MR SELFRIDGE GETS A SECOND SERIES

In the middle of its 10-episode run, Mr Selfridge is commissioned by ITV for a second series following its more than deserved rating success.

Press release here:

http://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/mr-selfridge-commissioned-another-series

See:

http://tattard2.blogspot.fr/2013/01/mr-selfridge-itv1.html

THE DOCTOR BLAKE MYSTERIES (ABC1)

Australians do top-notch dramas. Ask US network Fox, who wants to remake Rake. The first series of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries attracted a lot of attention and was bought by French pubcaster France 3 for its "Sunday Sleuth Slot".

Both shows are aired in Australia on ABC1 and the channel's latest effort, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, premiered this week.

This new 10 X 60-minute detective drama stars Craig McLachlan (best known here for his role in Bugs) as Dr Lucien Blake, who returns home to Ballarat in 1959 after a long absence to take over his deceased father's general medical practice. As the local police surgeon Lucien sometimes investigates mysterious deaths, but he is a man of mystery and secrets himself. Actually Blake hides his own pains behind a dose of anticonformism - but not only.

« You really don't need to hide all of these, you know.
- There aren't many consolations in life, Jean. Good whisky happens to be one of the few.
- There's rather a lot of consolation here. »

Other regulars of The Doctor Blake Mysteries are Nadine Garner (City Homicide) as Jean Beazley, Lucien's housekeeper and receptionist. Rick Donald (Underbelly) as young copper Constable Daniel Parks, Jean's nephew. Joel Tobeck (This Is Not My Life) as Chief Superintendent Matthew Lawson. And Cate Wolfe as Mattie O'Brien, the district nurse and a lodger at Dr Blake's house. In the opener, a girl from the local reform school is hit by a car and found later in the lake. Lucien Blake wants to know what really happened, and even swallows illicit pills to determine if they're amphetamines in order to prove his intuitions. What some eminent members of the Ballarat community find as hard to swallow is Lucien's tastes in art.

The Doctor Blake Mysteries is a creation of George Adams and Tony Wright (Mrs Biggs). It is produced by December Media and The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in association with ITV Studios Global Entertainment (also worldwide distributor) and Film Victoria Australia. George Adams produces, Tony Wright exec produces with Carole Sklan and Christopher Gist. The magnificent music is by Dale Cornelius and the superb title sequence is by The Kingdom of Ludd.

Written by Stuart Page (Neighbours) and directed by Andrew Prowse (Rush), Still Waters is a quite enjoyable premiere. Craig McLachlan is great and the cast is excellent. The Doctor Blake Mysteries is filmed on location in Ballarat. Splendid work from everyone involved.

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/doctorblake/
http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2013/01/the-serious-side-of-craig-mclachlan.html
http://www.dalecornelius.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVhfEKmwSWM (Interview with Dale Cornelius)
http://vimeo.com/channels/ludd
http://decembermedia.com.au/

MR SELFRIDGE (ITV1)

London, 1908. Agnes Towler, a young shop girl at Gamages department store loses her job for being helpful to a colourful American customer who said he was "just looking". This client is the flamboyant Chicago entrepreneur Harry Gordon Selfridge. 

One year later, Harry announces that he wants to open "the biggest and the best department store in the whole world" right at the dead end of Oxford Street. But his English partner suddenly pulls out of the project. Fortunately Selfridge meets journalist Frank Edwards, who introduces him to the alluring socialite Lady Mae Moxley and her connections.

ITV1, home of Downton Abbey, aired last sunday the premiere of its new big-budget period drama Mr Selfridge. This 10-episode series started a couple of months after the end of the similarly themed The Paradise on BBC One.  It was created by multi-award winning British writer Andrew Davies (Pride and Prejudice, House of Cards, etc.) based on the book Shopping, Seduction and Mr Selfridge by Lindy Woodhead - about the founder of the London-based Selfridges department store.

« We're giving them style, glamour, razzmatazz. Once they see what we have done here, there'll be no turning back. »

This 60-minute opener (minus adverts) is penned by Davies himself and directed by Jon Jones, who helmed Julian Fellowes's Titanic and Going Postal. It's an introduction to a Downton Abbey-esque ensemble of characters lead by the amazing Mr Selfridge, played by Jeremy Piven (Entourage). The American actor perfectly brings the required amount of exuberance and energy to the character without losing its complexity. Aisling Loftus (The Borrowers) plays Agnes Towler. Ron Cook is irresistible as Mr Crabb, Harry's loyal but anxious chief accountant. French actor Grégory Fitoussi (Spiral) is excellent as the creative director  Henri Leclair. Katherine Kelly (Coronation Street) is very good as Lady Mae. Amanda Abbington, Tom Goodman-Hill, Trystan Gravelle and Zoë Tapper (Survivors) are also amongst a great cast.

