Posted on October 10, 2008 | |
In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, ABC
In the UK: I'm guessing the Beeb will buy it. What do you think?
This is the one we in Britain have all been waiting for. Despite running for only two series, time travel cop drama Life on Mars became something akin to the crown jewels - a national treasure to be revered by everyone. Even the awfulness of spin-off Ashes to Ashes couldn't dull our love for it.
So when we heard that the US was going to adapt it, we all feared the worst and assumed terrible things were going to happen to our precious*. "Take your hands off our crown jewels, Yanks," was the general reaction.
To be fair, once we saw the trailer and the pilot, we actually had a good reason to be dismayed. The trailer was truly awful and the pilot was bland. Relocated from Manchester to LA, the show ditched most of the characters, took away a lot of the fun bits without adding anything, and didn't really have any style of its own.
And ABC agreed. It took one look and said, "Guys, do you want to try again? Because this is sh*t." So the producers did try again. They changed production team, relocated the show to New York, brought back all the old characters and rewrote the script. Then they brought in heavyweight acting talent Harvey Keitel, Gretchen Mol and Michael Imperioli – and reshot the entire thing.
Wow. They say pilots can be unrepresentative of the series that follow, but that's all pretty unprecedented – although unsurprising given just how few new dramas ABC is running with this Fall.
Has that been enough though?
Continue reading "Review: Life on Mars (US) 1x1"
Posted on June 20, 2008 | |
In the US: Thursdays, 10pm, ABC. No start date yet
Ah, Life on Mars. Everyone's favourite BBC show about time-travelling cops who are really stuck in a coma (there's more than one, you know). Harking back to bygone days of politically incorrect cops shouting "Gov!" and beating up crims before going to the pub for a swift pint or seven, it gave us lovable rogue Gene Hunt to grudgingly admire while we simultaneously gloried in nostalgia and looked at the recent past with just a touch of smug superiority.
But, oh the wailing and gnashing of teeth when it was heard that US network ABC was going to remake it. "Bloody yanks. They're just not going to get it," screamed a thousand armchair and pub xenophobes around the land. And when that trailer came out, many a person could see their point.
Even ABC saw their point after giving the pilot a look-over. At the moment, it's busy relocating the whole thing to New York from Los Angeles and is recasting.
So what, you might ask, is the point of reviewing this, the original pilot? Well, I think it's instructional. Firstly, given the script itself probably won't change that much, it's interesting to see what changes have been made and will probably make it through to the series proper. Secondly, it's interesting to see whether the trailer made the pilot look better or worse than it actually is. And thirdly, is Colm Meaney as Gene Hunt anywhere near as good as Philip Glenister, assuming he doesn't get recast?
Continue reading "Preview: Life on Mars (US)"
Posted on May 9, 2008 | |
Today's Joanna Page, despite the best efforts of the BBC, is Love Soup, David Renwick's slightly odd look at love that stars Tamsin Greig, Sheridan Smith and the superfluous one from Ashes to Ashes.
I caught an episode of it once to see what Sheridan Smith was up to in her time off from Two Pints and wasn't desperately impressed. This time round was better, notably because of Joanna Page who got to exercise her acting muscles in a surprisingly subtle way. More on that later.
Strangely, Love Soup seems to have more in common with Jonathan Creek than Renwick's One Foot in the Grave, with bizarre love mysteries to be solved in outlandish ways. It's not great, but it's okay: as much as I love Tamsin Greig – and indeed Sheridan Smith – Greig's character, Alice, is just dull (although that's probably the point) and Smith's doesn't really have a lot of depth. Still, it's only half an hour long and nearly at the end of series two, so I've probably missed out on a lot.
Anyway, more pics of JP after the jump, including a great big spoiler. If you haven't seen the episode yet and intend to, don't go any further.
Incidentally, I do warn you that if you have still to see it, do not watch it where anyone can see you: it is definitely Not Suitable For The Office. Or indeed public transport.
Continue reading "Today's Joanna Page: Love Soup"
Posted on April 15, 2008 | |
Sometimes, it's the network's fault, sometimes it's the writers' when a show isn't quite as it should be. Ashes to Ashes' writers explain some of the behind-the-scenes compromises. [via Feeling Listless]
UPDATE: More from the same event, which also suggests that Matthew Graham did not have a happy time on Doctor Who
Posted on March 31, 2008 | |
I know it's a bit late, but I was away over the weekend and didn't have the time to string together a review until now.
