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

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Show Me The Money

The Other Viewer and I have about 4 episodes to catch up on this one so excuse me if I’m a little behind the times in my analysis but, over on C4/E4, the much-hyped, Brothers and Sisters provides a glossy, American drama/comedy tale (are we allowed to use the term “dramedy”?) of a rather large LA family. The cast is pretty enormous and one of the big challenges proves to be trying to remember all of the character’s names but despite this, or may be thanks to

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Brothers-and-Sisters, Calista-Flockhart, Channel-4, Dallas, LA, Modern Drama, Sally-Field

Keep Smilin’

The awkwardly titled Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip began its first and only season on More4, its UK debut, just before the Other Viewer and I left for our annual vacation.  When we returned on Monday night, we found our Sky+ planner with a meagre 7% free, so we sat down in our jet-lagged state to enjoy this new import and free up some much needed recording space.  Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is a drama series about the production of a fictional comedy variety show

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Aaron-Sorkin, Bradley-Whitford, Matthew-Perry, Modern Drama, More4, Network, Studio-60

No-one Said It Would Be Easy … (Retrospective Catch Up #1)

The Other Viewer and I have recently finished watching Talk To Me, the recent Sunday night drama offering from ITV. Told over four weeks, it was a tale of complex and interweaving love stories that were anything other than straighforward.  I always have a bit of a problem with Max Beesley because every time I’ve seen him (in recent outings here, in Hotel Babylon and in the much-acclaimed Bodies) he always seems to be playing exactly the same character, a velvet-voiced Mancunian with some inner turmoil that never, ever

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Bodies, Emma-Pierson, Hotel-Babylon, ITV, Kate-Ashfield, Laura-Fraser, Max-Beesley, Modern Drama, Talk-To-Me

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

Read the rest of this entry »

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

Where Do We Go From Here?

Hustle is back on our screens, although it’s not as if the omni-present Marc Warren has actually been off screen for very long at all, given his roles in Dracula, Doctor Who, Hogfather et al. Not all of the old gang are back though because this time Mickey Stone (Adrian Lester) has been written out and is alledgedly on the far side of the world trying to sell the Sydney Opera House. Leaderless, the team rather oddly turn to Danny to take the reins, which is a decision that, in the

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: BBC1, Billy-Bond, Hustle, Marc-Warren, Modern Drama, Patricia-Hodge