Once again, this is being posted after the East Coast premiere of the second episode “Torchwood: Miracle Day” and talks about the plotline of the episode. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, it’s recommended that you do so before reading this post. If you are in the UK, you won’t see it until next Thursday and yes, it’s unfair. Please come back, read and comment afterwards.

Compared to the shocking turn of events in the first episode, which dealt more with the worldwide realization of the “miracle”, the second episode of this series was definitely more minimal. Much of the action took place aboard a plane bound to Washington, D.C. from Heathrow, where Jack and Gwen (no Rhys?!? Is this the end of him for this series? NO!) were being forcibly taken to the US by Rex to help the CIA uncover the reason that no one’s dying. Or at least that’s what Rex intends.

Accompanying Rex was a female CIA agent who might as well have been wearing a huge sign around her neck saying, “I’m up to no good” when she entered the action. She was in communication with Rex’s boss at the CIA, played by Wayne Knight, and let me add my name to the chorus of commentators who say that yes, it’s hard to take Newman from “Seinfeld” as seriously as I should’ve here. However, he possesses the first clue of something that looks like a link to a greater conspiracy or alien link – a device that looked like a cell phone with a 3-D triangle screensaver-looking thing that told him to “remove” Jack, an order relayed to the other CIA agent.

And that’s where that flight across the Atlantic got interesting. It’s a little strange – presumably the CIA “baddies” know all about Jack’s history from the files that were deleted, including his immortality, and Rex presumably had a few minutes between the end of last week’s ep – where he showed Gwen that he’s not healing and is now mortal – and getting on the plane to fill them in on what he’d found out. But Rex didn’t seem to comprehend that Jack was dying himself after the other agent poisoned him, so it’s safe to assume that he did not and whomever is behind this conspiracy/alien action already knew that Jack could be killed. So could killing Jack Harkness, the man who couldn’t be killed, be part of the motive behind the “miracle”? Something to ponder.

All of this lead to a whole bunch of “Con Air”-type action – Gwen figuring out Jack was poisoned, that the other CIA agent was behind it and that lead to the finding of arsenic in her purse. Which subsequently lead to Gwen, Rex, the “I’m not gay!” flight attendant and the rest of the flight crew managing to cobble together formaldehyde with assistance by phone by Dr. Juarez, who is rapidly becoming my favorite new character in a Dana-Scullyish way. Jack is saved, the baddie CIA agent continues to try to take him out despite a right ass-kicking by Gwen, and finally after Rex figures out something is afoot, he attempts to knock her out of the picture entirely. Which leads to one of the creepiest single scenes ever at the end of the episode. Just in case anyone’s reading this who hasn’t seen it, I’m not even going to describe it here because you’ve gotta just SEE it. Ick.

Beyond all the “Human Snakes On A Plane” action, there was Oswald, creepy as ever, making his first TV appearance on a show that I couldn’t decide if it was a ripoff of Nancy Grace or Piers Morgan, and inexplicably making the viewers instantaneously forgive him for child rape and murder by crying on television. He then meets Jilly, the PR flack with an agenda, who tries to talk him into hiring her to manage his career. To his credit, he immediately seems to catch on that she’s up to no good.

Jilly then randomly shows up at a conference that Dr. Juarez attends about how to handle the growing medical crisis caused by the “miracle”, where Juarez has just made the point that the priorities have changed from “saving” people to managing the pain and misery caused by their inability to die. Jilly clues her into some stockpile of medication that had been established by the government and is not being utilized in the crisis, and then tries to talk her into employing her. Clearly, once again, she should be wearing that “up to no good” sign.

The episode ends with the aforementioned creepy scene, as Rex and the Torchwood crew were rescued by Esther in her Mini – “I thought Americans all had SUV’s,” Gwen hilariously moaned – and she then utters the words all us longtime fans wanted to hear, “Welcome to Torchwood.” Because, really, this is where the Torchwood action we know and love should really start kicking in, at least in the way it did in “Children of Earth”, where the crew spent the whole series on the run and hacking into the system to find out the real answers.

It will now basically turn into their own version of “The Amazing Race”, and that’s how it should be. I just kinda hope that we something resembling an alien soon, because if Newman and the president from “Independence Day” are supposed to be the scary ones, then things are going to get boring fast.

Talking Telly: ‘Torchwood: Miracle Day’ Episode 2 – WITH SPOILERS is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Note: I am writing and posting this after the first airing of “Torchwood: Miracle Day” on Starz on the East Coast. If you haven’t seen it yet, this post contains spoilers. If you’re in the UK, you have a week to wait and it sucks, I know. Please come back and read this after it airs there.

I expect that the experience of seeing this new series of Torchwood is completely different for two distinct groups – those of us who have been longtime fans of the BBC version and those who are just getting into it for the first time since Starz signed on and has done a promotional blitz here in the US. I wonder what the newbie reaction must be, because on the surface and judged only by this first episode, it can’t seem that different from your average cable thriller. Lots of guns and explosions, quite a bit of grossness, but no aliens yet. And the absence of that last thing was the main thing that gave me, the longtime Torchwood fanatic, a bit of a pang.

But on the other hand, even though it took about 20 minutes to see them, it’s so good to see Jack and Gwen back and kicking arse in the Torchwood way of old. And Rhys and Andy! For the most part they really are the characters we knew back in the olden days, with Gwen getting restless and Jack being secretive and protective, and Rhys really not happy with the lot of it. It was interesting to see the parallels between Jack and Esther, the young CIA agent, to how he treated Gwen in the very first Torchwood episode. Even down to the retconning!

That leads to the new characters. Rex is complex and not a hero in the least, and it looks like he and Jack are going to really hate each other. Which is nice. I actually might like Arlene Tur’s character, the doctor (bodes badly that I never caught her name) the best, because she has nice chemistry with both Rex and Jack. Oswald….boy, the week after the Casey Anthony verdict was probably not the best time to meet him, was it? Instantly blood-curdling, and they didn’t back off on the child-molesting and killing part of his character. No redeeming qualities whatsover. So it’s going to be interesting to see how he apparently becomes this huge cult-like leader for this newly weird world.

And weird it is. No one’s dying, the Somalians aren’t killing each other, the guy who had rods rip through his heart is taking the world’s fastest plane ride from the US to the UK while popping Vicodin and mopping up the blood from his chest, and Jack is injured. Strangely, the last part was the least shocking to me – it only makes sense that if the rest of the world becomes immortal, the immortal man would become fragile – but it freaked out Twitter. I guess we now have to add Jack to the list of potential RTD-kills-them-all victims.

In all, I am pretty satisfied with what they did to Torchwood. It was a very slow episode because I didn’t need the 40 minutes of “What is Torchwood?” explanation before the 10 minutes of real action before it ended 10 8 minutes earlier than expected (grrrrrrrrr.) So I sincerely hope that next week has a lot more action, some actual evidence of alien involvement and a few less explosions. But the characters are the same, there’s already decent references to previous series (Gwen’s parents!) and the newbies don’t suck. Plus next week is the debut of Oswald’s PR flack, Jilly, whom I hear is possibly the best character of the whole show. So, to steal a phrase from another science-fiction show that sadly didn’t age as well as Torchwood seems to be, I want to believe.

Talking Telly: Week 1 of “Torchwood: Miracle Day” – MANY SPOILERS is a post from: Anglotopia.net

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes, prepping this super secret project.

Anglotopia has worked with TheTelly.net for a few years now and they approached us about launching a dedicated British TV Blog – they would own it and we would run it for them.

We jumped at the opportunity!

We’ve covered British TV pretty heavily here on Anglotopia – and we will continue to – but there’s been a lot we haven’t covered so we didn’t overload the site with just Brit TV stuff.

So, now we have a place to talk totally about everything British TV.

We’re pretty excited about it and we hope you like it.

Check out TheTellygraph here.

