Doctor Who

• The Next Doctor gets 11.7m viewers
• Michelle Ryan favourite to play the next companion?

Film

• Trailer for James Corden/Matt Horne's Lesbian Vampire Killers
• Watchmen featurette
• Bruce Boxleitner to return for Tr2n
• John Curran to direct Keira Knightley period piece The Beautiful and the Damned
• James Corden to appear in Gulliver's Travels?
• How Thor and The Avengers will work

Theatre

• Brace yourself for The Thorn Birds - the musical

British TV

• BBC1 to show season two of Damages
• Fewer stunts for Top Gear thanks to cutbacks
• Rachel Stevens to appear in next series of Merlin?
• Trailer for series three of Skins

US TV

• Watch the first episode of United States of Tara for free
• Michael Pitt to star opposite Steve Buscemi in Scorsese's Boardwalk Empire
• Flight of the Conchords season two premiere does well on internet
• Michael Cassidy leaving Privileged
• Clip of Salma Hayek in 30 Rock
• Sense and Sensibility's Charity Wakefield to star in David Kelley's Legally Mad

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Read other posts about: 30 Rock, Top Gear

Doctor Who

• David Tennant to appear in Shakespeare documentary

Film

• Actors' strike plans gearing up
• Trailer for Heigl and Butler's The Ugly Truth

Theatre

• Gareth Gates to star in Joseph

British TV

• Clip of Juliet Stevenson in Dustbin Baby
• Channel 4's Christmas line-up
• Licence fee won't be given to C4 for digital switchover
• Third series of Jam and Jerusalem planned

US TV

• Who's playing Olivia's sister in Fringe
• Sarah Connor hits series low
• Larry King to guest on 30 Rock

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In the US: Thursdays, 9.30/8.30c, NBC
In the UK: Five, from January (probably)

Wake up, NBC! Wake up!

I don't know if you've noticed this, but Tina Fey has been something of a hot property of late. Thanks to her scary impersonation of Sarah Palin (here with Will Ferrell as George Bush), people all over the world are waking up to the fact that despite having been on and written for a recent season of SNL, she is in fact a comedy genius.

Not NBC though, because they've waited until the end of October to bring to our screens the latest season of 30 Rock. Set behind the scenes of a fictitious NBC sketch show, it features Tina Fey as the show's bewildered liberal producer and Alec Baldwin as the interfering conservative executive in charge of Fey's show, east coast programming and microwave ovens. And it's easily the best comedy on television at the moment (yes, better than The Office, etc)

Well done, NBC. Would you like to look at your ratings? Scary, aren't they? Want to start thinking a bit more in future, maybe, about how you could capitalise on events rather than simply staring at them blankly?

Of course, there may have been doubts about the show's funniness. Would season three be as funny as previous seasons?

Don't be silly. Of course it would.

Continue reading "Review: 30 Rock 3x1"

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Doctor Who

• David Tennant to appear in Poliakoff's 1939
• DT planned to leave months ago
• Russell Tovey, currently filming Being Human, talks about returning (and not returning) to DW

Film

• Remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes?

Theatre

• Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart to star in Waiting for Godot
• Matthew Horne and Imelda Staunton to star in Entertaining Mr Sloane

British TV

• Five to air documentary on the Brand/Ross 'incident'…
• …Ross pulls out of the Comedy Awards…
• …and Ponderland gets its best ever ratings
• BSkyB profits up 25%
• Trevor McDonald to step down from News at Ten
• Press pack for Joe Ahearne/Martin Shaw's Apparitions

US TV

• Jesse Alexander and Jeph Loeb fired from Heroes
• Valentine and Easy Money cancelled
• Kath & Kim gets full season…
• …as does Samantha Who?
• 30 Rock gets series-best ratings
• FX developing Staten Island-set police drama
• Jenny McCarthy and Andy Richter to appear in Chuck

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Read other posts about: 30 Rock, Being Human, Gavin and Stacey, Heroes

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Film

• Teaser for Angels and Demons
• SJP and Hugh Grant to star in a rom-com together
• Sam Mendes to direct adaptation of Preacher
• David Lindsay-Abaire to write Spider-Man 4?
  
