90 posts tagged “abc-tv”

Oprah Winfrey was named for Orpah in the Hebrew Bible, but a spelling mistake led to her unique name, one which is in the global consciousness today. (Search for Orpah and Google asks if you are searching for Oprah.) I’m sure she’d be thrilled to find out that the spelling has been fixed by ABC News:

Here’s an interview for the new ABC show, Flash Forward (yes, not being silly this time) with two of the leads, Sonya Walger and Joseph Fiennes. They, and Jack Davenport, are all Brits. While Davenport plays a Brit in the show, Walger and Fiennes play Americans and adopt pretty convincing American accents (Walger in particular, sounds “more American” to me). But here they are speaking in their normal voices.

I am not up with the play but I understand German actor Dominic Monaghan (Berlin-born and raised) has joined the cast.
   In this globalized world, nationality counts for less and less when it comes to arts and commerce.

My late mother was a huge fan of the energetic fitness guru Richard Simmons, and from what I know he is a good sport at allowing others to take the mickey. That aside, from what I have read of his history he is a very giving man—and stole the show when he guested on the American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, a segment of which my friend Brandon informed me earlier today, saying it was the funniest thing he had ever seen on television.

Spoilers ahead on US Life on Mars.

If US Sam Tyler was in pod 2B in the finalé of the American Life on Mars remake, why was Ray Carling 2A when his apartment number was 4A, or is this one of those sci-fi nerd questions?
   As to the ‘gene hunt’ Ray Carling refers to, I came far closer to that than I thought in this November blog post!

US Life on Mars producers, take note, from a recent Family Guy where Stewie’s killing of Lois was a virtual reality simulation:

   Stewie: Oh, hello, Brian. Well, you recall my complaining about Lois and the fat man not taking me with them?
   Brian: Yeah …
   Stewie: Yes, well you said I don’t have it in me to kill Lois, so I was just running a simulation to find out exactly how killing her and taking over the world would play out for me.
   Brian: Yeah? How’d that go?
   Stewie: Not well, Brian, not well at all. I suppose I’m not ready to kill Lois or take over the world … yet.
   Brian: So what you’re saying is what you experienced in the simulation didn’t really happen or even matter?
   Stewie: Yes, that’s correct.
   Brian: So it was sort of, like, just a dream.
   Stewie: No, it was a simulation.
   Brian: Yes, but theoretically, if someone watched the events of that simulation from start to finish only to find out that none of it really happened, I mean, you don’t think that would be just like a giant middle finger to them?
   Stewie: Well, hopefully, they would have enjoyed the ride.
   Brian: I don’t know, man. I think you’d piss a lot of people off that way.

   Kind of says it all about last night’s US Life on Mars finalé. Maybe I could call it a cop-out and say the pun was intended? It’d be one consolation for me, making bad puns.
   And now the Spaniards know how not to end their remake.

Spoilers ahead. [PS.: in fact, if you scroll down and don’t want to know, be warned: there are humungous pictures from the last episode. So shut your eyes as you scroll.]
   Well, I was totally wrong about why American Sam Tyler got to 1973.
   But when they showed the scene of Sam waking up, I instantly figured it out what had happened and was right. I guess this particular outcome must have been at the back of my mind if I could see it all in a second. A few weeks ago, my father did say, ‘He better not have been dreaming for the whole series.’ Sorry, Dad.
   No, I didn’t think it was a good ending. At least not when compared with the original. I expected something much cleverer, more mythological.
   There were some cheeky aspects to it, with the ‘Special Guest Star: Lisa Bonet’ credit inserted just to keep us guessing—and because one of the producers let slip that Ms Bonet wouldn’t be in the finalé.
   But to have Sam Tyler—Spaceman—wake up in 2035 on a Mars mission, having lived in some virtual-reality world as part of the deep sleep needed for the long trip to the red planet, seemed a farce to me and a let-down. In fact, all I could do was laugh as the final few minutes unfolded. It was, let’s admit it, stupid.
   I imagine that if the series had gone on for another season and there were more “trip to Mars” clues, then it could have been more fulfilling. After 16 episodes, this wasn’t cool, and akin to Pam waking up in Dallas.

