A Better Title For That Post Would Have Been "Pulling Daisies"

Friz will doubtless be thrilled.

The episode of Pushing Daisies that ITV1 absurdly chose not to show will be screened after all: on their website. Well, clearly that's good enough.

I might even watch it. I watched the first one, and it was very good, but then I found out the second one wasn't going to be shown and didn't bother to tune in for the third. I want to see them in order -- there's enough good TV around at the moment I can afford to be picky. If they get round to re-running the show then I might watch from the third that way.

I don't know why TV companies go to such lengths to stop me watching their shows. Last night, I recorded The Apprentice and went out to see some live comedy, and when I got into work today, the BBC News website told me the result! Right there in the headline! I couldn't have avoided that if I'd wanted to.

Surely anyone who wants to know would want to find out by watching the show?

Kaiser Grief

There's been a show on Channel 4 tonight called "Kaiser Chiefs vs Kaizer Chiefs". In the show, famous Leeds band Kaiser Chiefs met the South African football team Kaizer Chiefs. They played a gig with Kaizer Chiefs watching. They then played football.

Is this really worth half an hour of airtime? I attempted to count the amount of times they mentioned that both had similar names, but got too bored. I'd also like to know whose idea it was to commission this show. I didn't even learn anything from it. The one fact that had was that Kaiser Chiefs borrowed their name from Kaizer Chiefs. And this fact was uttered again and again.

What next? Franz Ferdinand studying the reasons for World War One?

I'd Make a "Pluto" Pun, But It's Too Obvious

An advert for Bakers Dog Food currently airing states that they

"are the leading brand of dog food in Britain, so you'll have to go a long way to find a dog that hasn't tried it."

It then cuts into dogs in space.

Surely France is closer?

Oh No! The TARDIS is Trapped in a Giggle Loop!

According to the Guardian, Russell T Davis has chosen to stand down from his job as lead writer and executive producer of Doctor Who. His replacement, when the show returns in 2010 or so (blimey that sounds like a long way off), will be Steven Moffat. This is, broadly, what I've been saying they should do for... well, more or less since the end of the Christopher Eccleston series. He's written the best episode every year, and Jekyll proved he can do multi-episode stories. Also I'm pretty sure I spied him on the "next time on Doctor Who Confidential", so watch out for a damn good two-parter coming up next.

Moffat said: "My entire career has been a secret plan to get this job. I applied before but I got knocked back because the BBC wanted someone else. Also I was seven.

"Anyway, I'm glad the BBC has finally seen the light, and it's a huge honour to be following Russell into the best - and the toughest - job in television."

Finally, people have chosen to listen to me. This has never happened before. I hope it goes well, or else I'll lose all my angry, shouty credibility.

If it does, perhaps other people will start doing what I tell them, and then we can all live in a blissful utopia where the trains work and faith schools don't exist.

We live in an exciting time.

BBC Three To Make Doctor Who Confidential Anyway

According to Chortle, ITV have commissioned a second series of Moving Wallpaper... but not Echo Beach.

Which is fair enough, given that Echo Beach was total shit, but it really was all that made Moving Wallpaper different from every other behind-the-scenes sitcom.

I take this to mean that the whole ridiculous venture was probably a mistake.

Yesterday I Got So Scared/I Shivered Like a Child...

I'd like to point out a show I've been watching, I think possibly alone. It's a six-part British sitcom about a 16-year-old boy starting at a comprehensive sixth form having previously been in private education. I know, I'd instinctively have assumed it was drivel, too, but the trailer made me laugh, so I set the first episode to record.

It turns out to be very good. It's on on Thursday nights, repeated on Wednesdays at a ridiculous hour. It's pleasingly mature and clever, and it's a programme about young people that isn't ridiculously outlandish, which is nice: this week's episode featured a party with the parents upstairs and the closest thing to a sex scene the show has had yet — and that didn't count. Compare that to something like Hollyoaks, where the local school seemed, last time I saw it, to be a hotbed of knife crime. I'm sure that happens sometimes, but it's nothing I can relate to. The main character, Will, reminds me a lot of Mark from Peep Show, and The Inbetweeners shares Peep Show's liking for overblown "toe-cringing" farce climax scenes — and a Google search reveals Peep Show's script editor co-writes it. It's the first time E4 have commissioned a sitcom, and I think they've done bloody well for their first go.

There's not much of this series to go now. I think maybe three episodes, if you include a late-night repeat. The last couple of episodes are on Channel 4's free catch-up thing. It's also on 4oD, although I think you'll need a few spare pounds to catch up.

It's definitely worth a look, though.

It Made Me Clench My Fingernails

The Channel Four continuity announcer before Derren Brown today promised that tonight's would be "the most uncomfortable Peep Show yet". In fact, he said it would be "toe-cringingly funny".

That does sound uncomfortable.

...

I honestly, now that I come to think of it, don't really know what specifically cringing is, but surely you curl your toes. That's the saying.

Channel Flip Presents: The First Five Minutes of Scallywagga

A man in a red shirt jogs through the forest. He is portly and in need of exercise. He turns his head over his shoulder. He sees bikes coming towards him. Aloud, and to himself, he says one word. “Bike”.

Two people on a park bench. They are comparing phones, and showing off the technology that their phones contain. One of them stops time and pours water onto the other person’s lap. He looks like he has wet himself. A comical fart noise appears in the middle of this sketch.

A fly on an S.

A boy with long hair and black clothes claims he drinks blood. His mates say that he drinks Tizer.

Jeff from Peep Show and Sally Lindsay try and kill their son, unsuccessfully.

A boy with long hair and black clothes claims he once wore a wig. His friends disagree.

A woman straightens her hair. She sneezes. Her hair is no longer straight.

Bone Idol

America is enamored with American Idol. Not just this year, but every year. It is unfathomably the number-one rated show in the US, at times receiving over 36 million viewers during the '06 season. Why is this, I wonder? Why are people more interested in watching glorified karaoke than they are watching half-decent scripted television like Scrubs or Battlestar Galactica? The skewed interests of the American audience and the monstrous viewing figures that the show has received have, of course, led to television studios in the US trying to do one thing - top those numbers.

Shows are unfairly held up against American Idol's figures. If a show isn't getting the numbers that American Idol gets - if it doesn't even come close - it's already considered a failure by the network. No other network is more guilty of this than Fox, which is silly when you consider that they already have a track record of canceling successful shows for no real reason whatsoever, but even more moronic when you know that Fox airs American Idol. Ah, I get it.

Television Networks in the US, I implore you - stop using American Idol as a viewing-figure benchmark. The show is a fluke, an anomaly. Treat shows under their own merit. Stop being so bloody narrow-minded and let good television thrive.