The Village in the Prisoner remake

I had not noticed until reading a post on SFX that the trailer for the new Prisoner features a brief image of The Village. It occurs about four seconds in and I have done a screen shot (above). I earlier speculated about Swapokmund vs. Portmeirion and it seems likely that the success of the remake will depend largely on how good the new Village looks. From this, and from other pictures of Swapokmund, it reminds me more of the Truman Show's Seaside location in Florida than Portmeirion. Perhaps that will work well in the new version; I am looking forward to finding out. Incidentally, that SFX post also makes the excellent point that the trailer looks a bit underwhelming to those who have recently seen the Doctor Who Easter special "Planet of the Dead", which also has a double decker bus and a desert. But this trailer was clearly made for American TV, and only naughty people here in the US have seen "Planet of the Dead". Perhaps ITV will be well advised to construct a slightly different promo for use in the UK.

The Prisoner: first trailer for the new version

A short (fifteen second) trailer has been released for the new version of The Prisoner, which is to premiere later this year. The trailer appears on AMC's website, and it appeared before that on American television on Sunday. The voice on the trailer is American, so it looks like the remake will be on in America, at least, in November. It will be interesting to see if ITV in the UK gets it at the same time.

The Prisoner Promo


I particularly like Ian McKellen saying "Be Seeing You" in a menacing way at the end -- very promising.

(HT: Den of Geek, The Unmutual, AMC Prisoner site).

Doctor Who back in America -- at last

News broke last night, in Variety (reported by Radio Free Scaro) that the five Doctor Who specials are finally scheduled to air in America, and that they will premiere on BBC America. There had been some frustration among American Doctor Who fans about the wait for these new episodes, the first of which, "The Next Doctor", aired in the UK on Christmas day and the second of which, "Planet of the Dead" aired on the day before Easter. My friend Chip, of the Two Minute Timelord podcast, has been vocal in his criticism of the failure of the US TV companies to pick up (the first two of) these five specials in a timely fashion, not least because it effectively encourages the fans to access them "by other means". He first commented in Planet of the Delayed and then guested on the Whocast 118 in the first of two programmes they devoted to gathering the assembled hordes of Doctor Who podcasts to get their impressions on the lack of Who in America, continuing with Whocast 119.

I share the frustration of other Doctor Who fans in America.  The technology is available to broadcast things in close proximity in different regions, and this is now the norm with films, which often premiere on the same day in the US and the UK.  One of the difficulties, I think, with the scheduling and marketing of Doctor Who in America is that the habits and traditions of American TV viewing are quite different from those of British TV viewing. In the UK, there is an old tradition, which people like me grew up with, of Saturday night family viewing, when everyone gathers around the telly.  My Saturday evening as a child began with Basil Brush, went on with Doctor Who and continued with The Generation Game and The Two Ronnies.  Saturday night was the big night for TV and everyone I knew was watching.  I don't know that there has ever been a tradition like this in the US, though it may just be that I am ignorant.  One of the great things about new Who is that it recaptured the Saturday night family-viewing slot, with anything between 6 and 10 million viewers, but there is no equivalent family viewing Saturday night slot in the US, and the US cable companies have struggled to know quite where to schedule it.  Sci-Fi channel, who have been the first to air each of the recent series, from 2005 to the present, settled on the Friday night geek slot, about 8pm, just before Battlestar Galactica.  But this already nudges Doctor Who towards a particular niche audience, people like me, 30-40 something family types who might be in on a Friday night, and it does not target Doctor Who's natural family audience.

There is a related problem when it comes to what they call event TV.  The biggest TV audiences in the US now gather for Superbowl Sunday.  In contrast to the UK, the major holidays do not provide opportunities for major new TV drama.  Whereas in the UK, Christmas Day TV is some of the best TV of the year, in America there is little new programming and only repeats and films.  This explains, in part, the problem that Who has found in getting its five "specials" scheduled.  There is no special TV Christmas tradition into which a Doctor Who Christmas special like "The Next Doctor" could be slotted.  Still more so with Easter.  "Planet of the Dead", the second of the specials, got an excellent audience in the UK on the Saturday before Easter, but this kind of scheduling would make no sense in the US where there is no similar tradition of Easter TV.

