The Cabbage Patch

6 Shows you’re (probably) not watching, but should be

Hello World.

One thing we like to do here at Cabbage Patch H.Q. is watch television.  A lot of television.  Perhaps a tad too much.  However, being located in Australia, we’re often given the short end of the stick when it comes to quality programing.  Not many could argue with the fact that much of the good television being produced at the moment is coming from the US or the UK.  Now, that’s not to say there isn’t any good local fare, because there most certainly is.  The ABC’s current Wednesday evening line-up of Spicks and Specks, The Chaser’s War on Everything and Summer Heights High is testament to this, as is the now-Channel 7-owned Kath & Kim.  But each of these gems is tarnished by a Sea Patrol, Border Security or Big Brother 587.

Local stations have promised to deliver many of the latest US shows, such as House, Heroes and Bionic Woman within a week or so of their American airings.  But they have also managed to forego many, far greater, programs altogether.  I present below a few of the current/recent crop of international TV shows that we aren’t getting down here in the Great Southern Land.

Dexter:

Based on Jeff Lindsay’s novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter, this series is proof that we are (or rather, should be) living in a golden age of television.  Six Feet Under’s Michael C. Hall is Dexter, a successful forensic investigator by day; Miami’s most prolific serial killer by night.  That’s the basic premise of this show - the main character is the world’s most likeable murderer.  Dexter is such a fantastically thought-out and amazingly performed character that the audience finds themselves rooting for him, even when he has a victim tied down on the table under his knife.

This show is, however, not for the faint of heart.  By virtue of the title character being both a forensic blood-splatter expert, and a violent killer, there is an awful lot of blood and gore in this show.  Also, a lot of swearing.  Dexter’s sister Debra (a detective working in the same precinct as Dex; played by Jennifer Carpenter), does not utter two consecutive sentences without a bleep-worthy four-letter word in between.

A lot of the appeal of Dexter is that is does swear and show blood and nonchalantly kill people, because it is so clever about doing those things.  It obviously walks a fine line between celebrating crime and condemning it, but manages to say a lot about these issues without preaching (as many CSI-like shows tend to do).

Dexter is now in it’s second season in the US, yet we have not seen a single episode air in Australia.  When the series premiered back in 2006, Foxtel announced it would carry the show over here.  Over a year later, they still have not.  Foxtel recently announced a new channel called “Showcase” would be launching with Dexter towards the end of this year (December, I believe).  So, eventually, local audiences may be able to see this show, provided they pay for Foxtel, and provided they pay extra for the new channel.  But this still doesn’t change the fact that we will still be over a year behind.

Jekyll:

Lest you think this list will be solely made up of American products, here is Jekyll, a six-part series from the BBC (yes, the one in Britain).

Jekyll (as the name implies) is a remake/adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, although the series’ creators refer to it as a continuation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s original book (both the author and the book itself are referenced throughout).  Starring James Nesbitt and Michelle Ryan (now the new Bionic Woman), Jekyll tells the story of Dr. Jackman, who discovers a Mr. Hyde inside him.  The series introduces a shady government-like organisation and a conspiracy plot - plus a pair of feisty lesbian private detectives - and ends up as a modern, very edgy, version of the classic gothic tale.

The thing that really makes this series worth watching is James Nesbitt’s performance as Jackman/Hyde.  I have often said in the past that I do not usually like Nesbitt in anything - he usually plays the same character the same way all the time.  But this performance is truly incredible.  There is very little physical difference between his two personas - he is said to be a “few inches taller” and has “a different hairline” as Hyde - but he plays them so that there is never any doubt that these are two distinct characters.  His Hyde is incredibly scary.

Oh, and he fights a lion.  That alone leads me to recommend this show.

Unfortunately, there is no indication as to when, if ever, this show will be broadcast here.

Pushing Daisies:

What do you get when you turn a romantic comedy about a supernatural pie-maker and a ex-dead girl into a Dr. Seuss-like fairytale?  Pushing Daisies, that’s what.  This is, indisputably, the best show being produced at the moment.

The concept is a little convoluted, so bear with me.  Ned (Lee Pace) is a pie-maker who discovered as a child that he could bring dead things back to life simply by touching them, however only for one minute.  If they stay alive longer than a minute, something equal nearby has to die.  If he touches any re-animated thing a second time, it dies permanently.  A private detective, Emerson Cod (Chi McBride), discovers Ned’s talent and uses Ned to “wake up” murder victims to ask who killed them.  The two then collect the reward money for solving the case.  One of their cases is the murder of Lonely Tourist Charlotte “Chuck” Charles (Anna Friel), who turns out to be Ned’s childhood sweet-heart.  He un-deadens her, but can’t bring himself to let her die again.  Thus, she remains alive but the two can’t touch or else she will be perma-dead.

