TV answers

Sorry it took me so long to get to these, but here you go:

dear_gertrudeperkins gets things kicked off:

Best Christmas episode of any TV show and why?

There are a lot of good Christmas episodes out there. The king of writing these, however, has to be Aaron Sorkin. From Sports Night to Studio 60, his Christmas shows are always a cut above average, and it’s no surprise that the actor playing the character at the heart of each West Wing Christmas episode usually walked away with an Emmy. Of these, Bartlet for America, from the shows third season, is not only the best Christmas episode of any TV show ever but, IMHO, the second best hour of television ever.

Best pilot to new series and why?

There’s so many, I’m not sure how to choose. Serenity, the original pilot for Firefly. Pie-lette from Pushing Daisies. The West Wing and Studio 60 pilots. Rose from NuWho. The pilot for Glee. The miniseries for Battlestar Galactica. Pick one.

Incidentally, Virtuality stands alone as greatest pilot NOT to make it to series. Damn you Fox!

Best series finale and why?

Best series finale that was intended to be a series finale is definitely Not Fade Away from Angel. Best that wasn’t? Wonderfalls.

Next we have *Moonglow*:

Fav firefly character and why?

Kaylee. What can I say? I have a thing for geeky girls. Wash is a very close second though.

Fav episode?

I take it you mean of Firefly? Out Of Gas. I still cannot believe that Fox originally wanted it to be re-edited into chronological order.

Best Joss Whedon?

I would say Dr Horrible, but that’s not TV. I want to say Dollhouse as it had huge potential. Sadly there were too many bad episodes (including, IMHO, the worst episode of any Joss Whedon project). Buffy and Angel both had consistency problems at times. So, I’m going to have to go with Firefly. DAMN YOU FOX!

OH! and favourite “reality show” ( if you dont watch, which would you watch if you HAD to?)

The Apprentice.

SHARPSkinkid had a couple as well:

Angel or Buffy (show?)

Angel. As said above, both had consistency issues. But, as much as I love Buffy, when Angel was on the top of it’s game it was miles ahead of it’s parent show.

Greatest drama of all time?

If this had said greatest show of all time, I’d have gone with Battlestar Galactica (new version). But as it didn’t, nor did it ask about sci-fi, I have to go with The Wire. It is just so far above average it’s not even funny. David Simon made a comment about having to teach people how to watch the show, but I don’t think assuming intelligence in an audience is a bad thing. If you haven’t seen The Wire yet do so. Ignore everything you’ve been told about how good it is. It’s far, far, far better than that.

Better channel: BBC or HBO?

This is a difficult one. I don’t uniformly like either channels output so I can’t base it on that. I’m going to have to go with HBO, simply cos they take more risks. It’s what the BBC should be doing, but I realise they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they do make more risky programmes, they get accused of being elitist and there are questions about the license fee. If they simply chase ratings, they get accused of wasting the license fee on chasing the lowest common denominator (despite the fact that quality programming and ratings aren’t normally mutually exclusive). But I’d still like to see them have the balls to say to someone like Jimmy McGovern or Paul Abbott ‘You have five years, x amount of episodes a year and no ratings to worry about. Give us something like The Wire.’

And finally, we have SocksOnRye:

Favorite Dollhouse character and why?

Oh lord. Here we go. Probably Topher, because he’s slightly creepy but has a very strong sense of morality. Somewhere. (Favourite actor, BTW, is Enver Gjokaj who really should have an amazing career ahead of him.)

Favorite TV director (favorite episode/show they’ve directed?)

I don’t really know that many TV directors. Or if I do it’s because that don’t just direct (Joss Whedon, Tim Minear, JJ Abrams). I do know Euros Lynn because, well, you try forgetting that name. Tommy Schlemme from working with Aaron Sorkin. Timothy Busfield, ditto. Most of the male cast of The West Wing had a go at directing at some point, as did Dominic West over on The Wire. I’m going to have to go with Tim Minear and Through The Looking Glass. Why? ‘Numfar, do the dance of joy!’

Favorite freshman 09 show?

I’m going to split this into two. British and American.

British: I really, really want to be cheeky and say Torchwood, cos this was the year in which I feel we actually got Torchwood, but I’m going to have to make that my most improved. Instead, I’m going to pick trinity, a little show on ITV2 starring Charles Dance. It’s set in an exclusive university where strange things are afoot. This show proves that ITV can do decent sci-fi. I don’t know why they stuck it on ITV2 instead of ITV and I hope it’s coming back. Even if they were a bit lazy with some character names (seriously, see if you can guess where in Britain the character Angus Fergus is from).

America: I really want to be able to say Dollhouse but see above. So this will be split two ways. Glee is just fantastic. It’s obvious that the last episode was planned in case the show was cancelled but thankfully that’s not happening. And Joss Whedon will be directing for it. Now, if only it wasn’t on hiatus till April. DAMN YOU FOX!!! The other one is Castle. Brilliant cop show which is more about the characters than the cases. Thankfully, the characters are amazing. Nathan Fillion is obviously having the time of his life as the titular Richard Castle and the Halloween episode is pure geek heaven.

Guilty pleasure?

There’s a show that I’ve stumbled across called The Cut. It’s a webseries with half hour long catchups on the BBC iPlayer. Most of the cast are kinda-sorta could be famous types, the acting goes from passably good to could be better and they don’t seem to have got to grips with the idea that you don’t cram tom many storylines into 5 minute episodes. But i still like watching it and, again, hope it comes back. The music in it is also decent, even if the theme tune has the worse lyrics I’ve heard since ‘Are we humans, or are we dancers’.

And there we have it. I probably won’t get my last DePhoMo pic posted till tomorrow (as I’m planning to take it at midnight), so I’d just like to wish everyone a happy Hogmanay and all the best for 2010.

Oh, quick reminder. For those of you wanting to take part in Year of Creativity, remember that it does start tomorrow. And if you’re not sure what that actually is, go here

Will

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