Torchsettled

The new DWM has settled the troublesome Torchwood issue once and for all. Read more

Guys and Dolls

Is five becoming the new old-school Channel 4? Read more

Drop dead Fred

“Be happy; I say, be happy.” The last words, as they turned out, of Frederick Handel Elliott, master butcher of Weatherfield, publican to the masses and one of Coronation Street‘s finest entertainers. And now he’s dead. Read more

Torchmaybe

This’ll all be put to bed tomorrow, so one last piece of speculation about Torchwood‘s scheduling – and the latest whisper is the programme is going to get a regular repeat slot on BBC2 some time later in the week after its BBC3 showing.

Operation Winkle

So, blog favourite Strictly Come Dancing is back, but as someone whose enjoyment of daring routines is tempered by the desire to avoid all potential for car-crash telly (I always left the room when Fiona Phillips took to the floor last year), I find myself in my usual mixed state of enthrallment and discomfort when it transmits. Read more

Petrolhead Purgatory: A counterblast

Friend of OTT Ian Sparham has contributed this fantasically well constructed counterblast to Paul Stump’s Top Gear demolition which is currently gracing the front page of the site.  Read more

Torchwon’t

Apparently the Beeb have now dropped plans to simulcast the first episode of Torchwood on both BBC1 and BBC3. Which is a shame, cos it would have made for ident hell.

Stunted growth

Two years ago, Arrested Development arrived on British screens to a blaze of publicity telling us this was the best sitcom to come from America for years. The scheduling matched this, with a 10pm slot on BBC2 and the next episode straight after on BBC4. Now we’re in the middle of the third and final series, and when did BBC2 screen the latest edition? At 1am on Monday morning. Read more

Robin Hood

There’s an almost primal satisfaction in seeing a familiar face back on Saturday night television where they’ve always belonged. Read more

Torch bearing

Who (no pun) knows quite what’s going on with Torchwood? The BBC have released their press info for the week, but as yet, they’re not confirming a day. Read more

“An intellectual reach-around”

Apparently, there is such a thing as a blogging community (the… “blogosphere”, is that right?). My guess is that one of their central tenets is that blogs must, at some point in their life, mention the work of Aaron Sorkin. Consider this, then, OTT Blog’s coming of age, as I’ve been watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Read more

Election ’83

At least they got the exit poll right. At the start of the coverage, David Dimbleby announced that the Conservatives were going to win the General Election with a majority of 146. At the end of the coverage, David Dimbleby announced that the Conservatives had won the General Election with a majority of 144. Read more

Lawson the listener

There is a fashion currently to scorn Mark Lawson over the sporadic set of elongated interviews he is doing for BBC4, but frankly, I think each one I’ve seen has been brilliant. Read more

The Outsiders

It’s possible for a show to be doing all the right things, yet be let down by one element so badly, that watching it becomes akin to having a kidney removed by over-enthusiastic gibbons. Read more

Charlie and Lola

Forget Jane Eyre, forget the new series of Extras, forget the return of Cracker; for a substantial chunk of the population, the most significant event television of this season happened on Monday afternoon, on the CBeebies channel. Read more

Cracker

As Jimmy McGovern himself attests Cracker‘s always been about big issues: rape, racism and miscarriages of justice, and although the subject of pensions had provoked his ire enough to warrant the full Cracker treatment, he knew it just wasn’t the kind of story that would draw Fitz back from his largely reformed life in Australia. Read more

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