New Site: British TV Blog – The Tellygraph – The Website for People Who Love British TV is a post from: Anglotopia.net

She might not have been the Brit that fans thought might replace Steve Carell as the boss in charge of Dunder Mifflin on the US version of “The Office.” Heck, many of them have probably not heard much about her. But Catherine Tate has entered the lineup of guest stars on the show’s May 19 episode whose characters are vying to replace the departing Michael Scott.

According to TVLine, Tate will be appearing on the hour-long season finale alongside show co-creator Ricky Gervais, who will be reprising the role of David Brent that he’s played in both UK and US versions of the show. Also appearing will be Will Arnett – Gervais’ professed pick to replace Carell – Will Ferrell, James Spader and Ray Romano. Aside from Ferrell, who is slated to appear for the rest of the season in a recurring role, the rest are said to be the five final finalists to take over Scott’s job after the character leaves April 28.

Of those five finalists, only Tate and Spader are likely to be candidates to return in the next season. Gervais has said multiple times that he has no interest in reprising the role of Brent on a regular basis. Romano already has a gig on “Men of a Certain Age”, and Arnett has already booked an NBC pilot.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the US version of “The Office”, but Tate would make me tune in. She has played a lot of polarizing characters who you just love to hate on “The Catherine Tate Show”, not just Lauren and Nana. And if her stint as Donna on “Doctor Who” hopefully showed the world, she can convey both sharp wit and a deeper vulnerability. She might be a trainwreck, but the characters of Brent and Scott were both trainwrecks. This could be a treat.

Talking Telly: Catherine Tate to replace Steve Carell on ‘The Office’? Maybe is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Great news for everyone who’s been wondering exactly what Malcolm Tucker would think about the coalition government – we’ll get to hear his wonderfully graphic rants in about a year.

It’s been announced that the political comedy “The Thick Of It” will be back for a fourth series in 2012. According to The Sun, Tucker, played by Peter Capaldi, will find himself in the thick of an opposition government.

“I’m fascinated to see what will happen,” Capaldi said, “I don’t think Malcolm will like being in opposition. Malcolm will be there plotting the defeat of the government.”

Thanks to the change in leadership at 10 Downing Street, it will be previously beleaguered Tory shadow minister Peter Mannion in Malcolm’s old position, but he’s going to have the extra fun of dealing with Liberal Democrats in the new coalition government (assuming the coalition lasts till airtime?) Lib Dem politicians and advisors will be cast in the new series.

It’s going to be a slight wait for the show to come back, but there’s a very good reason for that – creator Armando Iannucci is slightly busy turning his cleverly skewering wit toward America’s government. He’s currently working on HBO project “Veep,” starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as an American Vice-President.

Oh, and if you just can’t wait to hear another Malcolm outburst, don’t forget to download “The Thick Of It” iPhone app. It’s actually available in the US iTunes Store!

Talking Telly: ‘The Thick Of It’ back in 2012 is a post from: Anglotopia.net

The British version of Comic Relief is honestly one of the highlights of the year for me, and is something I wish we did full-out here in the US. For about a month, pretty much everyone funny (or not so much) goes out and raises money for the charity, which funds major charitable work in Africa and the UK.

Not only the non-famous folk who do events and challenges to raise funds, but everyone up to No. 10 Downing Street gets involved. We all remember the classic Catherine Tate as Lauren/Tony Blair skit, right?

This year was absolutely no different. It would be impossible to include every event and every programme that had aired in recent weeks to raise money for Comic Relief, but there’s been everything from 24 Hour Panel People – David Walliams appeared in 24 straight hours of panel shows that aired live on the Internet and were shown in excerpts on BBC 3 last week (more to come on this separately) – to Famous Rich and In the Slums For Comic Relief, which sent funnyman Lenny Henry, Radio 1 DJ Reggie Yates, EastEnders’ Samantha Womack and journalist Angela Ripon to actually live in a Kenyan slum (if you ever feel sorry for yourself, check that one out.)

And of course, one of my personal favorites, always, is Let’s Dance For Comic Relief, which aired for three weeks and featured a lot of really funny dancing and a LOT of drag. It was clear the best dancers technically won this year with Charlie Baker and James Thornton’s tap routine, but honestly the act everyone seemed to be talking about online was Noel Fielding’s uncanny Kate Bush impression with “Wuthering Heights”.

Anyway, onto the main event that aired on Friday – Red Nose Day – on the BBC, which is packed full of goodies from shows from seemingly all the main British networks – thankfully ITV seems to relax their golden-handcuffs deal with Ant and Dec once a year so they could do their bit, plus bits from several shows – and a plethora of comedy and musical acts.

Really, the biggest thing that most American fans know from Comic Relief nowadays are the Doctor Who shorts they’ve started doing that are featured. This year had a two-parter. They speak for themselves.

Oh, and the Doctor did pop up again later in the show.

Another big highlight was “Fake That”, which had Alan Carr, David Walliams, Catherine Tate, John Bishop and James Corden performing as and with Take That. Being a bit of a squeeing TT fangirl, this was possibly the best part of the night for me. Who knew Corden was such a Gary Barlow clone?

Another musical act that was featured was JLS, who participated in an extended special “Miranda” where the cast of the funniest show around took over Pineapple Dance Studios. And if you are a fan of Stevie’s Heather Smalls impression, this is very much can’t-miss. Really, just seeing Miranda Hart doing her best Louie Spence makes it can’t-miss anyway.

Another recent Red Nose Day tradition is Ricky Gervais appearing somehow and doing his own skewering of the concept of charity. This year he really left it up to the round-headed Karl Pilkington to do the heavy lifting there, as he gave his opinion of Comic Relief. No big production here – and I admit I kinda miss the days of Gervias driving around on a Segway – but we all know Pilkington’s become his new voice of curmudgeon reason. Look for Karl to host the Golden Globes next year.

If you’re a fan of BBC’s seasonal outdoorsy shows like Countryfile and Autumnwatch, or you love Harry Hill taking the piss out of TV shows, you’re in luck.

Miranda Hart worked for Comic Relief before hitting it big in comedy, so it’s not shocking she popped up again on the show in another Red Nose Day tradition – celebrity versions of competition shows. This year had Comic Relief Does MasterChef at 10 Downing Street and serving Prime Minister David Cameron. Rather unshockingly, Miranda does not cook.

Is there anyone alive without a crush on Gareth Malone after “The Choir” actually aired on BBC America? This year he did his part with a special version of the show where he trained UK TV staples “The Chefs” as a choir to basically rickroll Red Nose Day.

Did I mention Ant and Dec were on? They gatecrashed practically every live light entertainment show in London one day last week.

Finally, Smithy from “Gavin & Stacey” made one of his periodic appearances for Comic Relief, but this year he shared the screen with the two big forces behind the Comic Relief history in the UK – Lenny Henry and Richard Curtis. Plus so many incredible guest appearances!

Once again, it’s impossible to show everything here, and of course this is leaving out the biggest part of the evening – all of the good works that Comic Relief pays for in Africa and the UK. But here’s a little taste of it with a man very familiar to us all, David Tennant. Warning – quite sad and not easy to watch even with him in it. But it shows you why so many people are involved and why this is so important.

The beautiful thing is that anyone – even us in the US and elsewhere – can give. And frankly, since the BBC made almost everything pretty accessible to American viewers this year (especially 24 Hour Panel People), I think it’s important for everyone to reach out to give, because it’s a great way to show we’re all one world and we all have to help. So to donate anything, you can click here.

Talking Telly: See highlights from this year’s Comic Relief special is a post from: Anglotopia.net

I think most Anglophiles have a list of Brits they’d love to see get their own American TV show. I wonder how many of them have Katie Price on that list. Ah well, because reports indicate that she is, once again, going to be on our television screens.

