If you imagine the aftermath of a nuclear attack on London necessitating giving the cast of Hollyoaks guns and telling them to get on with the business of catching terrorists, you'd pretty much have Spooks: Code 9, with all the bleak dystopia that such a scenario implies. Yes it has mushroom clouds on the opening credits, secret detention centres, id cards and Jack Bauer-style primetime torture, but there's still time for nice haircuts, cardigans and nights out in bars.

The first two episodes were jaunty enough and the premise is actually pretty good, apart from the cast all looking about 12. They even embraced Spooks devil-may-care attitude to the longevity of its cast members, Spooks being one of the few shows where actors are all on temporary contracts because, well, accidents happen.

In other news, the Mummy 3 really was as bad as Peter Bradshaw said. Michelle Yeoh was as watchable as ever, but even her presence alongside a trio of cgi yetis couldn't save the day. I could have come up with a better sequel. Hell, I could have come up with a better sequel whilst waiting for the film to start. The humour felt forced and the acting was dreadful - Maria Bello, taking over from Rachel Weisz to play Evy, was either carved from wood especially for the part, or was so busy concentrating on maintaining a prim and proper 1940s English accent that she forgot to, y'know, act.

And this concludes our Sunday night review!

From a link over at 

ken_of_ghastria's lj, rumours from Alan Tudyk about a possible second Firefly movie. Woo and indeed hoo! Here's hoping kids.

 

Tonight's episode (Blink) of Doctor Who was most definitely the best episode of the season, and quite possibly the best episode full stop. Who thought statues could be so damned scary even though they never did anything? Beautifully written, beautifully shot, with fantastically snappy dialogue and a really clever, intricate plot that made the best of time travel. Oh, and so scary I nearly wet myself.

Even if you've never seen Doctor Who or don't normally like it, forget that. Watch Blink. Now.

THAR BE SPOILERS IN THIS HERE POST! (for those reading this via an rss feed)

Tonight marked the final episode, ever, for Life on Mars, which I say with as much gravitas as I would a tv show that had been running 22 seasons, not 2 seasons. Yet Life on Mars, the story of DCI Sam Tyler, who gets hit by a car in 2007 and wakes up in 1973, has been fantastic. Really good, solid, clever drama, airing to critical acclaim and huge audiences in a primetime BBC1 slot every week.

Obviously the ending would be the crux on which the entire show would be judged in hindsight - will it turn out that Sam is in a coma (as the hints in the first season suggested), time travelling (as the more recent episodes seem to have been hinting at) or mad? Can they wrap it up satisfactorily, or will they fluff it right at the end?


Of course, besides the quality script and acting and all that guff, everyone knows the finest thing about Life on Mars was Gene Hunt, the chief inspector and Sam's boss who had a somewhat "unconventional" police style (a la the Sweeney) and a rather colourful tone of phrase. Here are some of my favourite Huntisms, for posterity's sake:

"She's as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot."

"Murderers do not play tennis!"

Gene Hunt: What is it you think I'm doing here, Tyler?

[Sarcastically under his breath]

Sam Tyler: Building a Death Star?

Gene Hunt: What?

Sam Tyler: Nothing.

and I think my favourite one:

Sam Tyler: If it was to do with football, he'd have serious injuries.
Gene Hunt: He's dead. That's quite serious.

So, to Life on Mars, good tv, and time travelling nazis ... err, policemen!

Those observant folk amongst you will have noticed something missing from my journal in the past few weeks, one of the 4 founding pillars of the blog (along with, umm, memes, links to random shit and ... crap of some kind or another) - the Lost Blog! There is a good reason ... I went out to roleplay a few weeks ago and forgot to set the tape. Then I forgot to watch the repeat. Then the following 2 weeks came by and as I hadn't caught up I got further behind.

Luckily I've borrowed Rich's dvd so am now catching up, but as I'm watching 3 or 4 this afternoon I'm not blogging them at the same time. Well, not yet. The blog will resume next week, probably.

Anyway, the previous few weeks can be summed up as ...

The last two episodes of Doctor Who have ruled and have been highly reminiscent of, depending on whose opinion you value, Event Horizon, Alien, the Exorcist and, my favourite, Warhammer 40k. It's all the gritty spaceships, the eye of terror swirling overhead (sorry, i mean blackhole), the allusions to a buried evil, weird runes and the air vents. Very Space Hulk-esque.

Which made me think ... Doctor Who is basically an Inquisitor, isn't he? Travelling the galaxy with his retinue, rooting out evil and destroying it. He turns worlds and cultures upside down, if it brings down the tyrants/monsters at their heart. I bet he'd virus bomb a world if he had to (witness the dalek episodes last series for proof if proof were needed). No?

