No, the books were novels written by the original authors, but with a twist. They start out the same as the series, expand on a few things, then there's a split around the time Lister gets stuck on an ice planet and left to rot. The twist comes in the form of 2 alternate endings, as each author writes a different sequel to the 2nd book.
The novels borrow a lot from the TV series, especially the first 3 seasons, but are very different in how they arrange the events and how everything plays out. They're not episodic, either.
There are audiobook versions of the first 2 books read by Chris Barrie (Rimmer), and another read by one of the authors, but I think that's it.
No, the books were novels written by the original authors, but with a twist. They start out the same as the series, expand on a few things, then there's a split around the time Lister gets stuck on an ice planet and left to rot. The twist comes in the form of 2 alternate endings, as each author writes a different sequel to the 2nd book.
The novels borrow a lot from the TV series, especially the first 3 seasons, but are very different in how they arrange the events and how everything plays out. They're not episodic, either.
There are audiobook versions of the first 2 books read by Chris Barrie (Rimmer), and another read by one of the authors, but I think that's it.
You missed his question.
The "Radio Show" versions of the books trim some stuff down, have new narration from the unabridged books and use sound effects and music. The unabridged books can be found on audible.co.uk
I'm a fan, too. I posted it back on first page or so.
Hoz, did you watch one of the slower episodes? I've watched all of the seasons except for the latest one and there are a lot of setup episodes.
They payoffs are pretty big, imo. It's one of the few shows where no one is safe.
From what I've seen the episodes are either really predictable*, completely implausible, or just straight out obnoxious. The ones that I found obnoxious were the two I saw involving the CIA. The "America is a big bully!" theme in both couldn't have been any more heavy-handed.
Overall the show is an ugly version of 24 that takes itself way too seriously and isn't nearly as fun to watch.
I'd like a spy show that tries to impress me with good writing and not cheap plot twists and bland actors trying to be clever characters from obtuse writing. Something equivalent to, yes, The Wire.
HBO is apparently making a spy series. Although it will be produced by Malcolm Gladwell and Mark Wahlberg so there's not much hope of it being equivalent to The Wire or The Sopranos.
*The kind of predictable where they make the entire show to hinge on a twist but if you predict the twist within 15 minutes of the show you're just sitting there for the 30-35 minutes left watching them clumsily try to execute it.
I actually saw Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz before I sat down and watched Spaced. After the first episode I said "shit yeah, gonna go ahead and watch all of these".
ALSO: I watched a couple of episodes of Wire in the Blood because I wanted to get my crime drama fix and Hulu said I might like it. If I were to base my perception of the UK on that show, I would have to assume that the whole population of the British isles are divided evenly between:
-sex predators
-serial murderers
-sex predators who are also serial murderers
-police officers
Years ago there used to be quite a few topical satire shows, like Dead Ringers and 2DTV. Further back, you've got Spitting Image.
Satire's mainly on panel shows these days, as well as Russell Howard's Good News on BBC3, which is more one guy's monologue with five second cutaway gags.
You should really check out 'that Mitchell and Webb look' it's the best sketch comedy series I've seen in years. I especially like the game show skit, and the drunken snooker commentators.
Numberwang or The Quiz Broadcast. Numberwang is good, but The Quiz Broadcast is genuinely *inspired*.
We do tons of topical satire. The Thick Of It, Have I Got News For You, Bremner's shows, etc.
The thick of it is fantastic but it's only vaguely topical.
I love Have I got News For You, but the quiz show format is played out. They barely stick to it on the show themselves. Mock the week doesn't count either.
I mean topical like - "All this stuff happened yesterday, here are some amusing opinions on it" topical.
Have I got News for You, is the best panel show; the day that Hislop leaves, is when they should stop doing it (while Paul Merton is also good, I seem to remember him not appearing on the show for a while, and it not really suffering).
Track down the show when Brian Blessed was the host (not hard, it's on you tube), it is TV gold.