That may seem complicated enough, but then there is Olive Snook (Kristin Chenoweth), Ned’s neighbour and employee who is secretly in love with him, Chuck’s aunts who have matching social disorders, and the murder-of-the-week cases the crew have to deal with.  On top of all this, the show is narrated by Jim Dale (who apparently voiced the American version of the Harry Potter audio books), who does the whole thing as if it is a Dr. Seuss book.

The concept of Pushing Daisies is complicated, and more than a little weird.  But the execution is truly superb.  There is colour and humour in every frame, and even the multitude of deaths in each episode can’t lower the cheery tone.  Also, every now and then (well, at least once so far) Kristin Chenoweth bursts into song.

Luckily, Channel 9 have announced they will be airing Pushing Daisies sometime next year.  But why couldn’t they have “fastracked” or “streamed” (or whatever made up marketing term they’re using now) this show instead of, for example, Viva Laughlin - which is, according to some, “the worst show in the history of television”?  Note to network executives: The mere presence of Wolverine Hugh Jackman alone does not a good program make.

[note: between beginning-to-write and finishing this article, Viva Laughlin has be axed by it's American broadcasters.  This only strengthens the argument.]

Rome:

Ah, Rome… when men were men, homosexuality was encouraged, and a religious curse wasn’t complete without a good old ox-blood shower.  Rome is The West Wing meets The Sopranos, only everyone’s wearing togas.  This show was an international co-production between the BBC, HBO and Italy’s RAI, and ran for two seasons from 2005-2007.  At least, it ran then in Britain, the US and Italy.  And Brazil, and Spain, and Israel and bloody Iceland.  Yet it has not aired here.

Rome re-creates the ancient world in such detail as to be breathtaking.  The sets, costumes and overall production are simply amazing, but that is not what makes this show worth watching.  No, the draw for this show is the way in which it tells (essentially) true historical stories, and the performances which bring these figures to life.

The show tells the story of Julius Cesar’s rise to power, his eventual fall, and the aftermath of his death.  But to simplify it like that does a disservice to the program.  All of the individual characters in the show have their own stories within this framework, be they personal or political, and they are all centered on (or wind around) soldiers Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) and Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson).  There are equal doses of dramatic poignancy and political intrigue.  And more than it’s share of violence, sex, drugs and naughty bad words (”It’s as hot as Vulcan’s dick!” being one of my favourites).

[note: We do not wish to imply that the mere use of bad language or violence or sex makes a show better than others that are more tame, however in examples like Rome, it does allow for a greater freedom - and thus, better results - than shows which must self-censor]

Rome is a true example of “cinematic television” - that is, television shows which have the same production values and quality as a film.  And that is certainly not a bad thing at all.

Again, there is no indication as yet that this show will be aired here in any form.

Veronica Mars:

Now, some of you may argue that this show does not belong on a list of recommended current, or even recent shows, because it finished it’s third and final season early this year.  We’ll get to that later.

Veronica Mars is one of those shows that sounds stupid when described in a sentence (much like one of it’s influences, Buffy the Vampire Slayer).  The premise is this: High-school student Veronica Mars is the daughter of the town’s leading ex-sheriff-turned-private-investigator [PI's seem to be a recurring theme here...], and she uses her super-sleuthing skills to solve various criminal cases that are brought to her, including the mystery surrounding the murder of her best friend.

Despite that description, this is not a kids’ show.  Yes, it’s set (for the most part) in a high school, and yes, cases such as the search for the stolen school mascot serve as amusing sub-plots, but the issues and cases dealt with are predominately of a far more mature nature.  The character relationships, the season-long conspiracies, as well as the week-to-week cases are all superb.

As with many of the shows listed here, Veronica Mars is really carried by the performances of its leads Kristen Bell (now in Heroes, where after appearing in only one episode she has already stolen the show) as Veronica and Enrico Colantoni as her father Keith.  These two have amazing chemistry together, and can equally pull off broad comedy or intense drama.  The dialogue writing in this show is also top-notch, especially within the father-daughter scenes.  Every film or television writer working today should be forced to watch this show (I’m looking particularly at you, Tim Kring).

But now to why this show is in this list.  Veronica Mars was briefly run on free-to-air television down here (albeit over a year after its US premiere), but was pulled very shortly thereafter.  Just like many other quality programs, it was not given a chance to build an audience.  What’s worse, is that it was promoted as being what it seems like from the one-line description, obviously by executives who had not watched more than a few minutes.  Local viewers were led to believe it was just another run-of-the-mill teen drama like The OC, and consequently didn’t watch.  It was for this very reason I also skipped over it entirely on telly here.