 

Episode 5

 

2205 Oh no! Sun has lost her wedding ring!

2206 flasback 1/20 queue flashback! Oh wait, haven’t we seen several permutations of Sun and Jin’s wedding/courtship anyway?

2208 news flash! Jin is exceptionally tight! Buying a tie, wearing it on a date, and then returning it indeed. In a flashback no less.

2214 aah great! Some more un-excitement with the back-enders.

2215 some npc woman is taking Michael into the jungle. She has a name, but I think she might as well not. I bet she’s dead by the end of the episode.

2216 Sun has lost her wedding ring! Never fear! Jack is here to save the day!

2216 Uh oh! Jack is going to save the day with a boring anecdote! Luckily, no flashback.

2218 Jin ownz feisty Hispanic chick at the fishing!

2218 flashback 2/21 Jin at a job interview! Ooh, the excitement is mounting! Will he get hired or not?! The possibilities are endless!

2219 he gets hired … I guess there arent so many possibilities after all.

2220 the tail-os apparently have trust issues …

2221 … although not to the extent that the big black dude doesn’t object to giving Sawyer the world’s hugest knife.

2222 Michael has take Libby saying that its dangerous to go ‘that way’ as an endorsement and run off into the jungle.

2223 Jin punches black dude! Black dude headbutts Jin! An intense round of staring ensues. This is the most excitement we’ve had in weeks!

2224 Hurley thinks the ring has been eaten by the dog … exciting staring at the dog’s poo ensues. Hey, what does the dog eat anyway?

2225 they discuss Sun’s dog … I smell flashback!

2225 flashback 3/22 some sort of matchmaking service. Oh, but Jin is on the door as a doorman, not in the matchmakers! Ooh, what WILL happen? Oh yes, we’ve seen this before. No more surprises then …

2228 boar attack! Jin falls down the hill and face to face with a corpse. Adverts ensue.

2234 Sun has devised an unstoppable method for finding the ring. She is beating up bushes with a stick!

2235 Locke has come to add his pithy remarks too. Lucky Sun! she should lose more things!

2236 flashback 4/23 more hott Sun date action. More Jin on door action, having his rose stolen by Sun’s date. I predict they’ll be punching each other by the end of the night.

2238 hmm, I missed the start of that conversation as I was typing and don’t speak Korean – sounds like Sun’s date is engaged! The cad! I hope there’s another equally eligible man in the building … like, on the door!

2239 Jin and big black guy (does he have a name?) are busy tracking. The tracks they are tracking can only have been made by Michael, because ‘they’ don’t leave tracks. Hover boots?

2242 flashback 5/43 Jin fails miserably to stop a poor man and his poor child having a piss inside the hotel! The ignominity! In Korea, to let a poor man wee in your house/hotel is dishonorable and you must fall on your hat in shame.

2244 Kate has now come to advise. Sun is as fed up as us though about the rubbish advice.

2250 Michael has a technique to find Walt that is nearly as good as Sun’s attempts to find her ring – running through the jungle shouting loudly!

2253 the ring! Now all she needs to do is trek across the island and throw it into Mount Doom! Oh, wrong film …

2254 although … Lost of the Rings would be cool! They don’t get stranded on an island, but Mordor!

2255 flashback 6/44 sadly not to Mordor. Only to Jin and Sun bumping into each other. Actually a better episode than last week. At least the flashbacks were unobtrusive!

2256 Next on Lost! Next week looks quite exciting! Either that, or there’s only 2 minutes of excitement padded out by 58 minutes of adverts/flashbacks …

I've just watched Big Brother (yes, yes, sneer all you like, but it has the potential to be watchable on occasion) and dear sweet lord, what is it with the campness of the dude in the beret? I mean, not only is he uber-camp (do people like that really exist? No gay man I've ever met is anything but normal), but also behaves as though in a pantomime.

In other news - blonde bimbo #4 seems to have a surprising amount of depth, in a shallow kinda way.

Now, back to Los

Episode 4

 

2205 Here we go again …

2206 Oh my … Hurley seems to have been left alone with the food stores.

2206 And Jin is speaking fluent English!

2206 And there’s a giant chicken. Oh, so it must be a dream sequence! Not had one of those for ages – makes a change from the flashbacks.

2208 Dull Michael (he really is very dull isn’t he) is shouting and moaning about his son. Yawn yawn yawnedy yawn.

2209 Feisty Hispanic chick is forcing Jin (at gun point no less) to get out of the pit! And yet they seem reluctant to leave their hole …

2210 Everyone escapes but Sawyer, who seems to be pouting at FHC (Feisty Hispanic Chick).

2214 flashback 1/13 Hurley wins the lottery. We’ve seen this before though haven’t we?

2216 I’m sure his mother didn’t speak English last series? The phone rings, prompting the best, if most incongruous, quote ever: “Yes! This must be Jesus!”