So why am I bothering? Well, there's the fact that BBC3 jessied around the schedules again so there was no Torchwood finale to laugh at (although, given James Marsters was on Smallville this week as well, I'm not sure the TV set could have taken the resulting Marsters overload if it had been).
But I also wanted to sing you a song. It's from that wonderful comedy show Absolutely, which should be coming out on DVD any minute now. It goes like this:
I'm clever, so terribly clever
So clever, so terribly clever…
Continue reading "Season finale: Ashes to Ashes"
Posted on March 28, 2008 | |
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Posted on March 14, 2008 | |
Some pleasing symmetry in my Ashes to Ashes viewing this week. As with last week's episode (which I still haven't watched all the way through), I only watched half of last night's. The difference is that I only caught the second half rather than the first half, since we were doing something vitally important at 9pm (watching Terminator 2 on DVD). Will have to use the iPlayer to catch up at some point.
As a little experiment to determine what annoys me most about DI Drake, I tried putting my thumb between me and the TV to block her out. Turns out though, it's her voice and everything she says that set my teeth on edge. Not sure if there's a journal I can write that up in or not – maybe the Journal for Marginally Insane Bloggers.
All the same, it was a little bit redundant as an experiment because she wasn't that bad last night and I thought the episode was better than previous efforts.
Continue reading "Review: Ashes to Ashes 1x6"
Posted on March 7, 2008 | |
Well, folks, I did say there was going to be a chance I did episode by episode reviews of Ashes to Ashes and here I am, not doing a review of the fifth episode of Ashes to Ashes. Sorry, I had to go pick my wife up from the station midway through and I haven't watched the end of it yet.
More to the point, I've had every chance to but I haven't. I haven't felt motivated. Last night's seemed quite well written, like the writer (who also wrote last week's) knew what he was doing. I just didn't really enjoy it, right up until the moment I turned off the telly.
I'm trying to work out what the problem is with Ashes to Ashes. Why is it just not very interesting?
Continue reading "Review: Ashes to Ashes 1x5"
Posted on February 29, 2008 | |
How'd that happen? I wasn't intending to do episode by episode reviews of Ashes to Ashes, but here I am, reviewing it. Probably won't happen next week, but who knows?
New theory, boys and girls. Forget Life on Mars. This isn't Life on Mars in the 80s. This isn't an attempt to look at changes in policing over the last couple of decades as I thought yesterday - or if it is, it's a bad one. This is an attempt to do an episode by episode pastiche of individual crime shows of the 80s.
Life on Mars only had The Sweeney (and maybe Special Branch) to have a go at, and was all about changes in procedure and attitude. Ashes to Ashes is all about a TV-addicted woman who wants to be in an 80s detective show, probably Moonlighting.
Help me with this theory since it's on slightly shaky ground. These are the shows I think Ashes to Ashes has been sending up so far
Episode 1: The A-Team, Miami Vice or at the outside Riptide
Episode 2: Anyone?
Episode 3: Prime Suspect I (which was 1991 admittedly)
Episode 4: Edge of Darkness
I've come to this conclusion because last night's episode was the biggest homage to Edge of Darkness that the world has yet seen.
Continue reading "Review: Ashes to Ashes 1x4"
Posted on February 28, 2008 | |
So downloads are all the rage now. Big Finish, which makes those Doctor Who audio plays, has set up a downloads service (they still haven't got back to me about those missing extras, BTW, so I'm going to assume you don't get the CD extras with the downloads, making them even less attractive).
The BBC, after doing ever so nicely with its iPlayer, has leapt onto the Apple bandwagon as well by putting various shows onto iTunes, including Ashes to Ashes, Life on Mars, Torchwood and more. I've had little interest in the iTunes TV service until now - cos it's mostly been shows that are rubbish or aimed at kids. But with Stu_N suggesting I was wearing rose-tinted glasses in my recall of Life on Mars, I decided to give iTunes a try and download the first series.
Continue reading "Review: iTunes - the Life on Mars download experience"
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