From my limited experience of American TV in the four years we have lived here, it seems that a lot is invested in gaining momentum.  A series is given a particular, regular slot and there are tons of episodes (21 to 24)  stretched across the key season time of September to April.  It is difficult enough to strecth a Doctor Who series of 13 or 14 episodes into this schedule, but still worse to fit in five "specials" separated by months.  

What I think is happening, however, is a steady, slight reawakening of interest in Who in America.  SciFi were getting a million or so viewers for the new episodes in series 4, and the series has then popped up on BBC America, and then PBS channels.  If the rumours of an American film ever come to anything, I supsect that there is an audience out there who could be interested -- many remember the PBS showings of the classic series  in the 1970s and 1980s, and several of the SciFi fans are already enjoying the new series.  

There is just one thing I really want to beg from BBC America as they premiere the new specials.  Please don't cut them!  Last year, Voyage of the Damned, the 2007 Christmas special, was massacred on its BBC America outing, with more than 20 minutes cut, including the Murray Gold song, "Stowaway".   SciFi were often the  same -- material trimmed here and there in order to squeeze it into an American TV hour.  I think viewers won't mind to have scheduling outside of the hour in order that they can see the whole episode.

Hitler's opinion on the new Star Trek film

I enjoyed this Youtube clip (courtesy of an anonymous commenter on The Busybody):



(Alternative rant here). I am pleased to find myself on the other side to Hitler. I have seen the film twice so far and loved it and even phoned in to the CIA Podcast for the first time to enthuse about it a couple of weeks ago (ep. 98). The film reminds me of the way that new Doctor Who manages to reboot the franchise while at the same time embracing and celebrating the past. Now our kids like Star Trek and Doctor Who, and we can enjoy them with them. Happy day! (Getting their interest in classic Trek and classic Who is not quite so easy, however).

The subtitled Hitler rant above is a good effort but it is not quite as good as the piece on the finale of Torchwood Series 2, which I blogged last year. Here is that piece again, now relocated. Warning: strong language and Torchwood spoilers:


Watch Torchwood Series 2 Finale Upsets Even Hitler in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

My favourite screensaver ever -- BBC 1980s Clock

I have been getting a ridiculous amount of pleasure out if this simple screensaver on the BBC Ashes to Ashes website.  It is a working BBC1 clock of the kind you would see between programmes back in the early 1980s.  In other words, it is a nice piece of nostalgia for those of us who were in our teens back then.  There is something about being a British expat that makes it all the more enjoyable, with distance as well as time separating us from Auntie.

Trucks and Lorries

In three years of reading the excellent Separated by a Common Language, I have never been able to fault it for the accuracy of its discussions of British English (BrE) vs. American English (AmE), speaking as someone who straddles both of those worlds.  Once again, Lynne is spot on in her discussion today of the issue of Trucks and Lorries.  There is one slight complication not mentioned by Lynne, though, which is that the word "truck" and "lorry" are interchangeable in BrE, perhaps because of creeping Americanization.  This is no recent thing.  One of the most famous Not the Nine O'Clock News sketches was all about "trucking", though the choice of word was no doubt influenced not so much by the fact that there is no verb "to lorry" as by the fact that "trucking" rhymes with something you could not say on the BBC in 1980, even after nine o'clock:

"Wunch"

While listening to Simon Mayo the other day, there was a nice moment when he became a bit concerned that the person who had called in was going to be rude about the bankers. The person on the phone says, "No, I'll just call them a 'wunch'." Mayo did not know what he meant and cautiously asked him to repeat it. "Wunch," the caller replied. "A wunch of bankers". A google search confirms that the word has been around for a while, and even finds its way into the Urban Dictionary.