Price, also known by professional moniker Jordan, has reportedly signed a £1 million deal for an eight-part show called “Make Me A Hunk” that is said to be the focus of a bidding war between ABC, E! and CW. According to the London Evening-Standard, she will make over “a geeky guy” for each episode. Do they make enough spray tan in LA for this?

This is not the first time Price has been on US television – for awhile, E! aired reruns of her first ITV2 show with ex-husband Peter Andre. They both became huge reality starts in the UK, and then after an acrimonious split they each continued to make shows separately. But really Price is known for being the kind of tabloid fodder that makes most people cringe, with much documentation of each of her frequent breast jobs and Botox injections, her marriages and breakups with Andre and current estranged husband Alex Reid, and just being a perma-tanned, weirdly dressed, media circus.

It should be interesting to see how her makeovers go – personally I like my guys to stay geeky. But I kinda wish that if they had to give an American TV deal to any of that circus, it had gone to Andre. He can at least kinda sing.

Talking Telly: Report – Katie Price gets £1M US TV deal is a post from: Anglotopia.net

To raise money for Comic Relief, David Walliams is currently hosting 24 hours of different British panel shows – everything from QI to Just A Minute to the Generation Game to Room 101 (boy, I miss that show) to Never Mind the Buzzcocks – on “24 Hour Panel People” which is streaming live now and then will be shown in pieces during the main Comic Relief broadcast.

And amazingly, the BBC is not region-blocking the broadcast! So you can watch the whole thing live until about 6 a.m. CST Sunday morning here.

Here is a list of the shows coming up for the rest of the day, as well as the panelists for each show (if they’re funny and British, they’ll probably show up at some point.) And to make your donation to Comic Relief (even if you’re not in the UK) click here.

Talking Telly: Watch 24 hours of live panel shows for Comic Relief NOW is a post from: Anglotopia.net

The first thing that should be be done in the future in relation to Channel 4′s 10 O’Clock Live is to get rid of the “British version of The Daily Show” label that we’ve all attached to this programme. By its very essence, it’s not. It’s an hour long, aired live and only once a week and has four hosts. If The Daily Show were run like their live Indecision election-night specials – which did, in all probability, inspire the C4 Alternative Election Night where this new programme originated – every night, it might be in the ballpark. But at this moment it’s unfair to expect a show that’s basically launching a brand-new format for live interviews and debate to be like a pre-taped show that’s run almost nightly for about 10 years.

On its own, without comparison and just on the basis of being interesting and funny, 10 O’Clock Live made a promising start Thursday night. It was definitely uneven and needs tightening, and not every host was equal in their contribution to the show, but for a brand-new show, airing freaking LIVE, with hosts who are 3/4 new to live broadcast journalism, it was certainly a triumph in not being a hot mess. And it looks like it has all the parts for potential greatness down the road, when there’s a week where people are really flipping out on a subject and all the parts gel together to be a sounding board that reverberates all over new media and really gets talk.

In the promotion for the show it was clear they were going for equal billing for each of the four hosts and for them to at least be in the ballpark of equal time (although they really slacked on Lauren Laverne there), but it’s clear that David Mitchell is going to rule the roost on this show. He did almost all of the pre-show promotion for the series, and Thursday night he did three segments – a roundtable about banking with three contrasting guests, an interview with Conservative MP David Willetts, who had brought forward the recent hike to university fees, and a “Listen To Mitchell” segment where he went off on on localized news (i.e. “Soapbox” on TV, or weekly therapy for those of us who are addicted to his rants.)

The only thing he seemed to have any trouble with was the roundtable, where the Goldman Sachs banker and the other talking heads were only too happy to try to outwit each other as loudly as they could with a boisterous studio audience egging them on. He’s going to have to work on keeping all of them in check enough to get any of his own banter in edgewise and be heard. But as pointed out before, he’s new to this. And his spirited debate with Willetts was fairly brilliant, with some thoughtful discussion over the logic behind the government’s decision to allow more student debt.

Charlie Brooker was, well, Charlie Brooker. If you love Newswipe and Screenwipe, his contribution’s along the same lines – a very familiar-looking segment on news coverage of Tunisia, and a Screenwipe-y pretaped bit on Sarah Palin. And it’s just as brutal as ever. I seriously hope that C4 allows clips of his Palin bit to slip to YouTube and not be region-blocked. Talk about an instant viral video. I can’t even describe what he said about her and her role in the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse without becoming rather un-family-friendly. Really in general this show is a social conservative’s nightmare, between Brooker’s dissection of the Tea Party and quite a lot of profanity.

And that brings me to Jimmy Carr. Dear me. I generally like him as a comic, but I’m not entirely sure about him on this show. My one big, overarching gripe with this first show is his opening standup routine, which really felt like it was stuck in there because it seems to be expected for there to be an opening standup on any non-scripted comedy show. The jokes were definitely of the moment, with plenty of Alan Johnson resignation stuff to show that they had watched the news that day, but a lot of the material did feel like week-old Tweets. Then he did some sort of weird odd salespitch of Tunisia as a vacation hotspot. The less said about that, the better. His interview segment with “skeptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg was good, but as people pointed out online, Laverne would seem like the choice for that part.

A lot of people have expressed a lot of reservations all over the place about why Laverne is on the show, but I think she did a really nice job with what she was given. Which wasn’t a lot. I hope they expand her contribution more in upcoming weeks, because the whole thing did reek quite a bit of testosterone and natural comic rivalry, and what she does could balance that out a bit. Or if she’s going to be the “social network voice” for the show, expand that a bit. There was more than enough about the show being talked about online.

There are very few shows that I’ve eagerly awaited on the level of this one, and it wasn’t a disappointment. However, it didn’t leave me bowled over. But I think in coming weeks, if they possibly moved the order around on some of the things they do and the hosts fully embrace the format, it could really grow into being something very special. Still not the Daily Show, but who needs to rip us Americans off, anyway?

Talking Telly: Review of 10 O’Clock Live is a post from: Anglotopia.net

I’m just going to state this up front, because this is a very controversial stance to make in a Brit-American forum such as this – I love Piers Morgan’s TV work. I already made this clear in the past. I’ve seen every episode of his Life Stories show on ITV, and I was thrilled from the moment his name came up in the Larry King replacement list. So all the haters can just go ahead and hate. This is not the review for you.

That said, on a professional level I can pick apart news shows like the best, and having had prior experience to a Piers Morgan program that I liked a lot gives me extra material to compare his first CNN interview with Oprah Winfrey to. The first thing I would say is that I really miss the little biographical segments that Morgan voices that are sprinkled into his Life Stories interviews on ITV. That may not be possible with five shows a week vs. one on ITV and most of us already know enough of Oprah’s life story as it is, but they added a lot to the body of the show. I hope they end up in future shows.

I also hate staged sets like Oprah’s perfectly-styled living room (or if that’s her real living room I would have to stay in another room because it would give me a migraine.) I’m looking forward to seeing the debut of Morgan’s studio set on Tuesday with Howard Stern, because the pictures look like watercolors and I’m interested in how that will translate on tape. I loved the starkness of the black-and-white, two-chairs Life Stories set. But it definitely gave an Oprah vibe and that was probably part of the deal for the “big get” of the interview.

As far as the interview, it was classic Piers Morgan. The best comparison to one of the ITV shows was his interview with Barbara Windsor, who is probably beloved in the UK on a comparable level to Oprah-mania. A lot of the show was unabashed sucking up to Oprah. Possibly too much. However, it only occasionally felt downright gratuitous and usually led to her opening up more about her “life lessons.” Which is where Morgan’s ability to make people talk and emote kicked in.

Oprah really did open up in a way that I don’t think I’ve seen her do with anyone else, except for possibly Barbara Walters on one of her “Most Interesting People” segments years ago. She admitted that it took many years for her to fall in love with her companion Stedman Graham. And she talked more at length and honestly about the death of her baby at the age of 14 – and how she kept it a secret even from family for years – than she ever has. She talked about it in a way that will resonate for many women and didn’t sound like something she’d held back to trot out gratuitously. It was heartfelt and open.

