some tv musings

I thought today I'd try to do some musing on telly stuff, as it's been a while since I've done that.

I finished the most recent series of Torchwood.  It was quite good, but it wasn't as dark as the Children one.  I liked it, but it did end with quite a lot of questions unanswered.

Now some of those were good in that I think they were intended to set up future series, but the main thing, which was the rift, wasn't explained at all.  I mean, what was it, were did it come from, how did it work, why was it there?  None of that was really answered.

There was all sorts of odd stuff that didn't work either.  It's like it showed stuff falling into the hole, but it wasn't clear where that stuff was coming from, or, more importantly, why gravity seemed to be operating sideways.  Rather than the hole being below them ,it was in front of them, yet it was meant to go through the earth.

And if stuff was falling in both ways, where was it all going?  And if you assume geological activity and shifting continents, how does that work?  I dunno, it all felt a bit unsatisfactory.

My trumpeting of the return of Total Wipeout seems to have been quite premature.  The two celeb specials, which were clearly made as if they would appear at the end of the series (there was no explanation of some of the obstacles, like you'd get if they were the first episodes) were shown and then there's been nothing else.

I was hoping it might appear now that we're in to October, but I can't see it in the TV listings.  The new series of QI is on, and they usually start at about the same time.   Though saying that the BBC seems to have moved away from hard seasons and tends to take a more staggered approach to starting series nowadays.

A couple of new BBC series have caught my eye.

There's the new Planet Dinosaur, which is, well, not a sequel to Walking with Dinosaurs, but of a similar vein.  However, this series is more focused on the actual evidence.  My memory of walking is that it purely showed reconstructions, but in Planet they'll show a bit of reconstruction and then break away to show you what the actual evidence is.

This is good in that the evidence is fascinating, but it can break up the reconstruction bits quite badly.  I think, actually, each programme should have been a little bit longer - perhaps 50 minutes instead of 30 - so they could be a bit more thorough.

Another new show is "The Fades".  This is on BBC3, which is the BBC's "yoof" channel and I was afraid it would therefore be crap, but actually I've been rather enjoying it.  The central ideas are a little mashed together, but it's quite well written and there are some interesting characters.  Certainly given how poor I found the third series of Being Human to be (not sure I ever mentioned that  - it seemed to forget it should be funny every so often and instead was even more angsty) this seems like a good replacement.

The Gadget Show has returned to its Monday slot.  They also seem to have dropped the annoying new competition format.  These are both good things.

The latest series of Bang Goes the Theory has just finished this week.  I continue to be impressed by the show - it's populist enough to keep it generally engaging, but with enough proper science bits in there to also be interesting.  And it's good to see the return of a show like this since Tomorrow's World died all those years ago.

There have been a lot of interesting shows on recently about the Army.  The BBC is running one of its themed seasons and there have been other random shows.  These have been of varying interest and quality.  One that really struck me, though, was around the guys who dispose of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).  It was fascinating, harrowing and, to be frank, terrifying in equal measures.

That's really only a small sample, as there's quite a lot on just recently that I've been enjoying.