227 posts tagged “tv”

Interesting commentary on ABC’s brand-new hit shows for 2008 in the American TV Week:

Buzz projects: Game show “Opportunity Knocks,” which takes the game show out of the studio and into contestants’ front yards, is gaining steam. An adaptation of British crime drama “Life on Mars” is virtually on the air, although producer David E. Kelley’s involvement is in doubt.

   We know Life on Mars is a remake, but Opportunity Knocks? Talk about reviving something very, very old.
   It began on BBC Radio in 1949 and the Hughie Green TV version on ITV began in 1960 in the UK.
   While this version sounds a bit different (‘contestants’ front yards’?) I can’t help but think it’s somehow the same show—it certainly sounds like a talent show with everyday contestants, as with the original.
   The original was infamous for having a young Su Pollard beaten by a dog and some dude called Gerry Dorsey (Engelbert Humperdinck to most of us) getting rejected at auditions. But it was a solid ratings’ hit for ITV and Thames in its day.
   It was so famous that Benny Hill did a parody of it in 1971, pretending it was on German television:

   Again, I shall be interested to see what transpires, and I mean that most sincerely, folks.

Just as I finished writing about Philip Glenister getting his driver off a ticket by acting as Gene Hunt, I surfed over to an article about Canadian actor William Shatner linked from the Daily Mail page I cited earlier:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=565380&in_page_id=1879

   In the 1960s, Shatner wore his Capt Kirk uniform rushing to work and was also stopped. He writes:

I got out of my car, dressed in my uniform. The police officer looked me up and down, frowned and asked: “So where are you going so fast at this time in the morning?”
   I told him the truth: “To my spaceship.”
   He sighed. “OK, go ahead,” he said, before adding the Vulcan blessing: “Live long and prosper.”

   Nothing new under the sun.
   The story is quite good, told in the first person. Shatner recounts his lows and the death of his third wife (after what seems to be the final paragraph talking about the price of his autobiography).

The first time I read about Philip Glenister getting his driver off for speeding (35 mph in a 30 mph zone) I chuckled, as he adopted his Gene Hunt persona. The cop saw the actor and said, according to Glenister, ‘I’m terribly sorry about this sir, I’ll let you off this time if you don’t mind.’
   Glenister had apparently said to him prior, ‘Yes, I’m the one on the booze, not him. Go and catch some proper criminals.’
   Then I found the earliest article on the incident in the Daily Mail tabloid which contrasted this with others in the UK:

   Earlier this week it emerged that Sydney Duffy was fined for doing 35mph in a 30mph area when he tried to leave the road quickly as his wife had an epileptic fit. The 63-year-old has appealed against the fine from Cumbria police and will appear in court.
   And Stephanie Cornwall was issued with a £60 fine after rushing to hospital when her six year-old son Alfie was mauled by a dog. The mother, 40, from Leicestershire, was travelling at 37mph in a 30mph zone.

   One law for celebrities?
   The Met should have more sense than to fine people like Mr Duffy and Ms Cornwall.
   At least here the traffic cops allow for some speedometer error and that humans cannot be expected to constantly monitor their speed when traffic safety is at issue. If you kept staring at your speedo, you might get involved in an accident!
   It is worse here in New Zealand than it was 30 years ago but by and large, 5 mph is not something for the cops to get that upset about.
   I know there are exceptions but I am talking in a general sense. As we work in metric, 5 mph is roughly 8 km/h.
   The second incident probably would have been frowned on more today, less so 30 years ago: 7 mph goes past that 10 km/h leeway that some cops have as a rule of thumb.
   I tend to drive at the legal limit but realize that due to speedometer error I can be anywhere between 5 km/h over or under.
   The ‘Your speed is’ digital signs around some parts of New Zealand are helpful as a means of calibrating my own speedometer—so why do so many of them have their displays closed?
   They tend to show that my car’s 50 km/h is actually 47 km/h so I tend to go closer to 55 km/h on my speedo.
   The problem is that speeding here is governed by legislation that brings strict liability, which basically means “no excuses”.
   But I would think a Kiwi copper would have been able to judge in both cases somewhat better than his or her British counterpart.
   I am not sure if we would distinguish between celebrities and everyday folk. Any stories? I know of one incident told to me by an eyewitness (the passenger) where a rich driver was let off because of the car he drove, and the officers wound up going into macho mode to discuss the vehicle and neglected to issue a fine for excessive speeding. I cannot reveal more since I am not permitted to, and I would hope it is exceptional rather than commonplace.
   If a flash car could get me off a fine, I would have really opened up the Astons and Porsche 911 I have driven, but I prefer my clean licence (knock on wood) and was much more careful.

