Paper Watch: David Tennant, Top Gear and more.

In my never ending quest to simplify and improve this blog, Outside the Box has decided to create this new feature, ‘Paper Watch’.

Each week my crack team will scour the newspapers to bring you the televison stories that matter.

Doctor Who star David Tennant aims to crack America in new drama -  The Telegraph

Tennant has been cast as the lead character in Rex Is Not Your Lawyer, a new hour-long pilot for NBC. He will play Rex Alexander, a top Chicago lawyer who suffers from panic attacks and has to coach his clients to represent themselves in court.

NBC has high hopes for the pilot, which could be made into a series if it goes down well with audiences.

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Top Gear to plan silent show – The Telegraph

The controversial presenter said that the only way to ensure the show couldn’t cause offence would be if no one spoke.

Mr Clarkson said: “One day we’ll do an episode of Top Gear in which none of us speak.

“It’s the only way they will have nothing to complain about. I don’t think I’ve done anything naughty this year, though, have I?”

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With Cast Offs Channel 4 has turned disability into a comedy drama – The Times

The caption at the start seems to promise the most exploitative reality television show yet made: “Eighteen months ago Channel 4 marooned six disabled people on a remote island . . .” Two months after the station finally killed off Big Brother, has it really come to this?

Not exactly. The reality TV show is fictitious, but Cast Offs, a comedy drama about the making of a disabled take on Survivor, is about to become one of the most talked about programmes of the year when it begins this month.

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The brilliance of Larry David and Curb Your Enthusiasm – The Times

The other day, my friend Martin brought round an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm — the American comedy series written by and starring the Seinfeld-creator Larry David — on DVD. It’s called The Ski Lift. In The Ski Lift, Larry, a Jew, wants to avoid having to donate a kidney to his dying friend Richard Lewis, a Jew, and so fabricates a friendship with the head of the “Kidney Consortium”, Ben Heineman, a Jew, but in this case an orthodox Jew: a frummer. In order to butter up Ben, Larry pretends to be an orthodox Jew himself, and because Cheryl, his regular wife, is blonde and clearly not Jewish, he gets his agent Jeff’s wife, a Jew, to pretend to be his wife, and wear a sheitel (a wig that orthodox Jewish married women wear). He then invites Ben and his very frum daughter, Rachel (who is suspicious of Larry’s motives), to a ski weekend. While at the lodge, Ben says of Larry/Jeff’s wife, “Ah, you remind me of my dear wife, Alav ha-shalom.” Larry says: “Really? I’d love to meet her.” Rachel looks askance at Larry.

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Spooks: A drama that sees the future – The Independent

Call it sixth sense. The makers of Spooks, BBC1’s hit MI5 drama, which begins its eighth series on Wednesday, seem to have an uncanny knack of knowing what’s about to happen in the news.

“The obvious example is 7/7,” says Spooks regular Peter Firth. “In June 2005, we filmed a train station being bombed by terrorists – a month before the same terrible event happened in real life. At one point, the episode wasn’t going to be shown because it was too near the mark. In the end, the episode went out in a very heavily edited version.”

Disturbing as the parallels may be between fact and fiction, they only serve to underline the extent to which the creators of Spooks have their fingers on the current-affairs pulse. They have also written episodes about the threat posed by a recrudescent Russia, the global financial crisis and London being locked down for a state visit by a US President before those events took place in real life.

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Spooks: overblown nonsense or top TV? – Guardian TV & Radio Blog

With perhaps a little less fanfare than usual, but no less crash-bang-wallop once the titles roll, Spooks returns to BBC1 tonight, allowing viewers a glimpse of the impossibly good-looking MI5 officers who are apparently single-handedly keeping the country safe from the clutches of evil terrorists.

It’s ridiculous stuff of course – the designer clothes, massive bomb plots every week, distinct lack of boring paperwork, and the glossy grid itself (at least I presume Thames House doesn’t look like that in real-life, although my invitation to inspect the premises has strangely got lost in the post). Most ludicrous of all, of course, is idea that MI5 has only five members of staff available to counteract the combined forces of world evil. Well, I say five. But they might be down to four given that Harry Pearce has apparently spent the last year wrapped in a bodybag in the boot of a car, while the writers waited for the next series to kick off.

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TRUE BLOOD: The Quotes part 4 & 5

I’ve been a bit slacking on my True Blood Quotes so this week I present a pair of fantastic quotes from one of the best written shows on the box.

Episode four finds Sookie and Bill take a trip to the vampire bar Fangtasia. Whilst there they make this little exchange as Bill tries to get a read on what Sookie thinks of Louisiana’s #1 vampire hangout.

