The Late Late Show

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson deserves your attention for one simple reason- it has some of the best opening credits of all time.

I’ve had that song in my head for days. It’s poetic and catchy. Plus its coupled with hand puppets and a fountain. All of which achieves the quite difficult task of convincing you to loose the hour of sleep this show asks you to sacrifice.

The Late Late Show (henceforth referred to as LLS) interviewed Matt Smith a couple of months ago wearing the now infamous polka dot socks2. So if you follow any of the major Who related news sources, chances are you’ve seen the interview on YouTube. That was my introduction to LLS. Then it was heavily involved in all that hot air which launched Eleven.

So what is this LLS thing anyway? It’s a talk show, of sorts, hosted by a Scottish/American dude called Craig Ferguson. This is television in its purest form. Its raw and messy and funny. Craig has this wonderful way of interacting with the camera. There’s something about the opening monologue that makes you think he’s actually talking TO YOU. Especially because lately he keeps mentioning Australia. And you keep going “That’s me! I’m from AUSTRALIA!3”

And no, I don’t understand half of what’s going on either. I don’t get some of the jokes but I laugh hysterically at others. I can’t really explain why there’s a robot with a mohawk who randomly makes suggestive remarks. His name is Geoffrey Peterson. Just go with it. And the random dancing horse? Its name is Secretariat and apparently has something to do with a Disney movie. That horse has its down dance. A really awesome “I want to do that in public in between bouts of the drunk giraffe” sort of dance.

The only problem with the show is the timeslot. It goes to air here at 10:30pm. Given that’s lot better than the ACTUAL timeslot which is 12:35am (seriously). But 10:30 is that dangerous time. It doesn’t feel all that late but I, for one, always regret any television viewed after that time. So why should you stay up for this?
I’m glad you asked.

“Its hard to stay up, its been a long, long day and you got the sandman knocking at the door. But hang on, leave the TV on and lets do it anyway, its ok. You can always sleep through work tomorrow. Ok? Hey hey. Tomorrow’s just your future yesterday.”

1- My number one footnote went missing during editing. I will therefore use it to draw your attention to all the pointless hyerlink goodness I've spent an unhealthy amount of time peppering this post with.

2- For those of you who aren’t aware I have a slightly unhealthy love affair with Matt Smith’s taste in socks. 

3- This sort of vaguely insane thought pattern is what happens when you watch late night TV. 

Ashes to Ashes- now that's a bit more like it

Now that, THAT was a bit more like it.


I probably won’t regale you with my musing on Ashes every single week but I think episode two warrants a mention. I was hoping that the series would suck me in again, what I wasn’t excepting was the terrifying speed and furry with which it would do so. I mean that episode?! That episode was like a slap in the face.


Ashes, to me, can be summed up by something I once posted on Twitter-

Ashes to Ashes- the best sexual tension on television and some of the best hair.

Gene and Alex are such a ridiculously unlikely pairing. No one, during Life on Mars, would have guessed Gene Hunt could be put forward in the way that Ashes portrays him. He’s softer, wittier and, very occasionally, even sort of sexy. Take last night when he and Alex were sitting across his desk filling out their dating agency forms. The scene could have groaned with sexual tension but instead it portrayed the subtle, unspoken understanding they have. Which was a lot more powerful.


Now, because you guys gave me permission to, allow me to speculate. If you’ve cheated and seen more of the series *coughcoughBECCAMARSHcough* then you can simply go and do something else. In fact, I insist. 


Something happened. Seriously, there’s something in all this that we’re missing. More happened while Alex was gone than episode one would lead us to believe.


-Why did Shaz and Chris break up (except to cause me serious emotional distress that is)? They were getting married and now they’re not even together? And Chris so obviously still loves her.  


-Screwdrivers. Something happened involving Shaz and a screwdriver and I think only Gene knows the full story. She freaked out when the builder put a screwdriver on her desk and when she was mobbed by those guys it wasn’t the knives that made her run away. There’s something in this, and I’m slightly afraid to find out what it is.