Nevermind the Buzzcocks has become too main stream. When Mark Lamarr hosted it, it used to be indie, and they'd rip into commercial music. When Simon Amstell took over, it basically just turned into a show about him taking the piss of contestants. Now they get people who are rejects of the X-factor and commercial pop acts coming on for their 15 mins of fame. It's lost it's way.
Mock the Week, for me, is just a poor man's Have I got News for You. 6 comedians, all competing for attention, and while I'm sure 99% of panel shows are rehearsed (HIGNFY hides it the best if it does), it is very obvious in this show. I honestly just don't get the love some people have for Frankie Boyle (I know he's since left). His gimmick is, that he's offensive, and each week, he just kept on having to increase that.
Has QI been mentioned?
Also, did anyone see the One Ronnie over christmas? This sketch I feel is genius.
Years ago there used to be quite a few topical satire shows, like Dead Ringers and 2DTV. Further back, you've got Spitting Image.
Satire's mainly on panel shows these days, as well as Russell Howard's Good News on BBC3, which is more one guy's monologue with five second cutaway gags.
Russell Howrd's good news isn't satire.
It's a young man desperate to be liked, shouting and doing silly voices, tenuously linked to current events. Dead Ringers is an impressions show, 2DTV was lowest common denominator comedy masquerading as satire. Now Spitting Image was true satire, but unfortunately unlikely to be successfuly recreated nowadays.
I guess what I really want is a British Daily Show. I'm convinced we can do it too. And going by how good Newswipe is, Charlie Brooker is the man for the job. I'm also a big fan of David Mitchell. So maybe 10 O'clock live will deliver.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
I guess see also The Friday Night Project. But don't. Because... yeah.
That I did not know. And The Friday Night Project wasn't really like SNL, it was just a late night chat show, wasn't it? I mean, nobody actually watched it, so I'm basing this on their awful previews.
Mojo_Jojo on
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
If you like your comedy dark (and by 'dark' I mean pitch black), I would heartily recommend The League of Gentlemen and Psychoville. The League of Gentlemen is set mostly in the nightmarish village of Royston Vasey, whose bizarre residents are at best unhinged and at worst, freakish psychopaths. The first two series are more like a sketch show with the third series bringing more structure.
Psychoville is the work of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, who were part of The League of Gentlemen. The series follows a diverse array of characters being blackmailed by an unknown stranger, which links all of their stories together.
On a lighter note, the sketch show Cowards is one of the tightest and funniest sketch shows I've seen. The only downside is that it only has three TV episodes (although the radio recordings are available on CD).
My political awareness was born from Spitting Image.
Why is no-one willing to fill this void?
it's a lot harder to do then it looks. You have to have a big staff of writers and watchers that are able to do a near daily turn around of big news stories, you can't do many re-runs and will never be syndicated. Plus the format for the Daily show is that of a talk show, so you get a ton of filler time.
Canada has a couple of shows like it. Air Farce was pretty damn good but fell WAY behind the news cycle by the end and had a lot of troubles writing skits in the short time frame. This Hour Has 22 minutes is still doing ok. Can't say it's that great but they manage.
edit: oh and there's the issue of the out of country market. I know no one gives a damn about Canadian politics aside for Canadians and I doubt that many will share the laughs about British politics.
Do the UK have anything like SNL? I want to know who is your country's Jimmy Fallon.
Nope. SNL is something unique to the States that I am not sure you even export anywhere.
We could really use some kind of weekly, topical comedy show. We've got far too many chat shows with celebrities coming on to plug their new thing, and instead we need something like SNL to give some more time to comedians and writers.
This may come from watching Studio 60, I'm not sure.
I definitely haven't watched enough of him to make this opinion solid, but if Charlie Brooker did a topical daily comedy show I would probably watch the hell out of it.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
I don't know, having seen and loved Studio 60 and actually seen a few episodes of SNL, I'm not sure it is something to emulate.
Mojo_Jojo on
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
I don't know, having seen and loved Studio 60 and actually seen a few episodes of SNL, I'm not sure it is something to emulate.
