TV Shows We Most Look Forward to Watching in 2010!

As Summer begins to slowly wind down, we simply cannot contain our excitement anymore! Yes, Autumn/Fall is here….which means, TV is our best friend again with our favourite shows and new ones coming to our airwaves! Let’s check out which ones MOST excite our TV buff senses…

1. SPOOKS

Oh YES!!! Last series gave us such an explosive finale we could hardly believed our eyes! Replaying the scene of the bomb explosion over and over again just to catch a glimpse of whether Ros (Hermione Norris) escaped or met her horrible fate, was making us near bonkers! We HAD to know but alas, no luck! Worse, after the series ended, Kudos Productions, cast and crew, would not reveal whether Hermione Norris would be returning to the next series! Agent Ros, aka Hermione Norris, is the epitome of COOL on TV! Not only is she gorgeous, she’s cool as a cucumber, cold if she wants to, fit as a fiddle, quick with her body movements (arse-kicking, arm-twisting, neck-breaking, pure tough running) and a wicked sense of humour. She doesn’t shy away from having an acid tongue if she wants to. She’s a hard pill to swallow which makes Ros such an engaging character that viewers of “Spooks” just can’t get enough of. Well, WE can’t get enough of her, so there! And Hermione Norris IS Ros. Period. No one else can pull off this unflinching, unapologetic but eternally fascinating character except Hermione Norris. That’s just a fact.

So, the latest update about the new series is that it will air on BBC sometime in November this year! Unfortunately, we couldn’t get anything out of Helen James Production, who recently filmed the behind-the-scenes footage of the show and obviously had some scoop about Hermione Norris, no matter how hard we pressed on! Oh, brother! Guess we have to wait until the show is ready to put out some teasers, then. Bugger! God Damn!

2. Lip Service

Alright, the creators of this series had us at “British version of The L Word“!! Icing on the cake is the lovely, adorable Laura Fraser, whom we all loved in “Nina’s Heavenly Delights“, who is one of the featured lesbians in this heavily anticipated BBC3 new series! FYI, we all HATED Ilene Chaiken’s “The L Word” as it was trashy, nonsensical, poorly written, exploitative show that catered more toward the mainstream (aka male viewers!)… The stories and characters after Season 1 were so far from reality about lesbian lives that none of us could bear to watch after Season 3, however much we love Jennifer Beals. Needless to say, watching Season 2 and 3 of “The L Word” was more painstakingly torturous than pouring acid into our eye sockets!!! And that’s probably an understatement. There are no words in describing Ilene Chaiken’s fuckeroo state of mind when she overturned a reasonably good 1st season into nothing but rubbish for the rest of the show!

Hence, when BBC3 announced its plan to air “Lip Service” this year with some comments from the creator, Harriet Braun, who wrote for the critically acclaimed serial dramas, “Mistresses” & “Hotel Babylon,” since last year, we were over the moon. We were ecstatic! We were so very excited! At last! A proper series about lesbians (oh yes, we ALWAYS prefer our own British storytelling especially when it comes to character-driven stories!) and instead of the tired Los Angeles scene, we’ll be watching the ladies in action in Scotland – most specifically… Glasgow!! YAY!! LOVE, LOVE Scotland!!! (Shout out to some of our friends in Edinburgh, Stirling and Aberdeen!) And then, who’s producing it? None other than the very COOL Kudos Production who’s given us so many unforgettable, original, exciting serials from “Spooks” and “Hustle” to “Life on Mars” and “Ashes to Ashes.” So nothing will go wrong. That’s a promise. No, we’re no psychics but our hearts and minds are telling us, “Lip Service” is going to KICK “The L Word” all the way to Timbuktu! Yes, that’s how much we loathe the LA-based show! Urgghh…

One of AfterEllen‘s columnists, Great LezBritain, had some scoop about the series since they visited the set last year (we think!) and also recently had a chance to preview the 1st episode of it! Oh, those lucky gals! And nope, they’re keeping mum about it until the air date is around the corner. Bugger!

