Friday, September 4, 2009

What's on the box?

4:03 PM / Television / CommentsNo Comments

Television

The 2009-2010 television season will shortly be starting on either side of the Atlantic. While British television doesn't really operate around the same seasonal structure as its American counterpart, there's still something of a tradition of new series of popular shows beginning to air around September to October. Here's what I'll be watching

  • Dollhouse - Season 2, consisting of 13 episodes (as with the previous season), begins airing on FOX on September 25 with the opening episode to be written and directed by Joss Whedon. It's unclear how many episodes he'll be personally handling this year (in Season 1, he only wrote the pilot, the first broadcast episode and Episode 6), but things have a habit of going better on his shows when he gives them his full focus. (Compare Firefly to the seventh season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, both produced at the same time, and it's obvious which one was getting his attention.) In any event, Tim Minear is joining full-time for this season, and he's as good a second-in-command as I can think of.
     
  • Waking the Dead - Starting its eighth series this Sunday on BBC1, for a considerably reduced run of four two-parters (Series 4 through 7 always had six). Some of the spoilers I've come across sound a little on the daft side, and the same regime responsible for the previous two series of variable quality - producer Colin Wratten and head writer Declan Croghan - is still in charge, but I'm pleased to note that Ed Whitmore, the head writer during the golden period, has come back to pen the second two-parter.
     
  • Spooks - Also due to start its eighth series some time this Autumn. Practically nothing is known about the new run, except that, by the sounds of it, Nicola Walker is back, at least temporarily, while there are strong indications that, after being held hostage, punched, kidnapped and shot at more times than I can count, not to mention raped and seen two potential suitors murdered, Miranda Raison's character, Jo (a.k.a. the one who looks like Jean Seberg in À bout de souffle - compare and contrast), will be bowing out. I'm happy about the former, less so about the latter.
     
  • Casualty - Series 24 starts on September 12. To quote a line in one of the opening episodes of Series 22, "This place is like quicksand - as soon as you think you've struggled free, it sucks you back in."

So what's everyone else marking their calendars for?

 
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