Torchwood: Miracle Day get’s it’s UK air date!
Torchwood: Miracle Day will air in the UK - 14th July 2011, 9pm BBc1
Finally, after dithering about and causing panic and confusion amongst the UK Torchwood fans that made the series a success in the first place, BBC have got round to revealing the UK air date for Torchwood: Miracle Day. And it’s the 14th of July 2011 at 9pm on BBC1.
You see how easy that was Beeb? You give us the date. We report the date. Done job. And i hope someone stomped on the toes and stole all the jelly babies from the idiot reporter that decided to say Torchwood would air ‘later in the Summer’ rather than ‘later in July’, or even ‘the following week’ in the article posted on the BBC website…
I know there will be some people out there that still have issues with us getting it after the US, but that was always likely. Starz part funded the show – to exactly what percentage, we don’t currently know, but i suspect it was a sizable chunk. And if it aired on the BBC on the 8th, the same as on Starz, that would mean the BBC would get it first due to time differences. Starz is a commercial channel reliant on advertising, so if the 2 channels are partners, it make more sense for Starz to get first airing of it, as the BBC isn’t affected by advertising revenue. Having said that however, it is slightly annoying that we’ll still have to spend 6 days dodging spoilers online between the US and UK air dates… Still at least it’s back!
Torchwood: Miracle Day airs 14th of July 2011 at 9pm on BBC1.
Torchwood air date ‘later in the summer’ in the UK…
Torchwood NOT airing in July?
UPDATE HERE: Torchwood gets it UK air date!
GeekTown has just read something rather disturbing in a BBC news article…
As we all know Torchwood: Miracle Day is due to be airing soon. We have the US air date - 6th July on the Starz network. We’ve been seeing stories saying Torchwood wouldn’t be airing simultaneously with the US as they did with Doctor Who earlier in the year. So, the assumption was it will air during the week following the US air date. It now seems that is not the case…
In the article it clearly states, ‘The series will air in the US in early July and be shown later in the summer on BBC One.’ So, it looks like Torchwood is not going to be just after the US air date, but rather several weeks behind it! What has prompted this rather odd decision from the Beeb is as yet unknown. I have requested a response from the BBC but so far they are silent on the matter.
Given the heavy amount of promotion and hype Torchwood has been getting online, this seem like a massive misstep by the BBC, and is only likely to eat into the viewing figures as fans find “other ways” of watching the show… Which is a real shame, as lower viewing figures could effect Torchwood’s chance of renewal. *sigh* I am getting rather sick of TV networks shooting themselves in the foot with bizarre scheduling decisions at the moment…
Thoughts? Comments? Leave them below…
First clip of J. J. Abrams Alcatraz
This is the 2nd J.J. Abrams show to get picked up this season after Person of Interest. Created by J. J. Abrams (Lost, Star Trek, Fringe etc…) & Elizabeth Sarnoff (writer/producer Lost, Deadwood), Alcatraz starts off with a fingerprint at a homicide found by Detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones – Sons of Anarchy, Big Love) which appears to be from a former inmate of the prison, who should be long dead. As she digs deeper, Madsen enlists the help of Alcatraz expert Dr. Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia - Hurley in Lost), and also encounters the hindrance of government agent Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill – Jurassic Park). It turns out not only is the inmate alive, he’s merrily killing again on the streets of San Francisco, and it seems he’s not the only ex-Alcatraz resident on the loose. Madsen and Soto reluctantly team up with Hauser and his sidekick Lucy Banerjee (Parminder Nagra – ER, Bend It Like Beckham) to track down the various miscreants. Alcatraz is due to air mid-season 2012 on Fox.
Why Was My SciFi Show Cancelled?
The Event
I started this post as a reply to a comment on the new Renewed/Cancelled Shows page, but it was getting so long i decided to turn it into a post instead! 
Denise (the commenter), was remarking that Channel 4 had been moving the UK air date ‘The Event‘ later and later which can’t be helping it’s chances of renewal. And that did get me thinking…
What effect do overseas viewing figures have on a US show’s chances of renewal?
The answer seems to be ‘very little’ in the short term at least. Overseas ratings are looked at by the owners of a US made show, but they need a network first and foremost to fund it. So if your a US production company making an English speaking show, your naturally going to seek out a US network for the largest English speaking audience to pay for the shows initial production. If the show falters on the US network, it’s going to be a much tougher sell to an overseas network.
