Tag Archives: TV

BBC comedy brings you Episodes {TV}

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BBC Two and Hat Trick have created ‘Episodes’ a seven-part comedy series from the highly acclaimed writing partnership of David Crane (Friends) and Jeffrey Klarik (Mad About You).

The show tells the story of a happily married English couple, Sean and Beverly Lincoln, who also happen to be successful producers of a hit British TV show called Lyman’s Boys.

At an awards ceremony in London they are wooed by a hugely powerful and charismatic US network executive who persuades them to move out to LA and remake their hit show for an American audience – with disastrous results.

Things begin to unravel at Sean’s and Beverly’s first studio meeting. It soon becomes clear that the network president has never even seen their show. To make matters worse, he insists they replace their lead actor, an erudite Royal Shakespeare Company veteran (played by Richard Griffiths) with… Matt LeBlanc. Sean and Beverly are appalled. But the decision is out of their hands.

Matt comes on board and they find themselves in a complicated triangle, which threatens to destroy not just their TV show but also their marriage.

The quintessential US comedy star Matt LeBlanc plays a larger than life version of himself. Joining him are Tamsin Greig (Tamara Drewe, Green Wing, Love Soup), Stephen Mangan (Free Agents, Never Better, Green Wing), Kathleen Rose Perkins (Without A Trace, Tell Me You Love Me), Mircea Monroe (Scrubs, Without A Trace), Daisy Haggard (Psychoville, Sense And Sensibility) and Richard Griffiths (The History Boys, Withnail And I).

Jimmy Mulville comments: “These are some of the best scripts I’ve read in a long time by two writers at the top of their game.

“To have the opportunity to make a show with David Crane andJeffrey Klarik, with Matt LeBlanc playing a hilarious version of himself, and then to make that show for both Showtime and the BBC, whose combined portfolios of comedy are second to none, is both a thrill and a great privilege. Episodes promises to be one of the great comedy treats of 2011.”

Matt LeBlanc adds: “This is a great idea from David and Jeffrey – I love it. I am really excited to be working with Showtime and the BBC. And I am also so glad I got the part; seeing someone else playing Matt LeBlanc would have been devastating.”

Start watching Episodes from Monday 10 January 2011 at 10pm.

Take a Peek at BBC's Christmas {TV}

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Take a look at some of the highlights of the BBC’s bumper selection of festive TV fare with our Christmas showreel.

Among the great clips watch the hair-raising moment when the Top Gear presenters realise which country they have landed in and what lies ahead; see Matt Smith as the ghost of Christmas past in Doctor Who – A Christmas Carol, laugh as the Royle’s prepare for Christmas day in The Royle Family and see some of the drama that lies aheads for the residents of Albert Square in EastEnders and take a look at a selection of Matt Lucas and David Walliams‘ latest comic creations from their new show Come Fly With Me.

Entertainment
Featuring impressive entertainment from Top Gear Special, Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special, Giles And Sue Live The Good Life, The Rob Brydon Show and Jools’ Annual Hootenanny.

Drama
Featuring stunning drama from Doctor Who – A Christmas Carol, Whistle And I’ll Come To You, Upstairs Downstairs, Toast, Eric And Ernie and EastEnders.

Get addicted to Pretty Little Liars {TV}

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There’s a new TV show to get addicted to and it’s just started on VIVA! The nail-biting guilty pleasure of a drama that is Pretty Little Liars is about four teenagers with a BIG secret. When Queen Bee Alison disappears, her four friends believe their secrets are safe forever. It’s never that simple in the world of a teenage TV drama as they soon find out. A year later their lives are turned upside down when they start to receive threatening text messages and it seems somebody out there knows the truth…
Set one year after the disappearance of Alison, the manipulative and vindictive queen bee, the drama revolves around four 16-year-old girlfriends — Aria, Spencer, Hanna and Emily – who have lost touch since Alison went missing. Linked by their former bond and the terror the enigmatic text messages cause, the friends are suddenly reunited. Each of them has their own secrets, secrets they don’t want anyone to know…

Filled with mystery, scandal, intrigue and suspense, Pretty Little Liars stars Trojan Bellisario (Quantum Leap, JAG), Ashley Benson (Eastwick, Bring It On: In It to Win It), Lucy Hale (Privileged, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2), Shay Mitchell (Rookie Blue) and Sasha Pieterse (Without a Trace).

