Be Excellent To Each Other

More news on The Shield: Channel 5 won't be airing series 7 until "early 2007". Oh for fucks sake...

The proprietry rights to the cure for cancer to whoever can PM me a link to somewhere to download series 7 that isn't a torrent (since I haven't a clue what one of those is...).

Series, or that odd 2-hour thing?

Um it's late 2008 at the moment, or am I living in the future?

Malc

Not with that haircut! ... etc.

And Craster, sadly it's the two hour thing. Seems the season may not start until "early 2009" according to some forums.

Torrents are dead easy to use and definitely worth it if you want to watch some US telly.

Word is Prison break isn't going to be renewed, which is a shame because it is quality tat.

The plan has always (since the writers' strike) been for '24' to start in January next year.

I didn't know anything about the 2 hour special until I saw the adverts, so am looking forwards to it.

I'm OK with that. 24 tends to have a January start, from what I remember. I was a little worried they were going to put out the 2-hour special now, and then use that as an excuse to not put the full series on until the second half of 09.

They were talking about making a proper 24 film for the cinemas a while ago. Is that what this two hour special is only it turned out to be too crap or something?

I know I'm late to the party, but I watched the pilot episode of The Shield recently and thought it was excellent.

I downloaded about 10 gig of American TV shows yesterday. (catching up from after my virus)

It's going to take ages to watch all of that!

Malc

I just watched the series finale of The Shield. Fuuuuuuuuuuck - I almost feel bereaved.

I urge anyone who hasn't seen it to watch this show. I don't normally like cop dramas, but over the last few months I've watched all seven seasons, and it's the best thing I've seen in a long time.

Did anyone else watch Series Seven of 24?

I watched the first 1/3rd, then had a corrupt recordiing on the Sky box and never felt stirred to download it. I think that says something. Was it good? I was enjoying the first bit.

Yeah. Watched the ending about an hour ago. The usual mix of the highly preposterous and the highly entertaining.

Also finished House S5 at the weekend. House is still brilliant, somehow. Brutal finale, as they tend to be.

I stopped bothering with that halfway through Season 3. It just got really boring, and should have stopped after the first series, which was excellent. They escaped, and that was what it was all about; leave the rest up to my imagination.

It was entertaining enough. It had the usual twists and turns, with the first baddie not being the real uber baddie, nor the second baddie being, etc. Same as ever season they ever did.

It was entertaining. I think the ending was partly ace and partly GAH! but I don't feel I wasted my time watching it.

I also need to watch the two hour finale of Fringe that I taped on the weekend. Excellently fun show, and the mad scientist is my current favourite character on all television.

yes.



Malc

Albeit quite predictable I thought it was something of a return to form after the last couple of series where it was mostly just Jack blubbing like a big girl all the time.

Attention, people who didn't watch it first time: the fucking fantastic show True Blood starts on FX next week (July 17th). It was the second best thing I watched last year, after Dexter. That is all.

Wassit about?

It's a drama from Alan Ball, creator of Six Feet Under, about vampires being real. It's set in the Deep South and features lots of vampire-human racial tension (like the tracking shot in the opening credits of a run-down church with the banner outside reading GOD HATES FANGS). It stars Anna Paquin and a guy called Stephen Moyer who I hadn't heard of before.

Wikipedia (beware, huge spoilers if you read too far because the US is on season 2 now)

It's the best, freshest vampire story I've seen in a decade.

Oh, and there is a lot of nudity, if I haven't sold it already.

I thought the vampire stuff in Being Human was really good. I'll have to check this out once I've regained access to my local TV show vendor.

Eugh. Vampires again?

Yeah, that's what I said. Try it though. It's really fucking good.

Did I mention Paquin gets nude?

Watched the first ep of True Blood, not really sure what I think so far. Can't really see where it's going, but I'll stick with it for now. I really hope Paquin gets less annoying. Like, by an order of magnitude.