- There’s a bigger reason Shaz wanted to leave. The heartbreaking scene in the kitchen with guv was laced with undertones of something terrifying and unspoken 

And after this no more.

-Right at the end when Gene promised Shaz promotion, the camera did a weird zoomy thing and everything went sort of black. At first I was slightly confused by the out of character cinematography and then I noticed what the soundtrack was doing. Over that moment they played one line-

The girl with the mousy hair…

And you know what song that’s from? 

Life on Mars. 

So I think Shaz is somehow involved in what happened to Sam. I think its safe to say that the man with the half-face disfigurement isn’t Sam. Unless of course they’ve decided to replace John Simm with a particularly terrible body double and hope no one notices. So who is he then? And what does this all mean? 


This is the part where you tell me what you think. Go on. You know you want to.  

Moffism

Look at him. He is so obviously evil. 

I’ve invented a word which I’d like to get into common usage- Moffism.


A while ago Steven Moffat did an interview where he admitted that he sometimes lies. Suddenly a lot of things made a lot more sense. See there were rather a lot of comments in the lead up to series Fnarg that become quite confusing once the episodes actually went to air. For example-
“We’re not going to bring back any old monsters.”
So…series five obviously contained no old monsters at all.
Except…for the part…where it totally did.


On reading the aforementioned interview I realised that Mr Steven Moffat Sir basically spent Comic Con in 2009 throwing random lies at interviewers with reckless abandon. I assume this was an attempt to throw us all off the scent. He’s pretty good at it. Plus I think the power’s gone to his head.


Take the trailer for a Christmas Carol, in fact take everything that was released pre-Smithmas, including the scenes the BBC released and the promo shots that we were allowed. All that stuff served the duel purpose of making everyone very excited while revealing absolutely nothing about the episode itself. That takes skill.


Take for example Amy and Rory’s outfits. As far as the plot of the episode went these were only there for one (rather excellent) joke, intended to please the parents and older fans. But in the lead up those images feed weeks of discussions and argument. They set certain parts of the internet on fire. And I can’t help thinking they’ll fuel a few fan fics in the aftermath too.
That, right there, is a Moffism.


So in watching the series 6 trailer I can’t help wondering how many Moffisms it contains. I think its pretty safe to say that everything is most certainly NOT as it seems. There is stuff in the trailer that’s been stuck in there just to confuse us. To throw us off the scent. At the moment my best guesses are River being naked and The Doctor’s beard. Because both fuel huge amounts of speculation while revealing absolutely nothing of consequence.


And then he goes and says stuff like this (about series 6)- 
“You’ve seen more than you think. The Doctor has noticed what you have not. And when the biggest jaw-dropping twist finally comes – well, the second one – you’ll realise you’ve known about it from the very beginning…”
I mean- the bastard! That's just cruel and unusual punishment that is. 


Same goes for Sherlock. The only things we know about the new series is what Moffat and Gatiss have personally allowed us to hear. Moffat (and the team who I know must work tirelessly with him) has proven that even in the modern internet fuelled world its still possible to keep a tight lid on things.


And that, quite frankly, is exactly where the lid belongs.

A post containing actual information

Last week marked the launch of the latest digital channel to grace our screens. Eleven has been hyped a hell of a lot by Ten. They insist that its DIFFERENT to all the other channels on offer. But what IS the deal with all the other channels? To quote my cousin on launch day-

“What’s this whole multi-channel thing all about anyway?”
I’m glad you asked.

Digital television is different to analogue television in two important respects. Firstly the reception is much better and second, there are more channels. Australian television, as you know, is home to five channels- the ABC, SBS, Nine, Ten and Seven. There is a certain amount of regional variation (Nine masquerades as NBN and WIN, Seven as Prime, and Ten as Southern Cross Ten) but those are the organisations in charge of our screens.

