Category Archives: TV

TV

Coming Soon to a TV Near You…America!

TV

Okay, so I shouldn’t be surprised by this at all, but it seems that our good ol’ British telly is becoming more and more American. Like, totally! The word “series” is now becoming “season”…ad breaks appear even though what you’re watching has barely started…end credits get minimised so we can watch a preview of another programme EVEN THOUGH THE ONE WE’RE WATCHING HASN’T EVEN FINISHED YET!

Ahem. What I was most annoyed about, however, was an advert for an upcoming Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares – specifically, that it was labelled “All New”. As in, not one of those boring episodes where they show you 50 minutes of old footage, and then add on a 10-minute “update” at the end. Can we not just have a full season…sorry, series…of episodes that are all brand new? I’m sorry if Mr Ramsay couldn’t schedule much filming in a particular month, but I’d rather see no episode than a rehash of a boring old one!

Anyways, here’s Gordon doing what he does best. No, not cooking! It’s being rude to a chef!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB8dGQ77Zg0&feature=related]

Pointless Programming

Spice Girls, TV, Uncategorized

I don’t watch much Channel Five. (Or simply, “Five”, as it now wants to be known – I suppose it’s a bit like P Diddy becoming just “Diddy”.) I think there’s a reason behind that. But yesterday I succumbed in order to watch 30 Rock, and subsequently saw an advert for a programme next week called The Spice Girls on Trial. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

This documentary will apparently analyse the Spice Girls’…

 “contribution to popular culture, combining interviews with key witnesses like former manager Chris Herbert with contributions from a range of diverse commentators, including Germaine Greer and Peaches Geldof”

Oh my God!! What does uber-style icon Peaches Geldof think of the Spice Girls??? I finally get the chance to find out!! My life is saved! *cries tears of joy*

Furthermore, the programme will analyse whether…

“the tabloids’ constant reporting of the Spice Girls’ lives [can] be seen as the starting point of today’s celebrity-crazed culture”

Errr, this sounds a bit like a school project. Maybe it is someone’s school project? Like some Chief Programmer at Five has just stolen his daughter’s Media Studies coursework?

Best of all, ladies and gentlemen…wait for it…there’ll be a live viewer’s vote so we can give our own opinions! Hurrah!

Red Hot Chili Peppers get pissed off by TV show

Crazy, Music, TV

Red Hot Chili Peppers

 Hey, Chili Peppers, tell me about it! Just the other day I was watching Neighbours in the afternoon, and then that really annoying Doctors came on, with its creepily upbeat theme tune, and before I can capture even a moment of yet another boring storyline where nothing really happens, I grabbed the remote control, turned off TV and stormed off in a huff.

Seems the same thing has happened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. So much so, that they’re actually suing the American TV network Showtime. Wow, when they get annoyed, they get MAD!

Oh wait. That’s not right. Oh I see. Turns out that the band are actually pissed off because the TV network have stolen the name of both one of their most famous songs and one of their albums, Californication. Californication, the TV show, stars David Duchovny as a highly-sexed writer.

I’m pretty sure that when the TV show came out, almost everyone immediately thought of the Chili Peppers’ song. I certainly did. There might just be something in this lawsuit.

Not a great start…

Music, Spice Girls, TV

Spice Girls

The Spice Girls gave their first live performance for…ohhh, centuries…Thursday night at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show. Despite massive hype, the Girls failed to sing live and only performed two songs – old hit Stop and new song Headlines (Friendship Never Ends). They had nice costumes, though. Honestly, people! You can’t ask too much of them! They’ve been out of action as a 5-piece for nearly ten years, you can’t expect them to look good AND dance AND sing.

The girls then gave a second performance in two days for Friday night’s Children in Need fundraising event. Goodness, TWO performances in TWO days?? That’s quite a workload! The jury’s still out on whether they sang live then either…methinks probably not.

I’m A Celebrity…no harsh criticism, please!