As if this anticipated show airing in the coming months isn’t enough, BBC3 also teased us with this mini-clip of the series in the beginning of this year! Oh, those sadists at BBC!! If you haven’t seen it, just take a peek…you won’t regret it!

3. Fringe

J. J. Abrams reallly fucked up “Lost” which sucked more and more until its last breath this year (thank God!) since Season 2. So we’re hoping that he and his crew don’t lose interest or focus when Season 3 of Fox’s mind-bending, X-File-ish “Fringe” returns soon. Last season’s finale, we saw the parallel universe of Olive Durnham and Co.’s world, which we were waiting for since the show’s inception 2 years ago! But then we also saw the UN-thinkable, wrong, simply UN-speakable thing that the creators did to the Olivia Durnham and Peter Bishop characters – the no-no romantic hook-up!!! When we saw that, we were like, “NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NOOOOOOO!!! WHY??!!!” What’s this obsession of some TV creators/writers wanting to please the freaking viewers?! Tell your story. DO NOT direct your show according to viewers fantasy!!! Honestly. We were “X-Files” fans…naturally. So when we saw quite a few episodes in Season 2 that mirrored (copied) episodes of the classic show, we were disgusted. It’s one thing to pay homage to a show that you look up to but it’s totally a cop-out to just copy the story and modify it a bit! Anyway, back to this horrible, no-no hook-up of the main characters – ok, if you’re copying “X-Files”, why not copy its creators’ absolute loyalty to their own wish to NOT pair up Mulder and Scully romantically despite millions of viewers pleading for that throughout the show’s life UNTIL they knew that they were ending the show?! Really! Even the actors themselves, Joshua Jackson and Anna Torv, were adamant about their characters not getting involved romantically! You see! Once in a while, you know, creators and writers should listen to their actors. This time, both Torv and Jackson are RIGHT! We’ve always seen Olivia and Peter as siblings rather than having any romantic linkage. So, that bit of the season finale really got to our nerves. Some of us were bitching about it for months….well, still are!

But we’re still holding out hope that J. J. Abrams and Co. will twist that bit of “pooh-pooh” storyline so there’s NOT going to be a romance shit happening between the 2 characters which, in our opinion, totally distracts the CORE of the show, which is, FRINGE SCIENCE – quantum mechanics, metaphysics, metapsychology, paranormal activities, the lot. Certainly NOT stupid, viewer fantasy-pandering fuckeroo that is the romantic involvement of the 2 otherwise steadfast, thinking-with-brain-not-heart characters! And PLEASE!! STOP making Walter Bishop such a wet blanket anymore!!! The KEY fascination and interest with this character is that he’s absolutely clueless, a socially inept but hilarious (not on purpose) and a total science genius freak! So, when the writers started making him more “human,” and sensitive, so to speak, it took away that unique personality that Walter had in the beginning. NOT a good idea at all, J. J. and Co.! Don’t do that anymore. Please.

Season 3, BE MORE of a para-, meta-, quantum-physics-like show like Season 1, and LESS of a heavy drama, sensitive, emotional kind of show. If we want to see the latter type, we’d tune in to other better dramas. We tune in to “Fringe” to watch the great paranormal, unexplained, quantum science type of storylines. Parallel universes, psychic abilities, telekinesis, teleportation, reanimation…. all these brilliant phenomenons!!

And lastly….

4. The Good Wife

This CBS series, caught us by surprise. At first, we didn’t watch it. But then we heard about how original and uniquely different it was from other legal, courtroom dramas. So, we decided to give it a try. Lo and behold, we were hooked by the end of the 1st episode! Wow! We never thought the creators and writers could do anything differently than all the countless legal dramas that the US TV had given us all this time. This show, is not only a courtroom, legal drama. It’s much more than that. It’s law. It’s politics. It’s investigative. It’s a woman in her 40s going back to the workplace in the present climate. It’s forbidden love/attraction. It’s playful. It’s flirtatious. It’s seductive. It’s funny. It’s real. It’s all of the above and then some! The cast is brilliant! Our faves have got to be Archie Panjabi who plays this mysterious, flirtatious investigator, Kalinda; Alan Cumming who plays Eli, this sarcastic political strategist/player who’s simply hilarious! (Yes, we’re very partial to Brits and Scots!) Lastly, the deliciously manipulative, vengeful and ambitious young attorney Cary played to perfection by Matt Czuchry. What a cast indeed.

