| R.B.7 1 A V I E W 2 0 1 0 |
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IM 448199 |
| R.B.7 1 A V I E W 2 0 1 0 |
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IM 448199 |
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(click here for the ration book rules) (red text = new items; + = new points to existing items) (pale text = repeated items unseen; murky text = taped items) |
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| JANUARY Welcome back to the Ration Book after my lengthy winter break (the snow has only just thawed on my broadband cable). This year we finally sever the link between these pages and the humble Freeview digi-box in order to investigate the rise of the internet. Consequently, I won't actually be rationing things this year, but I will instead make extra effort to provide exciting reviews on these pages. In that regard, calling this thing the Digi-Box Ration Book seems a bit of a misnomer, but as yet I've come up with nothing better. Here's a summary of the key changes: Anything watched or heard on-line gets noted as such (and dated to publication if following recent terrestrial broadcast, or else to the date of viewing). The BBC's iPlayer gets two entries: one for TV (red in the scorecard below) and one for radio (black). Now we're no longer confined to the content of the digi-box, Radio 4 LW is also permitted (noted as 4L), and for the first time since rationing began, news programming is no longer exempt (allowing R5 to truly shine). Some other new abbreviations have already made themselves felt: BD = BBC downloadable podcast, YT = YouTube, II = the Iraq Inquiry website, UD = UKTV Dave (not new, but it doesn't hurt to be reminded), and BN = BBC News (24). Ok. To business: This month has seen David Tennant's last ride as Doctor Who, the previous Prime Minister getting a rare grilling in the Iraq Inquiry, the second series of In Our Time specials, a finger-chewingly exciting draw in the Test Match, a cracking final in the Snooker and an Indian episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. We have, it must be said, been a little spoilt. Yet none of this comes close to the jaw-disjointing brilliance that was the truly amazing final episode of the first series of Dollhouse. Further research shows that it was so mindexplodingly amazing that it has never ever been shown on American television because it's just too good (well, actually because of a contractual mix-up at a uninterested Fox). Imagine if the last episode of Dad's Army was set in 1954 and saw a band of teenaged resistance fighters smashing into a boarded up Warmington-on-Sea church hall wherein they find the verger's head, Cold Lazarus style, in a vat of blue liquid. And by applying different currents they make him recollect the events of the intervening period: Mainwaring's last stand against the invading Nazi nuns, Wilson's descent into madness, Jones's tearful inability to come to terms with the victory of the Third Reich, and Pike's disappearance into the Warmington underground where he founded the resistance movement. He and Walker designed a secret weapon capable of destroying the Nazi's once and for all: a kind of super-bomb. Fraser appears and promises to take the teens to the enigmatic Mrs Fox. But can they trust him? All this at the end of a series ostensibly about a brothel of programmable prostitutes. It is quite easily the best thing of the year so far. I hope Mr Moffat was watching. |
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