Sunday Scrapbook – edition 1

Today Outside the Boxhas decided to bring you something new, a weekly feature of all the best clippings I find while travelling through cyberspace collecting information for this blog.

I hope you take the time to read the clips, and if you enjoy them, please follow the links to the original site, and read the whole article.

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Glenn Close profile From The Times Online:

Playing nasty has served Glenn Close nicely over the years and as the underhand lawyer Patty Hewes in Damages she’s never been more cut-throat. Close won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for the first series of the New York legal thriller on top of the critical acclaim and passionate devotees that the show attracted. Damages, which applies a glossy sheen to its world of skulduggery, violence and sex, returns for a second season on BBC One this month. Nobody knew that a quality television show could be so wildly addictive or suspenseful.

Damages serves up a complex, multilayered narrative, blending present, past and future plotlines to highlight the lies and deceit that engulf its characters. The first series ended in typically ambiguous fashion with Hewes emerging as both hero and villain. She won her class-action lawsuit against the corrupt insider-trading billionaire Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson), shot at the end of the first series by a disgruntled employee, but she ordered the attempted murder of her protégée Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne). In revenge Parsons has become an FBI informant, determined to bring down her boss.

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Caitlin Moran (arguably the best TV critic in Britain) discusses Jaime Oliver, Generation Kill and more, from The Times.

What is Channel 4’s “Great British Food Fight?” There are posters for it all over town – Hugh and Jamie and Gordon and Heston, looking like a culinary Mount Rushmore. Mount Mash-more, maybe. It’s all been very gung-ho and brie-brio.

But to what end? I mean, to what literal end? Because here we are, almost in February 2009, and, in a manner very reminiscent of the invasion of Iraq, Channel 4 seems to have instigated this “Great British Food Fight” – but with little thought of an eventual exit plan. So far we’ve had the battery chicken campaign, Gordon Ramsay’s Cookalong, Jamie Cooks Christmas, Heston v Little Chef, and now, this week, Jamie and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have popped out a one-off apiece. It’s going on a bit. This Food Fight is turning into the Hundred Years War. Hasn’t someone won yet? Bake love, not war. War! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely stuffing.

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Curls v boys in The Devil’s Whore – Times Online

Anybody who reads this blog on any sort of regular basis knows that my two inspirations for this mish mash of a telly blog are the wonderful Times columnist Caitlin Moran and the fantastic telly critic/TV presenter/TV producer Charlie Brooker. So occasionally when it is relevant I like to pass on bits and pieces of their articles… so I present Caitlin Moran’s views on the wonderful Channel 4 drama The Devil’s Whore.

From The Times:

Caitlin Moran

In terms of telly, the Second World War is, without doubt, the best one. The uniforms of the opposing armies are sufficiently different to alleviate confusion during battlefield scenes, the Americans pile in half-way – which facilitates the casting of exciting Hollywood stars – and in the end, the British, who are without doubt the goodies, win! Huzzah!

Consider, by contrast, the English Civil War. It’s a difficult war to love. Who are we supposed to be rooting for? The Roundheads are fighting for democracy – a set of attributes that almost infallibly signal “the goodies”. But when Cromwell eventually attains power, he bans Christmas – in effect, murders Santa – which puts him in a pop-culture category with the Grinch and the White Witch.

And what are you supposed to make of the Cavaliers? They might be running the country into the ground – what with their fascistic views on religion and democracy, punitive taxes, etc. But then, they have great hair. Whenever you see a group of humungo-wigged Cavalier soldiers marching off to war, curls bouncing in the sun, you feel like singing “Here come the girls” and doing the stirring-up-a-pot-of-funk dance. Again, great hair almost infallibly signals a goodie. Our Pavlovian instinct is to root for the glossy locks of the Cavalier. It’s all

continue reading via>>>  Curls v boys in The Devil’s Whore – Times Online

Children in Need… a bad night of telly!

Tomorrow night sees another Children in Need appeal on BBC1, and although the cause is a worthy one, the BBC provided entertainment for the night normally is not worthy of our viewing! And after a quick glance at the schedule for tomorrow night, it looks like this year’s show is not going to break the trend of tacky TV. In fact the only two highlights I can glimpse are the preview for the Doctor Who Christmas special, and the Ashes to Ashes meets Top Gear segment which will be aired sometime after 10:30 pm.

So bad is the Children in Need appeal’s television ‘extravaganza’ that even Outside the Box’s favourite journalist Caitlin Moran had a dig at it in her column in The Knowledge this week:

it’s Children in Need time again! That thing cynical adults are supposed to hate but, when they sit down to watch it — and see, for instance, the cast of Ashes To Ashes doing a “specially recorded scene” — they discover that, actually, they really do hate it. More than they remembered hating it last year.

Of course, the 2008 Children in Needdoes face more obstacles than usual — not least in respect to the post-credit crunch rise in food prices. The cost of filling a bathtub with baked beans will have almost doubled. No one’s going to be filling their Wellingtons with custard willy-nilly.

