ROMEWATCH

Attia of the Julii Cooper has managed to break up Julius Caesar and Servalan through the medium of lewd graffiti. Well, I suppose they didn’t have the internet in those days. Servalan found out who was responsible and went mental. Bring it on!! So far she has just cursed the pair of them. I hope she does other stuff too though (catfight! swimming pool!).

I suppose we know how it’s all going to turn out though as Servalan’s son = Brutus as in “Et tu Brutus” fame/stabbery etc.

In other news. Octavian is still a psychotic little brat and has teamed up with Cyber-Pullo. The plot re Niobe’s infidelity is still rumbling on, Vorenus is still a humourless dullard and Ceasar is roaming round chasing Pompey and his army.

Next week Marc Anthony calls Julii Cooper a “harpy”! ruh roh!!

24

They are showing two episodes a week of this, so maybe I should call it 12 instead of 24. Ha ha ha…. ahem…. (tumbleweed etc)

So, it turns out that the VIRUS is not actually disguised in a bag of coke as we had been led to believe, but is instead being carried by a blonde surfer type lad who was just trying to earn some cash to help his family. Cue violins. They tracked him down to a shopping mall, but when Soul Patch Tony tried to arrest him one of the baddies shot Tony in the neck. Nooo!!!! And also Ouch!!! Surfer Boy then managed to wander out of the mall (even though it was supposed to be completely locked down - the C in CTU certainly does not stand for “competent”!) and was seized by the baddies, who have now put him and his girlfriend into some sort of giant washing machine. Hmmm.

Poor Michelle, not only has she come to work dressed like a chorus girl from Chicago but also there is a VIRUS outbreak, the President is in town, her husband has been shot in the neck and now she is in charge of CTU. Perhaps she ought to borrow some of Jack’s heroine to calm herself down. If things weren’t bad enough, she also has to put up with Chloe wandering around saying things like “Michelle, I know that there’s a bio threat of unprecedented awfulness and your husband is fighting for his life, but Kimmeh used the last of the milk in the kitchenette and then didn’t go and fetch some more. Also she left her teabag in the sink! I’m not a cleaner you know, none of this is my responsibility!” I love Chloe.

President Palmer scenes = time to go and make a cup of tea.

Pouty Latino drug wife = still being repulsed by EVIL

That blonde, lesbian, husky voiced, telepath lady from Babylon 5 has shown up as a Disease Expert.

Kimmehwatch = she still hasn’t done anything too ridiculous yet. Come along missy, you are boring me.

CTU is rubbish. Vol MCMXVVI. CTU Mole Gael has set up a Doctor Evil style lair in a broom cupboard and keeps running off to phone the baddies whenever CTU find out a new terror fact and NO-ONE HAS NOTICED YET

Chase had a bratty fit because Kimmeh told Jack that they were going out and now Jack has made Chase be a desk man or something. Chase went to prison to beat up the Main Latino Drug Lord and make him sing like a canary, not knowing that Jack had come up with the brilliant idea of busting MLDL out of prison so they could prevent the virus being released whilst still not appearing to negotiate with terrorists. Pres Palmer said that if Jack went through with the plan then he could never be pardoned and would be a fugitive FOREVAH!! Jack is told this at least once a season and it hasn’t happened yet. Jack gave Chase a beating and then tied him up (paging Dr Freud… Kimmeh is an adult, Jack! She’s allowed to have sex with people! At least she hasn’t picked a kidnapper this time!) but the prison break went tits up so Jack had to release all the other prisoners too to create a diversion. I knew this “plan” would all end in tears…

Tick… tick… tick…

MUTANT X

Sky 3 is repository to all sorts of crap that I have never seen before! Excellent! This is like a really low budget version of the X-Men, where a bunch of “mutants” with “fantastic powers” (ie. catalogue models with low budget CGI) fly round in a magic invisible aeroplane (I thought that was a Wonder Woman gadget??) rescuing other goody mutants from baddies. I can’t really work out what they all do yet except for the best looking bloke = Lightning Lad!!! Their leader is John O Shea (aka Lex Luthor from Dean Cain/Teri Hatcher Superman) and the main baddy looks like Andy Warhol! OMG they have to stop him before he unleashes a really boring three hour film about drag queens onto an unsuspecting world!!!

TV OF YESTERYEAR - 24

In the “TV Dinners” tradition of getting excited about a TV program that was first on years ago (see Melrose Place…) I started watching 24 Season 3 on Sky 3 the other night! Hurrah, this is the first time I’ve seen it – how I missed Jack Bauer, what with his complete lack of ethics and velvety growl.

What I have learned so far!!

Jack has become a junky whilst “undercover” and is jonesing real bad. He keeps pulling gurny faces and shouting at people because he just wants a fix, god dammit! He has a new partner who is quite good looking in a square headed sort of way. The partner is obviously totally doomed as (a) he is Jack’s partner and (b) he is going out with Kimmeh. I just hope he has a chance to take his shirt off before he is killed by Kimmeh’s idiocy.

People at CTU still say retarded things like “I’m going to check his ID by opening a channel on the secure socket” as though it actually makes some kind of sense.

Kimmeh is now working at CTU. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. She did some gay trick with a computer to prove that she was “competent” but I’ll wait until I see her run across a road before I am truly convinced of that. Also, her new hairdo = hairdon’t

Evil drug barons are going to infect LA with Killer Space Flu unless their brother is released from prison. Over reacting much? Can’t they just intimidate witnesses or raid the prison or something?

Also, if they kill everyone in LA then who is going to buy their drugs??? It just doesn’t seem like good business sense to me and Siralan Sugar would fire you for sure if you tried that on The Apprentice. Anyway, evil main drug baron has a gorgeous pouting wife who is probably going to turn out to a goody (you can tell this because she flinches and makes sad faces whenever her hubby does something EVIL).

