THE reWIREd: The Pager

Five episodes into The Wire and the scene has been set. We know what we are watching here. Cops trying to catch drug dealers. The good guys versus the bad.

Things in The Wire though are not that simple. There are shades of bad in the good cops. And shades of good in the bad-ass drug dealers.

Throughout the series we will see the entire string of emotions, and different definitions of what it means to be a victim of circumstance. We will see that even the most evil or lost in the show has shades of good. And we see that even the toughest of characters are scared of something; be it the four walls of a prison cell or life itself, everyone in The Wire is scared of something!

THE reWIREd: Old Cases

BBC2 is re-showing all 60 episodes of The Wire, arguably the greatest TV show ever created.

To celebrate Outside the Box will be taking a second look at each episode and reporting back here the best bits from each.

Season 1 Episode 4 – Old Cases.

This episode features one of the funniest and most memorable scenes from the series. McNulty and Bunk investigating a crime scene, using only the word fuck or variations of this most colourful word as dialogue.

more about “The Wire – McNulty and Bunk, the famo…“, posted with vodpod

ALL THE SMALL THINGS; Is this the worst show on TV?

The other night I accidentally switched to BBC1 and caught the last fifteen minutes of their new show All the Small Things. The trauma of my experience is still wearing off!

For those of you who have been fortunate enough never to have this show invade your brains, take this as a warning; AVOID IT LIKE THE PLAGUE!

Described by the BBC Press Office as an “all-singing series”, All the Small Things is easily the worst show I have seen this year. Think of it as High School Musical goes to Church or Britannia High goes to Sunday School! Or even better, think of the worst show you have seen in the last year or so, and picture the cast singing, and then add that floppy haired kid from Coronation Street, Richard ‘I wanna be a popstar’ Fleeshman.

Second Opinion:

From The Guardian.co.uk:

All The Small Things occasionally showed signs of thickening into a nourishing soup – a lovely scene between Pearson and Lancashire in the bedroom here, a subtle evocation of the dark side of ambition and the advantages of amateurism there, and a turn by Roy Barraclough as the vicar just for the fun of it. But then it would become rapidly diluted by watery nonsense. Things may improve next week. At the very least, the trailers promise that Clifford, the choir’s simpleton, will get to sing. As he is played by Clive Rowe, this holds no guppy terrors, only delight.

The A to Z of Red Dwarf: featuring Lister, Rimmer, Kryton, The Cat, Holly and Smeg

With the first airing of a new episode of Red Dwarf in ten years only days away Outside the Box is scouring the net digesting all the Red Dwarf goodies we can find. And because we are a caring bunch, we have decided to share the best bits with you!

From The Times Online

The A to Z of Red Dwarf by Simon Crerar

Sci-fi fans are in for a special Easter treat, with cult series Red Dwarf making a one-off comeback on digital station Dave – 21 years after its first episode. Enjoy our refresher of the key elements: and tell us what we’ve missed below

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A is for And In The Beginning…

Red Dwarf was created and written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. It follows the adventures of the eponymous spaceship of the title, a six miles long, five miles tall, four miles wide vessel adrift in deep space.

Trapped aboard the ship, bubbly Scouser Dave Lister is the only human left in the universe after a radiation leak three million years earlier. The main dramatic thrust of the early shows is Lister’s desire to return home to Earth. Watch the first ever episode

B is for Back to Earth

This month’s comeback shows were filmed on a closed set in an effort to keep the plot secret. Apart from series seven, all previous Red Dwarf episodes were filmed in front of live audiences. For the first time, it is expected that there will be no laughter track.

Back to Earth will be the first episode of Red Dwarf to be broadcast in High Definition. View images from the new episodes

B is also for Bloopers: watch a compilation of Smeg-Ups

C is for Cat

The only surving member of Felis sapiens, a humanoid species that evolved in the ship’s hold from Lister’s cat Frankenstein and her kittens. Cat was played by dancer Danny John-Jules, who turned up in character for his audition, wearing his father’s 1950s-style suit, before revealing he had been reading Desmond Morris’s book Catwatching for research purposes. Despite his boasts, the Cat has never had an encounter with a female.

Watch the Cat dancing to impress

D is for Dave Hollins

The concept for Red Dwarf originated from the radio sketch Dave Hollins: Space Cadet, which featured in the mid-1980s BBC Radio 4 comedy show Son of Cliché. Hollins was changed to Lister to avoid confusion with the footballer Dave Hollins. In the radio sketch show the computer Hab was voiced by Chris Barrie, who plays Red Dwarf’s Rimmer.

D is also for Duane Dibbley, the Cat’s bowl cut sporting, big teethed wearing geeky alter-ego. The character became very popular, actor John-Jules explained, because “No-one’s ever written a black nerd before”. Watch Duane in action I Watch The Dibbley Family

Continue reading  The A to Z of Red Dwarf: featuring Lister, Rimmer, Kryton, The Cat, Holly and Smeg.