Now. Digital television lays claim to significantly more channels. There’s ABC1, ABC2, ABC3, ABC News 24, SBS 1, 2 and 3, Nine, Gem, Go, Seven, SevenTwo, Seven Mate, Ten, One and now Eleven. So where do all these fit into the general scheme of things?

Basically they’re “extra” channels. Each of the smaller ones is owned and managed by the larger bodies. So Gem and Go come under the Nine umbrella, Eleven is managed by Ten and so on. Excuse me while I use a nautical metaphor- its like a naval fleet. ABC1 is the flagship, ABC2, 3 and 24 constitute the rest of the armada.

There’s still a fair amount of confusion in the industry about the whole thing (so the general public are excused for feeling the same). See, television operates on “ratings,” which (very loosely speaking) is how many people are watching a show at any given time. Whoever gets the ratings gets the advertising revenue (plus glory and the people’s ovation forever.) But while’s its obvious that Nine and Seven are in direct competition, what about Nine and GO?

This goes a long way to explaining the distinct lack of interesting content on the digital channels. The last thing channels want to do is steal their own audiences. So if they want you to be glued to a top rating show on their flag ship, they’re hardly going to tempt you with a tasty morsel on the secondary vessel are they?
So why is Eleven a big deal?

So far multi-channels have largely been vehicles for repeats of ancient sit-coms and movies that are only a “free to air premiere” because no one else has wanted to fork out the cash for them before. In contrast Ten is going to give Eleven “equal billing.” Instead of playing second fiddle to the main channel, it’ll fit alongside it. Like two frigates, instead of one frigate and a sloop. It’ll be a full and proper network in its own right. So they’ve moved The Simpsons and Neighbours across and are throwing truck loads of advertising at it in an attempt to create “a unique personality” for the channel.

This all sounded rather exciting and innovative. Sounded being the operative word. In reality Eleven is only making a real push during prime time. During the day it sits pretty comfortably with the rest of the pack, content wise. Its all repeats of ancient shows. Which makes all the scathing remarks their CEO has made seem a bit uncalled for. They’re got some good shows, don’t get me wrong, but nothing to justify the pomp and pretension.

Then I realised something else. A digital channel on which new shows premiere? Which has original content tailor made? This is all sounding rather familiar all of a sudden. And you know why? Because the ABC has been doing it from the word go (no pun intended). They were the first cab off the rank with the launch of ABC2 years before anyone else got off the ground. Plus ABC3 remains the only channel which genuinely functions under the parameters Eleven claims to be pioneering. It has genuine personally, was created for a real niche audience and has been serving up clever and well produced original content for over a year now.

So basically Eleven is a lot of hot air and navel metaphors are cool.

I can, if you’d like, do more of this kind of thing. As you may have gathered my TV-Nerdom goes much deeper than just obsessive watching habits. I’d quite like to do a “Ratings 101” post and stuff like that. Would there be any interest?

Ashes to Ashes- first episodes are hard

Who thought I’d see the day when Thursday night provided television salvation? It felt a bit weird getting excited about my least favourite day of the week and yet the evidence was irrefutable. The premiere of Ashes to Ashes, flanked by Young Ones and Graham Norton on ABC2, made last night the best television since Smithmas.


Ashes to Ashes holds a proud place among my television obsessions. While the first two series were on air in late 2009 I used to miss the end of GNW to watch it. That’s a really big deal. Its a "nobody make any loud noises or sudden movements" sort of show in my house. So needless to say the new series was a highly anticipated event. 


Did it live up to that? 
Well…ok so not really. I’ll admit I spent the beginning of the episode feeling confused. I found myself distracted and unable to properly switch off and enjoy it. When you finish a series in brain smashingly amazing style, there’s a certain expectation that you’ll begin the same way. Instead we got Alex shopping in what looked remarkably like Big W then a weird dream sequence. Then Gene woke her up with zero effort and they went to a moodily light warehouse. Finally, with a suddenness that was jolting, it was all business as usual. Except there was this weird new greasy man. But first episode are hard. 