What was also notable was the lack of pressing on other subjects that some will call soft-pedaling, but I disagree. I suspect that if Morgan hadn’t taken Oprah’s declaration that she wasn’t going to talk about the sexuality rumors that have surrounded her and her best friend Gayle King to heart, she wouldn’t have opened up nearly as much about both Gayle (who apparently had gotten close to Piers in the weeks before the interview took place) and Graham. She said, rightly, that she had already addressed the subject of the rumors for the last time some weeks ago, and Morgan left it and instead delved into how many times she said she’s had her heart broken (twice) and why she’s never married (“Throw yourself a party and get yourself a really nice gown.”) So her relationships felt more fleshed out than just batting around rumors for 15 minutes or so.

It’s not fair to judge a show wholly on first impressions, but I do think this was a very strong first outing for Morgan’s first CNN show. It could’ve felt like an hour of nothing new, but there were enough new pieces to feel like interaction instead of merely another promotional piece. The real test will be in upcoming shows where Morgan is no longer interviewing the king or queen of any medium (will have to get past tomorrow night with Stern to get there) and he is not quite so effusive in praise.

Will he ask the tough questions when the time comes? Will he get emotion when the subject doesn’t have such a public heart on their sleeve? That’s yet to be seen. So check back in a couple weeks and we’ll have a better answer. But for now, I don’t think Morgan will be moving back to London full-time anytime soon.

Oh, one more note – if CNN can’t manage to replace Larry King with the kind of on-air promotion and online blitz that Morgan’s team has done in the past few weeks, it won’t be done. Many hats off should be given for their Twitter blitz alone. Both online and in simple footwork with other media outlets, Morgan has been inescapable for awhile now. Which is probably bad for the haters, but has been pretty entertaining on Twitter.

Talking Telly: Piers Morgan Tonight review, night 1 is a post from: Anglotopia.net

It’s amazing how suddenly a large percentage of America has suddenly discovered that Ricky Gervais is not some meek, mild US network sitcom character in the past 24 hours. I knew this mythical idea existed after hearing some of the audience reaction at the taping of Gervais’ last HBO special in October (HBO, it’s time to schedule another airing of it) but it’s hard for me to see why anyone who has much clue about what Gervais has built his career on is now shocked and seemingly annoyed that Gervais was so biting and – to some – vicious.

Here’s a couple of clips to illustrate my point that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association knew exactly what they were getting with Gervais. One is Gervais’ appearance on 2009′s Comic Relief, which is the UK’s annual telethon to raise money for people in need, using himself to make fun of the fact that celebrities often do charity appeals to make themselves look and feel good.

Two years before this was an even more pointed bit from him on the same subject at Comic Relief 2007.

But maybe the Hollywood types thought that Gervais would merely aim all of his humor at a particular sub-grouping that seemingly barely exists in LA – overweight people?

Personally, I thought it was nice to see a comedian take the “don’t stab them in the back when their chest is available” route onstage, and I wonder if the Hollywood types somehow didn’t realize that those jokes, every single one of them, are made every single day by people who don’t live there. I can imagine gaining that kind of self-knowledge so suddenly could be very hurtful. But it was very cleansing for a lot of us, and on Twitter today the British humor crowd seems incredulous that Americans seem to be so upset over stuff that would be tame on their shows.

By the way, for all of the folks that are loudly proclaiming that he will never be on any other American awards show or have another US award nomination, you should know he’s become famous and wealthy in the UK long before this and will remain so. He doesn’t need America to pat his back and give him our money. He’s going to be loved and rewarded for as long as he wants.

For those of us who already knew who and what Gervais is or have just discovered it and like what they saw, the good news is that you can see him on HBO’s The Ricky Gervais Show, and on An Idiot Abroad where his brand of picking at even his friends is on full display. And thankfully, one of my favorite British humor types, Mitch Benn, said it best on Twitter today when he told SimonPegg : “I have so had it with the whole ‘Americans don’t get irony’ thing. THICK Americans don’t, but neither do thick Brits.”

Oh, and this clip is for all the new folks that have just discovered that Gervais is, gasp, an atheist!

Talking Telly: Anyone should’ve known what was coming with Ricky Gervais on the Golden Globes is a post from: Anglotopia.net

It’s slightly ironic that Episodes, a BBC/Showtime coproduction about a UK show import going bad very quickly in Hollywood, is popping up in both America and Great Britain right now, as a new era of television’s most uncomfortable “special relationship” is really kicking in here in the US.

Just an hour after the debut aired Sunday, Showtime aired their own remake of the British hit Shameless. MTV is readying their remake of Skins, and is shooting a pilot for The Inbetweeners, and SyFy’s take on Being Human is ready to go. As we’ve all been debating endlessly this week, Torchwood crossed the pond to start filming a new series in LA on Monday. All three of the original shows were huge hits for BBC America. Downton Abbey is attracting a lot of buzz on PBS Masterpiece Theatre, just a few months after Sherlock’s big US debut in the same spot. And even news networks are tapping some love for Brits, with Piers Morgan pretty much impossible to miss before his new show starts Monday.

Since it’s clear that there is some notice that Americans seem to find British telly just as entertaining as the original audience does – and in some cases, more (i.e. Piers Morgan) – why is it that we don’t just get the show as it is instead of a regurgitated abomination that we’ve gotten over and over again?

BBC America raked audiences in once upon a time for Coupling, Manchild and Spaced, and all three shows were imported for American versions and failed flamingly. As those of us who know and love the genre know, the list of successful British remakes is probably topped by The Office and the rest could be counted with fingers on two hands. Indeed, even “the British network” seems to almost be moving away from that as they start making their own shows and airing X-Files reruns as a “supernatural” branding instead of UK programming, possibly meaning that we may never see new, terrific programmes like Miranda and Rev on American screens. At least before they are inevitably remade with Miranda Hart recast with Gwyneth Paltrow and the world-weary middle-aged vicar becoming a wisecracking young hottie.

And that’s where Episodes comes in. As I covered at length when the show was first announced last year, this show comes from a depth of experience in the stupidity of Hollywood decision-making, with Friends co-creator David Crane, Mad About You’s Jeffrey Klarik and John Mulville – a brilliant British comedy mind who sustained his own bad experience with Fox and “Game On.”

All three of them have had enormous success with seemingly nothing to prove, but have then gone through the wringer with US studio executives who questioned their idea of what was funny. So when the first episode recounts the initial encounter of half-drunken, BAFTA-crowned and giddy show creators Sean and Beverly Lincoln (played by Tasmin Greig and Stephen Mangan) and Hollywood studio head Merc Lapidus (played by John Pankaw) where Merc proclaims he wants to have sexual congress with their show – subsequently to be revealed that he had never seen a single episode – it very clear they speak of which they know.

As Americans pretty much already see daily evidence of the crassness of the entertainment industry, there is very little groundbreaking or shocking about the plot, and I would imagine that a Brit watching would say that it merely confirms what they think they know about us. But the show works because it almost becomes a parody of the stereotypes that have been fed by their experiences – the naive creatives in the Lincolns, the brass hubris of Merc, the sad suits that surround him, Merc’s blind (literally and figuratively) do-gooding wife, and the literal fake former reality-show set of a house that the Lincolns find themselves living in as they lose their soul in the Valley.

Frankly, I am probably as biased as any American can be about this show because I adored Greig and Mangan in Green Wing (yet another original the BBC America once introduced us here to once upon a time), Greig had already proven herself brilliant before that in Black Books (see previous about Green Wing) and Mangan just did a terrific turn in BBC’s adaptation of Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently. They have earned their shot at being beloved by all of us heathens, dammit. Greig in particular just shines as Beverly, who clearly never really fell in love with this Hollywood idea in the first place and starts imploding from the very beginning, whereas Mangan plays Sean as a charming oaf in the making.

