Lovely lovely television

[slemslempike]

I watched an episode of Ruby and the Rockits because it keeps being advertised during Make It Or Break It, and they had a father-daughter dance. Is that something that actually happens in America?? It was INCREDIBLY creepy. It wasn't just a school dance where girls brought their fathers, but a dance where the girls took it in turns to dance soppy formal dances ONE AT A TIME with their fathers in a sort of spotlight while everyone else watched. It was not a good show.

Better Off Ted finished, and I am sad - I love Portia di Rossi, and her management through hairstyle and slapping people and being generally awesome. Ted is less dull than he was, and I love the two scientist guys too. Veridian is so very creepy. Make it or Break it is also finished up (though I have not yet seen the final episode PLEASE DON'T SPOIL ME) and it is some of the most awesome television I've ever seen. I like the relationships between all the girls, it would be nice if they stopped trying to make us like the boys, but whatever happens most of the time there is some brilliant gymnastics going on in the background. Someone's concerned about their personal life, and behind them WHOOSH round the bars and FLIP on the beam and shiny glittery leotards everywhere.

I missed Psych resuming over the summer and now I'm catching up on that, and liking it all even more for the break. They should just leave the whole Shaun/Juliet thing, because it has always been dull and now it is irritating. Lassiter's great, and Cary Elwes was in the first episode! Dread Pirate Roberts is a suave art thief. I am also catching up with Nurse Jackie which I missed the final episodes for. Unfortunately I can't find 7 and 8 for download at the moment so I'm had to skip some. I think Zoe is lovely, with her panda earrings and her childish tops.

I am looking forward to the return of 30 Rock, The Big Bang Theory and The New Adventures of Old Christine. I am also really interested in the Seinfeld cast on Curb Your Enthusiasm, though I've not watched the last few series of that. I am less excited about How I Met Your Mother because I think the last two series have had a serious drop in quality, but I'll probably still watch it. A show needs to be very poor indeed before I stop watching it.

I watch Spicks and Specks even though it still infuriates me that they buzz in first and THEN think of the answer. Also The Librarians from Australia, about a weird power-hungry librarian and her long-suffering (and also weird) staff at the library. Jen has been making a list of people from Home and Away and Neighbours who show up in Prisoner [Cell Block H], and Cody showed up in an epsiode of The Librarians! CODY! Mysteriously not dead of an unlikely drive-by drug dealer shooting in a cul-de-sac, but just her same face and voice.

I watched the first episode of The Byrne Ultimatum, a panel quiz show, even though I am not overly enamoured with Jason Byrne. I really liked it! This is despite really rather disliking John Bishop and never having heard of the other panellists, but the silliness of the rounds and the fact that Jason Byrne was in charge and thus not having to desperately interrupt everyone else in order to draw attention to himself more than made up for it. The Panel is coming back too, mysteriously not cancelled after all, though the last series was really not great and suffered from a hignfyish over-reliance on youtube clips.

Peep Show is back. I wasn't overly impressed with the first episode of this series (though it was pleasantly free of jokes about having raped a teenage boy), And In the Thick of It starts again quite soon, so I must watch the specials before that happens. I liked In the Loop an awful lot, and in the next series of ITTOT one of my friends' names will be used on the phone, apparently. I sort of quite like Off the Hook mostly because Jay-from-the-Inbetweeners is not playing the same character which I had imagined he would. I sometimes quite like Rob Brydon on Would I Lie to You and sometimes he is very wearing, but David Mitchell and Lee Mack are good together. Something called Trinity starts tonight and I think it might be just my kind of trash.

What else is going to be coming back? What's new that I don't know about especially in the US? What's oldish that I should find and see?

Comments

[gair.livejournal.com]

I really like Spicks and Specks! I watched it when I was in Australia this summer/southern winter, and it was on on Wednesday nights, where there was just like an hour and a half of telly programmes in a row about how great people are and how much fun they might have if they all hung out being nice to each other, not competing or being bitchy/cruel, and making jokes which were not about rape, race/racism, homophobia, ableism, etc. It made me very happy. And also! A girl team captain just as if it was normal for girls to know things about music! I never saw that on Never Mind the Buzzcocks (not that I watched it after the first couple of seasons, mind, and at that time I was going out with a muso boy who had SPECIAL BOY POWERS OF MUSIC KNOWLEDGE - the second in a row, I was really crap at choosing boy partners, hence my eventual fleeing into the Republic of Lesbitania - so he may have tainted it for me rather.)

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I find it really weird to watch as a spin-off of Never Mind the Buzzcocks, because they're so NICE to each other all the time. It can get a little dull over the series, because a lot of it is "tell us a story about yourself" and when there's 30 episodes of mildly amusing anecdotes I start to pine for a show where people are nasty and rude. Australian shows seem to have a female captain as a matter of course - Glasshouse did, Good News Week does, Spicks and Specks (okay, all three of the ones I know, but I think the Panel had a regular woman too), which is pretty cool. Have you seen What the Dickens, which has Sandi Toksvig hosting AND Sue Perkins as a team captain? Yay!