The lavish and epic grand opening has everything promised and promises even more. Although with 9 episodes left, writers Andrew Davies (also exec producer), Kate Brooke and Kate O'Riordan should better have good material as clients already visited the rival department store. Mr Selfridge is produced by ITV Studios and Masterpiece for ITV1 and distributed internationally by ITV Studios Global Entertainment. Chrissy Skinns (Marchlands) is the producer and Kate Lewis exec produces for ITV Studios. Charlie Mole is the composer (the theme music is brilliant). The superb title sequence was designed and directed by Hugo Moss for Huge Designs.

http://www.itv.com/presscentre/presspacks/mrselfridge/default.html
http://www.timeout.com/london/feature/3501/on-the-set-of-mr-selfridge
http://www.hugedesigns.co.uk/news

REZA BADIYI (1930-2011)

Legendary television director Reza S. Badiyi died saturday, aged 81. He directed more than 400 hours of series and TV movies, holding the Directors Guild of America record for helming more television episodes than anybody in the history of this medium.

Badiyi was also a reputed main title sequence designer, whose work in this field includes Get Smart, That Girl, the memorable main title sequence for the original Hawaii Five-O, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Iranian-born Reza Badiyi started his long and prolific career in his native country as a documentarist and won an award for Flood in Khuzestan, a documentary which attracted a lot of attention and led to his arrival in the US as a student during the 1950s. After studying filmmaking at Syracuse University, Badiyi moved to Kansas City to work for The Calvin Company - a major educational and industrial film production company (1). There he met director Robert Altman and became his protégé and friend.

An experienced director and producer in the 1960s, Badiyi also developed a reputation as a designer of TV series main titles: « You have to capture the audience and keep them from going to another channel, » he explained. « It's like doing a wonderful commercial without showing what the product is. » (2) His work for the title visualization of Hawaii Five-O epitomizes this spirit and his approach was ideal for writer/producer Bruce Geller, who hired him on Mission: Impossible to direct season three's The Interrogator (1969). Reza Badiyi directed 17 episodes of the show, including its most ambitious episode in terms of production: Mission's only three-parter, The Falcon (Season four, 1970).

As a director he worked on series like The Mod Squad, Mannix, The Magician (starring Bill Bixby), The Six Million Dollar Man, The Rockford Files, Hawaii Five-O, Cagney & Lacey, Falcon Crest, and many more. His last credit was The Way Back Home (2006), one of the four feature films he directed.

(1) http://www.archive.org/post/55471/calvin-and-the-calvin-workshop
(2) Patrick J. White, The Complete Mission: Impossible Dossier (Avon Books, 1991)

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-reza-badiyi-20110822,0,7589597.story
http://www.deadline.com/2011/08/r-i-p-reza-badiyi/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/08/reza-seyed-badiyi-a-native.html
http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/reza-badiyi
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/smallscreen/features/article_1473601.php/The_Godfather_of_American_TV_Reza_Badiyi_interview

MADE BY MOMOCO

While watching episodes of Luther, Zen or the premiere of the new Peter Moffat legal drama Silk you may have noticed that the title sequences of these three BBC One series share common esthetic qualities.

The reason is that these superb titles, which recall some title sequences of the golden age of ITC Entertainment, are from the creative talents of Momoco. Based in London and LA, the company was founded in 1999 by Nic Benns and Miki Kato. Film titles designed by Momoco include Love Actually (2002), Johnny English (2003), Alien Vs Predator (2004), Hard Candy (2005) or Bharat Nalluri's first feature film Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008).

For television they are behind the titles of dramas like Eleventh Hour (the original UK version), Murphy's Law and E4's hit Misfits (2009). Their work perfectly matches with Massive Attack's Paradise Circus in Luther (2010) or the beautiful theme composed by Adrian Johnston for Zen (2011). The titles of Zen are one of their many masterpieces, along with the clever title sequence of Episodes (2011).

Momoco also works on commercials, music videos and motion branding.

http://www.momoco.co.uk/
http://www.watchthetitles.com/designers/Momoco

See also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_Qg1pQSOa0 (Luther)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxAE_SIS08k (Zen)