   It does explain why Gene Hunt is older and I kept calling him a father-figure, but for him to be ‘Major Tom’ Tyler was a surprise. Vic, it turns out, was the dark side of Sam.
   It’s still hard to process because most of those clues littered throughout the series meant very little—especially those that were quasi-religious.
   It seemed like it would explain more, with Sam arriving in Hyde—something a few of us speculated with the original series in 2007. It added to the mystery to learn that Sam was conceived there. Another good part was Rose Tyler (I still can’t get over this name) recognizing that ‘Det Skywalker’ is what she expected her son to grow up to be like. But so what? It all gets undone in the final scene.
   Highlight of the episode was Sam visiting an elderly Annie in 2010, a scene that some of us expected to see in the original as we speculated what had happened to the original Sam Tyler. That would have been brilliant as an outcome had Sam woken up in 2009. We also saw Sam and Annie finally kiss—a scene many of us waited for. But it’s all for nought: Sam doesn’t find 1973 more fulfilling and he and Annie wake up as colleagues on the mission, she having had no experience of falling in love with him.
   You get the feeling that it was a case of “all that work for nothing” and now that Col Annie Norris (‘I just pretend it’s far, far into the future, and they work for me’), Major Tom, Sam, Chris and Ray have got there, thanks to Frank Morgan at Mission Control and Windy the computer, the question remains: so what?
   The only consolation is the white shoe of Philip Glenister—well, Harvey Keitel, but in tribute to the original Gene Genie—reaching the red planet.

Zap2It has a good interview with two of the producers of US Life on Mars, Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg, on the finalé on Wednesday night there.
   At least the show has been given a proper sending off from ABC there.
   The story is rather brief so I won’t excerpt much. But it does make me wonder how they will tie in all the episodes this week, as there are some wildly varying possibilities of why American Sam is in 1973. From the story:

“It wasn’t terrifically complicated[,]” to have the season finale also be the series ender, Rosenberg said in a phone interview Tuesday. “We always knew what the season finale would be, and we always knew what the series finale would be. We just didn't expect to get to the series finale this quickly.”

   Since the beginning the producers have said Jason O’Mara’s Sam Tyler will not be in a coma, so that rules out the original reason.
   I still think Sam is in a USSR ESP experiment, but who knows?

Last week’s penultimate US Life on Mars offered some surprises—such as the Aries name re-appearing at a toy factory which sold the Rovers that Sam found in an earlier episode. Special Agent Frank Morgan was far more sinister than the original British DCI of the same name, and might have been a red herring thrown in by the American writers to put those of us who watched the originals off! (Bravo!) And one scene was directly from the first episode of the original Life on Mars: Sam standing on top of the roof looking at jumping off as a means of returning to 2008–9 and Annie stopping him.
   One scene was eerily reminiscent of the original’s final, too. There, Sam put his hand on Annie’s heart again, sensing it beating. Here, Annie put Sam’s hand there, to prove she was real.
   I have not seen the Spanish version but to my knowledge, the rooftop scene has now been filmed three times: once in the original, once in the unaired pilot and now once in the US remake. It was interesting the US writers put it in the 16th episode and I believe it is significant that they did.
   It could also explain why the last act of the first US aired episode omitted this scene. We shall see this week as the American remake of Life on Mars concludes and we find out why Sam Tyler is in 1973.

Variety has some additional info on the US Life on Mars finalé.
   For a start, the writers were planning a big revelation anyway, and only the second half needed a rewrite to reveal more of why Sam Tyler is in 1973.
   Variety reiterates that it won’t be the same as the original Sam Tyler’s reason.
   Secondly, both Michael Imperioli and Jonathan Murphy—American Ray and Chris—will be present, despite being gunned down in last week’s episode.

If the ABC press release preview of next week’s US Life on Mars is any indication, Dets Ray Carling and Chris Skelton are dead. Or somehow each survived four rounds at point blank range. But here’s a great little clue for those of us who saw the original British series: ‘Peter Gerety as Agent Frank Morgan’.
   It’s one of the many Wizard of Oz references in Life on Mars, and the Americans seem to be heading in the same direction. But we know the finalé will be completely different since the British one didn’t have Ray and Chris killed off with three episodes to go.
   If it’s agent Frank Morgan, not DCI, then he isn’t Internal Affairs—the equivalent bureau the Americans probably had to the British one—but possibly a Fed. But it doesn’t explain the Aries Project or the nanobots that the American adaptors have created in the course of the remake.
   His age is right if his character is like the original’s Frank Morgan, but I will feel a bit let down if Agent Frank Morgan is Sam’s doctor in 2009 as well. I will be watching for the clues next week.