News is that the current seventh season is to be the last for NBC's West Wing.
Many will no doubt lament the end of the run but in truth I am kind of glad to see it brought to a close. For a while there I was a great fan but it all kind of turned a bit wrong; they kept churning them out to eke out more cash but the passion was gone. The death throes really began several series ago when Aaron Sorkin was pushed out. Now, with Bartlett facing a term limit problem and the recent death of his chief of staff Leo McGarry (played by John Spencer) it seems kindest to let it all fade to black.
Aside: Which twat at the 'Independent' Newspaper decided to go for the two column web layout?
Sad news that John Spencer who played Leo McGarry in the West WIng died yesterday of a heart-attack. He won an emmy playing the White House Chief of Staff in 2002 and his role recently became vice-presidential candidate. Apparently his character had a heart attack in an episode a few weeks ago, McGarry recovered but sadly Spencer didn't.
[Via BBC]
Obviously I haven't been watching enough TV not to know that Channel 4 are launching a new channel next week, More4.
More4, Channel 4's new TV channel, is launching on Monday 10 October.That the West Wing will be there and Jon Stewart's The Daily Show (albeit one day after it airs in the US) is more than enough reason to finally get freeview. Sweet. It is on Sky at channel 165, ntl 166, telewest 142 and freeview epg 13.More4 will show the best of world documentaries, smart films, highest-quality news and current affairs and big pieces of home-grown contemporary drama.
Like the grandmother of reality TV that it is, Eurovision just refuses to die. It is the unwanted gift that keeps on giving. Car crash TV at its finest. Tonight, friends, euro-sceptics, euro-ambivalentics and euro-fanatics alike, is a night for unity.
And painkillers.
(If you can't be non-committally near a TV (BBC1 8 - 11.20pm) then you can watch the live stream anywhere you have net access. There is no excuse.)
I just watched the pilot of the US version of The Office. It mocu-dramatizes Dunder Mifflin paper supply company in Scranton, Pennsylvania. And it is actually okay funny. Not, thus far at least, riotously funny, but certainly chuckleworthy.
Somehow the manager (Michael Scott) played by Steve Carell isn't quite as creepy or cringeworthy as when played by Ricky Gervais, but that could just be a nuance thing which will be better appreciated by a US audience. In fact, perhaps it is just the patheticness of David Brent that makes him work while his American counterpart is more outrageous or bold in his misdeeds. I think it has potential though and am definitely gonna check out the next episode. Unlike I believe around 50% of the US audience who didn't bother to tune in for episode 2.
Jerry Springer the Opera, televised tonight on BBC2, was funnier than I remember it being when I saw it last Christmas in London. It seems that everyone who can broadly be termed ridiculous is piling in with crisicism of the BBC choosing to screen the show and some 45,000 complaints have been logged. Impressive organisation for whoever is behind it. According to one, "Showing Jerry Springer - The Opera sews evil into people and scandalises Christianity." I'm pretty sure it doesn't. I'm all for the beeb screening it but I don't think that their defence - "the BBC insisted there were fewer than 300 swear words in the show" - is likely to sway many of the discontents! At this Christian calendar time of 'epiphany' it would be nice if some of the protestors had an epiphany and started doing something a little more useful.
I urge you to vote for the Steve so that G4 do not win this competition. They are absolutely awful and if they ruin any more perfectly serviceable songs (let alone their disastrous rendition of Radiohead's brilliant "Creep") then I'm going to be most annoyed. End their embarrassment, let them fade away. That's all.
Another year another Eurovision. The reason the Uk never wins is because either a) it's all about politics and Iraq or b) everyone votes for their neighbours and being an island nation we don't really have any, except the Republic of Ireland (and they did give us a few points). Truth is that all the songs, singers, acts were (and always are) s*h*i*t*e, each as much as each other and each other as much as the winning Ukrainian entry. Two bottles of (3 for a tenner) Blossom Hill down though and the evening was highly amusing. Terry Wogan should be knighted for services to sarcasm, "I wonder if they are too subtle" being a classic example as leather clad warrior princesses strutted and grinded and warbled. Strutted, grinded and warbled their way to victory over Europe. Go Ukraine. Roll on Eurovision 2005.