It also shows in the US if you can convince the BBC's online "iPlayer" that you're in the UK. That's an exercise left to the reader, but one supposes a combination of FoxyProxy and a box in the UK might come in very handy...

Or the use of TOR and Privoxy.

(which works the other direction for access to Pandora)

Oh gosh no. I don't take it seriously in the least. It's the least profound show with the least to say of all the TV I watch. They think they have a lot to say (as evidenced by those terribly Mohinder narrations), but it's really just a soap opera with people who use super powers once in a blue moon.

Believe me, I want it to be fun. That's all I ever wanted out of it. But they tried for more and missed.

The writer strike seems to have had an effect, for the worse, on the show Life. They seem to have toned down the level Zen attitude for Crews.

Good clean fun!
Bitt, if you haven't caught the "Blink" episode yet, then you are in for a treat. It's one of my all-time favorites.

I also like the little 15-minute "Dr. Who Confidential" segments for an "inside baseball" look at the making of.
(Just don't watch one before the corresponding episode, as they are Spoiler City.)

I agree, but it's still one of my favorite network shows.

I was thinking the exact same thing! They now seem more interested in the mystery than the characters, which is always a backward way of thinking.

And as much as I like Donal Logue, I don't really buy the relationship they're creating there.

It's not my favorite show, but I do quite enjoy it.

i guess you're right, still, i can't wait for the next episode to come each week! we get next weeks episode played on bbc 3 right after the current episode, which is handy as i occasionally miss the following week, last night i missed the current episode (already seen) and 20 mins of the next episode cos i got carried away re-organising my workshop, gutted, will have to wait til next week to see it now, and then on I player as i'm out on the weds night !






yeah, i don't watch the confidentials pre show if they're on, that blink episode is class, not sure who was freaked out more, me or the kids! my litle girl is scared to death of the ood (sp?)

Hmm - well, since you've clearly been having fun digging into the electronics with Mark - maybe you should dig into MythTV too?

Does a home built PVR based on linux sound like a fun project?

i use to love making little electronic things, mostly nothing more than messing with led's etc, always fancied doing more. what is myth tv? i know nothing of linux btw!

"Blink" is amazing. I have it saved on my Tivo right now.

Agreed. One of the best pieces of writing for cinema, TV or otherwise, I'd ever seen. Just brilliant.

I do worry about the BBC America cut-down-for-US-commercials versions of any Doctor Who episode, though. I can't wait to see the episodes, so I'm always watching downloaded versions shortly after they're aired in the UK, thus I never watch the BBCA episodes, so I actually don't know how badly they've been butchered...

It is possible to edit a show well. Has anyone else here seen the network TV edits of Dexter? I've watched the show from the beginning, and I just had to tune in when they started airing the edited versions. My wife and I were shocked that it still held up! There wasn't much lost, and the edits for cursing were the best I've ever seen done (not distracting in the least). That really impressed me. I figured they'd have to completely re-dub Deborah's lines (and Doakes's too), but they handled it perfectly.

I've had a change of lifestyle since leaving Alaska where I was an avid TV watcher (30-40 hours/week). I no longer watch television. I have a TV set sitting in the living room connected to over 100 channels, and in the past six months I have watched part of a Presidential debate, and... uh... nothing else.

That frees up a lot of time for other, more productive things.

tanstaafl.

You might as well cancel your cable/satellite service, then, and free up your budget for other, more productive things, too.

My television cable brings in my internet. The pricing structure is such that internet alone is more expensive.

Usually I don't watch TV. In the rare moments that I do, I surf through Comedy Central, The History Channel, and Discovery Channel.
My housemate has been hooked on the motorcycle gang soap opera Sons of Anarchy, though, and although I can't stand the lionizing of criminals, I've watched along during the first season.
Anyone else?

My concern for Doctor Who is the need to edit for length, not language. When you cut 15 minutes out of a 60 minute show, what do you cut?

A similar edit-for-time was needed to get Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" into the theaters, and when I finally got to see the Criterion Collection version at its full length, it felt so much better and seemed a lot less disjointed.

Modern Doctor Who episodes are 45 minutes. In a 60-minute slot on an ad-supported channel, they aren't cut.

Peter

Or only slightly, since hour-long slots in the US tend to have 44 minutes of program time.

Actually, my biggest problem with the new Doctor Who is the length of the stories. It used to be that you got four or six 25-minute episodes making up a story, which is 100 or 150 minutes of story (minus a little for recaps and credit sequences), whereas now you get one or two 45-minute episode stories, so 45 or 90 minutes of story. As such, they almost always end up feeling rushed and truncated to me.

Ah! I thought they were 60 minutes when I was watching them as downloads. I must have been remembering wrong.

Just to clarify, by the "and" I meant the edits for cursing and what was lost to cuts for time. Dexter is about 55 minutes.

I was also wondering if when the show went to network television, they'd keep the great opening title sequence. That thing has to be at least a minute long, probably 90 seconds. In this day where lead-ins like Lost and Heroes are 10 seconds at most, I was surprised to see they kept it.

Leverage (TNT) seems to be like the old Mission Impossible series. Sanctioned only by moral outrage, instead of the Government.

Has anyone heard anything about the last three episodes? I haven't seen a new schedule showing it in the lineup.