And where is Matt LeBlanc? I think most people going into the first episode of Episodes will be surprised at what a backseat he takes in the show. He really does play a real caricature of his public image and gamely allows that to be a plot device of all that can go wrong on a Tinseltown studio set (he also has his own experience with that on Joey, of course.) When much was made of him being like Larry David’s character on Curb Your Enthusiasm, I didn’t think that would be so true. But in the second episode he manages to find that line between being obtuse and being offensive and dances on it fairly lightly. LeBlanc isn’t the best thing about the show, but it seems pretty clear that everyone involved knew that wasn’t the intent of the show. Just like on the fictional Lincolns’ creation Lyman’s Boy remake, he’s the pretty star that brings a name to the project that everyone knows, but he does end up leaving his mark.

Much like the Lincolns, this show is not meant to grace Americans’ screens forever. But it does tell a story and makes a statement, one that I hope that all of the US networks courting British creations could stand to learn. One is that a show is just better if you let the British talent work their magic on us. The second is that all the money and the fame in Hollywood doesn’t mean you know more than we do about what makes us laugh and cry and keep watching. If someone else who just happens not to share your accent has figured that out, it might not be a bad idea to let them go with that.

Talking Telly: Review of ‘Episodes’, episodes 1 and 2 is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Torchwood: Children of Earth (Courtesy: BBC)

Starz had its presentation at the Television Critics Association tour on Friday, where Russell T. Davies took the stage to preview the next series of Torchwood. For anyone who loves Brit TV who has been living without Internet access since July 2009, the show is now going to be a co-production of the BBC and Starz, is mostly filming in LA (starting Monday, in fact) and will debut in July in both countries with a 10-episode run.

Since none of it has been filmed yet, RTD obviously couldn’t show off much more than a bit of returning cast (Eve Myles was at the TCA event, while John Barrowman finishes his panto in Scotland), the cast list of new characters, and a bit of plot. Oh, and a new name. Originally called Torchwood: The New World, it’s been renamed Torchwood: Miracle Day. Which is an obvious switch from the plot revealed.

You know how so many people died in Torchwood: Children of Earth? Well, RTD has a special way of following that up. In Miracle Day, at least in the beginning, no one can die.

“The premise is a miracle that happens to the world,” he said. “That one day, on Earth, no one dies. Not a single person on Earth dies. The next day, no one dies. The next day, no one dies. And on and on and on. Now, the sick stay sick, the old keep getting older, the dying keep dying, but no one quite dies.”

Apparently while this sounds like, well, a miracle, it becomes a problem very quickly. Instant population boom, lots of people stuck dying, etc. And that’s where the need for finding the remnants of the Torchwood team comes in. Obviously, Captain Jack Harkness has a bit of experience with randomly finding oneself immortal.

At first I was a bit annoyed that he revealed so much, considering how relatively little we knew before CoE about what would happen. I hate to quote Doctor Who, Moffat Edition here, but “Spoilers!” But there was no way that they could sell this revamp, at least in America, without revealing something juicy. And there’s a lot that those of us who are Torchwood fans can chew over in the next few months, like how the man who can’t die and just watched two of the people he’d loved most in his hundreds of years of life die will deal with an immortal world.

The biggest name in the new cast members is Bill Pullman, who practically everyone in the US has seen in Independence Day. He will play Oswald Danes, who is a convicted child killer (the original character description says he’s also a pedophile, but there’s debate over whether that’s been dropped) who is given a lethal injection on “Miracle Day” and doesn’t die. The BBC character description says, “The most infamous man in the world, he becomes the most provocative figure in modern media.”

The second biggest new name is Mekhi Phifer, formerly of Fox’s Lie To Me, who plays the major role of Rex Mathison, a “golden boy” Harvard grad who plays a CIA agent who “can talk his way into anything, then charm his way out, fast.” He’s the one who goes looking for Torchwood as the events unfold and is said to go on a worldwide chase with Jack and Gwen to find answers to the mystery.

Other actors who have joined the cast are Alexa Havins, a former soap-opera actress (and really not bad at all) who will play “innocent” CIA field agent Esther Drummond, and Crash actress Arlene Tur, who plays Washington, DC surgeon Dr. Vera Juarez. Oh, and for those of us old-timer fans, we will see Kai Owen as Gwen’s husband Rhys, and Tom Price as PC Andy, although nothing has been revealed about their involvement.

But this is where the hard part comes in – Torchwood is coming back, but it’s not the one we knew and loved. It could never be that. The Hub was destroyed in Cardiff, and Ianto’s dead. Tosh and Owen too, but we’ve processed that. Somehow so many of us fans are still mourning Ianto.

I understand, really. I’m going to London in April and have contemplated a day trip to Cardiff with the intent of visiting the Ianto shrine that’s still kept by fans where the fictional Hub was located next to the Millenium Dome. I cried for two days over him. I feel the pain.

There are so many fans, though, who greet every piece of new news about the revival of Torchwood as a joint US/UK production with ire, mixing both anger that RTD is “selling out” and “going American” and a belief that if Ianto’s not on the show it shouldn’t continue at all. I give them credit for being vocal. They pestered (yes, that’s the right word for it) Steven Moffat until he politely said on Twitter that he considered Ianto to be dead and wouldn’t resurrect him for Doctor Who, and asked people to quit requesting that he do that. For a man who probably gets more fan grief than any showrunner in Britain with both DW and Sherlock to single out a fandom to ask them to shut up, it’s clear that they’ve said a lot. God help him if RTD ever joined Twitter.

But it’s not only them who have expressed no interest in seeing the new Torchwood – there are so many of us, the passionate fans, who seem so annoyed at what they see as just another horrible American remake that they have no interest in even trying the show out. I honestly thought a few months ago, when the casting rumor came out about Chad Michael Murray of One Tree Hill being Rex, that I woud be one. But mark me as someone who has been somewhat rejuvenated by the actual casting and the plot to actually get excited again. Enough that I want to at least ask the fandom to rethink their positions.

As I said, it’s not going to be the same Torchwood. Too much has happened, the set we knew and loved is gone, and yes, Ianto’s gone. He would be gone no matter what. But we do have the production team from CoE returning to make this new show. We have RTD, who despite his propensity to stomp on our hearts has built these characters that we love enough to care this much and has done the American importation thing successfully before with Queer As Folk. Also, we have some excellent show writers on board – John Shiban from The X-Files and Breaking Bad, Jane Espenson from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica, and Doris Egan from Dark Angel and Tru Calling. You can’t get much more experience with the sci-fi genre than that lineup.

And we have Barrowman. A few weeks ago Barrowman told a Scottish paper said he’s given up both an extended stint on Desperate Housewives and a part on House to play Jack again. Really, are we going to doubt that he’s not going to be someone we want to see on our screens for 10 weeks? Is he going to really let us down?

For many Torchwood has ended in their minds and hearts when Jack left the earth at the end of CoE. But for some of us we’d like to see the story continue. Don’t you want to see Gwen’s baby (who had better not die, RTD)? Don’t you want to see Jack flirting with every living creature on multiple continents? And don’t you want to at least see if this new cast can keep up with him and Gwen and their two loyal compatriots? For me, the answer is yes. I hope you come along for the ride.

Talking Telly: Dear Torchwood fans, give the new series a chance (SPOILERS) is a post from: Anglotopia.net

HBO has released the first episode of their second season of the animated comedy “The Ricky Gervais Show” a week early, both on iTunes and HBO.com. They were kind enough to let us feature the episode below.

I know that some of the hardcore Gervais/Merchant fans were a bit meh on the first season of this show, but I think it’s pretty awesome. What’s better than Karl Pilkington’s animated round head while he moans?