The freshman season ended with a cliffhanger. Very appropriate. We hope the show will expand the political side of the show – which is Chris Noth‘s character, Peter Florrick. And we want to see if Kalinda is or isn’t!! (Snigger!) We want to see this duel now between Alice and Cary; the continued chess game between Peter and Glenn in the political arena.

So, let the Summer end already because we can hardly wait for these brilliant shows!!

— written by TVFilmBuff, for Chatteringmind

Living In the Moment Amplifies One’s Focus?

“Better Off Ted” just keeps getting better, funnier, and more facetious than ever in tackling various political/social issues that we face today. I love it! The Veronica character played to absolute perfection by Portia de Rossi IS the FUNNIEST of the show, hands-down! So, imagine my surprise that de Rossi nor the show was even nominated for the Emmys last year! Being a self-professed geek that I am, I shall give the powers-that-be the benefit of a doubt, that it was because “Better Off Ted” was a mid-season show, hence too few episodes to gauge its worthiness in being nominated. Hopefully, we get to see at least Portia de Rossi being nominated if not the show at this year’s Primetime Emmys. Fingers crossed, huh?

Meanwhile, you gotta check out this extremely funny clip of Veronica trying to “educate” Linda about the importance of living in the moment as it’d make one more focused..! This is from last week’s episode. Absolutely priceless performance by both actresses!!

— written by TVFilmBuff, for Chatteringmind

Could David Tennant’s “Dr. Who” Die Any Slower??!

UTTER BOLLOCKS! Don’t know about any of you out there but I very nearly threw a shoe at the TV screen when I watched (bad idea!) the final episode of David Tennant as the 10th Dr. Who in the conclusion to the Dr. Who Special, “The End of Time”! OMG! WTF?! Could the writers, particularly the director, assassinate the character any worse than what they did to him in that sorry episode, with the ultra disastrous script with seriously handicapped dialogue, nevermind the animated performance, and constant shouting, spitting and eye-popping gestures?! What? Were they done intentionally so that viewers who’ve not wanted David Tennant to stop portraying Dr. Who after the actor announced his exit in 2008, or viewers who haven’t exactly embraced the new, much younger Matt Smith as the next doctor, would practically be done with David Tennant as Dr. Who after watching the incredibly bad Special? Because guess what, if the bad was done intentionally, then I’d say, the writers, creator and director have succeeded ‘coz I for one, who always thought that David Tennant was the best Dr. Who, immediately felt the overwhelming desire to repel Tennant as the Doctor after watching that farce that BBC called a holiday Special! Urrghhhh!! It’s incredibly distressing because I know that’s 1 hour and 15 minutes of my life I can never get back!

Let me count the many flaws and redundant scenes that “The End of Time” created:

1. The Script – what script? You KNOW it wasn’t significant because practically every scene was stretched till kingdom come and my gosh, the dialogue! Jeez leweez! It was so few that if you take out all the explosions, the slow-motioned-like gestures, the long silence, there was probably only 10 lines in total!

2. The Performance – OMFG! What happened to David Tennant and John Simm?! These are 2 very good actors in normal circumstances but “The End of Time” was truly their worst yet! I mean, did they really have to spit when they talked, and worse, was saliva-secretion part of the necessary acting “prop”?! It was oh-so gross especially if you watched it on HD, like I had! Urgh! Why were Tennant and Simm so animated with every word they spilled out? Why were they shouting so incessantly in EVERY.SINGLE.SCENE?! Why did they have to use such flamboyant gestures of different parts of their bodies all the time? Simm opening his arms and raising them in the air practically every time he was in the scene; Tennant shaking, trembling, raising his arms, widening his legs; and OMG, the zombie-like walk that took 5 minutes for Tennant to get from one spot the the next toward the end. Lastly, the excruciatingly L-O-N-G silence as the camera just stationed on one face to the other…. There were so many of those exasperating moments that I was literally hyperventilating out of sheer irritation and utter annoyance! It took a lot out of me not to destroy the HD TV that was right in front of me! Oh, and the endless whining and crying from Bernard Cribbins (Wilfred Mott) were enough to make me pull all my hair out in exasperation!

