Comic-Con: Dispatches - day one
Friday, July 24th, 2009
Johnny Depp mumbled, Robert Pattinson twinkled and James Cameron previewed his new film Avatar at the festival where everyone’s dressed up as their favourite superhero
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Archive for the 'Television' category
The Apprentice liveblogs, 2009
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
For the third year in a row, I did the full series of liveblogs for guardian.co.uk. The links below represent all the ones I did - the ones when I was double-booked or otherwise indisposed we by Heidi Stephens or Carrie Dunn, and were ace, but clearly not mine to claim on this site.
1 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
For the sake of it, the final of The Apprentice 2009 is reproduced below.
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Watch with … Grouting
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
[Another TV Group meeting, this time discussing the seminal Grand Designs]
Good evening, and welcome to another week of Watch With …, the weekly feature in which we take a hour of UK television and review it in real time, and try and decide if it’s all worth it or not.
This week, we’ll be lapping up the adventures of Kevin McCloud and his merry band of invariably self-assured and unrealistic self-builders in Grand Designs, from 9-10 on Channel 4. If you have any opinions on the show or the episode, during or after the event, any observations, wittisations, dissertations or condemnations - do leave a comment - otherwise press refresh for updates and new comments….
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Watch with … snogging
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
[Another TV Club outing, this time for Torchwood]
Good evening, and welcome to Watch With…, our regular kind-of-weekly-ish feature delighting in, dissecting and digesting a different piece of television every week, in real time. So like a bit like television review, but live, and faster, and less considered, with fewer clever bits (um - in a good way).
This evening, we’ll be watching Torchwood on BBC2 from 9-10, indulging in a bit of the Doctor Who spinoff that probably keeps wishing we’d stop calling it that. So what will happen? Will there be thrills and spills and the fighting of aliens? Or will it mainly be sex, sex, sex, like last series. And most of the first episode of this series. Only time, and us, will tell.
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Watch with … a faint hope of things going horribly wrong
Friday, January 18th, 2008
[For another week, TV Club is in session, this week watching a live ‘cookalong’ with Gordon Ramsey]
With adverts splattered all over the 4’s and commercial radio, it’s been trailed more than my uncle Barry’s caravan, Gordon intoning ‘Three days to go…’ in a voice that suggested we were all going to die rather than, say, do some cooking.
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Watch with … a vague sensation of deja vu
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
Jason Donavan in a soap? Martine McCutcheon? In a soap? Johnny Briggs out of Corrie? And all created by Mr Eastenders, Tony Jordan? What IS this, some kind of pot luck super made completely out of soaps? That sounds icky. I’m going to end up with a scummy mouth. Or, you know, more scummy than usual.
That’s right, it’s Watch This, our generally-regular feature where we take a hour or so of UK television, dissect, digest and deconstruct it live, as it happens and try and figure out what there is to be gained from British light entertainment on a weekday evening. I’ll be here from 9-10, this week watching ITV’s new concept series, Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach.
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SUSAN!
Monday, December 17th, 2007
Originally appearing as part of this feature by Stephen Armstrong on new lifestyle channel for men, ‘Dave’. Media Guardian section, December 17 2007
Imagine … if there was a channel for women
The home of witless chatter! OMG! Something excruciatingly fabulous has happened! Overnight, and like the natural metamorphosis that blindly follows other natural successfully rebranded metamorphoses, UKTV Living has, like, totally, rebranded as the hilariously super SUSAN! It’s like having a girls’ night out, but on your own, and “in”, rather than “out”!
Monday
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Watch this: Monday December 10, 2007
Monday, December 10th, 2007
[For The Guardian, 380 words, G2 supplement television pages]
Junior Mastermind
7pm, BBC1
Wherein cute and slightly precocious youths sit up straight in the big black chair and answer questions on weighty subjects like the life of Mahatma Gandhi, Antarctica and 17th-century Dutch painters. This, from a programme where the adult competitors get to answer questions on the life and career of Jennifer Aniston. Still, now we grown-ups can collapse on the sofa and feel slightly reassured that the future of Britain as encapsulated in her children is not going to hell in a handbasket after all.
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Watch this: Friday December 7, 2007
Friday, December 7th, 2007
[For The Guardian, 380 words, G2 supplement television pages]
First Cut: The Rules of Seduction
7.35pm, Channel 4
As film-maker John Farrar puts it: “The Game gives socially awkward men a voice with which to talk to women.” In fact, it’s a bunch of bottom-feeders with little respect for themselves and absolutely none for the women they collect. It’s not even about sex for these slimy wee numpties - including one Russell Brand wannabe - it’s about “winning”. Worth watching for tips on how to spot these nasty specimens in the wild: if someone opens with, “I was wondering if you could settle an argument?” run. Fast.
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Watch this: Thursday December 6, 2007
Thursday, December 6th, 2007
[For The Guardian, 380 words, G2 supplement television pages]
Arrange Me a Marriage
8pm, BBC2
With about 700,000 month-long relationships behind him and an annoyingly lazy attitude to apparently everything, it is less than surprising that rock fan Trevor is not yet married, and more than surprising that his lovely, patient family have managed not to kill him. Yet. Aneela Rahman is brought in to arrange an introduction party and, with the help of his loving family and friends, carefully whittles down the possibilities and finds a person they all agree may well be his perfect partner. And what does he do with this grand gesture, this beautiful opportunity? Oh, wait and see.
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