Talking Telly: Watch the first episode of ‘The Ricky Gervais Show’, Season 2 now! is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Wow, I must say that I never expected to see the number of people who commented on my first week review of Come Fly With Me. Also amazed by how many people flat-out hated it. Most people seemed to find it offensive, with the rest thinking it just wasn’t funny.

Me, I can’t help comparing it – as many others did – to another recent show, Frankie Boyle’s Tramadol Nights. Just like I’ve always enjoyed David Walliams and Matt Lucas, I liked Boyle on Mock The Week as much as anyone. But I had such a visceral reaction to the first ep of Tramadol Nights that I just have been unable to even think of trying it again. But there is such a difference in the tone between his show and Come Fly With Me that somehow makes all the difference to me.

While Boyle’s brand of humor was out in spades and was undoubtedly funny to those who share it, I found it to be, above all, aimed at meanness. They were intended completely to offend (listen to Channel 4′s before-show disclaimer if you need proof – it’s the longest I’ve ever heard before a programme.) And I would give anything to erase the memory of the first episode’s spoof of “The Green Mile” that, to me, glorified both capital punishment and prison rape from my brain.

On the other hand, while a lot of the jokes in Come Fly With Me fell flat and were disappointing to fans, there really was a sense of fun in it. The fun that’s poked – and yes, a lot with ethnicity – does not have a sense of meanness. If there’s an issue, they really do focus on stereotypes, but in my opinion it’s not done any differently than Walliams and Lucas did in Little Britain with gays and trans characters.

Anyway, I know a lot of the people who hated the show last week didn’t watch tonight. And that’s a shame, because Episode 2 was a much funnier proposition. This week Omar showing off the FlyLo’s knock-off of Ryanair’s new standing seating where he promptly smashed his head on the overhead compartment (I had wondered about that), Melodee showing off her spread in the “FlyLo Hotties” calendar, and the paparazzi once again missing out on their “get” because they started singing.

Oh, and Taaj was back but did a great bit where he ran through a long list of excuses for a delayed fight and somehow managed to make all, even a pilot who didn’t want to fly at night, into an “act of God.” I know people hate the character because of the ethnicity, but I suspect the jokes would’ve been the same and just as funny if he wasn’t of color.

There are supposed to be new characters every week and the best this week was Tommy, a wannabe pilot who is unfortunately dumb as a box of rocks. His idea is to work his way up at the airport via a new job at a burger restaurant, and if his order-taking skills are any indication, it’s going to take a long time. Or maybe they’ll really scare us and have him taking control of a plane in the final episode. Yikes.

But there’s still plenty to be offended by in the show if you are inclined to feel so. The immigration official who tried to bar a passenger from coming back from Liberia (the actress will make Eastenders fans happy) because he didn’t believe it was a real country is probably making a statement but will cause a stir. And the storyline between two airline stewards and one of them being on a mission to prove the other wasn’t straight won’t be my favorite of all time.

The best thing about the show to me is the guest stars who just pop in unexpectedly. Beyond the Eastenders surprise, there was also Olivia Colman, who I unabashedly adore. But the star of the episode was David Schwimmer, who was featured in the very last scene and possibly changed how some of us who still watch Friends on repeat think about Ross and Joey forever.

On a whole, I know there is no way that people are going to agree with me here, generally, but I do like this show and I urge those who can stomach the ethnic portrayals at all to give it another chance. I still have doubts that it can keep the joke level high through six episodes, but this week made me more hopeful.

Talking Telly: Review of Come Fly With Me, Episode 2 is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Courtesy: BBC

At long last the debut of the new sketch show from Little Britain’s David Walliams and Matt Lucas bowed Christmas night on BBC One, and it was definitely a fine end to a day of Christmas specials and festivities. And much like Christmas festivities themselves, it was almost too much of a good thing.

This new show focuses on a fictitious regional airport in England and its low-cost airline anchor, FlyLo Air. Obviously it was taking the mickey out of budget airlines like Ryanair and EasyJet that ferry Brits around Europe whilst charging them for the use of anything they can get away with. The show started with the FlyLo’s owner Omar (played by Walliams) demonstrating that critics were wrong and it was easy to find a life preserver in the event of a plane crash, and showing off how to purchase the use of it for 20 minutes at £60.

Just like on Little Britain, Walliams and Lucas play all of the main characters on the show in costume or in drag – everything from hapless airline manager Moses to the vicious FlyLo counter girls to the worst paparazzi on earth, who hilariously missed shooting Geri Halliwell as they performed a short selection of the Spice Girls catalogue. And like Little Britain, both the performances and the writing are entertaining. It’s hard to imagine how long those guys spent in makeup to make the show, much less writing their material.

But the main flaw of the show may be its focus on one place, instead of having a variety of settings like Little Britain. By the end of the first 30 minutes, it was running the risk of being tedious, and since future episodes will be in the same place and with the same characters it will be truly remarkable if they have any jokes left by the last episode of the series.

The second show will air on New Year’s Day.

Talking Telly: Review of Episode 1 of Come Fly With Me is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Courtesy: HBO

It’s a little bit special to get the chance to review a British comedian’s TV special before it airs anywhere, much less in America. It’s even more special when you aren’t even previewing an advance copy of the special on DVD. But I was lucky enough to attend the main taping of “Ricky Gervais: Out Of England 2″ in Chicago in October, and the HBO special is set to air this Saturday night at 10 p.m. EST.

I had meant to review Gervais’ show immediately after seeing it in October, but frankly I needed a little time to digest it. One thing that was amazing was how an usher told a few of us beforehand how shocking the previous audiences (he did a total of three shows in Chicago) found his set. Apparently a fair number of people thought, “Oh, that’s the guy who invented The Office, right?” and bought tickets just in time to sit there and get offended. And the first thing to know about Gervais is that if you get offended by just about anything, his standup act is not for you.

And that’s where I, who really don’t get offended by too much, got a bit stuck on a subject that probablymost of the audience wouldn’t care about – fat people. According to interviews after the fact, Gervais realized that since he’s now lost about 25 pounds or so, he should probably retire his fat joke repertoire. So he finished them out in style, spending a lot of the beginning of the set talking an awful lot about fat women. That’s probably my sore spot because I’ll be the first to admit that my body type is much like Miranda Hart’s. So I needed a bit of time to get over myself and judge the rest of the act in itself.

There was a lot of great stuff that the Gervais fans are almost guaranteed to love. The best of the act was something I touched on in my previous post about Karl Pilkington – Gervais did a retelling with commentary of a children’s picture book about Noah’s Ark that he was given in Sunday School as a kid. Once again, his material would be easy to be sensitive about if you get touchy about Christian beliefs being the subject of secular comedy, but in truth it was hilarious.

And don’t let it be said that Gervais can’t make fun of himself, especially the fact that he’s now self-described as incredibly posh and spoiled.

Another highlight that’s going to be in the special (because I’ve seen the synopsis) is another commentary done to illustrations in a book about homosexuality amongst animals. I promise that you will never see dolphins in the same way. He also talks about the Icelandic volcanic brouhaha and about the question of travel disruptions being classified as “acts of God”, and what he sees as being the “problem with heroin.”

In all, I’ve had time to get the ability back to see the humor in things that I could take personally, although I still hope that Gervais is really not right in saying that fat women might as well keep eating because we’d still be ugly if we were thin. But even when he’s pissing me off, he’s still one of the funniest guys out there, and the rare British funny guy to be found onstage in the Midwest.

Talking Telly: A first-hand look at Ricky Gervais’ Out Of England 2 special is a post from: Anglotopia.net

I’ve been looking for new ways to both downgrade my cable subscription (sorry, but BBC America is not offering enough real Brit programming to justify extended digital service anymore) and to be somewhat lazy and order what I want, when I want as far as TV and movies from the comfort of either couch and my HDTV or from my bedroom TV.