• J Michael Straczynski updating Forbidden Planet

British TV/Radio

• Jonathan Ross suspended for 12 weeks, Radio 2 controller resigns
• BBC2 to air a Geoffrey Perkins tribute night

US TV

• Fox cancels King of the Hill
• American Dad gets a fifth season
• Emily Rose to star in Operating Instructions; Willie Garson joins White Collar
• Bradley Whitford to star in and produce Off Duty
• Jon Hamm to play love interest on 30 Rock?
• More episodes of Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill and 90210 ordered
• John Schneider to do three-episode arc on Dirty Sexy Money

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Doctor Who

• Pics from Torchwood
• Prince Charles turned down Doctor Who cameo
• David Tennant likely to stay to 2011
• Seven Doctors to reunite for Children in Need?
• Torchwood's new cast members

Film

• Ridley Scott to direct The Forever War
• Frank Darabont quits Law Abiding Citizen
• Trailer for Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber's Defiance
• Orphange director Juan Antonio Bayona to take on Hater
• Pics of Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law as Holmes and Watson

• Channel 4 quits digital radio

British TV

• Richard and Judy ratings getting even lower
• FX to show John From Cincinnati in November

US TV

• CBS to stream entire shows on YouTube
• Four more episodes of Knight Rider ordered
• Thursday night ratings, including Life On Mars', strong
• Salma Hayek to appear in 30 Rock…
• …and clips of Jen and Oprah
• Clips of Nicole Richie in Chuck
• Sarah Palin: The TV series?
• CW's Sunday night ratings not great

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Read other posts about: 30 Rock, Life on Mars, Torchwood

Doctor Who

• An interview with a new companion [spoilers]

Film

• Seth Rogen to produce I'm With Cancer
• Max Payne clips
• Eric Bana to star in remake of Le Convoyeur
• The kids of Fame
• Rebecca Mader to be female lead in Men Who Stare at Goats

British TV

• ITV4 acquires Life
• Beeb to launch kids version of iPlayer…
• …and pilots comedy programmes for kids
• Michael Grade wants to end ITV's indie quota
• Chris Tarrant has a new gameshow
• More UKTV rebranding: now it's Blighty and Eden
• Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton reunite for Psychoville

• ABC remaking V
• …and its Wednesday night ratings keep falling
• Burn Notice and Psych get renewed
• 30 Rock Gossip Girl cameo cancelled

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Doctor Who

• Sylvester McCoy to appear on Doctors
• Rusty helped with Merlin
• Rusty willing to come back for Doctor Who movie

Awards

• The results of the Emmys: good news for 30 Rock, Mad Men and John Adams

Film

• Universal turns down Tin Tin…
• …but Pegg and Frost will play the Thompson Twins
• Stephen Chow to direct and star in The Green Hornet
• Nicholas Cage to star in Season of the Witch

US TV

• CBS renews Flashpoint
• William Fichtner to lead TNT's Night and Day
• Uma Thurman joins A Muppets Christmas
• Brendan Fehr to play David Boreanaz's brother on Bones?

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Read other posts about: 30 Rock, Mad Men

Doctor Who

• David Tennant stopped 'Potterisation' of Who
• Excerpts from Rusty's book
• Russell Tovey to replace DT?

Film

• Extended clip from The Day The Earth Stood Still

Art

• Damien Hirst auction brings in £70.5m

British TV

• Douglas Henshall, Paul McGann and Phil Davis to star in Collision by Anthony Horowitz for ITV1
• Michael Grade reckons Google is a parasite
• Touch of Frost to end finally
• Strictly gets 6m
• Tess of the D'Urbervilles gets 5.7m
• Wire in the Blood gets 5.6m
• Ocean Finance launches a loans and mortgages channel

US TV

• Children of the Corn remake to include David Anders and Daniel Newman
• Daivd Simon and Tom Fontana to make mini-series about the hunt for John Wilkes Booth
• Rumer Willis to appear on CSI:NY
• Steve Martin to gues on 30 Rock

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Doctor Who

• John Barrowman to investigate Animals at Work

Film

• Office writers to script Ghostbusters 3
• Robert De Niro leaves Edge of Darkness
• Denzel Washington to star in the Hughes brothers' The Book of Eli
• Clip of Ricky Gervais in Ghost Town
• Mark Strong joins Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes
• John Harrison talks about Dune
• Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen cast in Bone Deep

Commercials

• Dairy Milk gorilla to play 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'

Theatre

• Jimmy Osmond to guest star in Grease
• Keith Allen to play Long John Silver in Treasure Island

British TV

• Freesat adds C4 timeshift channels
• Lost in Austen only gets 3.8m viewers
• Clip from Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul

US TV

• Gossip Girl girls to guest in 30 Rock…
• …and footage of Jennifer Aniston on-set
• Mitch Hurwitz and Jason Biggs working on sitcom for CBS
• Aliens land with Greg Berlanti and Rene Echevarria for The Return for ABC
• Anthony Edwards and Noah Wylie to appear in ER's final season
• Michael Rodrick to guest on 24 and Without a Trace
• Jodie Foster to play Maggie in The Simpsons; Anne Hathaway also to appear
• Swingtown creator to develop BiCoastal for Showtime
• New Amsterdam's Zuleikha Robinson cast in Lost

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Read other posts about: 24, 30 Rock, Gossip Girl, Lost, Torchwood