My Favourite Episode: Are You Being Served? – “The Hold Up”

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As a child, I watched the season 10 Are You Being Served? episode “The Hold Up” obsessively, wearing out the tape. Burglars turn up at Grace Brothers during late-night stocktaking and take Miss Brahms hostage. Our trapped troop realise that only the local gangster family, “The Gumby Gang”, will scare them – cue Mollie Sugden’s over-the-top (and lost on me) Mae West moll impression and John Inman devouring the mahogany-lined office set scenery as Mr Humphries attempts “Italian Toni, the Tooting Terror”. » Read more..

Adam Buxton’s BUG airs this July

Adam Buxton BUG

After some of the funniest evenings in the London’s BFI one has ever experienced and a host of YouTube joy, Adam Buxton’s TV version of BUG takes to UK screens this July.

Airing on Sky Atlantic HD from 9.30pm, Monday 9th July, the show’s inaugural season will run eight episodes and include videos presented in Buxton’s inimitable, hilarious style from well-known award-winning high-budget directors, right through to young newcomers. » Read more..

End of season Mad Men party: Out-of-context stills

We’ll get some ‘serious’ coverage of season five (and quite possibly the greatest yet) of Mad Men tomorrow, until then here’s a small compilation of out-of-context spoiler-free images to whet your appetite if you’re watching on Sky tonight or allow you a moment of brief reflection if you’ve already completed this run.

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Breaking Bad Season Five: first promo

One month to go!

What do you get when you cross The Voice and Take Me Out? The Choice!

Fox have outdone themselves with their latest Cat Deeley vehicle, The Choice, a format so lazily cobbled together from other reasonably successful shows it almost rises beyond parody.

Brilliant. If ITV aren’t going to pick this up, I will.

Welcome to TV Wonder

Take a moment first off to read the About page so you can ascertain exactly what it is we’re trying to do here. Being as we launch the same day as the Euro 2012 football tournament, we thought it only write to ask Gareth Dobson to write this. Interested in the newest of new shows? Have a look at what Peter White saw in Los Angeles. What about an existing show you might not have seen? Ben Fowler explores Friday Night Lights.

There’s plenty to come across the whole TV spectrum, through the ages, across both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and beyond. Enjoy the site and if you like something, please share it!

“A drunken ninja armed with a bag of Monster Munch” – ITV Sport’s Clive Tyldesley taken to task

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If you were to use Twitter as a barometer of public opinion (and you never should), Clive Tydesley is not a popular man, in fact every time he helms the microphone for the coverage of an ITV-screened live football match, one only need to search his surname in said social bear-baiting arena to read a deluge of missives that range from exasperation to anger to blind, near-pathological hatred.
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Have You Seen? – Friday Night Lights

Friday Night Lights

Some shows are an easy sell. Mad Men, with its period allure; True Blood’s heightened Southern Gothic sensuality; The West Wing’s corridors of power. But try to explain the appeal of Friday Night Lights to anyone and it can feel like you’re digging yourself a hole that just keeps on getting bigger. Set in the small Texan town of Dillion, Friday Night Lights (or FNL as it’s known to its fans) revolves around a high school football team led by Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), its players, sponsors and supporters. Farmed off to ITV4 in the UK for its first two seasons, it’s no surprise that a show seemingly so niche struggled to find an audience alongside Jericho and re-runs of Miami Vice. Now airing on Sky Atlantic, it might have an opportunity to garner new audiences interested in discovering the latest misunderstood US show.

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My Favourite Episode: Freaks and Geeks – ‘Tests and Breasts’

Freaks and Geeks Linda Cardinllini Seth Rogen Jason Segal Busy Phillips James Franco

“How do you wanna do this?” asks Linda Cardellini to James Franco in Episode 5 of Judd Apatow’s pitch-perfect representation of high-school life – Freaks and Geeks. “I don’t know… I’ve never done this before” is the reply from Franco’s character, Daniel Desario. Despite what you might be thinking, they are talking about maths revision, but that is where the genius of Freaks and Geeks lies – in its identification with the teenage awkwardness of being uncomfortable in your own skin and wishing to be different. » Read more..

LA Screenings 2012: The Following

Kevin-Baconand-James-Purefoy-of-The-Following

Last week I watched twenty-seven multicamera comedies (think repeatedly being bashed over the head with a Big Bang Theory box-set while Two and a Half Men is stuck on repeat) and thirty-two procedural dramas (where the most remarkable police detective had a really good memory and a smartphone).

This, however, is also the most fun week of the television calendar.

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