2217 Charlie must have got a crap contract this season. It’s episode 4 and he’s only just made a real appearance. He tops the Jesus quote tho, shouting at Hurley: “You’re going to lie to me? You’re going to lie to the baby?”

2217 Sassy black woman (Rose?) is back! I thought she and her plot line had vanished way back earlier in the series when she was used as a foil for Jack’s moping.

2220 Claire finds a bottle. Presumably the bottle we were cunningly reminded about in the teaser.

2221 Hurley is put in charge of the food. Hurley, the really fat, greedy guy, who has stayed fat throughout series 1 (presumably by eating the extras?), is in charge of the food. Starvation in t-minus 1 week I predict!

2223 flashback 2/14 some sort of boring Hurley flashback to him being shouted at by his manager at the burger joint, and then quitting. What next? Kate asleep in bed? Charlie doing his shopping? Sawyer mowing his lawn?

2225 Charlie is stalking Locke, this time without the baby. Locke has l33t jungle skillz, however. Charlie doesn’t like being kept in the dark. Neither do we Charlie, neither do we.

2227 Sawyer is let out of his pit and they discover that these dudes are from the other half of the plane. Did we know about them already? Do we care? I say they missed an opportunity to get rid of the boring cast members, not take on some more.

2230 So who is missing? Who haven’t we seen yet this series? Sun (Jin’s wife) hasn’t been in it yet. Can’t say I’ve seen Shannon either. Not that they’re terribly exciting, but they are quite nice eye candy.

2235 Charlie seems to be overly petulant and stroppy today … “You’ve changed man, you’ve changed.” Yeh bloody yeh.

2236 flashback 3/15 do we even care? He’s buying records. One of them is Charlie’s band. Ooh the juxtaposition.

2237 Sayid and Jack are looking for something, crawling about under the bunker in some tunnels. Sayid draws a comparison with Chernobyl.

2239 something goes bang and steam starts to gush out. Yet despite the aforementioned comparison, they still go to investigate. It turns out to be Kate in the shower. Oh my.

2240 Turns out there are 23 new minions from the tail end to be added to the list of readily disposable victims.

2240 turns out the tail-enders have got a door of their own. Into the same bunker, or do they have one of their own? I bet they didn’t need to blow it up with dynamite! Not that the main group did after all, having found a back door.

2242 they seem to have found something shocking in the bunker, judging by the gawping.

2242 ooh! Shannon AND Sun turn up together, along with neglected Claire. It must be something in their contracts.

2243 Hurley and Locke are shouting at each other about rations. Hurley (or Hugo, as they all seem to be calling him this week) stomps off and finds some dynamite in a tree. Is he going to blow the food up?

2244 flashback 4/16 Hurley’s up to some sort of jape involving gnomes. “Promise me that nothing will change.” Ooh, I can feel the point of the flashback starting to appear.

2246 Rose stumbles in on Hurley setting dynamite in the food store. I don’t think he likes change.

2246 flashback 5/17 so short it barely registers!

2247 Rose and Hurley are arguing! Arguing seems to be the theme of the episode.

2247 flashback 6/18 argh! It’s there for a second, then it’s gone.

2248 flashback 7/19 is this even a flashback, it’s kinda superimposed with Hurley shouting at Rose about potato chips and everyone hating him for rationing them. I’d just eat them all, instead of blowing them up.

2251 Hurley is handing out all the food. A big beach bbq seems like the best choice! Although one thing he does say doesn’t make much sense – that there’s enough food to feed 1 guy (Des), 3 meals a day for 3 more months. So Des was about to run out of food then? Seems like a badly stocked bunker …

2255 Rose’s husband shows up. A happy ending of sorts, until Hurley blows Rose up by mistake.* Aah, bitter sweet endings are the best.

 

*This doesn’t really happen. But this episode was so boring I had to add my own excitement by blowing up cast members …

Aah, back to back episodes. What finer thing could there be? Yes I've blogged this too. Sad, aren't I?

So I'm watching the first episode of Lost seasons 2. I have the laptop with me. What better use of my time than to blog the opening episode? Yes there will be spoilers. No I can't guarantee it will even vaguely be amusing. Yes I'm doing so anyway. At least until boredom or sleep kick in.

So, the new series of Doctor Who has started, with the tenth Doctor safely in charge of the TARDIS. Don't worry, no spoilers here. The episode was perfectly serviceable, but has left me a little underwhelmed. Had this been the first episode with David Tennant as the Doctor, I think I'd be disappointed for the series as a whole, but after the sheer unstoppable genius of the Christmas Invasion (which you could think of as the pilot for this series), I know that he can do much, much better, and will put this one down to a hiccup, of which the last series had a couple too.

Anyway, next week's looks awesome! Best special effects so far, if I do say so myself!