Paul's journal

Summer TV is providing a chance to see a few new shows and I've liked the ones I've watched.

I've watched the first two episodes of Sleeper Cell which I found quite engrossing. It's like 24 but at more lesuirely pace and without all the tech-porn.

The pilot of The Big Bang Theory had some good laughs (although the laugh track needs to be toned down a few levels). It's very traditional but easy to watch.

30 Rock started off good too and looks quite promising. Tina Fey is quite adorable to watch.

The show that is a stand out so far is Gossip Girl. I really enjoyed the first episode, much more than I feel I should have enjoyed a new teen drama.

I'm also looking forward to watching Journeyman tomorrow.

Channel Seven and Channel Ten's great plan to stop people downloading TV shows by fast tracking them has come to a screeching halt with the end of ratings.

Never mind that there are some episodes that haven't been shown in the US or will be shown in the next week or two. Our ratings have finished and so have the fast tracked shows.

This is particularly bad timing with the writers' strike shutting down production on shows and leading to probable shortened seasons.

For instance Heroes finishes tonight two short of the end of the episodes airing in the US (and possibly the end of a shortened series two). How much of a hurry will Seven be in to show two orphaned episodes of a series? Will Channel Ten show one random episode of House amongst a lot of repeats? Actually given how they stretched out season three of House with repeats, Ten probably would.

What these networks have actually done is force us fans to download the shows. I would have waited until next Feb/Mar for the current season of House and Heroes to be shown but I don't want to now wait for some vague point in the future where these last '07 episodes air.

I watched House's finale last night (so I know who Dr House hired) and will watch Channel 7's episode of Heroes tonight and follow it with the episode shown in the US this week.

Love this, from Comic Relief:

At the start of the week it felt like this week was going to go forever. But, even with a bit of sickness, it feels like it went pretty fast. We had a goodbye lunch today that I felt a bit flat at but it was followed by farewell drinks which went much better. I was louder than usual, helped by the people and the acoustics in the "nightclub" (I prefer calling it "diary room" but I don't think that will catch on).

It's got really hot too. This weekend would have been a nice one to head down to the island but I haven't planned well enough. I did some shopping tonight, watched an excellent episode of The Office and despite the heat feel like catching up on some sleep with an early night. I slept in a bit this morning so I think I could use a few good zzzs.

I need a new Work icon too, the one above is very, very old.

They promoted tonight's House as being shown directly after it aired in the US (well the day after anyway). What I found interesting was that the opening credit's tonight had the American theme music (Teardrop by Massive Attack) unlike the sound-alike music the International version usually has.

After burning through our download limit too quickly last month my sister and I upgraded the plan. And we've already used it all up.

Dial up Internet is painful. I usually have windows open all over the place but I'm having to narrow my focus to one thing at a time.

The only reason we go through so much bandwidth is television downloads. Hour long episodes of The Office and the MTV broadcast of Legally Blonde the musical haven't helped this month.

What's worse is there is still two weeks until the Net speeds up again. I wonder if there's a truly unlimited download plan out there somewhere?

Poor DB Woodside. Last season he was an almost assassinated President of the United States. This season he's a bodyguard/assistant to a Casino owner.

I waited. I've been tempted but I've waited and finally the wait has paid off. Completed Arrested Development available in November. Anybody wanting a Christmas gift idea for me, look there.

After the slowest download ever, I finally got to see the premiere of the next series of the Office. Very funny ("blink twice for no") but my favourite part: the holding hands. *Swoons*.

I watched the first episode of Bionic Woman tonight just a week or so after reading a few opinions of it online. I tend to agree with most of the reviews and am in no hurry to keep watching.

The networks trying this fasttrack thing with new shows run a risk of picking shows that might flop. It happened with Jericho last year and could easily happen again.

Yet again I get my hair cut and I fall sick. I woke up feeling a bit off and by the time I got to work my nose was running and it continued to all day, plus with added sneezes.

I left work early, and might have left earlier but I wanted to see our new website delivered safely into the world wide web.

This time around the cold wasn't as bad, and it shouldn't have been since I just had one a month ago. I was a bit wasted Friday night and had a a bit of a chill on Saturday, but by today I'm mostly fully functional.

My plans to go shopping and to go to the movies were postponed, but I could catch up on the Deadwood DVDs, and have now started series two.

I was hoping to watch The Office tonight but the download is still going. Since we hit our monthly quota every thing's dropped down to a crawl

I did venture out today and got some containers I wanted to help organise my room a bit, and it is helping, but I really need more room.

I hired the first two discs of Deadwood from the video shop and am now four episodes in. I am loving this show much more than I thought I would. It's great. There's so little on TV at the moment to watch so this is a great find for me.

