What Are You Currently Watching (on tv/dvd)?

[fish]

Isn't there some old saying about a cap fitting and wearing it?

[Ian]

[Ian]

Kolchak: The Trevi Collection. Black magic meets haute couture! High-fliers in high fashion are dying in decidedly peculiar ways, and Kolchak begins to suspect that witchcraft is at work in this very entertaining episode.

[Ian]

The Bill: A Price to Pay. DS Boulton's impatience and tunnel vision manages to turn a huge success - a "You've Won a Prize" scam to net some wanted criminals - into a total f**k-up when he refuses to listen to one of the suspect's claims that they've got the wrong man. And he gets a well-deserved bloody nose for his troubles too!

[Ian]

The Bill: In the Dark. A man is attacked during a burglary in the home he shares with his blind wife. Investigating, the wife's description of an item of missing jewelry leads DC Rod Skase to suspect that the victim might himself be a serial killer responsible for the deaths of several prostitutes in this gripping double-length episode.

[Ian]

X Files: Field Trip. When a young married couple vanish in the woods and are then found as skeletons inside of just a couple of days, Mulder and Scully set off to investigate.. and find themselves in for one hell of a trip. I love the cleverness of this episode (Scully's hallucinatory experience is particularly amusing; there's something deliciously satisfying about having everyone parrot her own "plausible" theory (that she doesn't even believe herself) at her word-for-word, much to her own horror) and there's an eerie plausibility to the nature of the menace that makes it genuinely unsettling (SPOILER for anyone who hasn't seen this episode!). There are fungi that span several acres, often underground, there are fungi with hallucinogenic properties, and there are plants that feed on living organisms, making this particular threat feel like something that could genuinely exist. That said, I would have loved to have heard the writers pitch this one to Chris Carter: "It's a giant killer mushroom!" As Mulder notes, "Sounds like crap when you say it."

[Ian]

Started Earth 2 this afternoon. I remembered this short-lived (just the one season) mid 90s SF show as being pretty good, so picked up the DVD set and... it's still pretty good, actually. A bunch of colonists/refugees fleeing from an overcrowded Earth and a corrupt government (nothing much changes then) head for a habitable planet 22 years away, but while their wake-up from cryo-sleep goes fine, getting down to the planet turns into a bit of a disaster and once there, they find it may not be as uncharted or as uninhabited as they thought... This is a pretty decent stab at genuine SF on TV and I remember being disappointed it didn't last longer; there's even a trace of Lost in here somewhere. Also very sad that the actress who plays the little girl True has already left us; died of a rare form of leukemia at just 22. Awful. But this remains a pretty decent show and I'm glad I picked it up to see again.

[DMt.]

Showed my dear Janice the first half of the [great, classic] double film Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources - my sixth viewing, her first...she loved it too!

Second half tomorrow...

[Ian]

Finished my latest run of Angel season 4. Y'know, I'm not the biggest fan of Angel in general - overall, I vastly prefer Buffy - but season 4 may well be one of my favourite seasons of any television show. It's completely OTT, magnificently epic - a deranged supernatural apocalyptic version of 24 - and the final run of the arc, with "Jasmine", the Goddess who takes everyone who sees her or hears her voice under her thrall and who sets out to bring Peace on Earth, albeit at the complete expense of free will, is one of the most batshit insane things I've ever seen on television. I love this season to bits.

[Ian]

The Bill: Twanky. The boys and girls of Sun Hill attempt to stage a Christmas pantomime for charity in this very funny double-length Xmas episode from 1997. Can still remember this, doesn't seem like 18 years ago!
Rod, dressed up as Widow Twanky, but knocked out by a thug and left outside the theatre, gets arrested as a drunk hooker!

[fish]

...gets arrested as a drunk hooker!

Oh dear, they don't make 'em like that any more.

[Ian]

The Bill. David Burke was in the one I watched today as a rival Chief Super. Dr Watson!
Also, the updated late 90s credits have kicked in and PC Eddie Santini has arrived. What a little ^*&$ he turns out to be!

[Ian]

I've started on The Saint (the colour episodes, which were cheaper to get). It's Roger Moore being Roger Moore. Me likes.

[sydney]

I am almost through the first season of Prison Break... Still 3 seasons to go......

[Ian]

The Bill: Deep End/The Party's Over/Bang Bang, You're Dead/Team Spirit. WPC Rosie Fox arrives at Sun Hill and develops an immediately antagonistic relationship with PC Eddie Santini. The two are thrown together on an undercover CID operation, but what initially seems like a possible attraction takes a very sinister turn... This gripping "sexual harassment" four-parter kicked off the show's return to the hour format in 1998 after 11 years in the half-hour format, opening with the feature-length Deep End. Dark, and the ending may well be PC Dave Quinnan's finest hour, as he finally sees through the wool that Eddie's pulled over everyone's eyes and exposes him in an explosive and seriously public manner. Cracking stuff.