Harry's Place Arts

The NPR program “On the Media” features a report on how the 1950s British TV series “The Adventures of Robin Hood”– popular both in the UK and the US– employed blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters writing under assumed names.

The great “Simpsons” character Troy McClure was discontinued after Phil Hartman, the actor who voiced him, was tragically murdered in 1998. Troy, a washed-up actor, would frequently appear as the host of an informerical or an educational or corporate PR film. He always began his spiel: “Hi, I’m Troy McClure. You might remember me from…” [...]

When you heard that Julie Walters was playing Mo, in the eponymous bio telly pic about the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland you knew Maureen Mowlam was going to be warm, and human and dead loveable and out-spoken and Northern, with an adoring husband.  Similarly in Wide-eyed and Legless, where Julie Walters was playing Diana, [...]

Guest post by Jon D Dead at the age of 79. For many he’ll doubtless be remembered as ‘The Equalizer’. British horror movies cultists will recall him as DS Howie resisting the charms of Britt Ekland in ‘The Wicker Man’. But I’ll remember him most fondly for a role most obituarists seem to have entirely [...]

Via: The Advocate.

Just a brief note to endorse every word in this review of Battlestar Galactica (BSG), and to say to those averse to Sci-Fi: “Try it, but start here“. Also worth noting that the UN have been using BSG as a method of promoting their work. When one of the UN’s representatives talked about how part [...]

Radio 4 are currently broadcasting The Death of Grass [caution spoiler], part one and two of which are on iplayer. After overcoming the difficulties of taking the likeable David Mitchell seriously as a narrator, I’m finding it an interesting distraction. I always thought John Christopher’s Death of Grass was under-rated in comparison to Day of [...]

Last night the BBC repeated Margaret Thatcher: The Long Road to Finchley.   I don’t know how accurately it portrays the young Margaret Thatcher but it’s bright and quick moving like a cartoon, especially in those scenes when Thatcher tries housewifery and paces about in a cage too small for her energy, turning out dozens of [...]

Tomorrow night (9pm, Sky One) Battlestar Galactica returns to the UK screens. Apart from the sadly incomplete Firefly series, whose shaky camera space battle footage Galactica copies, this is the best science fiction TV show in the past ten years (Dr Who being the best children’s television of the past ten years). Highly character driven, [...]

Jack Bauer is back in the 7th “day” of 24. He’s changed. Supposedly he has been hijacked by the liberals, upset by his use of torture. And in an apparent bid to get in tune with the new president, the new season opens with Bauer facing a congressional investigation probing his use of torture and [...]