2013 in review: top 10 TV

Well everyone else in the world is doing 2013 review posts so I figured I'd join in. And TV is a great place to start because I love it.

I'm such a couch potato it's ridiculous. Generally, though, most of what I watch consists of either repeats or complete trash. Or both if I'm having a bad day. My current favourite things in the world are the sensationalised American crime documentaries that populate the ID channel (as I write I'm watching something called 'Manhunt: Search for a Serial Killer'). Not big, not clever, very entertaining.

Anyway, just occasionally I watch something that isn't awful. Here's a (largely spoiler free) list of my favourites from this year...

Best in Show: Boardwalk Empire
If this were Crufts, some minor royal would be handing Steve Buscemi a big trophy and a rosette. I love Boardwalk. I love everything about it - the writing, the cast, the acting, the way it's shot and lit, the music, the costumes etc etc etc. It's the most consistently brilliant thing on TV and series four is fantastic. Top, top stuff.
Top moment - Michael K Williams' Chalky White vs Jeffrey Wright's Dr Valentin Narcisse is by far and away my favourite Boardwalk rivalry since Steve Buscemi's Nucky Thompson vs Michael Shannon's Agent van Alden in series one.

Best for the lolz: Parks and Rec
One of the inumerable reasons I love BBC4 is that it introduced me to Parks and Rec, and this year I've got properly into it watching the first three series back to back over a series of very happy weeks. Another case of great writing and a fabulous ensemble cast combining to make something lovely. And lovely is the right word for Parks and Rec - it's funny without being mean, well observed without being cruel and incredibly optimistic in outlook. Now to start watching the next few series...
Top moment - anything said or done by Ron Swanson

Most improved lolz: Veep
I watched series one of Veep and found it a bit meh. Series two is so much better and as a result completely hilarious. It feels like the writers have really hit their stride and focused in on giving the fantastic cast some amazing one liners. And the second great comedy on my list whose lead character is female, which is more noteworthy than it should be.
Top moment - so many fantastic quotes and insults to choose from, but as a cheese lover I particularly enjoyed Gary's vaguely psychotic girlfriend declaring "quit being so hot, you're melting my cheese".

Best for epicness, nudity and dragons: Game of Thrones
I adore the Song of Ice and Fire series of books and, so far, Game of Thrones has been a fantastic and (more or less) faithful adaptation. Probably the best ensemble cast on TV at the moment with amazing effects and great writing, it's the grand and sweeping scale of GoT that makes it so spectacular. And all the nudity. Gotta love the nudity.
Top moment - loved the addition of Diana Rigg to the cast, but the highlight for me has to be The Red Wedding. What's that song I hear?

Best for gore (and hotties): The Walking Dead
A good, old fashioned post-apocalyptic zombie yarn, The Walking Dead is definitely more than the sum of its parts thanks to some fantastically well constructed characters, great writing and uniformly excellent big set pieces. Another great cast too, particularly Andrew Lincoln's Rick (good hotty) and David Morrisey's The Governor (psycho hotty).
Top moment - the excellent mid-season finale showdown between Rick's group and The Governor's. Gory, exciting and heartbreaking in equal measure with a couple of great twists and a fantastic cliffhanger. Can't wait to pick the series up again in February.

Best old fashioned thriller: The Tunnel
English language adaptations of European crime thrillers are rarely great (the superlative Wallander aside) but Sky's take on Scannoir murder mystery The Bridge was really well done. Stephan Dillane and Clemance Posey were fantastic leading a British-French hybrid production in this well written, dark, funny and unpredictable drama about a serial killer with a grudge and a point to make. The Bridge has just been renewed for a second series. Hopefully The Tunnel will follow suit.
Top moment - the incredibly tense sequence with the (ultimately fake) bomb in cretinous tabloid journalist Danny Hillier's car in episode one set the scene and the pace really well. I was hooked from then on.

Saddest goodbye: Borgen
The fact that there's no more Borgen, ever, makes me sadder that it reasonably should. I love this series mostly because I love the characters and I'm genuinely sad to say goodbye to them, especially Birgitte. A believable, rounded and strong female politician character is so achingly rare, as indeed is a believable and rounded depiction of politics in general, and I'll miss Borgen's take on both so much. Bring on the box set!
Top moment - I have two (beware spoilers ahead): the moment when Bent follows Birgitte to the New Democrats and the moment when Nete - who I loved - is revealed to be the one leaking information to the Moderates. The former made me cry happy tears, the latter made me viscerally angry. I love that TV can do that.

Best one off: Burton and Taylor
Dominic West as Richard Burton and Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth Taylor - need I say more? Well if you insist: fantastic central performances with a great script and did I mention Dominic West as Richard Burton?
Top moment - the hotel room workout flashback scene was adorable. But my favourite scenes were the 'I love you but we can't be together' finale. Heartbreaking stuff.

The 'Not as good this year but still pretty fucking ace' award: The Great British Bake Off
Basically, I really didn't like any of the final contestants, didn't care who won and found all the tabloid nonsense really tiresome but Bake Off is still one of my favourite shows. And as long as Mary, Paul, Mel and Sue are still involved I'll always love it. The contestants and baking are kind of peripheral at this point.
Top moment - custardgate. Poor Howard.

The 'this is basically porn' award: Paul Hollywood's Bread and Pies and Puds
Pretty self explanatory really. Any show that involves a lot of old blue eyes is going to feature on my list. Several of my lists actually, but the others aren't for public consumption.
Top moment - all the close ups of his hands. Don't even care how creepy that is.

