Television

[iainjclark]

I'm not normally one for fan-made videos setting TV clips to music but this one of Firefly/Serenity to the music of Wicked has Joss Whedonian and Tim Minearian endorsement, so I went to look. It's extremely well done.

< insert obligatory *sob* for Firefly here >

While I'm here, the 2007 in Review piece in Strange Horizons has a very small contribution by yours truly, in which I inexplicably can't find anything better on TV last year than Doctor Who. Three times in a row. It's just wrong. Fortunately everyone else is very erudite and reads books and stuff. Also pikelet is insane but you knew that.

Of course The Wire is far better than any SF-related TV currently airing but that doesn't count for Strange Horizons. My Season 4 DVD arrived today, and Season 5 has just started in the US. It's just so very satisfying, layered and intelligent and you should all be watching it but will you lot listen? *Will you*?

In lieu of any other good TV and with anyone who could potentially write some being on strike, we've resorted to DVDs. We've been hugely enjoying Cracker on DVD, a series we missed in its entirety when it was on TV. Robbie Coltrane is fantastic, and the writing is incredibly sharp, with a real interest in psychology and themes rather than just the surface process of investigation. This definitely puts it a notch above most other ostensibly 'crime' related television which seems more formulaic with each passing year. We've only the final one-off special and the more recent Cracker reunion TV movie to go.

We've also been bingeing on old Doctor Who. The Time Warrior is splendid, and gives me my fix of Sontarans in a way that The Sontaran Experiment just didn't accomplish. The Claws of Axos is, sadly, complete rubbish despite featuring some iconic images that have stuck with me since childhood. In contrast, Tom Baker's debut story Robot is great. Yes, even the rubbish FX are great. All of this has made me so nostalgic that I've rashly ordered the Beneath the Surface box set, despite it having the really terrible Warriors of the Deep in it.

Comments

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

Cracker is wonderful television - intelligent, confrontational, combines slow-burning character arcs with strong stand-alone stories. I loved it when it was on originally.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

That Firefly video is nice. And my DVD rental queue finally spat out The Wire, so soon I shall see what all the fuss is about.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

That's a nice vid, and it's really cool that Whedon and Minnear brought so much attention to it, but it's far from the best vid I've ever seen and I'm not even very versed in the field. There's some really good and professional looking stuff out there.

[fba.livejournal.com]

If you took out the Merka 'Warriors of the Deep' would be a workmanlike base-under-siege with flashes of genius that pretty much sums up Davison's Doctor. As it stands it will always be the one with the pantomime seahorse getting karate chopped by the main villain... I hope the release Kinda and Snakedance soon - despite the dodgy snake they are really wonderful multi-layered stories and there is something about them that really sums up 80s Who.