SNL has fucking sucked ever since they screwed over all of the people who actually had talent. They used to have good music, talented comedians and clever writing and now they... don't.
I don't know, having seen and loved Studio 60 and actually seen a few episodes of SNL, I'm not sure it is something to emulate.
SNL has fucking sucked ever since they screwed over all of the people who actually had talent. They used to have good music, talented comedians and clever writing and now they... don't.
I hear this same complaint about every generation of the cast. Those who are the funny/talented portion of the cast find work outside of SNL even while on the show.
Sorry, but the show was pretty great until Aykroyd and Belushi left. There is a really steep drop in quality, both of writing and performance after that.
I definitely haven't watched enough of him to make this opinion solid, but if Charlie Brooker did a topical daily comedy show I would probably watch the hell out of it.
Brooker has also done You have been watching, which was pretty fun.
He writes a column for the Guardian (nearly) every week.
If you had to push me for a negative about the guy, I'd point out that in previous years, he's generally given a review at some point about the X-factor and laid into Cowell and so on, and yet this year, that's not happened (the coincidence being that his wife presents X-factor extra).
I definitely haven't watched enough of him to make this opinion solid, but if Charlie Brooker did a topical daily comedy show I would probably watch the hell out of it.
Brooker has also done You have been watching, which was pretty fun.
He writes a column for the Guardian (nearly) every week.
If you had to push me for a negative about the guy, I'd point out that in previous years, he's generally given a review at some point about the X-factor and laid into Cowell and so on, and yet this year, that's not happened (the coincidence being that his wife presents X-factor extra).
I would love to see him work with Robert Florence. He's already sort of done a video game review thing with him.
British politics is similar enough in structure to mine own country's, and populated with enough characters, that even I would consider watching a political satire show from the UK, if the writing was solid.
However, there is a tendency to add a lot of panto-style innuendo and funny voices as filler. And the pop culture references. At least that's what I've found listening to various BBC news satire shows.
British politics is similar enough in structure to mine own country's, and populated with enough characters, that even I would consider watching a political satire show from the UK, if the writing was solid.
However, there is a tendency to add a lot of panto-style innuendo and funny voices as filler. And the pop culture references. At least that's what I've found listening to various BBC news satire shows.
I'm a fan, too. I posted it back on first page or so.
Hoz, did you watch one of the slower episodes? I've watched all of the seasons except for the latest one and there are a lot of setup episodes.
They payoffs are pretty big, imo. It's one of the few shows where no one is safe.
From what I've seen the episodes are either really predictable*, completely implausible, or just straight out obnoxious. The ones that I found obnoxious were the two I saw involving the CIA. The "America is a big bully!" theme in both couldn't have been any more heavy-handed.
Overall the show is an ugly version of 24 that takes itself way too seriously and isn't nearly as fun to watch.
I'd like a spy show that tries to impress me with good writing and not cheap plot twists and bland actors trying to be clever characters from obtuse writing. Something equivalent to, yes, The Wire.
HBO is apparently making a spy series. Although it will be produced by Malcolm Gladwell and Mark Wahlberg so there's not much hope of it being equivalent to The Wire or The Sopranos.
*The kind of predictable where they make the entire show to hinge on a twist but if you predict the twist within 15 minutes of the show you're just sitting there for the 30-35 minutes left watching them clumsily try to execute it.
You will never lose a UK audience's suspension of disbelief by portraying the US as either bungling or sinister. Americans are the ultimate panto villians.
I love Spooks, and couldn't stand 24, so I'm guessing this is probably just an example of divergent tastes.
Well pretty much everything I would recommend has already been mentioned. I don't remember seeing Hustle anywhere though. It's a fun series about a group of con-men that pull off increasingly implausable, but very entertaining, cons. There was quite a long break between the original few series and the new series, and finding it from series 1 can be difficult but you definitely want to start there because the new group isn't quite as good.
Jonathon Creek. Seriously this wasn't mentioned yet? A guy who lives in a windmill and designs tricks/illusions for a famous magician gets pulled into solving impossible crimes by a failing crime writer. Best of all, the complete collection was released just before christmas on DVD. Everyone should watch this.