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Disney, I'm annoyed with you

(And now I'm also annoyed with Blogger/myself for deleting the original version of this post when I tried to correct a typo in it. This version is better though, promise.)

 

So John Carter is going to go down as one of the biggest movie flops in history. As HuffPo reports, it's set to lose parent company Disney around $200million. That's a big number. Mickey Mouse is going to have to shift a lot of Dole Whip* to make that up!

Now I saw JC over the weekend. It was a good film; not great but not awful and certainly not the turkey these numbers make it out to be. Visually, it was stunning - the landscapes, the effects, the CGI creatures were all brilliant and that's before I even get to the aesthetic appeal of the largely topless/otherwise half naked cast! (In my chart of hot villains, Dominic West's Sab Than is somewhere near the top. Mmmmm... I digress.) Although leading man Taylor Kitsch left me cold - and I hope he only got the part after Zac Efron turned it down, he would've been much better - the supporting cast was fab. All in all it was exactly what that sort of sci-fi-come-action film should be: an entertaining couple of hours.

So it's not the quality of the film I'm annoyed with, it's the marketing campaign. According to that HuffPo article $100million was spent on the John Carter marketing campaign. Really?! On what?!

I'm a geek. I'm a Disney loving geek. I'm a Disney loving, sci-fi-come-action film loving geek. I should've been the target of this alleged marketing campaign. So how did I find out about JC? Trailer in the cinema? TV spot? Print advert? Viral campaign online? No. I find out about it whilst stalking casually browsing Dominic West's IMDB page. Even the last minute, panicky push out of clips, trailers and interviews didn't appear on my radar until sites like Den of Geek wrote about them in the context of the general mess that the JC marketing became. If I wasn't noticing this stuff then who the hell else would be?

Compare and contrast with other recent, and less good (for my money), Disney offerings like Pirates of the Caribbean 2-4. I literally lost count of the number of adverts of various types I saw for POTC4. And that was a well established franchise with a well established fan base that, frankly, would probably have done fine without any advertising at all.

Part of me wonders whether Disney is prepared to take the hit on John Carter because it knows it will surely make the loss back with its share of mega franchise The Avengers which is out later this spring (and which I know all about thanks to some decent marketing). If that's true I'm even more annoyed.

Anyway, if you get the chance do go and see John Carter. As I said it's a good film that deserves to find an audience - and really is worth seeing on the big screen. I especially recommend it if you're a fan(girl) of Dominic West and/or James Purefoy both of whom are scene stealingly excellent in it. And half naked. I may have mentioned that already.

*This is an in joke for Disney World fans. If you don't get it then you clearly need to visit WDW, stat.

Awesome thing of the day: Dominic West on Googling himself

First off, 'Googling himself' is not a euphemism. Although, this post would be a billion times more awesome if it were...

Sorry, I'll stop that.

The Telegraph's Tom Chivers has the story (reporting comments from a Radio Times interview, to be fair):

"Obviously I loved Dominic West with a confusing passion already, but today he has made the breakthrough into all-time hero. The Old Etonian and erstwhile star of The Wire has cheerfully confessed in this morning's paper that he regularly Googles himself. Better still, he often gets involved in the comments on the articles he finds, as well: 'I like to have chats about myself with people – mainly putting forward the case for the defence in forums. I use my own name but nobody ever believes me.'"

There's nothing confusing about my passion for Dominic West (I'm doing it again. Sorry.) but I do love this story. As Chivers goes on to say:

"It's brilliant; I love the image of Jimmy McNulty tapping away one-fingered at the tired old BPD computer, truculently seeking a row on Holy Moly about his acting skills: "What the f**k did I do? If you don't like the Brechtian method, that's your problem, pal." It's pleasing to hear someone in the public eye say this without going on about how Googling yourself is narcissistic, or getting involved in online discussions is lonely and sad....But best of all it's West's sense of humour about the whole thing. Compare it to Reese Witherspoon on a similar topic: “Only in very, very dark moments – moments of pure self-loathing – do I type my name into Google. You never read anything positive. You’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re tired, you’re worthless, you don’t have a career any more, you’re a bad actor. It’s just an affirmation of every horrible feeling you have about yourself.” Well, if you seek out the horrible stuff, obviously, although I bet that Ms Witherspoon will find plenty of things calling her talented and beautiful as well, if she looks. But Dominic West knows what to do: you go and find the people who've called you a fat talentless hack, and you argue with them about it. "I may be talentless, but I am NOT FAT." It requires a thick skin, and can take up too much of your day, and it may be rather different for global celebrities than obscure bloggers on newspaper websites, but it's good fun."

Admit it: we've all done this. If you put my (real) name into Google, the top results are an American model and actress and a Guardian journalist. I know which one I'd rather be (hint: it's not the Guardian journalist). Google's autocorrect feature suggests I might be a volleyball player at Stanford University (I still prefer this to working for The Guardian).

Incidentally, if you happen upon a copy of the Radio Times - or can read it off the rack like I did - it's worth reading West's interview in full. It's very funny - and reassuring to find out that even he isn't immune to the questionable charms of Extreme Makeover. I also fell (a bit more) in love with him owing to the number of times 'I was drunk and this happened' appears as part of an answer. There are few things I find sexier than a posh boy with a bit of an edge. (And I've given up booze for lent so frankly anyone talking about/partaking in alcohol is an instant object of lust for me at the moment.)

I'm also enjoying the irony of blogging a story about someone Googling themselves that I found through a Google Alert about that person. I win at the internet.