The internet knows all, and a bit of googling told me it was ‘Frankie’s Gun!’ by The Felice Brothers.

Emusic has the relevant album, and it’s great. Highly recommended.

Also their site tells me they’re playing London on the 20th of March. Hmmm…

Why did nobody tell me this?

It seems a particularly timely piece of information as we’ve been introducing the kids to Buffy recently (in part to get us all over the lack of Doctor Who), and also to Firefly. We are deep in the Whedonverse.

First we have Episodes (actually a British-American coproduction), starring Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan, in which a married-couple writing team go to Hollywood to adapt their hit British comedy show for the American market. It also stars Matt LeBlanc, playing himself. Yes, it’s all very meta, and what’s wrong with that?

Then there’s Campus, which has some of the Green Wing writing team, and could lazily be described as “Green Wing, but set in a university instead of a hospital”².

If you are one such person, then I slightly envy you: you still have these joys ahead of you. And with both of them, don’t worry if the first episode doesn’t overwhelm you; just watch the next, and you’ll be hooked.

1. Currently listed as “Watch now on 4oD” (sic). I might just do that.
2. And indeed has been, by me,

(What, you think that’s a spoiler? You saw the future world when Sylar had healing powers: obviously that one wasn’t going to come true).

You know, some things shouldn’t have a second series. They are perfect bite-sized little vignettes as they are (OK, pretty big bites, and not so much of the “ette”, in this case). Their story is told, and while it may not have a tidy conclusion to every thread, it has at least reached a satisfying point at which to stop; there are no downright cliffhangers left.

And that’s like life: there are no beginnings, no endings; not really. Only a continuing narrative that we pay more or less attention to; and that we eventually have to stop reading (or writing), and put away forever (which last fact is intensely annoying, and the sooner we can edit it out of our reality, the better).

I’m sad that Heroes is over; but in a way I’m sadder that it’s going to go on. Because there will be inevitable deterioration — I read recently that Tim Kring has apologised about the quality of some Season 2 eps (oh, there are a few mild spoilers for Season 2 at that link; or not so mild, depending on how you feel about them) — there will be shark-jumping. And eventually it may fall to the lowest common denominator of all serial drama: soap opera.

I’m looking at you, Desperate Housewives.

And things that should go on, that need to go on, don’t get to. One of these days — and it must be soon, I think — Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip is going to finish, and then it’ll be gone forever, irrespective of what plot threads are dangling. Bummer.

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Just replacing the sonic screwdriver like that was a bit of a copout, mind: given that it got destroyed, I thought that they might try to make something of him not having it.

Still, that’s a very minor nitpick; it was much better than the start of the previous series (also set in a hospital, curiously).

A really strong start.

Updated to say: I’m guessing that the “Vote Saxon” poster is the first reference to whatever this season’s “Bad Wolf” may be.

Unless it’s just a reference to a dodgy heavy metal band.

Technorati Tags: doctor who, tv, sf

And maybe that’s what’s going to get them out of this one: somehow or other the Doctor’s going to have to use one set of baddies against the other.

But what of Rose? How can she be saying, “This is how I died”? I wouldn’t be surprised if she got trapped on the alternative Earth, but that’s not exactly death. Could she end up trapped in the Void craft (and in the Void)? The beach at the beginning could be virtual reality. But even that wouldn’t exactly be death, and it couldn’t provide any way that she could be telling her story.

The only thing that could make anything like sense, as far as I can see, is if she was telling her story knowing that she was about to die. But I don’t really see how they could get to that state of affairs in the forty-five minutes remaining of the series.

Still, all this speculation will look pretty stupid by this time next week, I suppose, as the speculation about ‘Army of Ghosts’ does now.

My son was crying with emotion when the Daleks flew out of the sphere. We had, of course, seen the Dalek blast in the trailer, and he had said, “I think there’ll be Daleks in it.” While I said, “No, it’ll be Dalek technology that Torchwood have scavenged, and maybe even needed the Doctor’s help to get it working.” But how right he was.

We should have seen it coming, of course. When the Doctor said, “There’s a storm coming,” it was obviously an allusion to ‘The Oncoming Storm’, his supposed nickname amongst the Daleks. So what could his oncoming storm be? And then when he said that you could survive the end of the Universe inside a Void craft, it should have leapt out at us as an obvious place to survive the Time War.

But I thought I had heard that there weren’t going to be any Daleks in this series. In fact, I though that Russell T Davies himself had said that. If so, then it was a great piece of misderection—of lying, let’s face it—and I don’t hold it against him for a moment. At last we got a properly non-trailed, non-spoilered surpise baddy arrival: the best since the Cybermen’s appearance at the end of the first episode of ‘Earthshock’. Almost as good as the Dalek’s appearance in ‘Dalek’ could have been, if the episode had been called something else and they hadn’t trailed it.

Only one more week: what’ll we do without it after that? And The West Wing ends the week after that. Bah.

Technorati Tags: doctor who, daleks, cybermen, tv, television, russell t davies

I thoroughly enjoyed Life On Mars on BBC 1, recently. I expected slightly better — or at least different — of it when it was first announced: I thought there would be more (or some) ambiguity or doubt about whether Sam Tyler was experiencing it all in his mind while in a coma, or had actually travelled in time.

Shortly after the start there was no such ambiguity about that, and we were deep in The Bridge or Marabou Stork Nightmares territory (if you can compare a TV series with a novel, then I’d say it’s better than the latter but nowhere near as good (obviously) as the former). What I was hoping for in the final episode, though, is that Sam would wake up back in 2006; and that he would then look into the history of the personnel at the station, and find that Gene Hunt and the others (and DI Sam Tyler, for that matter) really existed. Maybe he would even look up a now-aged and retired Gene, an Annie who is a grandmother.

Obvious, maybe, but it could have been a nice touch.

I had some mixed feelings about the whole thing, though. I wanted it to be resolved and completed, for dramatic satisfaction. But I so much enjoyed the interactions between the characters (especially the growing and grudging respect between Tyler and Hunt) and the quality of most of the stories that I became (and remain) keen to see more. If he had woken up, there would be no going back.

The West Wing maintained its high standard through the recent season (in fact this season, 6, was significantly better than 5 was, I would say) and I’m profoundly glad that we got a digibox and so could watch it on the excellent More4, rather than having to wait for the DVDs to be released. More4 are taking us straight into season 7, so only 22 21 more weeks and then it’s over forever.

More4 is also where we get The Daily Show With John Stewart, to give it its full-length name. This is just a fabulous show; hilarious, thought-provoking and informative. What more could you ask for?

Well, I could ask for something as good — and in a similar vein — for Britain.

The IT Crowd was disappointing enough after two or three episodes that I didn’t bother to work around its clashing with The West Wing on Friday nights). I’ve read some positive comments on it, though, and it ought to have been good, given its pedigree; so maybe I’ll watch out for the repeats. I wonder if that stupid announcer ever stopped calling it ‘The it Crowd’, though?

Hyperdrive was largely disappointing, and Invasion just petered out: that is, I petered out of watching it.

Most importantly (in comedy, at least): at last they’ve started showing the trailers I’ve been waiting for: “New Green Wing. Nearly ready.” Hooray! The funniest comedy of the last few years: right up there with Absolutely I can hardly wait.

And to top all that, my old friend from uni, Paul Cockburn inadvertently reminds me that the new Doctor Who will be starting quite soon. Fantastic!

Technorati Tags: tv, television, green wing, doctor who, absolutely, the west wing, the daily show