The ‘Dreaded’ Nielsen Ratings…
Nielsen ratings aren't the problem
There are a lot of people that rally against the US Nielsen ratings system, and a lot of misconceptions about it. One of the issues with sci-fi shows i think is they are broadly watched by a younger audience who tend toward recording shows on DVR’s or watching online. Nielsen do actually count online and DVR figures BUT they count less than shows that are watched live. Why? Well, it’s pretty simple – for the network, it’s less about how many people have seen the show itself, and more about how many have seen the adverts. As a basic principle, Adverts = money and money = your show getting renewed.
So, the system is understandably has a bias towards shows the audience might watch live. Unfortunately that tends to be the sort of programme your actually not that bothered if you see or not, or it’s ‘event tv’ where you don’t want to be behind everyone else, possibly so you can go online and chat about it after it’s aired (this is why we have so much ‘reality tv’…) It’s less an issue with the Nielsen rating system itself, but more a problem with how the network gets money from the advertisers. You could have made the greatest TV show in the world, but if everyone is recording it on a DVR and fast forwarding through the ads, that’s not a huge amount of use to a network who are trying to sell the ad space. The Nielsen ratings job is to calculate the financial worth of a programme, not the cultural worth or quality of it. Okay, it’s might not be perfect, but it’s not really fair to blame Nielsen for doing the job it’s designed to do.
So what can they do about it?
Primeval
There are some solutions networks have been trying, such as a product sponsoring a show with ‘sponsored by’ ads for products wrapping the intros, outtros and ad breaks in shows which has been reasonably successful. Also in the UK we’ve recently had a relaxation of the product placement rules for TV shows, working on the basis that if the product is in the show, your not going to fast-forward through it! However, product placement does come with it’s own issues for a sci-fi show. Seeing someone on an alien planet reaching for a cool refreshing Coke rather pulls you out of the world the show’s production team have gone to great lengths to create!
There are alternative revenue models to the advertising solution. Subscription services like HBO rely on people paying a monthly fee rather than adverts. This is why a lot of the best quality programming you find in the US tends to be on HBO, as quality programming is HBO’s currency. If the programming is bad, people won’t pay for it. However, if every channel was pure a subscription model, you’d have a lot less channels, or an astronomical monthly bill… Of course we in the UK also have the BBC which doesn’t have these issues as we pay for it via the license fee. Trying to avoid opening a huge license fee shaped can of worms here, but it is a system that allows the Beeb to take risks you might not get on commercial channels – some which pan out like ‘Life on Mars‘, some which don’t, like ‘Outcasts‘.
Another solution we’ve seen on the increase recently, particularly with UK shows, is multiple international networks picking up the tab. Primeval for example was brought back from the brink by a deal between ITV, BBC Worldwide, Watch, Impossible Pictures, and German broadcaster ProSieben. Similarly the latest series of Torchwood was made possible by a deal between the BBC and US network Starz. I suspect there are a number of network execs watching closely to see how this sort of deal pans out for the networks involved. If it works, it’s a solution you might see happen more more and more, with multiple international networks sharing the cost and the risk.
Review: Game Of Thrones Episodes 1 & 2
Game of Thrones starts on Sky Atlantic – 18th April 2011 at 9pm.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months, you’ll probably have seen at least one of the massive billboard posters or TV adverts for Sky Atlantic‘s latest HBO import. Game of Thrones is an epic adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Fire and Ice” series of novels, due to air in the UK this Monday (April 18th), just a day after the US. However, I was lucky enough to get a preview copy of the first 2 episodes (sometimes i love this job! 
). I’ll try and keep the review as spoiler free as possible!
Set in the fictional medieval style land of Westeros, Game of Thrones tells the story of power struggle between several noble families in Westeros’s Seven Kingdoms. The opening 2 episodes introduce a lot of characters in 4 of the families houses, so here’s a quick rundown of each of the houses, and how they connect:
House Stark
House Stark
House Stark is ruled over by the grim but honourable Lord Eddard Stark (Ned to his friends) played by Sean Bean. Stark is based at the castle of Winterfell in the bitter north of Westeros with his wife Catelyn (Michelle Fairley), the loyal eldest son Robb (Richard Madden), eldest daughter, the very proper Sansa (Sophie Turner), and their younger siblings – the spirited Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), and the tomboy-ish Arya (Maisie Williams). Also part of the house of Stark is Jon Snow, Ned’s bastard son, conceived by Ned 17yrs earlier whilst he was away during the war that bought Robert Baratheon, Ned’s oldest friend, to the throne.