3. The Direction/Production – OMFG! Euros Lyn? What happened? Did something or someone twist your arm so hard that you’d only shoot your actors at close-ups and nothing else?! Whatever made you think that endless shouting and screaming from your actors would create some kind of heart-wrenching, explosive, memorable scenes? And was the script and dialogue so poorly written that you had a hard time stretching it to, not 1 but TWO parters, lasting a total of 135 minutes?! And who sanctioned the 2 parters?! This script, “The End of Time,” is obviously only written to last for 50 minutes only, max 60 minutes! As a result of this poor decision from either the creator/executive producers or BBC to split it into 2 episodes, every scene was stretched into oblivion, hence making it really painful to watch especially when the camera was stagnant for far too long. When the camera was moving, the actors were like they were in slow motion. The whole story was utterly incongruous because of these forced actions.

4. David Tennant – the 2nd part of “The End of Time” was supposedly his last hoorah to “Dr. Who.” But due to how the script and the direction were headed, Tennant ultimately paid the price as every extra, redundant minute they put him on the stretched scene refusing to die or go away, only further exacerbate the inevitable assassination of his character. From not wanting to see Tennant leave as Dr. Who, I felt like he didn’t die fast enough. The looming fact that he’d die was highlighted practically in every scene. Then, when fell from the sky, breaking the glass ceiling and splatted onto the ground, I thought, well, that’s it, he’s a goner, he’s going to regenerate. But no! He was still alive! He was clutching his body in pain but the gesture was so long that it was too excruciating to watch for another second! Then, when he had to get into the glass box so Wilfred could get out and he had to consume all the nuclear energy into his body, I thought, ok, this is it. He’s finally dead and will regenerate while still inside the box into Matt Smith! But…yes, you’ve guessed it…NO! He’s magcially still alive! Boy, he really didn’t want to go, did he?! The last straw that broke the camel’s back came when all the “Dr. Who” spin-off peeps and past side-kicks were all dragged back into the finale just so Tennant’s “Doctor” could bid farewell to them….ever so very boringly slow. So, when Tennant finally regenerated into Smith, I was like, “OMG! YYYESS!! FINALLY!!! GOOD RIDDANCE, TENNANT!”

You see the problem here, Russell  T. Davis & Co.? That’s not good. If you want to give a proper farewell to a character, the last thing you want to do is to overstay his welcome on the screen. And that’s exactly what the peeps behind “Dr. Who” did to Tennant. Instead of preserving the good memories of Tennant as the very popular, very cool 10th Doctor, I instead am left with this recollection of the “Doctor Who Wouldn’t Die!” It’s dreadfully unfortunate.

5. Catherine Tate – poor “Donna Noble!” Why would the writers bring her into the picture if they didn’t want to use her?! One of the BEST thing about Series 4 was the introduction of the flamboyant character, so superbly played by Tate, which really balanced out the peculiar characteristics of the 10th Doctor played so well by Tennant for the past 3 series. The comedic and dramatic timing of Tate as Tennant’s sidekick was truly classic. Unfortunately, she was so underused in the finale of the 10th Doctor that the writers might as well not have included her in the first place.

All in all, I for one, will only consider the finale of Series 4 to be the finale of David Tennant as the 10th doctor in “Dr. Who.” As for the previous 3 specials in 2009, they were so subservient compared to the strong, exciting and thought-provoking stories written in Series 4, that I don’t even consider them either.

Phew! I feel better now that I’ve vented this whole farce here!

— written by TVFilmBuff, for Chatteringmind