I'm sure there was something else but I can't remember it at the moment.
Rami on
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The novels borrow a lot from the TV series, especially the first 3 seasons, but are very different in how they arrange the events and how everything plays out. They're not episodic, either.
There are audiobook versions of the first 2 books read by Chris Barrie (Rimmer), and another read by one of the authors, but I think that's it.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
You missed his question.
The "Radio Show" versions of the books trim some stuff down, have new narration from the unabridged books and use sound effects and music. The unabridged books can be found on audible.co.uk
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
Overall the show is an ugly version of 24 that takes itself way too seriously and isn't nearly as fun to watch.
I'd like a spy show that tries to impress me with good writing and not cheap plot twists and bland actors trying to be clever characters from obtuse writing. Something equivalent to, yes, The Wire.
HBO is apparently making a spy series. Although it will be produced by Malcolm Gladwell and Mark Wahlberg so there's not much hope of it being equivalent to The Wire or The Sopranos.
*The kind of predictable where they make the entire show to hinge on a twist but if you predict the twist within 15 minutes of the show you're just sitting there for the 30-35 minutes left watching them clumsily try to execute it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzhUbuJbmJE
Shows how good the writing is when one of the best episodes is them just stitting around watching TV and waiting for some pizzas to be delivered.
I think that it's been brought up already.
I actually saw Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz before I sat down and watched Spaced. After the first episode I said "shit yeah, gonna go ahead and watch all of these".
ALSO: I watched a couple of episodes of Wire in the Blood because I wanted to get my crime drama fix and Hulu said I might like it. If I were to base my perception of the UK on that show, I would have to assume that the whole population of the British isles are divided evenly between:
-sex predators
-serial murderers
-sex predators who are also serial murderers
-police officers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNcDpEDncfM
Nope. SNL is something unique to the States that I am not sure you even export anywhere.
The Staunton Lick will forever be one of my favourite songs after Spaced.
Satire's mainly on panel shows these days, as well as Russell Howard's Good News on BBC3, which is more one guy's monologue with five second cutaway gags.
David Baddiel on the subject of canned laughter:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article6933281.ece
And mentioning David Baddiel reminds me of The Mary Whitehouse Experience, which I must recommend.
And mentioning The Mary Whitehouse Experience reminds me of Punt & Dennis, which means I must follow up by recommending The Now Show (radio).
And mentioning Hugh Dennis reminds me of Outnumbered, which I really, REALLY must recommend.
Numberwang or The Quiz Broadcast. Numberwang is good, but The Quiz Broadcast is genuinely *inspired*.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Live_%28UK_TV_series%29
I guess see also The Friday Night Project. But don't. Because... yeah.
Have I got News for You, is the best panel show; the day that Hislop leaves, is when they should stop doing it (while Paul Merton is also good, I seem to remember him not appearing on the show for a while, and it not really suffering).
Track down the show when Brian Blessed was the host (not hard, it's on you tube), it is TV gold.
Nevermind the Buzzcocks has become too main stream. When Mark Lamarr hosted it, it used to be indie, and they'd rip into commercial music. When Simon Amstell took over, it basically just turned into a show about him taking the piss of contestants. Now they get people who are rejects of the X-factor and commercial pop acts coming on for their 15 mins of fame. It's lost it's way.
Mock the Week, for me, is just a poor man's Have I got News for You. 6 comedians, all competing for attention, and while I'm sure 99% of panel shows are rehearsed (HIGNFY hides it the best if it does), it is very obvious in this show. I honestly just don't get the love some people have for Frankie Boyle (I know he's since left). His gimmick is, that he's offensive, and each week, he just kept on having to increase that.
Has QI been mentioned?
Also, did anyone see the One Ronnie over christmas? This sketch I feel is genius.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI
Russell Howrd's good news isn't satire.