Bill Compton: [with Sookie at Fangtasia] You able to pick anything up?
Sookie Stackhouse: [looking around] All anyone’s thinkin’ about here is sex, sex, sex!
Bill Compton: One needn’t be telepathic to pick up on that.

Episode 5 sees Lafayette go a bit berserk when a couple of Rednecks return his AIDS burger. The scene is a bit long, so I will just post a short video instead.

Reviews weekly – SPOOKS, THE F-WORD

Another new weekly feature here on the blog. A look at all the weeks biggest shows and their reviews from sites around the web. This week we begin with a look at the return of two shows which have seen better days, Gordon Ramsay’s cooking show The F-Word and BBC1’s spy thriller Spooks.

The F-Word

Lucy Mangan, The Guardian:

Gordon Ramsay’s F Word (Channel 4) returned for its fifth series, pitting two Italian restaurants against each other: Salvo’s in Leeds, run by brothers John and Gip Damone, and Prosecco in Bristol, run by Venetian chef Diego Da Re. Tabloid revelations about Ramsay’s private life and financial restructurings may have threatened to overwhelm the brand, but it seemed business as usual once the competition was underway.

It helped that Diego was such good value. He berated Gordon for not having a black-bristled pastry brush so that he could see if it had left any bristles in his ravioli. He also gave his mentor’s exhor- tations to keep moving short shrift. “The energy is there,” he snapped. “Just let me use it for cooking, yes? Not for conversation.” It was a tasty moment.

As ever, of course, the show’s momentum was arrested by the perennially flavourless celebrity recipe challenge. Katie Price put together her favourite dish: chicken kiev, mashed potato (“I add sugar. Don’t ask me why”) and sweetcorn, which surprised all of us who assumed the plat du Price would involve kebabbed Andre gonads. “Do you want to be on the top or the bottom?” Gordon asked rakishly, opening the oven. “Middle,” she replied with the winsome flirtatiousness of a dead cod. “Are you excited?” he said as they sent their dishes off to the tasters. “Oh yeah, very,” she said in tones of fathomless boredom. “I’m shaking.” You almost felt sorry for the man.

Spooks

Tim Teeman, The Times:

Spooks has returned. The life of a spy’s child was at stake, but it worked out very cleanly without anyone getting dunked into a vat of bubbling, face-melting, boiling fat. How will they ever better that?

Tom Sutcliffe, The Independent:

Family values were relevant in Spooks too, never happier than when it is torturing one of its central characters with the imminent destruction of a loved one. In this case, it was Ruth on the rack, wrenched back from idyllic retirement in Cyprus to have her husband shot in front of her eyes and her adoptive son threatened with the same fate. I haven’t watched Spooks with great diligence recently but I can’t help feeling that around 90 per cent of the team’s energies seem to be spent on rescuing each other from hazards they should never have exposed themselves to in the first place. And “intelligence” is not the quality you would attribute to some of the strategies employed. In this episode, Malcolm presented himself at the baddies’ safe house, announced that he was there without backup and asked them to swap him for the child. Nice one, Malcolm. Now they’ve got a 10-year-old and a valuable MI5 case officer.

 

Faces: OLIVIA WILLIAMS

Joss Whedon’s mind-trip sci-fi series Dollhouse has an absolute assortment of sexy women to keep the male viewers happy. Yet for me, a man nearing middle-age with a penchant for the sexy English accent, Olivia Williams is the only reason I need to keep tuning in to a series which tries hard, but doesn’t always deliver.

But what is known about this sexy English actress?… OtB searched the interweb to find out!

Olivia Williams Fact File:

• Full name: Olivia Haigh Williams.
• Born: 26 July, 1968 in Camden Town, London, England.
• Educated in Cambridge, Olivia graduated with a degree in English Literature (like me) before studying drama at Bristol’s Old Vic Theatre School.
• Olivia’s first acting job in film was in The Postman after doing a screen test for Kevin Costner.
• Olivia’s career took a turn for the better in 1998 when she starred in Wes Anderson’s brilliant film Rushmore. The following year she appeared in the surprise hit The Sixth Sense, appearing as Bruce Willis’ wife.
• In 2002 Olivia won a British Independent Film award for best actress for her role in the film The Heart of Me.
• In 2006 Olivia appeared in X-Men The Last stand, but her appearance was for some reason uncredited.
• Apart from acting Olivia also writes. She writes regular travel reports for The Independent on Sunday, and wrote and read the short story, The Significance of Hair for BBC radio.
• Olivia is also an avid cyclist, and she insists on cycling to and from acting gigs.
• Olivia Williams can currently be seen as Adelle DeWitt in Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse.

