I Am A TV Junkie

Emmys.com Video -- Melissa McCarthy is Desperate, Joel McHale Knows What That's Like

 

Watch this above and then bookmark this, the link for the UStream.tv webcast of the Emmy nominations, which happens tomorrow at 5:30 eastern.

Do it!

Sherwood Schwartz, November 14, 1916 – July 12, 2011

Watch Mr. Schwartz speak on the day he got his Walk of Fame start by clicking this.

Watch him talk about the impact of The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island by clicking this.

Gilligan's Island theme when you click this, just because.

Marcia getting hit with a football when you click this.

A TV legend. To lose Schwartz and Sam Denoff in the same week? Heartbreaking. Links connect to obits at the Emmy TV Legends blog.

The Story Behind Changing My Name on Twitter and Plans for the Future

Here's the quick and dirty version ... I had not written anything on this blog over a week. My Twitter handle used to be @ThatTVBlogger. Having not blogged for a bit that was a lie.

So I changed it to something truthful, @JoeWatchesTV, which I've been doing with the usual regularity (there are 84 series on my series DVR list after all).

Longer version ...

I can't be one of those bloggers who writes up recaps of shows and posts them right after the show airs on the east coast. First of all I don't get that many screeners, so I'd have to watch the shows as they air which puts me at a disadvantage, especially as I am on the left coast and three hours behind in primetime.

Besides, I don't watch ANYTHING live. Even the Oscars ... I start watching about 90 minutes after the show starts so I can skip through commercials. I like that. I'm not willing to deny myself the benefits of our new media landscape.

I just finished watching the third season of Being Human, the BBC version. It aired months ago, but I was busy with US primetime shows which were in full bloom. It sat on my DVR until the last week when I ate them all up like it was a vampire-ghost-werewolf buffet. I gorged myself. I like watching series that way. I wish my DVR hard drive was bigger, I would do more of that.

The conflict I see is as follows: TV fans run to the internet after (or sometimes during) their shows for immediate answers, instant gratification. I can't or in some cases refuse to provide that which relegates me to a second or third tier of blog just based on my personal preferences.

So, I've decided to change things up some. In the near future I will be opening an additional blog back at Blogger where I started in the first place. I'm limiting my scope to UK shows in the US, with emphasis not just on BBC America but on the other less recognizable outlets for shows from the UK like IFC and Sundance and most of all PBS, not just the shows on Masterpiece but those shows that local public broadcasting stations acquire on their own. I'll also let you know where to find this content on the web and through Netflix.

I've already reserved a domain at Blogger, I'll let you know about it as I get closer to doing that.

In the meantime I'll be writing here with a little more regularity than I have lately and eventually this blog, which has gotten very unwieldy lost its Google Adsense account for reasons I don't quite understand, will close.

But I'll let you know before all that happens.

Have a great day!

Blerg. Blag. Blog.

 

 

Blerg.

 

 

Blag.

Blog.

Bigger and Badder, Torchwood: Miracle Day Premieres Friday Night on Starz

The waiting. That's been the hardest part for fans of the BBC series Torchwood, an adult-focused spinoff from the legendary Doctor Who. After a huge success with the five-part miniseries Children of Earth which was started exactly two years ago yesterday in the UK, nothing.

NOTHING.

And that just sucked. First losing Ianto Jones (and before him both Naoki Mori's Tosh Sato and Burn Gorman's Owen Harper) and then seemingly losing the show. BBC, having its own budget issues in this down economy, seemed to say it was hardpressed to find the funds to produce another season on its own, which just didn't make sense to me after CoE's ratings success on BBC One, and in Canada, Australia, the rest of Europe and here on BBC America.

(Of course, there are all kinds of reasons this is happening and they all have to do with the structure of the British Broadcasting Company and BBC Worldwide and how revenue is shared, and I still don't really understand it all.)

Their mandate now seems to be to find an international partner for big shows. And in Starz, they've found a hungry participant as well. Their Spartacus series put them on the pay cable drama map and although Camelot did not follow suit and in fact was canceled just this past week, they are hungry for big, bold series that will attract hoards of young men and the women who love them to the channel.

Enter Jack Harkness (John Barrowman). He's big and bold. He lives forever, he's traveled through time, he's had sex with all kinds of stuff in the tradition of one James Tiberius Kirk, that's big and bold for ya.

Like Kirk he's saved the world, more than once. You know, like heroes do. And, bonus, his interstellar horniness doesn't restrict itself to one sex, Harkness is a true pansexual. In fact, I think he would have sex with a very attractive pan.

So, with only Jack, Welsh goddess Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and hubby Rhys (the bear-y loveable Kai Owen) left of the ol' Torchwood crew, the hub in Cardiff having been destroyed, and lots of American money being spent, how do you come up with what is in essence a fourth series of Torchwood?

Well you bring in the heavyweights is what you do. You've got Russell T. Davies, the guy who brought back Doctor Who, created Queer as Folk for Channel 4 UK, showed us that Bob & Rose can fall in love (but it's a tricky business) and invented these people in the first place.

He calls brilliant friends like fan darling Jane Espenson (Buffy, BSG, Caprica, the recent Game of Thrones), Doris Egan (House, Numbers), John Shiban (Vampire Diaries, Breaking Bad), and John Fay who wrote Ianto's death scene in Children of Earth.

And they get it done. My somewhat spoilery review of the first hour of Torchwood: Miracle Day starts when you click over the jump.