I’m not even that huge a fan of Kath & Kim but I find the US remake news interesting. The two lead characters will still be Kath and Kim Day, but there will be no Sharon, Kel or Brett! Yes, they are being Americanized to Heather, Phil and Craig!
   I am keeping an open mind but just as I can’t visualize this set in the US, I can’t see Sharon called Heather!
   Official site is now up with very little content: http://www.nbc.com/Primetime/Kath_and_Kim/index.shtml.
   I’m wondering what sort of American accent would equate to Melbournian suburban—and no one I know in Melbourne talks like Kath and Kim anyway!

 

   Meanwhile, I understand that Outrageous Fortune already has a UK remake (Honest, with Amanda Redman) and that the US version approached Rene Russo for the Robyn Malcolm role, but IMDB says it has gone to Catherine O’Hara. I was wrong about the name: Throng reports it is to be called Good Behavior and IMDB confirms this.

Isn’t it far too early to be nostalgic for a Beverly Hills, 90210 revival?
   American networks don’t think so: it’s back in the (northern) autumn, called 90210 and produced by Rob Thomas (who’s also doing the US version of Outrageous Fortune, called Outrageous Behavior).
   More at Canada.com.
   Normally revivals take some 20 years though they seem to come around the time of Hollywood writers’ strikes.
   And will fans of the old watch the new if it doesn’t have returning stars? That would be like Grease 2 not having Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta.

Life on Mars (the US version) has made the news a bit more lately, with a report that David E. Kelley could leave the show if financial arrangements don’t suit.
   Variety reports that October Road executive producers Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Scott Rosenberg could join the series as showrunners if Kelley departs.
   The Hollywood Reporter says ABC is close to picking up the US version of the British time-travelling cop show as a series.
   So for those of us without Ashes to Ashes to watch till 2009, this might be the next best thing. And because we know the British ending, there’s always a chance that the US one won’t work out the same way (even if Three’s Company kind of did).

I was trying to find a version of ‘Life on Mars’ that I had heard on Groove FM here in Wellington, but stumbled across Rick Wakeman doing one on piano instead. (Wakeman played it on the Bowie album.) Very amazing.

I would have watched Alias if it was more like this each week.

What fictional character do you relate to most and why?

Let’s see: what Chinese fictional character had to operate in the west, deal to the establishment, drive a rare two-door car, impersonate others, and have his adventures chronicled?
   Simon Templar.
   Pity he was always played by Caucasians on the screen, but I always thought he was Chinese, since his creator was. A new pilot is being made now, which, inter alia, Sir Roger Moore and his son Geoffrey are producing.

   TV trivia buffs might notice John Steed’s Rover SD1 from The New Avengers in the last car chase, reused here. It was also George Cowley’s Rover SD1 in the first season of The Professionals. Stingey British Leyland!

The trailer to one of my favourite films—but it’s very 1960s. A modern audience won’t exactly get excited over this. That’s ironic though: if you see the film, there are plenty of scenes which could be edited in a modern fashion to create a very impactful trailer. But since it was the 1960s, this was perfectly acceptable and there’s just enough of Sophia Loren in a state of undress to get her fans along. And plenty of Christian Dior dresses and shoes (oh, the shoes—they were in Loren’s contract and written in to the script as a fetish of Alan Badel’s character). Gregory Peck, meanwhile, is still one of the top stars of the time—doing a role originally written for Archie Leach (Cary Grant to the rest of us). Note the prominence of Henry Mancini’s name, too. 
   As a movie it holds up remarkably well, far better than the trailer.

Un pub pour le film Arabesque, de Stanley Donen, avec Gregory Peck et Sophia Loren.