As bad as this all is for such a wonderful show, however, the worst part of the Veronica Mars-in-Australia story is that even now, three years after its first airing, we have yet to receive the Region 4 (ie, Australian) DVDs.  This is a show (like Buffy before it), that has developed a devoted cult following, and the DVDs have the potential to be hugely popular if they would just hurry up and come to our shores.  Unfortunately, it looks like this won’t be happening any time soon.  From Wikipedia:

Warner Bros. Australia have plans to release the show on DVD, but have encountered some legal problems caused by music licensing. The first season was originally slated for a 2006 release, but was postponed soon after. It is still unclear, at this stage, whether or not these legal issues will be resolved anytime soon. TV Week has stated that the DVD will not be released…

Admittedly, “music licensing” is an entirely different problem, however there didn’t seem to be any legal problems with the initial television airings other than poor marketing resulting in poor ratings.  (This also raises the issue of ridiculous region-based licensing for media and the stupid Region-coding DVDs are distributed under… but that’s a whole other rant.)

Weeds:

This was another show that perhaps shouldn’t be on this list, but is.  Despite being more than a year delayed, and run at constantly-changing graveyard hours, Weeds has been given somewhat of a chance on Australian television.  However, it is a perfect example of a different problem with our current television system.

Weeds is the story of suburban single mother-turned-drug-dealer Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), and thus contains a lot of material of a mature nature.  There is full-frontal nudity, a lot of drug use, and the kind of language usually reserved for the high-school playground.  So, obviously, this presents a problem for any commercial station that wants to air it.  It must be relegated to “late” - which often means after whatever movie or other program happens to come before it this week - and this is usually a fairly nebulous timetable.  So, inevitably, the show fails to build a “sufficient” audience, and is pulled from air and maybe brought back to fill an out-of-ratings summer slot [it appears this has happened again - Nine silently pulled it from broadcast this week].  This seems to defeat the purpose all together - Nine end up playing it during non-ratings period, losing any commercial benefit of owning it, and audiences get jerked around.  It’s a lose-lose situation.

One possible solution for this is for the networks to realize which programs they will have trouble fitting into their desired image/demographic/timetable, and allowing niche channels (such as a Foxtel channel) to pick up hard-to-broadcast shows like Weeds instead.  This would then rely on Foxtel treating the shows, and audiences, with respect also and not doing what they have done with Dexter.  For things like Weeds (and Dexter) this could work because Foxtel channels are slightly less ratings-based (due to being subscription-based) and there are uncensored channels like Showtime and The Comedy Channel which are more willing to play “risqué” programing.  As I mentioned earlier with regards to Dexter, however, even this has failed to work well so far.

Often with shows like Weeds which are owned by a network but not aired or are significantly delayed, it is not even possible to bypass the TV and go straight for the DVDs.  Networks usually have exclusive agreements meaning that no other release of the show can be made until the episodes are broadcast on the channel that owns them, even if that puts us years behind the rest of the world.  As long as Channel 9 keeps buying Weeds and not playing it, Australian audiences won’t be able to see it.

Solutions?

We’re not going to show you where you can go to stream these programs to your computer, nor are we going to tell you how to use BitTorrent to download them, or where to search for torrent files, however it is no surprise that Australia has one of (if not the) highest rates of television Internet piracy in the world.  Piracy is not an acceptable solution by any means - content producers don’t like it, and users have to jump through a lot of (mostly illegal) hoops just to get what they want to see.  So what is the solution?  Ideally, networks will wise up to the shows that people want to see (and when), and the cable channels will stop relying on Simpsons reruns to fill their timetables and instead be more competitive with the first-run shows they pick up.  Failing this, some sort of protection should be put into place so that if a show is not aired within a year of the network’s purchase of it, then at least the DVD can be released.

To be clear, American or British shows should by no means take precedence over local products simply because they are from overseas.  But surely we could have a couple of these gems grace our screens instead of seven-year-old repeats of Airport or the next series of Survivor: Fremantle?

Tags: TV

I’ll get you next time… cat!

Hello World.

Trap the Cat is a game that tells you what it’s all about right there in the title.

The goal is to trap the cat by clicking on the light dots, turning them dark.  The cat will take one hop after every click, but only onto a light dot.  If it gets to the edge of the board, you lose.

Simple. Difficult.  Fun.

– [via digg]

I think your Cylon wants my Wookie

Hello World.

This last weekend, I attended the Supanova “Popular Culture Convention” in Sydney.  Basically, an all-out geekapalooza.  Below are some photos of the event.

Click each photo once for sarcastic yet witty commentary.

In all seriousness, it was actually a bunch of fun.  I went to a couple of very interesting seminars on writing, and Naomi spent so much money on comic-books and related paraphernalia that she could barely stand under the weight of it all.

