Archive for April 2011
Forget Me Not
If you’re looking for a distraction from the no doubt endlessly looped coverage of the Royal Wedding this weekend, then the BBC have come up trumps with Exile. Paul Abbott, heavyweight writer of Cracker, creator of State of Play, Clocking Off and Shameless, has returned from his stint writing the US version of the latter show to bring us a characteristically riveting tale of family, identity and political corruption.
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Nothing is Forgotten...
In 1984, I was eleven years old. And Robin of Sherwood, whose first episode was screened exactly 27 years ago today, made a huge, life-changing impression on me.
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Planet of Fire Redux
This is our very last – and this time we mean it – classic commentary podcast. Featuring extra-special guests Rula Lenska and Ed Stradling, topics up for discussion include: Barry Manilow, Gallifreyan sex toys, Howard’s Way, JNT’s VHS collection, Peter Wyngarde’s crimes against music, and The Rocky Horror Doctor Who Show.
Tachyon TV Planet of Fire Redux commentary – click to listen
Who What a Scorcher
There used to be an unwritten rule that every new Doctor Who series should start with a bit of a lark: some gentle comic business and general dicking about to soften up the pre-pub crowd for the darker, arc-heavier stuff coming later. Or maybe it was a written rule: maybe on a whiteboard at Upper Boat there’s a Kama Sutra of Who positions in Russell T Davies’ handwriting that says you should always gain your audience’s trust with some light romping, after which you can suggest something a bit more adventurous, like taking them all the way to the year five billion.
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Farcical Aquatics
King Arthur was very big in the 1970s. He’d been big ever since Tennyson sent the Victorians into a frenzy of excitement with Idylls of the King in 1859, but following on from Lerner and Loewe’s musical Camelot in 1960, and Disney’s version of TH White’s The Sword in the Stone, the 1970s were particularly awash with versions of the Arthurian myth.
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