I'm A Celebrity, TV

IACGMOOH

 Ouch. The Daily Mail really knows how to hit people where it hurts. And by “people”, I mean celebrities, of course. And by “hit”, I mean take a sly dig at but actually not really because the paper will give them lots of exposure over the coming weeks thereby increasing their presence to the general public.

I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! returns once again to our TV screens tonight. 10 celebrities (or as the Mail says, “celebrities” – how cutting, Daily Mail, how cutting!) return to the wilds of the Australian jungle, with only creepy crawlies and two short Geordie lads for company. Except 10 have now become 9 as ex-Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren has quit before the show even started, claiming the show was fake. Well, duh. If I went camping in Australia, I doubt I’d have to perform Bushtucker Trials everyday in order to get some grub.

Everyone criticises this programme each year for featuring Z-List celebrities. Now, people, think about this for a while. Do we really have 26 difference types of celebrities? From A-List right down to Z? Like, what’s a P-List celebrity, for example? P-List does also kind of sound like a name P Diddy might possibly go by one day.

Okay, so the full list of (ahem) Z-Listers is: Gemma Atkinson, Marc Bannerman, Jason ‘J’ Brown , John Burton Race, Janice Dickinson, Lynne Franks, Rodney Marsh, Cerys Matthews and Anna Ryder Richardson. Fun times ahead!

X Factor – Is Anything On It Real?

TV

Louis Walsh 

In an interview on Graham Norton’s TV show, X Factor judge Louis Walsh has admitted that the houses featured on the ITV show aren’t real. Or rather, they ARE real houses, of course…they just aren’t houses belonging to the judges. Contestants in the last 24 of X Factor get to fly out to the judges’ houses for more auditions – Simon Cowell in Marbella, Sharon Osbourne in LA, Dannii (won’t one ‘i’ do?) Minogue, and Louis in Dublin. The houses that the contestants turned up to were merely rented for the purposes of the show. The contestants should be grateful that the judges don’t all pretend to “live” in Peckham.

A spokesperson for the show said:

“The contestants are invited to a house. We call them the judges’ houses, not the judges’ homes.”

Ahh! Clever! Houses, not homes. And I suppose they also call the program “entertainment”, not “sucking the life out of TV”. Or that it’s a “talent contest” and not “something to line Simon Cowell’s pockets with”.

See, they’re all very small difference. You’d barely notice.

Katie Hopkins – You’re Fired! (Part 3)

Media, The Apprentice, TV

Katie Hopkins 

Poor love. This keeps happening every few months or so. Katie Hopkins, patomime villainess of this year’s Apprentice has been fired from yet another job. A columnist for the Exter newspaper Express & Echo (the cutting edge of modern journalism, I’m sure), she was recently subject of an online poll where readers could vote for whether she should keep her job or not. 84% of those polled voted for her to go…and today she got the sack. Katie was also fired in the summer from her job at the Met Office.

In fact, only 407 people voted in the poll. I wonder what was the actual readership figure of her column in the first place?! Maybe she’ll move on to bigger and better things, like agony aunt in Turning Down a Job with Alan Sugar Monthly, or gossip columnist for Shagging Outdoors Weekly.

You can read her column – all nine entries of it (wow!) – at the link below. I can see why some got annoyed.

One of the comments to the article at the Express & Echo makes a good point – will the paper be running a poll for all its writers? I say yes! Do it for all newspapers and magazines everywhere!! Let’s get rid of all the annoying writers!

I give it TEN!!

80s, Music Videos, TV

In honour of Bruno Tonioli, one of the two best judges on Strictly Come Dancing (which starts again this Saturday, 6th October, BBC1, 6.15pm – tune in!!) here’s Elton John’s 1983 hit I’m Still Standing. Bruno is one of the backing dancers in the video!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lK-0wfHutk]

You guys are mean!

Entertainment, TV

I log into my stats today, and what do I find as one of the search terms for people coming to this blog? This:  

Losers on Dancing with the Stars 2007

That’s cold! COLD! Look, I know they don’t always get the biggest star names, and sometimes some of their dancing is rather average, but you really don’t have to call them losers. I’m sure they’re trying their best!