Just a Few Notes as I Prepare to Depart Once more –
We’re going back up to Nova Scotia again, driving this time, and probably won’t have any internet access while I’m there, so no updates for two weeks (but you never know!). Even more daunting is the fact that I’ll have to rely on the three over-the-air TV channels available where we’re going. I expect to be going mad by mid-week, and if anybody wants to watch the deterioration of a human being just look for me! I’ll be the one freaking out next to the
Northumberland Strait.
But in the meantime, here are a few things that I’m setting my VHS to tape. No, I haven’t entered the TIVO/Replay age yet; call me a dinosaur, and I know it’s supposed to change your life, but you know, I kind of like the challenge of setting up the machine and and then getting back home to see if I did it right. Which I don’t always….
Here goes:
Tommy Walsh,
Ground Force’s resident builder, gets his own show on
Discovery Home & Leisure Channel starting Friday night.
Tommy Walsh DIY Survival is based on his book of the same name,
and you can expect Walsh’s trademark good humor, accessible manner and undeniable expertise to make this an enlightening half hour.
TWDIYS airs at 8pm, with encores at 11pm and 4am. If you don’t already know Walsh’s work on
Ground Force, you should tune into
BBC America, where the newest season (sans former GF guru Alan T) is now unfolding.
I had earlier pondered how the show would feel with Alan missing. It seems to be working fine, but clearly there’s no “boss” anymore, and therefore you’ll hear a lot more freeform joking and griping between darling Charlie and Tommy. It’s a relationship of equals, which wasn’t quite the situation with Alan in residence. Neither Charlie nor Tommy have quite for gift for quick-witted banter that Alan possessed, but if this new version of
Ground Force is different, it certainly isn’t inferior. Those of you who like to see the gang working on foreign (to them) soils will be particularly interested in
Ground Force America which will begin airing on Tuesday July 29th. In this series of episodes, the team goes to several locations in the U.S. and performs their magic. Will it have the heart and soul that they get in the UK? It will be fun to find out.
Check out the BBC America Ground Force website for airtimes and all sorts of other info about the show!
BBC America will also be airing a cute sitcom called
My Hero beginning next Wednesday July 16th. Starring Ardal O’Hanlon (who’s such a fan favorite in his role as the daffy Father Dougal McGuire on the amazing and hilarious
Father Ted),
My Hero is a much more traditional comedy than
Ted, which might disappoint those of you looking for the same kind of lunacy. Ardal stars as George Sunday aka Thermoman, a superhero type from another planet who ends up in suburban Britain, thanks to the lovely young lady who’s fallen in love with him. Bringing to mind
obvious comparisons to other alien adjustment comedies like
Mork & Mindy,
My Favorite Martian, and
3rd Rock From The Sun,
My Hero is nevertheless eminently watchable, thanks to O’Hanlon’s wide-eyed gift for comedy.
My Hero has been a part of many
PBS stations’ remarkably long-lived Britcom line-ups, so I guess we’re getting leftovers here to some extent. As many folks who frequent the
BBC America discussion boards will lament, there are so many wonderful comedies being shown over in the UK that it’s a shame
BBCA isn’t a little more adventurous in their choices. I agree; in their early days they had a greater variety of shows than today, but with greater visibility comes the inevitable sameness and competition for ratings that pretty much stamps out much of that pioneer spirit (trust me, I programmed TV for a lot of years; it happens).
If you were thinking of comparing Ardal’s superhero with his addled priest, well…that won’t be easy, as
BBC 
America has shelved
Father Ted for now, replacing it with more reality programming. At least that gives you an opportunity to check out the DVDs, which are of course uncut and contain some droll commentary by one of the show’s writers. There is a vast underground of
Father Ted addicts out there, and as I’ve said before – check out the archives for Friday March 14th – this is a show that once seen will become one of your favorites.
P.S.: I neglected to mention that there's another reason to pay attention to
Father Ted. Gavin Polone's Pariah Entertainment, which this coming season brings the
BBC's
The Kumars to
Fox as
The Ortegas, has optioned
Ted for a U.S. remake. It will be hard to duplicate the irreverent Irish/Brit style that makes
Ted so incredible, and many have tried -- and failed -- to adapt Brit humor to U.S. tastes, but perhaps Polone will be among those who can make it work.
Visit BBC America's My Hero website for more background info on the show!
I think I’ll also try to tape
Banzai, which premieres on
Fox this Sunday night at 8:30pm. It looks like a delightful crazyhouse cobbled together from the best of Japanese endurance-type game show bits and
outrageous personality turns, sifted through the twisted comedy sensibility of its British production team. Yes, this is a British import – thank the lord – and if you loved the grandeur and nuttiness of
Iron Chef then
Banzai is really gonna sizzle your sirloin.
What I love about the whole thing is that it’s an outrageous put-on of an already outrageous TV convention. The notion that some Brits thought it was hilarious to create a mock Asian game show with insane hosts and a language all its own -- and that it works – reaffirms my faith that somehow there will always be enough amazing things on TV to please even the most idiosyncratic viewer. In addition to silly stunts and practical jokes, evidently there’s also some awkward celebrity interviewing from Lady One Question, and that’s something I always love to see.