Read more about Olivia Williams: No regrets from the Telegraph

The Buzz: Misfits

In my continuous attempts to simplify this blog, I have devised in my little mind a new idea. Simply called ‘The Buzz’ this new feature will present my loyal and growing readership with all the news of upcoming and returning shows that will surely be the topic of conversation around the water cooler at work, or your common room, or where ever you and your mates meet to chat about what is happening on the google box (please note I am talking about TV, not some new Google devise )

E4’s commitment to home-grown drama continues with exciting new comedy drama series Misfits.

The show features a cast of hot young emerging acting talent – Robert Sheehan (Red Riding), Iwan Rheon, Lauren Socha (The Unloved) Nathan Stewart Jarrett (The History Boys) and newcomer Antonia Thomas.

Misfits, described by some as X-Men with ASBOs, follows a gang of five teenage outsiders who get caught in a flash storm while on Community Service and suddenly find themselves saddled with strange superpowers.

The misfit superheroes include party-girl Alisha (Antonia Thomas) can send people into a sexual frenzy with just one touch, hard as nails Kelly (Lauren Socha) can hear people’s thoughts, while one-time sporting hero Curtis (Nathan Stewart Jarrett) discovers he has the ability to turn back time. Even painfully shy nerd Simon (Iwan Rheon) can make himself invisible – which is what he has always felt.

Which makes things even more painful for smart-aleck Nathan (Robert Sheehan), the only member of our ASBO gang who appears unaffected by the storm. The biggest mystery about him remains how he got his community service order in the first place – all anyone knows is there was a mysterious incident involving some pick-n-mix…

Each week the gang reluctantly step up to the plate to save each other and the rest of their community from the very thing they’ve all been mistaken for – the bad guys. But unlike their more conventional counterparts, they don’t swap their Nike’s and ankle tags for capes and tights. Instead, they discover just how tough life can be when you’re all that stands between good and evil. Well, that and a curfew order….

INFORMATION PROVIDED BY HOTCHERRY

 

And the Misfits fun doesn’t stop on the box…

In addition to the television show, the good people at E4 have also developed plenty of other Misfits fun as part of their marketing campaign which you might want to check out. The fun includes:

• A Game called Do a Runner.
• A blog to keep you updated with the show.
• A graphic novel (which I am trying to get my hands on) featuring the first episode of the show to be distributed on University campuses.
• A website for the show, featuring cast and character profiles, videos etc.
• A Twitter feed for the show as well as separate Twitter feeds for the shows characters Simon and Kelly.
• There is also a YouTube channel filled with all sorts of weird videos set-up by Misfits character Simon.

Misfits begins on E4 Thursday November 12 @ 22:00.

Dogs + Judo = Comedy Gold

Dogs have always had a place in the world of animation. We’ve had mystery solving dogs (Scooby Doo), we’ve had liberal, martini drinking dogs (Brian Griffin), heck we’ve even had a dog attached to a cat (Catdog)… And now we have a duo of dogs who do judo to add to the list, all thanks to the good people at 12Foot6 who have created a surreal stop-motion animation Dog Judo!

Admittedly dogs dabbling in the martial arts has been done before (Hong Kong Phooey) but this is different, very, very different. Firstly these are Judo dogs not a mild-mannered Kung-Fu dog, and secondly this group of kick-ass canines are also REAL, not some ink scribbled creation!

more about “Dog Judo: Power Date | Random Weirdne…“, posted with vodpod

To view more episodes of this comedy gold pop over to Dogjudo.com where you can find all the adventures of this duo of Judo dogs. And remember to visit the site every other Thursday to watch further adventures of these furry judo obsessed friends.

Coronation Street babe challenge part 2 – The Mums

Part two of our Coronation Street Challenge of the Babes sees two of the cobbles most famous mothers battle head-to-head. Liz McDonald is pitted against Janice Battersby.

I know it is not much of a battle for both of these gals have probably seen better days, but you know what they say “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” so lets get ready to rumble!

OK so where to begin? Liz McDonald has a big mouth and a pair of assets equally as large, and she runs a pub, but other than that she is not the kind of woman you would want to be lumbered with. She is loud, not exactly bright and a bit obstinate.

Janice on the other hand doesn’t even have the breasts to fall back on, nor does she own a pub. In fact as this is typed the team here at Outside the Box is finding anything that would make a man want to spend any time with the loud-mouthed girl from a knicker factory. So with this in mind, we have to find Liz McDonald the winner… by default I guess!