House Bartheon
House Baratheon
House Baratheon are the most powerful house in Westeros, headed by King Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy), ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. Robert led a rebellion against King Aery II (aka Aerys the Mad) of House Targaryen, leading to the death of Aerys and most of House Targaryen. After taking the throne, Robert married Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) of the formidable House Lannister who were allies of the Targaryens for much of the war, to ensure peace between the two Houses. His legitimate offspring include the rather obnoxious heir to the throne – Prince Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), and his sister Princess Myrcella (Aimee Richardson).
House Lannister
House Lannister
House Lannister are the richest, proudest, and fair to say, most arrogant noble family in Westeros. Led by Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance – although he doesn’t appear in the 2 episodes i’ve seen), their attitude lives up to their motto – Hear Me Roar! Tywin’s family consists of Cersei, wife of King Robert Baratheon, her twin brother Jaime, with whom she shares a… close… relationship… And their younger brother Tyrion, also know as ‘The Imp’, due to his diminutive stature.
House Targaryen
House Targarye
House Targaryen was all but decimated during Robert’s rebellion leaving pretty much only Aerys’s children – the callous Prince Viserys (Harry Lloyd) and Princess Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) – who escaped into exile across the sea. In an attempt to raise an army and take back Westeros, Viserys has forced Daenerys to marry the Dothraki warlord Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa). In return, Drogo is supposed to supply Viserys with a Dothraki hoard to take back ‘his’ land.
Game Of Thrones Episodes 1 & 2 Review
If you’ve seen trailers for Game Of Thrones, and are thinking ‘that looks a bit Lord of the Rings’, you really couldn’t be further from the truth. Game Of Thrones is described as a tale of family, betrayal, lust and greed – not all of those being mutually exclusive, and a lot of it shown on-screen in true-to-form, HBO, lusty and gory detail. Middle Earth this really is not!
“If your thinking this looks a bit Lord of the Ring, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Middle Earth this really is not.”
The opening episode “Winter is Coming”, is a superb introduction to the series. Given the need to highlight quite a large number of key characters, they manage to show you enough to give you a flavour of each personality and key traits, without overwhelming the viewer with masses of back story. There are, what could have been, a bewildering array of plot strands set up in episode 1, but the shows creators Dan Weiss and David Benioff have managed to introduce the various Machiavellian machinations in such a fashion that it doesn’t grind to a halt under the weight, and keeps the viewer gripped to the story.
Sean Bean - Game Of Thrones
The casting of the show is superb. Not only from the experienced hands, such as Sean Bean, Mark Addy and Lena Headey, but also the large number of younger actors and relative unknowns taking up the roles as various family members. The one real stand out role for me though was Peter Dinklage as Tyrion. He may be seen as the drinking, womanizing, diminutive younger sibling of the Lannister family, but what he lacks in size, he makes up for in mind, with an appetite for books as large as his appetite for booze and the ladies.
One of the things that really struck me was the lack of obvious CGI in the show. As a large scale fantasy drama, you’d rather expect some form over over the top effects at some point, but any CGI that did appear was subtlety inserted, so much so that you’d barely notice, which is a wonderful thing.
From the creepy and rather disturbing opening of the 1st episode, which sets the wonderfully dark tone of the series, Game of Thrones is a gripping and captivating show, that i’m really looking forward to seeing more of in the coming weeks. In true HBO style it’s not for the faint of heart, but those of you that do decide to visit Westeros will be very glad you did.
9/10 – A dark, gripping and captivating fantasy drama. Not to be missed!
Castle Season 3 Promo
Season 3 of Castle on Alibi
With Season 2 of Castle nearing it’s conclusion on Alibi in the UK, I thought we’d be in for a long wait for season 3. That’s not the case however, as they’re running straight into Castle Season 3 starting 9pm Wednesday 9th of March on Alibi (Sky 132, Virgin 130)!
Season 3 of Castle also looks like it’s hitting the ground at full speed. The first episode begins with Castle taking a break in the Hamptons to finish writing his second Nikki Heat novel, “Naked Heat”. Beckett and her team have been following the trail of a murderer to a shadowy apartment, only to find Castle standing over a dead woman’s body holding a gun! Castle protests his innocence, but Beckett has no choice but to arrest him on suspicion of murder… It’s going to be a great kick off to the new season!
