BAFTA TELEVISION AWARDS 2010

[6.35 - French Time] If you're still asking yourself about the shrapnel found by the Doctor at the end of Doctor Who's Silurian two-parter, well we now have the answer: it was a piece of Graham Norton's TARDIS, as the BAFTA Television Awards 2010 host arrived in a blue box last night on BBC One.

Graham Norton knows a great deal about time travel - he also hosts the Eurovision song contest - but the presenter looked a little nervous. Perhaps the London Palladium was the Purgatory and the elite of British TV industry was eager to have a drink at Nelson's pub after the show. Or maybe Norton feared an animated Matt Smith would pop up and ruin one of his jokes.

On the opposite, Simon Cowell had all the reasons to enjoy the ceremony. Not only he received a Special Award but his format Britain's Got Talent (ITV1) won Best Entertainment Programme - amusingly versus The Graham Norton Show (BBC One), and his pals Ant & Dec got Best Entertainment Performance for I'm a Celebrity... (ITV1). The duo delivered the best quips of the evening, with Dec referring to Cowell as "The man who made ITV what it is today: still in business." Too bad they couldn't host those TV BAFTAs.

The other big winner was Armando Iannucci's political comedy The Thick of It (BBC Two) with Best Situation Comedy, Best Female Performance in a Comedy programme for Rebecca Front, Best Male Performance in a Comedy Programme for Peter Capaldi. This category was presented by Glee's Sue Sylvester, the talented Jane Lynch, but Glee lost the YouTube Award to The Inbetweeners (E4).

Misfits (E4) won Best Drama Series against Jimmy McGovern's The Street, a tired Spooks and, most surprisingly, Being Human (BBC Three). Best comedy programme and Best factual series went deservedly and respectively to the hilarious Armstrong and Miller Show (BBC One) and the wonderful One Born Every Minute (Channel 4) - whose theme is not Simon Cowell's shows. Another rightfully deserved award was Matthew Macfadyen's Best Supporting Actor for Criminal Justice (BBC One).

Occupation (BBC One) won Best Drama Serial. Julie Walters won Best Leading Actress for Mo (Channel 4) against her clone, who played in A Short Stay In Switzerland (BBC One). Kenneth Branagh got Best Leading Actor for Wallander (BBC One) against John Hurt for An Englishman in New York (ITV1, 2009), the superb sequel of the classic The Naked Civil Servant (1975). Hurt won a TV BAFTA for his portrayal of Quentin Crisp in 1976, it's sad they didn't give him one this year for the same role.

Full list of winners here:

http://www.bafta.org/awards/television/television-awards-nominations-in-2010,1095,BA.html#jump0

THE KILLING JOKE

[20.51 - French Time] Thank God NBC spared us another pathetic remake of a television classic when they passed the 2010 Rockford Files, starring Dermot Mulroney in the role popularized by James Garner. But for the 2010-2011 season, CBS and the CW stick to their new takes on Hawaii Five-O and Nikita.

We can have an acceptable notion of what these two shows will look like thanks to extended promos widely available. In Hawaii Five-O Alex O'Loughlin (Moonlight, Three Rivers) plays Steve McGarrett, a decorated Naval officer who returns to Oahu to investigate his father’s murder. He stays in Hawaii as a cop with his own task force.

The preview shows us basically an action-packed buddy movie, or Hawaiian Heat (a forgotten 1984 cop drama) with explosions and VFX. In January your humble servant wrote that a character like Wo Fat, the recurring archvillain of the original show, seemed unconceivable today in our politically correct world. And when James Marsters was announced as McGarrett's nemesis we supposed that he would rather be a "24 type terrorist mastermind".

Not only it resembles Hawaii Five-O (1968-1980) as much as, let's say, NCIS: Los Angeles looks like NCIS but the questions is: can they afford that every week?

http://livefeed.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/06/trailer-hawaii-five-o-.html#more

For the new Nikita, its owes more to Alias than to the Luc Besson movie or La Femme Nikita, the TV series. Ironically, Alias was more or less a mainstream LFN and there are now rumours that the J.J. Abrams show could also be remade! For the rest, just watch the trailer and please read what I wrote last month (http://tattard2.blogspot.com/2010/05/ne-cherchez-pas-la-femme-dans-la-nuit.html).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoTz17GWxjs

NEMESIS

Doctor Who - Cold Blood (Series Five, Episode Nine). The Doctor (Matt Smith) and Nasreen (Meera Syal) are in the Silurian city to exchange Alaya (Neve McIntosh) for the human captives, while Amy (Karen Gillan) is the subject of an unsolicited interest in a Silurian lab.

[Spoilers]

« Perhaps today IS a good day to die. » (Lt. Commander Worf)

The second half of the two-parter written by Chris Chibnall and directed by Ashley Way has an epic feel which compensates some inconsistencies in this subterranean tragedy. The epic is inspired by the Silurian city, with a little help of the creative use of Swansea's Plantasia Botanic Gardens, Cardiff's Temple of Peace and of a few smart light tricks. Should the production pull an Upper Ledworth for the James Corden pre-Grand finale it would not be a surprise after such splendors.

The stunningly beautiful place is a glorious stage taken by the performance of Neve McIntosh who also plays now Alaya's sister, military commander Restac, a true Shakespearean Star Trek villain. McIntosh is given the opportunity to shine twice, when Alaya loses deliberately a Weakest Link round against Ambrose (Nia Roberts), and when Restac appears to Rory (Arthur Darvill), Ambrose and Tony (Robert Pugh) on the computer screen.

The siblings get the best script material compared to scientist Malohkeh (Richard Hope) and Silurian leader Eldane (Stephen Moore). Malohkeh's switch from vivisectionist threat to ally of the Doctor is not fully convincing. Nor is Eldane, who hardly goes past his plot device status after he stops the execution of the Doctor and his Human friends. And the leader's useless voiceover brings nothing more than a nerve racking relapse from The End of Time.

At his best Matt Smith reminds of Peter Davison but the Doctor often acts like a Nobel Peace Price candidate with an annoying pro-Silurian bia. We know from the start that the Loose Women (or The View) sequence passing as a conference will not bring an era of peace and cooperation between the two races: the Silurians have a whole bunch of terracotta warriors hibernating.

We also know from the beginning of The Hungry Earth that Rory wears a D.O.A. tag on his head, which is too bad as he's one of the most interesting companions in years and deserved better than a panto South Park demise. But Darvill nails it with his « I don't understand. We were on the hill », and the idea that there are fates worse than death (see The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone) makes Amy's grief twice more touching.

Overall an enjoyable episode despite the script flaws and the fact that 45 minutes are not enough to fulfill all the ambitions of the story. Perhaps Doctor Who should consider a return to the serial formula and drop the contrived high concept story arcs. Anyway we should be grateful that the Eurovision song contest didn't interrupt the course of the series. Is the shrapnel found by the Doctor in the crack the result of another Graham Norton attempt?

See also:

http://cathoderaytube.blogspot.com/2010/05/doctor-who-series-5-cold-blood-review.html