It's a young man desperate to be liked, shouting and doing silly voices, tenuously linked to current events. Dead Ringers is an impressions show, 2DTV was lowest common denominator comedy masquerading as satire. Now Spitting Image was true satire, but unfortunately unlikely to be successfuly recreated nowadays.
I guess what I really want is a British Daily Show. I'm convinced we can do it too. And going by how good Newswipe is, Charlie Brooker is the man for the job. I'm also a big fan of David Mitchell. So maybe 10 O'clock live will deliver.
That I did not know. And The Friday Night Project wasn't really like SNL, it was just a late night chat show, wasn't it? I mean, nobody actually watched it, so I'm basing this on their awful previews.
Psychoville is the work of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, who were part of The League of Gentlemen. The series follows a diverse array of characters being blackmailed by an unknown stranger, which links all of their stories together.
On a lighter note, the sketch show Cowards is one of the tightest and funniest sketch shows I've seen. The only downside is that it only has three TV episodes (although the radio recordings are available on CD).
My political awareness was born from Spitting Image.
Why is no-one willing to fill this void?
I think the problem is that you'd be constantly compared to Have I Got News For You.
it's a lot harder to do then it looks. You have to have a big staff of writers and watchers that are able to do a near daily turn around of big news stories, you can't do many re-runs and will never be syndicated. Plus the format for the Daily show is that of a talk show, so you get a ton of filler time.
Canada has a couple of shows like it. Air Farce was pretty damn good but fell WAY behind the news cycle by the end and had a lot of troubles writing skits in the short time frame. This Hour Has 22 minutes is still doing ok. Can't say it's that great but they manage.
edit: oh and there's the issue of the out of country market. I know no one gives a damn about Canadian politics aside for Canadians and I doubt that many will share the laughs about British politics.
To be fair, Spitting Image lost it's way towards the end.
I'm pretty sure 2DTV (which I didn't really enjoy) was written by some of the same people as Spitting Image.
And I suppose Spitting Image had a pretty easy target (the Tory's of that era, whereas now, most politicians are carbon copies of each other).
I just remembered Bremner, Bird and Fortune as being good political satire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNYxTpEVQWc
Probably because he was funny
We could really use some kind of weekly, topical comedy show. We've got far too many chat shows with celebrities coming on to plug their new thing, and instead we need something like SNL to give some more time to comedians and writers.
This may come from watching Studio 60, I'm not sure.
SNL has fucking sucked ever since they screwed over all of the people who actually had talent. They used to have good music, talented comedians and clever writing and now they... don't.
I hear this same complaint about every generation of the cast. Those who are the funny/talented portion of the cast find work outside of SNL even while on the show.
Brooker has also done You have been watching, which was pretty fun.
He writes a column for the Guardian (nearly) every week.
If you had to push me for a negative about the guy, I'd point out that in previous years, he's generally given a review at some point about the X-factor and laid into Cowell and so on, and yet this year, that's not happened (the coincidence being that his wife presents X-factor extra).
I would love to see him work with Robert Florence. He's already sort of done a video game review thing with him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1XSyPP1ja0
For reference, Rab is the guy who did the best God Hand review (although I'm pretty sure he's famous enough around here that everybody knows him)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBqB5LUKh8A
Although I mostly want Rab for his accent, admittedly
However, there is a tendency to add a lot of panto-style innuendo and funny voices as filler. And the pop culture references. At least that's what I've found listening to various BBC news satire shows.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
Like the Bugle with John Oliver?
Not sure how well that will translate on to TV.
You will never lose a UK audience's suspension of disbelief by portraying the US as either bungling or sinister. Americans are the ultimate panto villians.
I love Spooks, and couldn't stand 24, so I'm guessing this is probably just an example of divergent tastes.
Jonathon Creek. Seriously this wasn't mentioned yet? A guy who lives in a windmill and designs tricks/illusions for a famous magician gets pulled into solving impossible crimes by a failing crime writer. Best of all, the complete collection was released just before christmas on DVD. Everyone should watch this.
I'm sure there was something else but I can't remember it at the moment.