Summer 2007 -- Is there ANYTHING on?

[krissie]

The three things I've found to watch this summer are:

Heroes: which was shown on Sci Fi, but I didn't watch. However, BBC2 have just started to show the first season, so I'm giving that a go.

Still Game: There are only seven episodes in this series, and so far they've been a bit disappointing. (We're over half way through the seven. ) (Still Game is a comedy set on a housing estate in Glasgow. The stories focus on a group of pensioners who refuse to grow old gracefully. They are 'still game' for life and fun.)

Drop The Dead Donkey: yep. Like Chris, I've been resorting to reruns. This is a comedy set in a newsroom. When it was made, the episodes would include references galore to personalities and stories in that week's news. Half the series 'charm' was its topicality, but even now, about ten years later, it can be pretty amusing.

Or maybe I'm just desperate...

Krissie

[carl1951]

Has anyone seen "Layercake," stars the new Jame Bond actor Daniel Craig. One wicked movie with a wild ending.

It's from Britain.

Later, Carl

[doobrah]

Ooh Carl, I loooove "Layer Cake." I checked it out of the library when Daniel Craig was named as the new Bond, since I didn't know his work. "Layer Cake" is an amazing movie, very stylish and with a plot filled with twists & turns. It made me a Daniel Craig fan. I can understand why they chose him as the new Bond. And did you notice that his character didn't have a name?

[carl1951]

He was known as "XXXX," if you want to consider that a name.

Later, Carl

[housemouse]

Three words for anyone looking for good television this summer:

State of Mind

Here is a link to its IMDB page: www.imdb.com/title/tt0824775/ I tuned in because Keven Rankin (Herc on FNL), guests in a couple of episodes. I tivo'd it and figured I would fast forward through the Rankin-free parts. No such luck. The entire show is great Rankin is just gravy (for you FNL fans out there, he plays a handicapped patient - I want to see this guy walk).

In the vast wasteland that is summer television, State of Mind is an oasis.

A couple of other shows I am enjoying - promise not to laugh - they are my guilty pleasure shows; The Two Coreys, Intervention, and Confessions of a Matchmaker.

[hoosier]

Here the summer is almost over and I can not believe I actually zoned out on some of the reality shows! Like Shmeep, I watched Hell's Kitchen and thank goodness the guy won and not the personal chef/pseudo-nanny. I have even watched America's Got Talent, So You Think You Can Dance and last night even flipped over to PussyCat Dolls tryouts because there was nothing on! Help me, I am a victim of reality tv overload!!! And I cringe at the thought of some of the new ones they are advertising for the fall

But all is not lost. I have been watching season one of the Closer on DVD and even pulled out The Children of Dune to watch yet again.

[inuvik]

So Thursday night I watched the two hour premiere of a new show called Blood Ties.

I was expecting this show to be terrible! It is about a female PI, and the previews showed it all about the supernatural--vampires, cults, etc. I only watched it because I give all the new shows a try.

So, upon watching--not only does she have sexual tension with a vampire, but the vampire is one of the sons of Henry the VIII. Plus, she has a love hate relationship with a cop, involving his reluctance to share info, and they have sexual tension--all the usual cliches.

And then, the real kicker--the show turns out to be Canadian! (which is why you may not have heard of it). But not just Canadian, gratuitously Canadian--as in showing many, many shots of the CN tower, characters waving our money around, things like that. I can't stand that stuff.

Despite all this, it actually wasn't that bad--but I won't be watching again. The reason I'm posting is something that almost had me do a spit take. It turns out that she is a former cop, who left the force to be a PI. And why did she leave, you ask? Get this--she has retinitis pigmentosa. They had to tell us this as at this point her vision appears to be fine. But I just know, if the ratings suck, that at some point it will be trotted out, as she has a vision "crisis" or something.

It all made me long for BJ, where blindness seemed to be shown so realistically and with such sensitivity. What a great show it was.

www.tv.com/blood-ties/show/68415/summary.html

Thank you to the two people who gave me karma anonymously today!

[mlm828]

I caught an episode of Blood Ties a couple of months ago and thought it was -- pretty bad. I'm not sure whether the problem was the lead actress (who doesn't seem to have much acting ability) or the writing or both. I don't even know why I watched the whole hour. Maybe I was hoping against hope that it might get better. But it didn't.

By the way, inuvik, did you know Eric Stoltz pitched for the Dodgers this afternoon? Quite a multi-talented guy, that Eric! Oh, wait, that was Eric Stults. Wrong Eric. But I did think of you when I heard the name.

[maggiethecat]

inuvik said:

the vampire is one of the sons of Henry the VIII.

Well, that's the neatest trick of the week. If I remember my history, Henry VIII had just three offspring: Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon; Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn; and Edward, son of Jane Seymour, and who didn't live to be much older than 12 or 13. Which is one of the reasons (of many) why Henry kept going through wives, trying for male offspring.

Where do they come up with this stuff?

[inuvik]

maggiethecat said:

inuvik said:

the vampire is one of the sons of Henry the VIII.

Well, that's the neatest trick of the week. If I remember my history, Henry VIII had just three offspring: Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon; Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn; and Edward, son of Jane Seymour, and who didn't live to be much older than 12 or 13. Which is one of the reasons (of many) why Henry kept going through wives, trying for male offspring.

You made me curious, so I checked Wikipedia. It says it was his illegitimate son, and following that link you get:

Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset (15 June 1519–18 June 1536) was the son of King Henry VIII and his teenaged mistress, Elizabeth Blount, the only illegitimate offspring that Henry acknowledged. FitzRoy was created Earl of Nottingham and Duke of Richmond and Somerset on 16 June 1525.

Apparently he was ill, and they now suspect consumption. It then goes on:

A character based on Henry Fitzroy appears in the Blood Book novels, by Tanya Huff, and Blood Ties, the television series based on the novels. The fictional Henry became a vampire. His sickness came from the draining of his blood that turned him vampire and after more than four hundred years lives in Toronto, Ontario in Canada.

And all this is probably the most interesting thing about the show!

Ha ha MLM, boy would I have loved to have seen that if it really was him, doing a celebrity pitch or something. There's a real life Eric Stoltz that designs websites, and when I do searches I always find his stuff.