“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

Keep Calm and Carry On

Here we are, two-and-a-half weeks into 2009 and it’s been a quiet one on the TV viewing front. There have been quite a few nights of late when the telly has remained stubbornly switched off. A quick glance at my Sky Planner shows a meagre capacity of “29% free” so I will have to start watching soon.  BSG returns on Tuesday and Lost cannot be too far away either and both of these HD shows will eat into that at a pace. I have five parts of Neil Fergusson’s The Ascent of Money and

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Tags: 24, Ascent of Money, Battlestar Galactica, Jack-Bauer, James-May, Lost, Oz Clarke, QI, Royal Institute, Sky

Four new people on the Island… Five new episodes

The strike is over and all the US networks have all announced plans for how they intend to have the curtailed series of their favourite shows produced.  ABC were one of the last to get their proclaimations ready but they delivered the goods as series four of Lost seems to be getting another five doses of island shenanigans, making a respectable 13-episode season and means that only 3 have been, erm, lost.  Over at The Watcher (a great blog I only recently discovered) you can track

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Tags: 24, ABC, Jack-Bauer, Lost, writer's strike

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

Vanished… From The Schedules

Amid no fanfare and barely a trailer to be seen, the UK’s fifth terrestrial channel has begun to show another US import. Vanished appears to be a child of the genre that has brought us 24, Prison Break, or Murder One (if you’re a little older) where the action from the entire series revolves around a single story with lots of different threads and characters to provide added intrigue.  I was actually quite impressed.  There was enough mystery and revelation to keep up viewer

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Tags: 24, Five, Five-US, Modern Drama, Prison-Break, Vanished

24 meets Alien meets Red Dwarf meets….

It seemed to me that Torchwoood’s head honcho and first time Doctor Who writer, Chris Chibnall’s introduction to the bigger stage of the Whoniverse was a somewhat derivative storyline. Any genre fan worth his salt (never understood that phrase… answers on a postcard) would be able to spot at least a dozen similarities between this story and many other movies and programmes of a similar ilk. However, if you flip between either using the phrase “rip-off” or the phrase

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Tags: 24, 42, Alien, Anthony-Flanagan, Chris-Chibnall, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Freema-Agyeman, Graeme Harper, Jack-Bauer, Michelle-Collins, Ripley, Saxon, Torchwood