After much research, I invested in a Roku XD-S, which provides instant access to Netflix streaming, Amazon On Demand, Hulu Plus, and a host of other services (a full lineup of their offering is here. And it’s completely simple to set up – hook the box (about the size of an adult hand) up with a component cable or an HDMI cable to your TV, plug it in, make sure it’s getting a wifi connection (very important your wifi signal is strong), set up your services and your accounts (Netflix is $7.99 a month and Hulu Plus is about the same) and hook them up to thing like your Amazon account and your Pandora account. Then you’re set to go to town. No monthly fee on the Roku itself, BTW.

The British highlights on the main services:

Netflix: Unfortunately, the BBC’s agreement with Netflix for streaming media has just ended, so the selection is probably not as good as it was before. In particular, the last series of Doctor Who is not available streaming, but the last four were. However, there are some real gems in the classics department. At this moment, I’m watching A Bit Of Fry & Laurie – all the series are available. So is Black Adder, Red Dwarf, The IT Crowd (not the latest series, but hopefully soon), Hyperdrive, Fawlty Towers, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Office (UK), Saxondale, Little Britain, and (surprisingly to me) one series of The Mitchell and Webb Look. Plus more. Oh, and Merlin, Jekyll, Torchwood (all series), Robin Hood, Survivors, Doc Martin, etc.

Hulu Plus: This is the one with the most potential of the growth of individual, non-BBC-owned shows. Peep Show Series 1-6 is now available on there (c’mon, Series 7!) There’s also some wonderful cult comedies like Black Books, Green Wing, and Spaced, as well as the wonderful country lawyer dramedy of Kingdom. The Office is also available here, as well as Coupling. This would be a terrific place for some panel shows to pop up in the future, since Hulu seems to sign up a lot with individual production houses instead of relying upon a network.

Amazon On Demand: This is a wonderful place to rent a lot of British TV and movies, but unfortunately it is not subscription-based so you could rack up some nasty charges if you decided, for instance, to do a Sherlock marathon ($4.99 for a rental apiece.) But you can find some nice things on sale – for instance, I got a 24-hour rental of Love Actually last night for 99-cents. For now this may be the fastest way to be able to download first-run programs that are made available, like the latest Doctor Who ep if you don’t have BBC America or download elsewhere. For some reason, they don’t offer a way to order subscriptions to full seasons on their streaming service as far as I can see.

A few other things: One of the channels available is Willow TV, which offers cricket matches (too bad I got this a week late for the Ashes.) Tune-In Radio is powered off of RadioTime.com, which has all of the BBC Radio stations available online but for some reason doesn’t make them available on Tune-In Radio (they also have the BBC TV nets available if you are in the right region.) But they do have local radio stations like XFM, Absolute Radio, Heart and others that work fine.

There’s a channel called Roku Newscaster that offers news updates and podcasts from various news sources, including the BBC. The BBC World Service has a large number of titles on offer.

So far I’m pleased with my Roku investment, because it seems like it’s going to be a way of pulling in sources of British TV that are good quality and perfectly legal quickly into my TV in high quality. I hope that the sources just continue to expand their foreign offerings, and that British networks look at how relatively easy it might be to offer a subscription service for a box like this for their current programming.

I’d also love to see YouTube availability on here (since that is, frankly, the best place to find current British TV episodes) but I’m not sure that will be happening. However, there is Vimeo, so maybe some of the British uploaders could switch platforms? Just an idea.

Talking Telly: Roku provides a new way to watch lots of British TV is a post from: Anglotopia.net

The hilarious “An Idiot Abroad”, following the global exploits of Karl Pilkington as mechanized by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, aired on Sky1 this fall. Now American audiences will get their chance to see Pilkington whine his way to the Seven Wonders of the World.

The Science Channel will air the 8-episode series next year, according to The Futon Critic. The premiere has been tentatively set for Jan. 21.

Pilkington, a Manchester native known by many as the “round headed idiot” from Gervais’ podcasts and “The Ricky Gervais Show” on HBO, is becoming a bit famous in his own right, even here in the US. At the taping of Gervais’ HBO special “Out Of England 2″ (which is, incidentally, airing next week) one of the biggest cheers of the show was when he brought up Pilkington’s name when he was doing his adult retelling of a Biblical children’s book. To find out his reaction to Ricky’s recitation of the book, you definitely will need to tune into the special.

As for what Pilkington does in this show, here’s a clip from one of the episodes. Basically the premise is that Gervais plans this whole series of trips with the sole intention of metaphorically poking him with a stick repeatedly, and that he and Merchant do in spades.

Talking Telly: Karl Pilkington’s ‘An Idiot Abroad’ coming to US is a post from: Anglotopia.net

This trailer features Doctor Who, Whistle And I’ll Come To You, Upstairs Downstairs, Toast, Eric And Ernie and EastEnders. Looks really good. I’m personally looking really forward to Doctor Who, Eric and Ernie and EastEnders, but we’ll all have our own favorites.

Talking Telly: Christmas Specials – See the BBC drama trailer is a post from: Anglotopia.net

The BBC has released their first trailer for Come Fly With Me, a brand-new sketch show starring Little Britain’s Matt Lucas and David Walliams set in a fictional British airport. Its first episode will air on BBC One in the UK on Christmas night. Thanks for not region-blocking this, BBC!

Talking Telly: See first trailer for Matt Lucas and David Walliams’ new show is a post from: Anglotopia.net

According to reports, the BBC has plans to launch their global version of the iPlayer as a subscription-based app for the iPad, initially in the US.

Apple Insider relays a report in the Financial Times (subscription-only) quoting Luke Bradley-Jones, managing director of BBC.com, as saying that the network plans to expand its UK-only iPlayer platform “to initially launch just on the iPad platform, as it provides such potential to develop a truly interactive video-on-demand service, and also maps pretty nicely on to our core target audience for the service.”

An international iPlayer platform, paid for by either subscription or through advertising, has been promised in 2011 by BBC Worldwide for months as a way to grow revenue for the network in the wake of licence fee freezes in the UK. Bradley-Jones said in the report that they eventually hope offer subscription access, digital downloads, and pay per view offerings, as well as advertising for free content.

But starting out iPad-only at the start? Personally, it’s hard to find a bigger Apple addict than me – I’ve been using Macs since 1993 and am currently writing this on my MacBook. And yes, iPads are an incredible platform for rich media. But they are also very pricey and a very small segment of the market at this moment. A huge number of potential subscribers would be left behind if this launches only on the iPad, even beyond what would have happened if the iPlayer had launched as Silverlight video when it was Windows-only just a couple of years ago.

The current licence fee in the UK is the equivalent to $227, which is a price that the BBC would hope to spread out for US users via subscription. But if you see the initial investment to even getting that subscription in spending at least $600 for an iPad, will there be enough takers to pay for the development, much less develop a real profit for the BBC?

There have been so many people asking for and begging to pay for an international iPlayer, so it’s great to know it’s on its way. But their current platform that’s available in the UK is solid. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. My humble plea is to work with that and launch the subscription program cross-platform when it can be available for everyone, regardless of operating system as long as you have a system that can handle live streaming. It’s not the matter of paying for the content – we’re ready. It’s a matter of having to jump through even more and very expensive hoops to get there.

Talking Telly: Global iPlayer to be launched as iPad app? is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Courtesy: BBC

The best thing about a British Christmas is, for me, the Christmas specials. Networks in the UK go the extra mile to bring in fans of all sorts, from the popular current hits to the classic shows to beloved performers showing up on either of the first two or in their own one-time show.

And it’s more than just stunt casting or the American concept of “sweeps” – it’s tradition. More people have been found in polls to watch the EastEnders Christmas episode each year than the Queen’s speech, and statistically a higher percentage do so than Americans watch the Super Bowl.