And another thing. Alex’s hair. 
I don’t hate it anymore, on the contrary I think it may just grow on me. It was just her handling of it that bothered me. 
You see, when you have hair like Alex’s (and, as previously mentioned, I do) it isn’t something you take lightly. Hair like that takes constant vigilance. Having it all cut off (for whatever reason) is not something you would simply take in your stride (what even WAS the reason?! She got shot IN THE STOMACH not the head!). Despite everything else going on, waking up to find you had significantly less hair than before would throw you, at least for a while. I seriously can’t see Alex just shrugging and flicking it effortlessly into a clip, as much as I’d like to. Neither can I see Gene bringing her three different blue shadows and an eye pencil. So where did she get all that make up? 


But despite everything, I loved it. The sharp dialogue was out in force, Alex’s blue earrings made me actually want to get my ears pierced and the team were all on fine form. I know it’ll take a while to settle back into my addiction but I’m looking forward doing just that. 


The hardest thing is that I don’t really feel like I can speculate. Because it’s taken so long to get to our screens most people have already seen series 3 via slightly less legal means. I have nothing against that but I really don’t believe there’s any substitute for watching it at an allocated time on telly.
You get more colours that way. 


Anyone else doing it properly with me? Can I speculate a bit more in weeks to come without knowing “I’ve peeked at the ending on YouTube” glances?

A Literary Interlude

I bought a copy of “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” because it came highly recommended. Both Mr Steven Moffat Sir and Ian Simmons (the later whom I actually talked to about it) had said it was terribly good. Plus the Popular Penguin edition was only $10. Who could say no to that?


To be honest I don’t know why I haven’t read them before. Sherlock Holmes contains so many of my favourite things- short stories, impeccable characterisation, stunning use of language and the late 1800’s. (If I had a time machine I would relocate to the 1800’s and simply commute from there.)


I’ve fallen head long into the world of 221B Baker St. There’s something quite intoxicating about the whole thing. 
The descriptions occasionally make me cry out with joy. I love words. I love the way words can come together to create something magical and I honestly think that modern books have lost a lot of that simplistic magical description that people like Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle were masters at. 
Holmes has quickly claimed a place among my favourite fictional characters of all time. I love the way he never does things by half. He’s always “throwing” the newspaper down and “lunging” across a room. 
And they’re funny, laugh out loud funny, which is a fair claim for a 100 year old book.


What place does all this literary garbage have on a blog about TV you ask. Well, I would have thought that would be obvious- Sherlock. As some of you may have gathered, I liked Sherlock a lot. So much so that in the months since then I’ve seen it all the way through more times than I would care to mention. And I’m almost bursting for the new series. So would I recommend reading the books before then?


I can’t tell you what affect a knowledge of the original stories will have. Honestly though, I don’t think it will be bad. Try watching “A Study in Pink” with auto-commentary. Its an hour and a half of Moffat and Gatiss fan-boying about the original stories. I’ve just finished reading “A Study in Scarlet” and the way they took the key elements from that story and turned it into something wholly new is masterful. I’m halfway through “Hound of the Baskervilles” right now and the only thing I’m more excited about than seeing how they modernise it, is discovering the solution to the mystery. I’m looking forward to being able to spot the subtle references from the stories on screen instead of visa versa. 


But there is certainly one drawback. I’m starting to form my own opinions about Holmes and Watson. So I’d really love to see Holmes pay violin more, and the lighter side he seems to have when discussing art and culture. Plus I think they should eat more toast. One of my favourite things about the stories is how many important scenes seem to occur while Holmes is in his dressing gown and he and Watson are eating toast and drinking coffee. 


Then again, I might just be particularly biased toward toast. 


Maybe this is a poor excuse for a post but have you SEEN the TV Guide recently. Its bloody dismal. The only glimmer of hope on the near horizon is Ashes to Ashes series 3.