Highlights included:

• Watching Naomi squirm when Nicholas Brendon (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) sat down next to me during Nicki Clyne’s Sunday Q&A.
• Watching the same Nick Brendon then proceed to make a fool himself during said Q&A by asking incomprehensible questions of Nicki Clyne (Battlestar Galactica), and having her (jokingly) ask him to leave.
• Sam J. Jones (the original Flash Gordon) mispronouncing the word “boom”.
• Learning of the existence of William Shatner’s Tek World.
• The girl in the Cat-Woman costume.

Some of you may be wont to point out that I have no right to make fun of Supanova or its attendees, seeing as I myself was one of them (for two days, even!).  In reality, it’s just a bit of fun.  I had a great time, and I’m just pointing out some of the absurdity of it all.  Also, I didn’t get dressed up.

‘Orrible Cabbage, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Hello World.

Apparently, once upon a time, I was a comic book character.  And not just any comic book character either, but an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., working alongside Nick Fury himself!

Unfortunately, Agent David Purcell only seems to have appeared in one issue, and the entirety of his story can be summed up thus:

David Purcell was a young S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, a cadet who was about to graduate. He was hoping to marry his girlfriend Gail. As he was preparing for the graduation day ceremonies, Gail noticed that he was missing his dress boots, and he started searching for them. As he was occupied, HYDRA agent Lt. Romulus broke in and killed Gail from behind. Before David could react, Lt. Garotte grabbed him from behind and crushed his neck.

The two HYDRA agents then used David’s body to create an LMD with which they could infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. Central on graduation day.

The LMD found Baron Strucker’s Satan Claw weapon where S.H.I.E.L.D. had impounded it, and transmitted the schematics to Strucker so that he could build a duplicate. By that time, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Bruno Krea had smelled cyclonite on Dugan’s hankerchief, and they were about to deal with the matter when the LMD was detonated, and the explosion destroyed S.H.I.E.L.D. Central, killing all 1,500 graduates gathered that day. A mop-up squad of HYDRA crafts ensured that no survivors escaped the blast.

Basically, my comic book namesake witnessed his girlfriend’s violent murder shortly before meeting his own demise, then his body got turned into a walking bomb and killed all of his classmates.  So, not really a legacy I’d like to be remembered for, to be honest.  But still… Nick Fury!

Introducing the magical disappearing page content!

Hello World.

A couple of new features on the site, thanks to the amazing Mandigo theme which this site uses.  Well, newish.  They’ve been active for a little while now, but I forgot to mention them.

In the corner of each post you should now see some small icons:

These are buttons which change the shape of the page.  The most useful is the left button (the small arrows), which hides the sidebar and expands the post content to full width, allowing to fit more content on the screen at once and removing other distractions.

The other button shrinks the post down to it’s title.  This is mostly useful in the individual post pages, where you can hide the post and just read the comments.

They’re not just cute, like everybody supposes

Hello World.

Do you remember the Sony Bravia ads that have been playing on TV for a while?  The first was made up of thousands of bouncy balls launched down the streets of San Francisco, and the second consisted of a building showering itself in coloured paint.  Well, those ads are not made using CGI or fancy effects, but are actually painstakingly put together by hand and filmed on location, by advertising agency Fallon London.  They’ve just released the next ad in the campaign, and this one is by far the most impressive:

The above ad used 2.5 tons of plasticine, took forty animators three weeks to put together, and is made up of 100,000 images.

It is truly an amazing achievement, but the real question is: Is it worth it?

This kind of effort and expense could produce a fantastic short film, or an art piece of some kind.  There is the argument that an ad like this is a form of artwork, or could be considered a short film in its own right, but the fact of the matter is that it’s still an ad.  A great ad, but an ad nonetheless.

Personally, I feel that these types of advertisements are great when considered within their context - I would much rather watch a few minutes worth of these between shows than the slapped-together, mindless and repetitive stuff that I end up fast-forwarding through at the moment - but in the broader context, should we really be celebrating what is essentially a tool to make us spend money on stuff we don’t really need?

I think I’m split on this issue.  I love creative advertising, and interesting visual works like this in any form should be celebrated and encouraged.  But when I see things like Channel 9’s current “Commercial Breakdown” program, I have to think twice.  This show, for those who haven’t seen it, is one of those clip deals showcasing funny and clever television ads from around the world.  Yes, some of them are very creative, funny, well made etc.  But when you think about it, you’re watching an hour of advertisements, occasionally interrupted by advertisements.

It seems a sad state of affairs when the most creative people are creating things like this.  There is more money (and jobs) in advertising than there ever will be in film or television, and this is nothing new.  But it still feels like a waste.  A pretty waste, with adorable little bunnies.

– [via Gothamist, via Photojojo]

Tags: advertising, bunnies

I can feel it coming in the chocolate tonight, oh Lord.

Hello World.

A very funny (and extremely well made, I might add) advertisement for Cadbury Chocolate: