Any Guesses?

When Keeley Hawes announced at the start of Ashes to Ashes on Friday night with the words “My name is Alex Drake. And quite frankly, your guess is as good as mine”, I couldn’t have agreed with her more. This show, although less so its predecessor, Life On Mars, has always been about what’s happening on the fringes of the story rather than the story itself. In all the furore about Doctor Who at the weekend, I failed to blog about this installment but it does throw up an interesting comparrison. Doctor Who (since 2005) has, on the majority of occasions, been about telling an amazing adventure story set within a little bit of continuity, or “arcs” as we fans like to call them, thrown in to tease the observant. LoM and AtA

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Tags: Alex Drake, Ashes-To-Ashes, Gene-Hunt, Keeley Hawes, Life-On-Mars, Philip-Glenister, Sam-Tyler, Series 3

“Welcome to my new empire, Doctor!”

Catching up with the Day 8 of 24 over recent days and I was very amused to find that the guy who played Eugene Tooms in the X-Files (and also Horace of the Dharma Initiative in Lost) was now portraying none other than Davros! Actually it was someone other than that Davros because Doug Hutchison, for that is he, was pretty good in his role as a hired assassin for the first four episodes until, as is usual in 24, he met an untimely demise. When I was a kid I always thought that one of Kojak’s co-workers was also called Davros but I got that one wrong too. So, are there any other circumstances where a Davros has turned up in unlikely places? Comments in the usual place please. [While I have your attention, don't forget to vote in the February poll (over on the right) of your most anticipated US import for the coming months]

Tags: 24, Doug Hutchison, Eugene Tooms, Jack-Bauer, Kojak

Do want eggs with that?

An inexplicable absence of series two of Dexter on DVD here in Region 2, combined with the fact that I completely failed to realise that the obsure channel, FX, had picked up the initial UK broadcast rights (along with my reluctance to illegally download these things) means that last Thursday’s debut on ITV1 was the first chance I had got to see whether the “difficult second album” was going to live up the joyful first outing for everyone’s new favourite serial killer.

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Tags: dexter, Doakes, It's Alive, ITV, Laguerta, Masuka, Serial Killer, Showtime

Boyd and The Team

It is a blogging tradition that when anyone writes about Waking The Dead, one should also include comments about Boyd’s shouting. I have put my reference in the title just to get it out of the way and shall endeavour to not mention it again. Trevor Eve who, even to a person of my years, is now more commonly known for his Detective Superintendant Boyd than he is for his immortal Eddie Shoestring, is quite

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Tags: BBC1, Boyd, Cold-Case, Shoestring, Trevor-Eve, Waking-The-Dead, Wounds

Time to Say Goodbye

While the writers have been on strike over in the USA and the people who make 24, Prison Break and shows of a similar ilk have had their iMacs switched off, I wonder whether any of them will have taken the opportunity to look at the UK’s attempt at a 24-esque, season long, story arc. Admittedly the latest series of Spooks is only ten episodes long but the writers have tried to do something a little different in season six by linking all the stories together and, in my humble

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Tags: 24, Adam-Carter, BBC, Hermione-Norris, MI5, Prison-Break, Ros-Myers, Spooks, Tom Quinn

What a Tangled Web We Weave

If ever there was ever a case study of “Dysfunctional familes as portrayed in television drama”, you would have to watch an awful lot of television drama before discovering a cast of characters that were more dysfunctional than those portrayed in True Dare Kiss. This six-part, BBC drama was reasonably watchable throughout… well, I didn’t give up after one episode at any rate and, instead, saw it through to its somewhat disappointing conclusion. The puzzling thing was that I was actually

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Tags: BBC, Esther-Hall, Modern Drama, Paul-McGann, Pooky-Quesnel, True-Dare-Kiss, TV-Today