I think
Banzai looks like a blast! And of course
Fox has my other favorite show this summer,
Keen Eddie, which is still plugging along in its Tuesday 9pm time period. It’s preempted next week, but returns on 7/22 with another new episode. Need I plead for you to take a look at it? You’ll cry when it’s gone, I’ll wager….
Visit the Banzai website on Fox to get more information.
I haven’t even looked at the schedules too much – I don’t want to know what I might be missing – but don’t
you miss anything! Really, I know a lot of
clean summer Nova Scotia air will do me a lot of good! I’m going to keep saying that, and hope it’s true!
See you soon!
Spike, Spike, Spike, Spike…Lovely Spike, Wonderful Spike!
Well, it looks Spike Lee and Viacom have kissed and made up, and whaddya know, it also looks like Mr. Lee’s going to be doing some projects for them too, as part of stopping his action against their
Spike TV re-launch of
TNN. Certainly this lawsuit had engendered a lot of general scoffing at Lee’s contention that the network was being named after him – including here on 6/13 – and as the whole silly mess comes to a conclusion it doesn’t seem any less ludicrous. The real winners here are the folks at
Spike TV, who’ve gotten more ink than they ever could have imagined as this controversy was splashed all over the media. Much more publicity, clearly, than they would have gotten with only the meager changes to their programming (more to come), and the oh-so-easy-to-deride rationale behind the whole Spike re-branding. Early ratings have been decent on what new stuff they have already launched; combined with the lawsuit which almost made people feel sympathetic for one of the biggest media congloms on the planet,
Spike TV is off to a rip-roaring start. And Mr. Lee and his wife got a gig. Not bad….
Two Heads are Better Than…
As a long-time observer of all things unusual, I was fascinated by the
ultimately sad tale of the Iranian
conjoined twins Laleh and Ladan Bijan, who lost their lives on the operating table earlier this week as they underwent surgery to separate them. These two spirited and intelligent young ladies, joined at the head, had wanted nothing more than the approximation of a normal life, and they were willing to risk their lives to attain it. It’s hard for most of us
to imagine even for an instant what life under such an overpowering and inescapable circumstance could be like, and yet these women grew up and prospered, harboring dreams of becoming a lawyer and a journalist. You can debate the wisdom of their determination to go ahead with an operation that many surgeons had refused to perform because of its danger, and yet, it was their choice to make and it’s unfortunate that the procedure turned out to be every bit as perilous as some had feared.
It’s easy to objectify human beings who are so different from ourselves, but it’s also important that we celebrate those differences and the triumphs of the human spirit that can result from them. While you’re watching the current crop of so-called reality shows disgorge themselves across your TV screen, take a little time to ponder the fate of two brave women who wanted nothing more than to walk on this earth by themselves, alone, for once in their lives. And then think if you really want to waste your emotions on those phony situations and contrived challenges….
Speaking of Challenges –
If you missed the terrific documentary
Christopher Reeve: Courageous Steps, about Reeve’s determined fight to walk again, check it out tomorrow night, Thursday 7/10 at 9pm on
Discovery Health Channel. It’s amazing.
Drew Who?
Hey, catch a couple more of the very expensive (3 million bucks per), contractual-fulfillment-produced episodes of
The Drew Carey Show tonight at 9pm on
ABC. The once extremely successful sitcom wasn’t picked up by the network for their new fall schedule, so it’s into summer that it goes.
Yes, I'm Back...
-- but wow, what a lackluster TV week it's been! The July 4th holiday weekend, while it had some good programming --
Black Adder on
BBC America -- wasn't exciting enough to keep me watching much. And after years and years of
Twilight Zone marathons -- and I hope nobody out there thinks that
Sci Fi invented them; I was doing them at
KTLA in the early '80s and I believe that
WSB in Boston had done them before that -- I've just about reached my limit on watching them, but of course did watch a few minutes of some. It's hard to go cold turkey.
Tonight, R. Lee Ermey's great
Mail Call has its season premiere over on
History. It's a special hour-long episode entitled
Mail Call Life From the Gulf, so it's bound to be extra-terrific, and that's saying something. There are a couple of amusing new promos for the show running now; both feature uniformed guys brandishing remotes (in one of them they're in formation on recliner chairs) and Ermey gives them a dose of his D.I. mode. They're pretty cute so watch out for them. As I've said many times before here, there's more energy and charm in this series than in almost anything else on TV, and you get to learn something, too. Definitely tune in tonight at 10pm!
Other news: After an extremely strong tune-in for the season premiere of
Monk on
USA a couple of weeks ago (the numbers are down a bit since but not by much), it's great to see this wonderful series hitting a chord with so many viewers. Nice article in
TV Guide also a week or so ago, too. Check
Monk out if you don't already! Fridays at 10pm on
USA.
And goodness knows
Keen Eddie on
Fox (Tuesday night at 9pm) needs some viewers, pronto! The numbers continue to be dismal and let's see if it even makes it through its scheduled run. Sad....
