Friday, March 21, 2008

Mon Dieu!

We've come over all religious!



It is Easter, after all. It's not about chocolate eggs. It's about Army Of Lovers!

Labels: Army Of Lovers, Crucified, Easter, ridiculous-but-amazing

By Paul :: Post link :: ::  
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Thursday, March 20, 2008

Karma'n over to my place

PROPERTY! I Own Britain's Best Home, Five, 8.00pm

Now we know there are a lot of you out there who like property porn (or more specifically, property porn with a bunch of foolish 'real' people and some clever and just the right side of condescending experts.... OK, property porn that features Sarah Beeny, Kirstie'n'Phil, Ann Maurice or Kevin McCloud) and we wondered if this new little show would be up your street.

However, despite I Own Britain's Best Home being trailered like crazy on Five at the moment, we couldn't find out much about it (they are adopting the Channel 4 tactic of not updating their website until after new programmes air, and stfu if you want to find out about them before they start to decide if they are worth watching).

We think the gist is that a bunch of people get to pose their houses up before the camera and we get to presumably laugh at their sumggery. We *think* there might also be some viewer vote action along the way. Sadly, we suspect the crazy house boat people from the last series of Grand Designs won't be featuring.

PRISON! My Name is Earl, Channel 4, 10.00pm

Well, this is a turn up for the books. After series two of My Name is Earl turned up a gazillion years after series one, we are quite surprised that series three has turned up so comparatively quickly. We're not complaining. We like this show a lot, and what with the writers' strike and all, there has been a dearth of US comedy on our screens, and seeing as Channel Four don't seem that inclined to show much home-grown comedy either at the moment, this is doubly welcome.

Last time we saw Earl he took Joy's place at her theft trial, and in this opening two-parter (part two next week! What sort of nonsense is this, Channel 4!), he is in jail. We presume some how he will get out next week, no doubt through a series of karma-riffic komedy kapers.

We have heard a few rumours that this opening episode isn't quite up to the usual standards of the series. We hope that a) that isn't true, or b) if it is, that it's just a blip. Thursdays have not been all that funny since Lead Balloon and Buzzcocks ended, and we could do with something to take their place.

Labels: Channel 4, Five, I Own Britain's Best Home, My Name Is Earl, TV

By Rad :: Post link :: ::  
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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Rag and funnybone

TRAGIC! The Curse of Steptoe, BBC Four, 9.00pm

The idea of there being great sadness behind great comedy is not exactly a new one. but it does rather make you think. Will we be watching drama documentaries in twenty years time, telling us how Mitchell and Webb secretly hated each other? Behind the scenes recreations recounting how all of the sketches in Little Miss Jocelyn were created in a haze of drink and drugs? A hard-hitting documentary pointing out how Ricky Gervais really wasn't very funny, The Office aside? Actually, we'd probably quite enjoy that last one.

Anyway, in the lack of any hard factual evidence to back up any of our above assertions (although this being the internet, facts are always secondary to a good old-fashioned rumour, aren't they?), for the time being we're making do with BBC Four's series of dramas focusing on some tragic stories of comedy legends that do have a basis in reality, kicking off tonight with Steptoe and Son, exploring the fraught relationship between the show's stars in real life.

In some alarmingly good casting, Jason Isaacs is Harry H. Corbett and Phil Davis is Wilfrid Brambell, and perhaps we're just a little overtired, but there were points where we looked at the promo pictures and couldn't tell if they were from the drama or the original series. Also noteworthy in the casting department is Torchwood's Burn Gorman as Ray Galton, one half of the legendary writing partnership Galton & Simpson. Frankly, if watching the show is even half as exciting as reading the cast list, we're going to need to watch it lying in a darkened room with a chilled eye mask and some soothing music playing in the background.

Labels: BBC Four, The Curse of Steptoe, TV

By Steve :: Post link :: ::  
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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Blame the parents

PARENTAL! ONE Life, BBC One, 10.35pm

This is a curious one. It's a programme looking what it's like to be a pop star's parent. Yet it's not on Sky One, or ITV1/2, or Five, but in BBC One's quirky real lives strand, ONE Life. And it's not on in prime time, either, but late into the evening. We're not really sure that the whole point of this is, or where it's going, but it's a topic that hasn't really been covered so much by telly, so it may be interesting.

The parents here are those of a right rum assortment of pop stars: Courtney Love, Anthony Kiedis, Amy Winehouse (surely the show's big draw), er, Asher D from So Solid Crew, and, umm, Suggs. Presumably they will be expressing their disgust at their children's experiments with drugs, drugs, drugs, guns, and er, terrible fishfinger adverts.

Seeing as Anthony Kiedis' father is renowned for getting him into drink, drugs and women, and Amy Winehouse's parents are no strangers to the media (they have frequently publicly denounced her behaviour and famously told people not to buy her albums), this could be interesting. But we are really intrigued as to a) how they managed to get Courtney Love's family here (will Steve Coogan be brought up??) and b) why on earth Suggs' family are here.

We also get to see lots of baby photos of the stars, including Amy looking like a young Alanis Morissette. Come to think of it, Alanis hasn't released a record since, ooh, about the time Amy hit it big. Could this programme reveal that they are, in fact, one and the same? And what has Suggs done to poor old Captain Birdseye in order to bag that advertising contract? These are the things we really need to know...

Labels: BBC One, BBC1, ONE Life, parenting, pop stars

By Rad :: Post link :: ::  
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