President Palmer has a new dull relative and a new foxy lady doctor. I assume that one of these two will turn out to be working for the baddies. Sigh.

Tick… tick…. tick…

Reality TV check

I’M DESPERATE: GET ME ON TELLY
We were at the Breeders’ gig on Sunday (I think this is the only bit of the Internet where I haven’t mentioned that I was at the Breeders gig on Sunday), so we missed the opening night of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, but apparently our beloved Elaine “Sullen Slater” Lourdan has been airlifted to hospital following a couple of fainting fits. Even Daniella Westbrook managed a full week, fer chrissakes. .

Oh and the Breeders were fantastic, thanks for asking. Yes, those Breeders…the band with Kim and Kelley Deal. That’s right, her out of The Pixies. We saw The Pixies last year too

ROME
I was going to write something long and complicated about this, but I am a bit non-plussed so far and so will merely list a few good/bad points:

CLASSIC
I like Pullo; the legionnaire who runs around drinking, whoring, gambling, brawling, stabbing people in the neck and saying “RAAARGHHH!” He is practically a PIRATE, only disguised as a soldier. Also he has a metal plate in his head, which makes him a CYBORG too!! Awesome. (his accent is a bit posh though – he should have been a cockerney or from oop north or something).

Attia of the Julii (aka Alexisus Colbeyus, aka Julii Cooper of the OC) is good value. Every roman TV series needs a manipulative bitch type character (see Livia in “I Clavdivs”) and she has been manipulating and bitching like a trooper. Alexisus has had her drippy son-in-law killed, is shagging half of Rome, has bathed in arterial bulls blood for our viewing pleasure and has all the best lines. I am now waiting with bated breath for her and Servalan (or whoever the hell Lindsey Duncan is playing) to have a catfight and both fall into a swimming pool. What? They had baths in Rome, innit?

Mark Anthony is fit and frequently takes his clothes off. Cheers!

There are some quite good sly little jokes, like the graffiti that is briefly glimpsed saying “Attia is a slaggg. Tru” in Latin. Also there was a funny bit where a soldier had just finished crucifying a bunch of Gauls and then had to take them all down again and made a pissy face. I thought it was funny anyway.

DUD
They cut the first three episodes down into two because apparently everyone in the UK knows Roman History – um, hello, no they don’t!! I only know the period of Roman history covered by “I Clavdivs” which appears to have started a while after “Rome” (seeing as how Octavian is a smarmy brat in this and was Brain Blessed (I think) in “Clavdivs”).

I still have no idea who half the people are in Pompey’s Posse or why they were so arsey about Julius Ceasar coming back to Rome in the first place. As if that wasn’t bad enough, all the scenes in the senate remind me fatally of Star Wars I – III. “Caesar has crossed the Rubicon and Naboo does not recognise the Trade Federations authority.” Etc etc.

Then, after having two over-edited, hard to understand episodes they have a really dull one where nothing much happens and Alexisus isn’t very entertaining. Booo.

Vorenus appears to have mistaken “playing an uptight rigid character” with “being totally wooden”. Also his wife and her sister appear to be from totally different continents. What’s that all about? As it happens, I am not particularly interested in common people’s marital problems. I can watch Eastenders for that. More of Attia having people killed and unleashing her bosoms in the name of POWER plz thanks.

Typical – not long after saying that Lost is awesome I get bored of it and give up. Sorry dudes, even Dr Jack’s hotness is not enough to keep me watching. Just as well that there are more series on the horizon – Rome is coming up soon. Woo hoo! - but first of all…

BLEAK HOUSE

Hmmm, I am not a huge fan of Dickens but think it is a brilliant idea to schedule a TV adaptation like a prime time soap, rather than a Sunday evening malarkey with two hour episodes etc, as after all this is how Dickens’ original readers got their fix of thrills. I know nothing about the plot of Bleak House either so all the plot twists and excitement will work brilliantly with me, assuming I keep watching it…

First couple of episodes were OK, with tons of exposition and a host of speedily introduced new characters. There is a long standing legal case about a will and some of the young people who might get £££ from the will are packed off to stay with nice Dennis Lawson and his midget maid. Agent Scully pops up as some kind of posh Victorian goth lady with a shady past, and some bloke who might be her long lost lurver karks it in opium drug shame shocker.

At present, most of the fun is to be had by spotting people in the cast you recognise – Johnny Vegas is a slum landlord! Charles Dance is a baleful lawyer! Irene from EE and Liza Tarbuck are Charitably Inclined Ladies of Good Character! Juhneen from EE is a downtrodden member of the proletariat! Timothy West is married to Agent Scully! the Judge was in that thing about the smarmy politician who murdered people! Uncle Monty from “Withnail and I” is a poncy doctor with a wack moustache.

There are many plot lines going on – some are not interesting (the young ward wondering what to do for a living), some are semi interesting (our heroine is stalked by a young legal clerk with a weird mouth) and some are v interesting (Charles Dance investigating Agent Scully’s past). I am not exactly dying to know what happens next but will continue to give it a try.

TOP FIVE MOMENTS IN STRICTLY COME DANCING – SO FAR (in no particular order)

1. Darren Gough transforming before our very eyes from a burly beer monster into Fred Astaire

2. Patsy Palmer’s 1930s style tango hair helmut

3. Will from Casualty taking his shirt off (PS. How gay is he???)

4. Fiona Phillips attempting to look sassy and swing her sash around in the jive. Ha
ha ha. If you looked up “hapless” in the dictionary it would be illustrated with this clip.

5. Colin Jackson jumping 6 feet into the air and doing a fancy toe touching manouevre – wowsa!!!


Colin to win!!!