I rewatched it just now. There are (very subtle) clues even in episode 1 about big stuff you don't find out until the end of the season. I'm impressed by that.

Let me guess... the makeup effects people get fired?

the main driving factor in the story is two people who shouldn't fall in love, do. It's very well written and it also creates a tangible deep south sweaty atmosphere, with added nudity, violence and well defined characters. Definitely one of the better US dramas of late.

Well I was quite pleased that Paquin ended the first ep getting a kicking. I hope that becomes a theme.

I'm just angry that they've ripped off the script that I'd been writing for Channel 5.

Desperate Dan from the Dandy falls in love with one of his cowpies. However, every time he tries to consummate the relationship, an old timey gold digger comes in and lets off a shot from his blunderbuss before hopping up and down going "Yeehaw!" a lot. You get to see Dan's erect, glistening, oily phallus quite often, along with plenty of gaping cow pie. But like you said, they've already gone and done it now.

Really enjoyed True Blood. Watched the first episode last night, and there are all sorts of interesting things in there. Looking forward to see how it pans out.

I liked True Blood, but I didn't love it. The main problem for me is the two main characters - initially I rather enjoyed Sookie's innocence-but-not-weakness, but she gets gradually less sympathetic and more annoying as the series wears on, and Vampire Bill is just a big dull dullard. Also, the plot's a bit uninspired (Twilight with tits) and the X-Men stylee Vampires As A Metaphor For Any Oppressed Minority thing is rather dramatically undermined by every vampire in the series being a murderous wanker.

All that being said, I ploughed through the first series and the start of the second in two days flat. It's the supporting cast that keeps me coming back - Tara and Lafayette, Sookie's grandmother, Andy, Jessica, Jason (one of the most enjoyably unpleasant characters in recent TV history, the Crowning Moment Of Awesome being his reaction at the end of the video of the first murder) and of course Eric the Camarilla Prince Sheriff, Badass By Royal Appointment.

I also like the groovy Deep South small-town atmos, the mix of lust and gossip and booze and prejudice and heat and old-time religion really comes across and really works for it. So yeah. Good, but not great.

WTF? Seriously?!

'Fraid so.

Watched the last two series of The Shield over my week off. It never matched the heights it hit with the unbearably tense S5, and was getting more than a little samey and a lot more than a little silly by the end, but was still generally bloody good fun. It's not The Wire - not as well-written, not as intelligent, not as angry, not as funny, not as authentic - but that's hardly a disgrace.

Watched True Blood EP1 last night. It's alright. I'll watch some more. Incidently, the adverts at 2am on FX are shit.

The 'confession' scene in the penultimate episode is priceless though.

I've only got around to watching the pilot so far. Seems a tiny bit grim and bleak and humourless. Still, I shall persevere.

On the basis that every time The Unit gets mentioned, MaliA says "But it's just Ultimate Force with Americans", I bought the DVD set of Ultimate Force. It's not very good so far.

Just finished S1 of House. From [a legal rental source - ED].
Ended up galloping through it at about 3 episodes per night so I bought the rest of it on DVD.

I watched my first ever episode of House the other night, whichever one was on Sky that week. I enjoyed it. I've also seen only one episode of Lie To Me, but it was enough to conclude the latter is an inferior copy of the former.

What the hell, man? You don't get to recommend anything more (especially annoying vampire nonsense) until you've seen at least up to the end of S4 of House.

It's never not been on my to-watch list. It's just never made it off the to-watch list.

I have caught up with House nearly.. well it is on my SKY+..


I do like True Blood...

So far it has some skanky titties. There's not much else to be said for it. The main vampire guy is almost as bad a brooding emo as the Twilight guy.

That's probably what they're aiming for. All the teenage-mid twenties primary coloured haired girlies are damp for his face. "He so surly! He so misunderstood! I luvs him!"

And the guys are just looking at the skanky titties. Yep, I can see that working.

It gets A LOT better. I was reasonably non-plussed after two episodes, but after that I was hooked.