Like Desperate Housewives meets Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars is set to be the next big thing, tune into VIVA! Thursdays at 8pm


Poirot Halloween Special Preview {TV}

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Halloween’s as much about guilty little treats as it is about undead souls. This Halloweens treat is a special episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. Possibly the most dark and sinister Poirot yet starts out with a children’s Halloween party complete with witches, eerie music, jack o lanterns, fire a haunting game of snap dragon and of course a death. Add into the mix a cast of suspicious characters and an un co-operative police officer in a rural setting and you tada, one classic who dunnit.

Award winning actress Zoë Wanamaker makes a welcome return, alongside David Suchet, as Ariadne Oliver in Hallowe’en Party.

Adapted by actor, screenwriter and novelist, Mark Gatiss, Hallowe’en Party also stars Amelia Bullmore, Deborah Findlay , Georgia King, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Sophie Thompson, Paul Thornley, Eric Sykes, Fenella Woolgar and Timothy West.

When Ariadne Oliver attends a children’s Hallow e’en party in Woodleigh Common with her friend Judith, a young girl boasts of having witnessed a murder years before. Later that evening, the girl, Joyce Reynolds is found dead, drowned in an apple-bobbing bucket in the library. It appears that any one of the guests could have slipped out in the dark during a game of Snapdragon and murdered her.

At the request of Ariadne, Hercule Poirot arrives at Woodleigh Common to investigate the murder. Though Joyce was dismissed as a fantasist, Poirot is convinced her story has some truth to it. When he seeks out the local gossip, he discovers that there have been a number of suspicious deaths in the village in recent years which Joyce could have witnessed. But while Poirot pieces together the facts, another child is found murdered. Could a forged codicil, a missing au pair and a secret love affair be the key to solving the crime?

Watch the Poirot Halloween Special in ITV1 at 8pm on Wednesday 27th October.

BBC turns back the clock on high street stores {TV}

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High streets across the UK are going back in time this autumn as part of an exciting new BBC Learning Hands On History project and landmark BBC One series.

Across weekends in October, November and December, an empty shop in 11 different towns will be transformed into a Thirties grocer store, giving today’s shoppers the chance to travel back in time and experience living history.

The project, which is set to visit Armagh, Bradford, Chatham, Clacton, Louth, Paisley, Poole, Stockport, Sunderland, Truro and Wolverhampton, will give communities the chance to learn more about their local history in a fun, exciting and hands-on way.

Visitors will be able to touch, hear and even smell what life was like on their local high street around 80 years ago, as well as share their own memories, photographs and mementoes.

With the help of local history groups, museums and archives the BBC Learning team aims to explore the past of other shops in the towns using documents such as posters, ads, bills and letters, all helping to create a high street time line.

Communities can also help create a photographic “Now and Then” archive of their area with the project’s dedicated Flickr group, or download a special guide to researching the history of their high street at the BBC History website.

The shops are part of the new six-part BBC One series Turn Back Time – The High Street, which takes four empty shops back to the 1870s and propels them through 100 years of change.

Turn Back Time will see a group of shopkeeping families from a variety of trades travel back in time where they’ll face the challenge of living and working in six very different eras of British history, from Victorian Britain right through to the Seventies, all recreated in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. Turn Back Time starts in November.

And to bring the High Street history strand right up to date, BBC English Regions TV current affairs series Inside Out will be examining how our modern day High Streets are coping with the challenging economic climate across each of its 11 regional programmes. The films will be broadcast on BBC One across England in early December.

Launching the Turn Back Time shops, BBC Learning campaign executive Nina Bell said: “This is a fantastic opportunity to bring history alive and give everyone a chance to celebrate their high street. And it’s not just about the high streets with pop-up shops – BBC Learning is working with local history partners right across the UK to develop engaging, hands-on events to bring the history of their local area to life and encourage Britain to fall in love with its high streets again. You can find all the details on our website at bbc.co.uk/history/handsonhistory.”

X Factor and BGT here at least until 2013 {TV}

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ITV has signed a new, three-year deal with The X Factor & Britain’s Got Talent, keeping Simon Cowell in work for at least another 3 years.

As part of this renewed collaboration with Syco Entertainment and FremantleMedia, the broadcaster has also secured exclusive UK broadcast rights to the American version of The X Factor and America’s Got Talent for ITV2.

Simon Cowell said: “I am thrilled this deal has been concluded with ITV to enable our relationship to continue to develop. I am committed to making sure both shows get bigger and better every year. I have a lot to thank ITV for; they have been key in making The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent the UK’s biggest television shows.”  