A little disappointed after my successful email flirting on Monday for there to be an empty inbox the next two days. Oh well, I'm going to keep moving on. Work's really busy afterall which is a good (if not complete) distraction. Hopefully the new site will be up by early next week. There's a few new faces in the office, and of course they are women (sigh!). Didn't feel much like the gym tonight but went and am now exhausted. Had wobbly legs when I got off the bike! Watched the remaining half of the Emmys but not much worth watching in that part that I hadn't already seen on Monday.

We downloaded the first half of the full Emmy telecast tonight. There was quite a bit that really wasn't a shame they skipped. There was some really bad jokes and banter. There was simply embarrassing moments such as when Judy Davies wasn't there to pick up her win and the hosts didn't know what to do. At least when this happened with Ricky Gervais Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Steve Carrell made it one of the only highlights of the show.

Instead of the full Emmys we got a cut down version tonight. All the big awards where there but a lot was cut out. For some reason a performance by the Jersey Boys made the cut. The round arena didn't work very well. Apparently we got to see the three moments censored by Fox - you can't say screwing or god damned or mouth the word shit (although they were a little slow on the last one). Channel 10, which showed it, was reaching to find one of their shows that was a winner and could only find "Channel 10's The Office won best writing".

The weekend?

Well it started on Friday night with me seeing Hairspray. I didn't love it or hate it. I feel a bit indifferent about it. I've seen a lot of musicals this year, and although this was fun it felt a bit fluffy despite the themes. I would like to the see the original movie now.

I bought the soundtrack last week prior to seeing the film and the soundtrack is better. On the big screen the music seemed to drown out the lyrics more. It it's impossible not to dance when listening to "You Can't Stop The Beat".

Saturday I went and picked up a secondhand Beta VCR. I started ripping the old tapes to DVD and at long last got to rewatch Come Midnight Monday. It's just as I remembered and holds up well. One thing that keeps rocking me is seeing the teenage bully smoking nearly every time he's onscreen, something that wouldn't happen in a children's show nowadays. I've got four and a half of the episodes and I think the missing one and the start of the other are waiting to be found on another tape.

This morning after watching a fighter jet do laps before the racing started a few suburbs overs, I went to the new video shop. Their TV range is really good. I planned to borrow Deadwood series one but they were missing one of the four discs so I decided to wait (since to hire them at 95 cents per disc you have to hire a minimum of three).

The power went out for about 20 minutes before tea. That fierce wind that's been blowing all day must have finally knocked something into a power pole.

The Channel 10 and ABC schedules are a little out of synch so the ABC showed Captain Jack reuniting with the Doctor several days before he left Torchwood to do just that. I taped both episodes so I could watch them in the intended order.

I liked the Torchwood finale but who are they going to cover up such a big death count, and such a big bad? The ghostly appearances reminded me of The First - but why did nobody raise that they were seeing these? This team needs to work on their communication. Definitely one of the better Torchwood episodes.

But then came Utopia which was an amazing episode of Doctor Who. I much prefer Captain Jack when he's allowed to have fun and not be in charge. There were some explanations of Jack's background too which felt a little more appropriate for Torchwood - and which led to me having to explain to my sister what was going on since she'd never seen the Ninth Doctor/Rose/Jack episodes.

The general crisis was pretty interesting but it was all slight of hand for the set up of the two part finale and one fantastic cliffhanger. Good thing is there's less than a week wait now for the next part.

On a nitpick, it looked like the TARDIS appeared inside Torchwood on that show not above it. I suppose if it's six months in between those two scenes, rather than sixty seconds, you might not notice.

Channel Ten is only showing an hour and a half of Emmy highlights next Monday night. Foxtel have got an exclusive rights to them and the Golden Globes. I (since recently) have Foxtel but not the Bio Channel so I miss out. Not really happy about that but also not ready to download such a long show either.

I've been watching a bit of Ellen DeGeneres on Foxtel.

Tonight's episode was the fifth season premiere and she had Hilary Clinton on and it was a pretty good interview. Ellen even asked the hard question of her about being for civil unions but against gay marriage.

But I what really shocked when Ellen told the audience that she's turning 50! I would never have guessed she was that old.

This was some unsuspected gossip from this week's Lying in the Gutters. I'll be watching this:

Buffy Spin-Off Ripper Finally Happening
http://www.filmick.co.uk/2007/08/buffy-spin-off-ripper-finally-happening.html

"This weekend, Anthony Stuart head has been attending the Collectormania Glasgow event. Several film ick eyes and ears were present, as well as some pushy film ick fingers and flapping film ick tongues. What was the best bit of news we found out?

That according to Anthony Stuart Head, the Ripper series is finally going into production. He's expecting the shoot to take place next summer, if everything goes to plan. And, yes, Joss Whedon is behind the wheel.

Ripper was originally proposed some years ago as a BBC co-production while Buffy was still at The WB. It's to be set in the UK and Anthony Stuart Head is to lead a line-up of new characters, much the way Angel did when he went to LA.

Good to hear that the Buffyverse is coming back to TV, even if legal issues might keep even little cameos from some favourite characters well out of the frame."