Not all of the networks have released summaries of what they have coming up for Christmas Day, Boxing Day and, well, a few days around those. But the BBC has released a hefty lineup that’s sure to please some hefty fandoms.

Doctor Who: This is the Christmas special that’s becoming such a huge annual tradition that BBC America is actually showing it with almost no transmission delay. In the UK, “A Christmas Carol” will air at 6 p.m. on BBC One We posted this the night it aired during the Children In Need special, but in case you missed it, here’s the official preview trailer. Two words are really all that’s necessary – Michael Gambon.

Come Fly With Me: Little Britain’s Matt Lucas announced today via his Twitter feed that the new sketch comedy show featuring characters by him and David Walliams based in the world of air travel will air on Christmas night on BBC One at 10 pm. Lucas and Walliams will once again play every character, from check-in staff to pilots and paparazzi.

Top Gear: Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May are mirroring the legendary path of the Three Wise Men to Bethlehem, crossing Iraq, Jordan and Israelin a range of top sports cars wholly unsuited to the terrain. In the interest of continued world peace and good will to all, I really hope that the three of them don’t decide to reenact their trek across Alabama, Arab-style. This is due to air on Boxing Day on BBC Two.

Strictly Come Dancing: Strictly has been having a fantastic series (I’m still watching it!) with Ann Widdecombe, so the Christmas special is attempting to replicate that with Lib-Dem MP and current Business Secretary Vince Cable, who is advertised as never having danced before, ever. But really, for most of us the reason to watch will be John Barrowman. If there was a performer made for this show it’s probably Barrowman, who has never met a spangled outfit he doesn’t love, and it’s probably the last of him we’ll see until Torchwood: The New World debuts next summer. Also starring Ronni Ancona, Fern Britton and June Brown and airing on BBC One.

EastEnders: Can I just say it’s a crying shame this isn’t airing on BBC America along with the Doctor Who special on Christmas? There are Americans who have never watched a regular episode who go out of their way to find the Christmas special each year, because it’s always spectacular and shocking on a level American soaps haven’t reached in years. This year marks the show’s debut on HD, and longtime character Stacey Slater will be departing Albert Square in some sort of dramatic fashion. It’s also probably fair to guess that Kat Moon (who took over the Queen Vic after Peggy Mitchell departed this summer) will have her baby then, since the next huge storyline for New Year’s Day involves them. This airs on BBC One at 8 p.m.

The Royle Family: Another classic that was right behind EastEnders in the ratings last Christmas. In this year’s reunion of the classic cast, Ricky Tomlinson’s Jim Royle set to spend another holiday on his favourite armchair after injuring himself in “an unfortunate incident” leaving Sue Johnston’s Barbara (Sue Johnston) to deal with the big day. It’s set to air right after EastEnders at 9 p.m. on BBC One.

The One Ronnie: A big one for most classic British comedy fans, as legendary Ronnie Corbett (of The Two Ronnies) celebrates his 80th birthday in an all-star sketch show featuring performers Rob Brydon, Miranda Hart, James Corden and singer Charlotte Church. He’ll also perform one of his trademark monologues written by Ben Elton.

Upstairs Downstairs: A revival of the classic show starring Dame Eileen Atkins, Jean Marsh and Keeley Hawes, on BBC One.

Eric And Ernie: A drama about the early years of Morecambe and Wise, possibly the most famous British comedy double act of all time. Starring Victoria Wood and Vic Reeves on BBC Two.

When Harvey Met Bob: Another BBC Two drama about the history behind the creation of Live Aid by Bob Geldorf and Harvey Goldsmith.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: Stephen Mangan takes on the role of the titular eccentric detective from the Douglas Adams novel.

Nigel Slater’s Toast: Helena Bonham-Carter stars in “a young boy’s childhood journey through everything edible during the Sixties” on BBC One.

Whistle And I’ll Come To You: An adaptation of MR James’s Edwardian ghost story starring John Hurt on BBC Two.

And, literally, I am ending this here but there are still so many shows that will be doing specials for Christmas. Everything to specials of My Family to the Top Of The Pops Christmas No. 1 special to special editions of Mock The Week and Never Mind The Buzzcocks. If I continue listing things, I’ll literally be writing until Christmas.

My plan in upcoming weeks is to compile a viewing guide for each of the nights, especially as the other networks unveil their own plans. Needless to say that there will be so much television to watch this year, and a ton to write about. Let it snow!

Talking Telly: Preview of BBC’s Christmas lineup – 2010 British TV Christmas Special Round-up is a post from: Anglotopia.net

As our poor British readers continue to shovel themselves out and most of us Americans prepare for our first major snowfall, it’s a great time to watch my very favorite segment about news coverage of weather events – a clip from Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe from this past winter about “Frozen Britain”, which was basically what the last major snowfall in the country was dubbed by most news outlets, a week before the US East Coast’s “Snopocolypse” that made this clip viral.

I work in TV news in this country (and am expecting my first big snowfall since I moved to the Midwest this weekend) and there are few things more difficult for a newsroom to do than come up with “new” angles for weather events that should not be surprising but that do manage to paralyze a geographic area. I’d love to see Brooker’s reaction to similar media coverage of winter weather in the US Southeast, where a forecast of possible sleet closes schools and an inch of snow closes most major highways.

But what makes this Newswipe analysis best is how he points out all of the ways that news reporters and videographers attempt to make a very visually boring but fairly major part of a story sexy. In this case, it’s grit (or here, sand/salt/beetroot mixture) for roadways. It’s really the part of the story that we need to know about, because it’s what’s going to keep the roads passable, you can’t predict how much to buy before the winter and if you run out you could really be in trouble. But how do you make people interested in ugly, gray powder? BBC News and Sky News certainly did try.

In any case, for all of us who have missed Brooker and Newswipe/Screenwipe (and there’s many who do) BBC 2 has scheduled 2010 Wipe to air during the Christmas period (a move up from BBC 4, where Newswipe and Screenwipe appeared.) Unless it turns out to be three hours long it won’t be enough, although if he and David Mitchell keep making shows together, I won’t bitch (much.) But it’s one of many things to look forward to in the coming weeks – look for my Christmas specials roundup on British TV very soon!

Talking Telly: Fond flashback to Charlie Brooker’s take on TV snow coverage is a post from: Anglotopia.net

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Peter Davison, best known for his stint as the 5th Doctor and as Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small, is set to join the cast of ITV’s Law & Order: UK as filming begins on another 13 episodes of the show.

Davison will play the part of Henry Sharpe, who takes over as the the new Director of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) from George Castle, played by Bill Paterson. Paterson is set return in future series as the newly appointed Director of Public Prosecutions, according to What’s On TV.

Another new addition to the cast is Dominic Rowan, who will play Senior Crown Prosecutor Jacob Thorne, described as “a working class hero who helps the team in their fight for justice.”

Other actors said to be making guest appearances in the show’s fourth series are Juliet Stevenson, Tobias Menzies, Eddie Marsasn and Nicola Walker.

Law & Order: UK executive producer Dick Wolf said “Following the Law & Order tradition of seeing casting and recasting of roles as an opportunity rather than a burden, we welcome two great new actors to the Law & Order family. “Peter and Dominic are well known and well respected members of the British acting communuity.”

That’s certainly very true for Davison, who beyond his iconic roles on Doctor Who and the television version of James Herriot’s classic, has been a staple of British television and theater, making guest appearances on a variety of shows and playing Denis Thatcher in the feature film The Queen. He’s currently playing the role of Professor Callahan in the West End production of Legally Blonde.

Another 13 episodes of the show with such a relatively well-known actor (at least amongst us Anglophiles and Whovians) will be good news for its American fans, who can watch it on BBC America on Friday nights.

Talking Telly: Peter Davison to join Law & Order: UK cast is a post from: Anglotopia.net