The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent are the UK’s most popular entertainment television programmes on any channel.  The two shows provided the most watched television moments of 2009 with peak audiences of 19.3 million for The X Factor final and 19.9 million for the Britain’s Got Talent Final.
This year’s seventh series of The X Factor has been the most popular ever with viewing figures across every stage reaching record levels. Almost 17 million watched the second Judges’ houses show, and yesterday’s second live results show peaked at an enormous 15.2 million; the highest ever at this stage of the competition.
Online, ITV.com/TheXFactor attracted over 95 million page views during the 2009 series with over 30 million video views across the run.

Wallace & Gromit want your inventions{TV}

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To launch the brand new BBC One series, Wallace And Gromit’s World Of Invention, world-renowned inventor Wallace and his ever faithful sidekick, Gromit, are asking the UK to get inventing.

From their self-built basement television studio in 62 West Wallaby Street, the inimitable pair are trying to track down Britain’s best amateur invention. Wallace and Gromit are asking enthusiastic kids and crackpot inventors to invent their very best contraption. The winner – chosen by a panel of judges, led by Nick Park – will be given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have themselves or their invention immortalised in a future Aardman production.

To celebrate Wallace and Gromit’s debut as TV presenters, BBC One are unveiling a website and nationwide series of regional roadshows, that hope to get Britain inventing. In their brand new BBC One series the inimitable pair present a factual series for the very first time, uncovering the quirky, inspiring and accident-prone world of inventions.

But not everyone is as expert an inventor as Wallace, so the pair are planning to kickstart the UK’s inventive spirit through a series of regional inventors roadshows that will provide the tools and motivation needed to root out the inventor in all of us.

Nick Park, Oscar-winning creator of Wallace and Gromit, said: “It is an enormous honour for Wallace and Gromit to be asked to take up the torch (all be it solar powered) and shine it on the world’s top and most innovative inventors.”

Create your own cracking contraption:

Wensleydale-loving inventor Wallace knows just how powerful a great idea combined with only a little bit of engineering know-how can be. So, inspired by his favourite contraption, LAD, Wallace is asking the British public to unleash their inner inventor and create their own device. He’s asking budding inventors (complete novices included) to design and build their most inventive contraption, made entirely from bits and pieces around the home. It could be something that wakes up Wallace, helps Gromit complete his household chores or moves one (or both of them!) from A to B – anything goes, as long as it meets the judges’ criteria, which are available online.

Anyone can enter – individuals, teams of friends or even entire school classes. Entrants need to record a short video (maximum three minutes) of their creation, and upload it onto the BBC’s Wallace And Gromit website.

For full details, including judging criteria and terms and conditions, visit bbc.co.uk/wallaceandgromit.

Inspiring invention

The BBC have teamed up with Aardman Animations to create an exciting new roadshow event to accompany the new BBC One series Wallace and Gromit’s World Of Invention. Inspired by Wallace’s love of inventing, the BBC Learning roadshows will give budding inventors the opportunity to step into the world of Wallace and Gromit.

The tour will visit six UK shopping centres throughout November and December 2010 and will be open to the public on both Saturday and Sunday.

The roadshows will be accompanied by an entire Wallace and Gromit world online. To find out more about the secrets of invention, play in Wallace’s Workshop and find out more about the regional roadshows, visit bbc.co.uk/wallaceandgromit.

The Tardis Crash Lands in America for Doctor Who {TV}

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The BBC have announced that series six of Doctor Who will kick off with a two-parter set in the US “penned by “Who supremo” Steven Moffat.”

In the special two-parter co-produced with BBC America, key scenes will be filmed in Utah for a story set in the late Sixties in which the Doctor, Amy and Rory find themselves on a secret summons that takes them on an adventure from the desert in Utah right to the Oval Office.

Shooting for the scenes in America will start in mid-November Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill will be joined by Alex Kingston who reprises her role as River Song.

“The Doctor has visited every weird and wonderful planet you can imagine, so he was bound get round to America eventually! And of course every Doctor Who fan will be jumping up and down and saying he’s been in America before. But not for real, not on location – and not with a story like this one! Oh, you wait!” – Steven Moffat

The new series follows on from the Doctor Who Christmas Special guest starring Katherine Jenkins and Michael Gambon which is due to broadcast on Christmas Day. Series six will start airing on BBC One in spring 2011 and the second half of the series in autumn 2011.