Public Address - Radiation (Home)

More, please | Jan 25, 2006 14:05

This year's new TV shows are nearly upon us – Lost is coming, as is Commander in Chief, Grey's Anatomy, Casanova and a slew of new US shows which mostly look pretty dodgy. Although it's fair to say the New Zealand programmers get the pick of the bunch of US and UK fare, there's an awful lot of stuff out there that completely passes them by. Why? They think New Zealand television audiences are a bunch of dumb asses, that's why.

So here's a little list of programmes we'll never see on New Zealand television. Probably. Feel free to add some of your own.

1. A Century of the Self. PR spin and consumerism are all Freud's fault. Or rather his nephew, Edward Bernays, who took his uncle's ideas of the self and used them to manipulate the masses, linking their (our) unconscious desires to consumer goods.

2. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart, we love you. You and your copious writing staff shine the searchlight of satire and comedy on the US political system. Plus, you are funny and kind of hot. You have good guests too, usually authors, but sometimes it's Dolly Parton or Ricky Gervais. Looking forward to the Oscars, dude.

3. The Colbert Report. Grippy! Although not as zingy as The Daily Show, which it follows on Comedy Central, more a riff on dumb right-wing thinking.

4. The Staircase aka Death on the Staircase. It screened on the Sundance Channel, but here's a BBC4 interview with filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, who also made an Oscar-winning documentary about a black kid accused of killing a white woman. De Lestrade was granted unusual access to murder-mystery writer Michael Peterson, who was accused of killing his wealthy wife. He says that once the police discovered that Peterson was bisexual, they assumed he was guilty.

5. The Root of All Evil? Russell's blogged about this, Richard Dawkins' documentary about the tyranny of blind faith.

6. Ethiopian Idols. You'd think that Fremantle, the owner of the Idol format, could have let Ethiopia off for this one – but according to this story, Fremantle is going to charge the show's producers a fee. However, we'd really like to hear the singing, and the costumes look quite nice too.

7. The Office. The US version that is, with Steve Carrell. The first episode is weird, because it's almost the same as the British one, only with Americanisms. But it gets better. And just as excruciating. According to EW (which named Carrell as one of its entertainers of the year), the scripts "spew American corporate absurdist vernacular with perfect pitch". Plus it does the near impossible, honors Ricky Gervais' original and works on its own terms.

8. The Wire. Will we ever see the third season of the finest cop show ever made?

Digg this Scoopit!

Back to the futuristic | Jan 20, 2006 11:06

Thanks for all your best-of 2005 picks – and the winner is: Firefly! Heh. Geeks rule. Thanks to Graeme also for remembering The Wire, which is, without a doubt, the best cop show I have ever seen and also quite possibly the only show with a scene in which the only word – said many times – is "fuck".

Venetia's long and wonderful email includes Angel (of course!): "How many other shows could turn the main character into a Muppet for an episode?"; Carnivàle, Doctor Who, Kingdom Hospital, Battlestar Galactica, Strange (on UKTV) and Medium.

Medium annoyed the shit out of me, actually – if you'd seen the mediums episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit (another good one from the year), it was pretty clear what a lot of fakery all that crossing over crap is. If you liked Medium, however, get ready for Jennifer Love Hewitt in Ghost Whisperer, coming soon to TV2, and also Supernatural, which does star Jared Padalecki – Dean from Gilmore Girls.

Graeme also mentions Battlestar Galactica and sends this link to Time's best-of list.

Friend of Public Address, Gordon Dryden's list for 2005 is as follows:

1. That Garth George's religious column be removed from "perspectives" and be submitted instead, each week, for a Herald letter and see how many qualify.

2. That the New Zealand public education debate concentrate on our dozens of great schools that actually lead the world in learning, yet few outside them know they exist.

3. That at least one New Zealand political party discovers the real benefits of the "open source" movement: a genuine third-way alternative to bureaucratic socialism and greedy capitalism.

4. That New Zealand ceases to be the only advanced country in the world, outside the United States, to permit "ask your doctor if this high-priced copycat medicine is right for you".

5. That TVNZ appoints a CEO who has some idea of what real public-service television can achieve, perhaps with the new DG of BBC as a mentor.

6. That all sports broadcasters, under pain of dismissal, be instructed to delete the meaningless phrase "on this (or that) occasion" from at least every third sentence.

7. That Colin James gets his first New Year wish, and New Zealand starts to "think big" again, but in the creation of big ideas.

8. That the next election will be fought on other than single-issue tax-bribe policies.

Dude, I was talking about your favourite television programme, but that's a very lovely list anyway.

Meantime, Nic gives up the love to … BitTorrent. Top five: Firefly (shiny!), The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Doctor Who, Beginner's Guide to Love and Lost – season two that is. Nic, you are a very naughty man and I can neither confirm nor deny that season two of Lost is bitchin' and The Daily Show is so scarily funny it hurts. In addition, The Colbert Report proves that Americans do have a sense of irony, although you heard none of that here. (Also, season two of Veronica Mars is brilliant. Guest stars include Alyson Hannigan, Charisma Carpenter and a cameo from Joss Whedon and more plotlines than you would have thought it was physically possible to cram into one commercial hour. As EW said: "What sophomore slump?" Um, you also didn't hear that here.)

Speaking of Joss, EW quotes him saying no more Serenity – he's okay with that, he has closure – and Tim sends this link re what he's doing now. A new series of Shameless has started in the UK, here's a good story about a posh reporter who went down to West Gorton estate where the series is filmed. And speaking of telly on the internet, this is an interesting interview with the new director of the BBC, Mark Thompson, in which he talks about some of the stuff that Ashley Highfield was on about at the Great Blend, like rolling out the interactive media player.

Thanks for the bad back advice/commiserations/recommendations: it's mostly better now, thanks to the osteo, apart from the nasty pains in my right leg. It's a bugger how it takes only a short time to wreck, but such a long time to put right. Why couldn't it be the other way around? It should hold up for the mosh pit at the Big Day Out anyway.

Digg this Scoopit!