In 1989, presenter Neil Buchanan and producer Tim Edmunds created a show for Children’s ITV called Art Attack, which showed kids how to make quirky and unusual things from household objects. With Art Attack being such a success, Buchanan and Edmunds were asked to create a new show for ITV in 1992. Zzzap!, first broadcast … >
It’s the most financially successful James Bond film (adjusted for inflation), the second (after Goldfinger) to win an Oscar, this time for Best Visual Effects, and infamously remade as Never Say Never Again, luring Sean Connery back to the role, in 1983. AND YET. Reaction to Thunderball has always been decidedly mixed, for reasons that … >
Before becoming known to a wider audience on The IT Crowd, Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry made their first television appearances in the brilliant Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, a pastiche of low-budget ‘80s horror. A second season of Darkplace was discussed but sadly never commissioned, following low viewing figures and concern from Channel 4 bosses as … >
It’s thirteen years since Little Britain hit our screens with its outrageous brand of humour. Always shocking, defiantly funny, and endlessly quotable, the BBC comedy series from David Walliams and Matt Lucas has become part of the national landscape, even inspiring Russian and American versions. As well as Carol Beer telling everybody that her ‘computer … >
Hands up who else fully expected that ‘Last Christmas’ was at some point going to feature a certain Wham song? Instead, the Twelfth Doctor’s first seasonal outing reunites him with Clara (in Jenna Coleman’s third consecutive appearance in a Christmas special) as the pair work to extricate themselves from dreams within dreams, and save an … >
It was a bittersweet Christmas when we bid farewell to the Eleventh Doctor. Like Ten before him, Eleven chose to make his Doctor Who exit over the holidays in 2013’s ‘The Time of the Doctor’. It’s at times grand and ridiculous and features a Doctor who is at times bald and nude. It’s also the … >
Since 2005, a festive Doctor Who special has become a staple of BBC One’s Christmas Day schedule. But before ‘The Christmas Invasion’, there was ‘The Feast of Steven’; the missing-believed-wiped seventh episode of Season 3’s epic twelve-part ‘The Daleks’ Master Plan’ serial, broadcast on Saturday 25 December 1965. 50 years on from its debut, ‘The … >
Following on from the established tradition of Christmas specials featuring innocuous and pleasant winter things trying to murder the Doctor and friends, 2012’s ‘The Snowmen’ features the Eleventh Doctor in an adventure that may well have left scores of children utterly terrified of those jolly, anthropomorphic snow friends that festoon the front gardens of many … >
Just give me all the Turkish delight you have: the Eleventh Doctor goes full on Narnian in his second festive Doctor Who adventure. 2011’s ‘The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe’ has got a lot going for it, as far as guest cast is concerned: it’s got the mum from Outnumbered (Claire Skinner) and the … >
At last, it’s Matt Smith’s turn to get festive and his first holiday outing sees Doctor Who taking on Dickens’ classic, but this time, it’s in space! (I hope you read that last bit in the Eleventh Doctor’s excited voice.) It’s a bit of a fun novelty getting the JJ Abrams-esque bright white spaceship and … >