I have to respectfully disagree with this comment. I have just started watching the UK original (2 episodes so far) and while I like it, I don't think it's as good as the US version. The acting is quite well done, the characters likeable enough, but there's just too much missing. I get a sense like there's too much padding in the UK version whereas the US remake uses that extra time to provide more content - that works well. I think I would feel the same way even if I had watched the UK version first. I can't shake the feeling that parts of the episode are stretched a little too thin.

They've done an amazing job of refreshing the series and I think they've ended up with a better produced and better written show for it.

Now, I wouldn't expect all shows to work as well given a remake. The Office worked, but I can't imagine the IT Crowd pulling it off (I'd love to see the US pilot though).

They will be aired this summer sometime.

Could part of that be due to the slower pace of a full hour-long show instead of one that's ~44 minutes?

I stopped watching the US version, so I can't say for sure (and you've also only seen two episodes of the UK version, so I wouldn't judge too quickly either), but you're saying that there's a lot of padding on a show whose entire run lasted 16 episodes? The US doesn't know how to end a show other than an abrupt cancellation (see Pushing Daisies) or a prolonged meandering story (see X-Files). I'd really be interested in seeing how closely the US version follows the story of the UK version. If so, there really isn't much to add there that the UK version didn't say better and with fewer episodes.

Most of all, I refuse to believe that anyone can match or surpass Philip Glenister in that role. I'm sorry, it is impossible to argue this with me - my personal opinion on it is unwavering. I was somewhat interested in seeing Colm Meaney in the role, but the studio ditched him for Harvey Keitel, and I haven't heard the reason for that.

The only thing I didn't like about the UK version was the actress who played Annie. I just didn't think she was very good.


ps- while I was thinking about this show again, I had to check when Ashes to Ashes was returning. I can't find anything! Do any of you Brits know? The first episode aired last year in the beginning of February, so I hope it's similar this year.

I thought that was it at first, but upon comparison, the US version still packs more into its shorter air time. It's not just compressing what was in the UK version.



It doesn't matter how many total episodes there were to be able to compare episode to episode. I'm not commenting on the overall story arch nor am I saying that the UK version is bad. I'll continue watching it since I have the whole of both series.



That's both the fault of networks and producers/creators. On the one hand you have a show being created without a definitive overall plot or story arch as was the case with the X-FIles. It also lacked continuity on amy different levels. On the other hand you have shows that do have well thought out stories that have been tailored to last a specific number of episodes and some type of plan on how to end the series. When the network steps in and prematurely cancels this type of show, it's not always possible to wrap it up neatly.



We don't really know if there's a plan to produce only a fixed number of US shows at this time. There are at least 13 episodes planned for this first season though. Since the original creators are behind the US version, I suspect it would work well enough even if it ran two or three times as long as the UK version. At one point a show stops being a remake or retelling and takes on a life of its own.



That's fair, I'm not going to argue the merits of one actor versus another. I've liked both versions enough to say that I don't think either is carried by the strength of one single person.

I think my feeling at this time is that the creators have improved on what they wrote originally. And the substitution of US-isms for UK-isms wasn't what made the changes work.

I'm looking forward to watching both, though I'd really like to try and get ahead on the UK version to see it from the other side.

How is it that studio executives wonder why shows falter? This season has seen very obscure schedule shuffling and show pulling. Even shows that are supposedly doing well have had this treatment.

You can contrast this to TV of the past where you'd see a lot more reruns. Now you just get shows vanishing for months at a time with little to no notice or promotion of the return. The studios are crapping all over their content and then wonder why the audience is abandoning them.

Complaining about PVR usage isn't going to cut it when you're shuffling that deck of cards around so often and so quickly that using a PVR is the only way anyone is even going to be able to follow a series.

I'm thinking they're morons.

Um, yeah. Ditto.

From what I can tell, all the networks are nearly identical in their behavior: a show lives or dies based on how many viewers it gets in the first 3-5 episodes. It doesn't matter one ounce to them how passionate the fans are about a show, as long as there's a lot of them.

And yeah, once a show starts changing nights, unless it's an enormous hit (like Lost or, in the past, the X-Files), that's a sure sign it's on its last legs. Currently I'm scared for Bones, as they just moved it from Monday to Thursday. This means I have no choice but to "obtain it by other means," as I'm already recording two shows when it airs now.

Bruno, it's a good sign that the people who made the UK version are also doing the US version, I wasn't aware of that, but I can't imagine that have even a tiny amount of control over how long the show lasts. If it's successful, the network will try to run it as long as possible, if it's not, the creators will likely not be given enough warning to wrap up the story.

There have been very few exceptions to this rule, and even when there have been, the "wrap-ups" are at best unsatisfying. Take, for example, last year's show Journeyman. The show started off as a decent-but-not-great show, and ended up as (IMO) fantastic. The timing worked out just well enough so that the writers had a chance to answer a number of questions that they would have strung out longer, and in the end they gave the show a thematic ending, if not an entirely satisfying one.

It's one of the biggest complaints about network TV that I have. Everything the networks do proves how little they care about their viewers.

I haven't seen the complaints you're referring to, but it does occur to me that, if the networks can assume that most people have PVRs (or that the people who get most addicted to particular programmes all have PVRs) then their strategy seems pretty good: put the first few episodes on during prime-time, then once everyone is either hooked or not, switch it to half past dogwatch. (Especially if it's a programme such as Heroes, where there's no point starting to watch the series part-way in.) It's the TV equivalent of the magazine world's "Today, Tom Cruise revealed he regularly sticks a ...continued on p168".

Peter