Those guys from Ashes To Ashes are really going to have to give it some jazz-hands.

So my advice to all of you who feel it is your civic duty to watch Children in Need just because it supports a worthy cause, is save your time, watch something else and donate some money to the cause instead. The money will help children, and the lack of tacky BBC programming will make you feel as though you didn’t get robbed for your donation!

CLICK HERE TO DONATE SOME MONEY TO CHILDREN IN NEED

CLICK HERE TO BID ON SOME GREAT CHILDREN IN NEED ITEMS IN THE BBC AUCTION

Looking forward to APPARITIONS

Thursday sees the debut of the new BBC1 exorcism drama Apparitions, and I can’t wait. Starring John Shaw the new six-part drama promises to do for the Catholic church what Spooks did for MI5.

Described by the BBC as; “Supernatural drama series about a priest, working to promote candidates for sainthood, who becomes drawn in to exorcism as he discovers a dark battle between good and evil.” It is one of the shows I have been looking forward to since the BBC announced it’s autumn line-up of shows.

The wonderful columnist Caitlin Moran from The Times Knowledge magazine though isn’t so sure and this week she wrote the following about Apparitions;

You’ve got to love an actor who knows what he wants to do. Some of them are all mimsy and floaty and, “Oh, just any script that interests me, really. I never know what I’m doing from one year to the next.”

Not Martin Shaw. No sirree.

“Next thing I do, I want to be an EXORCIST,” he said, firmly, to the BBC. “There’s too much law, too much medicine, too many cops.” As a result, he is now the executive producer on this, the resultant exorcist drama, Apparitions.

And who can blame Shaw? We haven’t had a pop-culture exorcist for a while — and they make for an appealing archetype. After all, when a girl gets to watching a man dressed as a priest, holding up a crucifix and resolutely repelling all the forces of Satan, she gets to thinking how useful that ability would be in dealing with people who work in Currys and call-centres, etc. She thinks how fine it would be to marry a person with such powers, and is apt to develop a bit of a crush.

Meanwhile, for Shaw personally, having a pop at an exorcist makes perfect sense. Shaw has, let us not forget, spent the past six years being BBC One’s Judge John Deed. Deed was — what with his self-righteous shouting over any manner of ne’er-do-well-ery — a bit like a very posh, judicial Jeremy Kyle. It would be a pity to let all that invaluable experience in the swishing of black robes, yelling and fighting for the forces of good go to waste. Really, with that sort of CV, Shaw had to take the role of either an exorcist next, or Batman.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING

Heroes is back, and it’s another fine mess – from Times Online

Caitlin Moran the excellent columnist for The Times presents her views on the third series of Heroes and introduces us to Sunshine, the new drama premiering on BBC1 this Tuesday.

WARNING MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

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At last Heroes has returned. We’re into the third series. But God knows what I’m going to say about it.

Not from any lack of opinion or regard, you understand. The show is still a mile-high tower of amethysts, in a world where people get excited by knee-high bundles of brushwood. But it’s all so complicated. And I don’t want to give anything away. And I still don’t quite understand what’s happening at any given moment, either – which is, to be fair, part of the reason why the show’s so hot in the first place.

This is a drama, after all, that’s quite happy – comfortable, even – to narrate from three or four different places in space and time. Everyone’s turning out to be related to each other – a bit like Dynasty, but with the DNA conferring the ability to shoot electricity out of your eyes, rather than the ability to have extremely large hair. And the complex Apocalypse! There’s always a complex Apocalypse looming in Heroes. This time, it’s some mysterious high-speed death cloud; which looks like it needs at least 12 hour-long episodes of quality television chucked at it before it disperses.

To make matters worse, Peter Petrelli (or IS it him?) has thrown space-time into confusion by teleporting back from the future (or IS it the future?), causing rampant butterfly effect all over everyone’s lives (OR ARE THEY ALL REALLY DEAD AND IT’S A DREAM?).

Now the Cheerleader’s had her brain unzipped by the evil, mono-browed Sylar (not a scene to watch while eating rice pudding and jam, FYI) – meaning he’s totally back on that old “superhero serial killer” plan. And, most importantly of all, a dungeon full of VILLAIN heroes has been emptied on to the streets of Manhattan – who, with their flame-throwing hands, etc, almost certainly aren’t planning to cruise by the deli, pick up a couple of dill-pickle sandwiches and then check out the Rothkos at MoMA. No. They’re totally going to go and kick the good Heroes’ asses – with choreographed fight sequences, explosions, and the most well-appointed and devious of plot twists.

So, as you can see, it doesn’t really matter if there’s going to be a world-wide depression, does it? It’s not going to affect TELLY. There will still be Heroes.

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Of course, if you’re looking for a bit less thrill and a little more cheer, you might, mistakenly, be looking to Sunshine to fill up an evening. However, while it might star Steve Coogan, and have been written and directed by Craig “Royle Family” Cash, you must stop expecting a comedy. No good will come of it. Sunshine is, instead, a “bittersweet drama”, set in a Hovis-ad-mellow village in the North.

