TV and radio and books, oh my!

[royalmarriage]

Found myself last week in the unusual position of looking forward to an ITV programme, specifically Marchlands. And when I got round to watching it, I was pleased that it was (or at least I thought it was) really really rather good. It's a bit difficult to know what else to say about it on the basis of just the one episode, but it was certainly rather gripping and fascinating, and although I was expecting they'd spend some time in each time period (1968, 1987 and 2010), in fact they went from one to another quite rapidly, but without leading to any jarring sense of confusion that could be expected. Kudos to Stephen Greenhorn who wrote it (he's also responsible for The Lazarus Experiment and The Doctor's Daughter, and therefore indirectly for getting David Tennant and Georgia Moffett together...).

Last night's Being Human was really rather splendid - if they carry on at this rate I suspect the third series will end up as the best of the run so far - but by heck, it wasn't one for the squeamish. Jamie Mathieson's script excellently captured the mood of the show, with lots of dark humour. I was laughing out loud for large chunks of it, despite the odd stomach-churning moment...

Incidentally, does anyone know if there'll be any more tie-in novelisations? I really enjoyed the three that were published this time last year, and more would certainly be appreciated.

I've heard kind of mixed things about Outcasts, but have set the old Sky+ box to record it anyway. If I don't like it, I don't like it.

News from the SFX Weekender - apparently Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett's Good Omens is being adapted as a four-part TV series. Hopefully that's four hour-long parts, minimum...

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For a while now, I've been using the Sky+ box to record radio programmes when I'm out - I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue and The Now Show from Radio 4, and The Goon Show repeats on BBC 7. Although it requires a bit more old-skool manual setting (time, channel, date, frequency) than recording TV programmes, it works a treat. Or at least it did until recently (a couple of weeks back), when all of a sudden it's started asking for a PIN Code whenever I try to play stuff back. Does anyone else experience this with Sky+ recordings? 'Cos Sarah and I have no idea if we even have a PIN Code, never mind what it might actually be.

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Went to a couple of book signings last week. The first, on Monday, was for Canadian R J Anderson (rj_anderson on LJ); the third of her trilogy of fantasy novels - Knife, Rebel, and Arrow - has recently been published in this country. I've nearly finished the first one, and if the other two are as good, I really can't recomment them highly enough. Proper review thingy will follow at some point, but anyway.

Second signing, on Thursday, was for Kate Griffin, who was promoting the publication of The Neon Court, the third book in her series of books about Matthew Swift, urban magician. Having enjoyed (albeit taken a long time to read) the first two books, Madness of Angels and The Midnight Mayor, it was great to make it to the signing to actually get them all defaced by their author.

The great thing about both signings was that they weren't massively attended. Maybe it's the nature of literary signings over TV/film signings, maybe it's just that neither author is particularly well known at the moment, but when I turned up to Ms. Anderson's signing a few minutes after its official start time, she was signing copies for the store (and then bamboozled me by recognising me from my LJ/Facebook pic), and although there were slightly more people in attendance for Ms Griffin (whose signing was taking place alongside one by Jon Courtenay Grimwood), "more" still only meant about a dozen folks there by the time the signing started, with me about sixth in the queue. And not all of the folks were actually there for Kate, meaning I got to spend a few minutes chatting about her books and the prospect of future film adaptations thereof (I suggested Aidan Turner to play Matthew Swift; Kate didn't disagree, but felt that he should be played by someone who isn't good-looking).

And I got a nice piccie of Ms. Griffin, :



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And to make the title of this entry really work, a couple of weeks back Sarah and I went to see Wicked, and it was brilliant. Great fun, amazing set, fun story, some great acting and singing (particularly Rachel Tucker), and...yeah, just generally a great night out. Don't know if I'll go again (I know that it's the kind of show that attracts that sort of devotion, and I'm definitely not ruling out a return visit), but I bought the original novel and the CD.

No doubt I shall post more soon. I sort of spend most of my time on Twitter nowadays, but there are some things that just won't fit into 140 characters, however much you squeeze them... :o)

Comments

[davidbrider.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'll check that out when I can!