So here we have Steve Coogan as “Bing” Crosby, almost permanently weak-eyed and disabled from a couple of pints, and heading towards a decade of letting down his girlfriend Bernadette (Lisa Millett from Blackpool) and his nine-year-old son. His big problem is that not only is he addicted to gambling, but he’s also a resolutely ungifted gambler, too – with relatively little money to devote to his hobby, what with being a work-shy binman and all.

In his latest role, the long-simmering Problem With Steve Coogan finally reaches a point of genuine national concern. Good God – can’t we, as a country, find something suitable for the best comic actor of the past 20 years? The man who should be this country’s Steve Martin or Bill Murray is, instead, faffing around with this wholly forgettable straight role: playing some resolutely uninteresting “local character” who does little more than sing karaoke and face an “emotional journey” straight out of a bad episode of Holby City.

Coogan is too good for this Lilliputian twaddle. Give him a character that’s devious, swashbuckling, epically flawed (Tony Wilson in 24 Hour Party People, A Cock and Bull Story, Alan Partridge, obviously) and he can go to town on it. With some Legoy piece of nothing like Bing, however, his heart’s not in it. He barely acts above Gas Mark 5. His eyes have far too much energy and ambition to be this binman loser with Lee Evans impressions where charisma should be.

Craig Cash scarcely does any better. In many places Sunshine turns outright mawkish. The only good bits are where Cash has forgotten that he is writing a “bittersweet drama” and has just written an old-fashioned gag instead. But they’re few and far between – leaving us with dragging chunks of time to ruminate on how Coogan, in Sunshine, is like watching electricity curdling on a tray.

Heroes continues Wed, BBC Two, 9pm; Sunshine, Tues, BBC One, 9pm

Heroes is back, and it’s another fine mess – Times Online.

The Times |What fun: let the credits roll, and the grumbling begin| Caitlin Moran

Caitlin Moran was the inspiration for this blog. Like me she is a telly junkie and has her finger on the pulse of popular culture… also like me she cannot understand how a lot of things in so-called popular culture became popular, but perhaps that is part of the fun of the whole entertainment industry – Things we love today, we will look back at in twenty years time and just laugh at.

The other similarly Caitlin and myself share is that we are both glad that Autumn has arrived, not because we are looking forward to the cold and the rain, but because television becomes much more interesting when the leaves change colour.

Today in The Times, Caitlin presented her views on the upcoming Autumn telly schedule:

I am excited about Merlin. It is a razzy prime-time drama centring on a hot teenage King Arthur, a hot teenage Merlin, and Zoe Slater from EastEnders, doing medieval pouting. I will be getting tea on our Round Table early on Saturday nights, so we can bolt down our puddings and watch it.

Yes, I am also excited about the return of Strictly Come Dancing.The prospect of the ITN reporter John Sergeant – looking very much like Rembrandt in Lycra – doing the pasa doble is thrilling. Gary Rhodes, doing the tango? Cherie Lunghi, attempting a jive? Get in there! Only a fool would miss it.

And, of course, reentering the orbit of You’ve Been Framed is one of autumn’s greatest joys. I will never tire of watching cats falling off things. But the reason it doesn’t matter if these shows are any good or not is because we are lucky enough to be British.

And being British means that, when autumn comes, as a nation, we still gather together as one to watch the same five programmes; unlike the poor unhappy Americans, say, or Japanese – scattered and lonely across their ultimately futile 300 channel choices.

Subsequently, the actual content of the UK’s autumn schedules is an essentially nugatory affair, compared to the real sport: discussing it afterwards. It doesn’t really matter if Merlin turns out to be more Bored in the Stone than Sword in the Stone – because when the credits roll, we can spend all evening discussing exactly why it stinks.

Likewise, if they’ve fatally miscast Strictly Come Dancing, and come up with nothing to match last year’s exciting romance between the hot bloke from EastEnders and his dancing partner – well, that’s another hour of pub conversation, right there. It’s the same every year. Two years on, the BBC’s big, awful autumn flagship show of 2006, Robin Hood, still informs my life. I can easily while away an hour with friends, discussing just how annoying Maid Marian’s fight scenes – straight out of the Miss Piggy School of Kung-fu Chops – really were.

So yes. Draw the curtains, gather the family round – and let the autumn of 2008 bitching commence.

Join the Revolution, boycott BB9

It must be summer, because the Big Brother house is open for wannabes and losers to sell their souls live on TV in the hopes of becoming famous…

Caitlin Moran the wonderful television writer for The Times is not doing it… and I am joining in I’m not doing it either, I am not going to watch the freaks in the Big Brother house. No matter how tempted I am just to go and have a peek, I am not going to look inside the wasteland of humanity that is the BB House even if it is a new pad with a sex room (yes that said sex room). No folks, I am giving it a miss, and I am urging you all to do the same!!!

READ CAITLIN MORAN’S BB9 ARTICLE

LEARN ABOUT THE NEW BIG BROTHER HOUSE