If it weren’t for soapland’s usual season of doom and gloom, you’d be able to look at BBC Drama “Public Enemies” as the official end of the festivities. With the presents opened, the crackers pulled, and the tree taken to the dump, British people can get back to the business of feeling really bad about international relations, the financial state of the Europe Union and the ever increasing catalogue of ‘austerity measures’.

“Public Enemies” is a drama about a probation officer, Paula Radnor (played by Anna Friel), suspended from her job when an ex-murder kills again on her watch. Upon her return, she has to supervise Eddie Mottram (Daniel Mays), who has been released after serving ten years for the murder of his girlfriend. Even beyond this fact, Eddie is a difficult character who resents his old friends, the accommodation he is assigned and the public in general. Yet, he desperately wants a second chance and has passed his risk assessments: and should he do anything out of line, he’ll be back in prison.
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Ok everyone! This could possibly be the final update to this post, so lets get on with it

Now I’ve always been a fan of the TV show Monkey Dust that used to be on BBC Three some years ago with it’s quirky characters and amazing music, this is the show that introduced me to the wonderful musical talents of Goldfrapp and Boards of Canada!

So since having a trusty iPod I’ve been collecting the tracks that have been on the several series that the show ran over and when I originally typed this post I had 22 tracks, now at my most recent count I have 56 tracks that were used over the three series on Monkey Dust, yes that many!

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You may remember sometime back when I posted about the TV show Stargate Universe being cancelled! Well the channel Syfy are not only happy with cancelling that show and Sanctuary, they have now also cancelled Eureka (also known as A Town Called Eureka).

Don’t Get Rid Of Our SciFi

It was announced back in August 2010 that the show had been selected for a fifth series and 13 episodes, but it has recently been announced (on August the 8th) that Eureka would not get a sixth series and would be cancelled after series five of the show. But an extra episode of  series five would be produced to give Eureka a “proper” ending.

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Because researchers are committed to spoiling any and all manifestations of fun, new research has come to light suggesting that knowing how a story ends may not actually damage our enjoyment of it. One of three versions of several short stories, (two with a paragraph that revealed essential plot details and a third unaltered version) were given to the participants. The results showed that people who had had the story spoilt for them rated the stories higher.

So not only are spoilers apparently not harmful, they’re actually better for your enjoyment? This is precisely the opposite of what most people feel about hearing plot details before they’re revealed to them. Drop a spoiler in polite conversation and you expect to see someone boil with rage and hit you square in the chin. They’ll at least put two hands over their ears and drown out your spiteful words with an enthusiastic chorus of ‘La-La-La-La’s. So, is there something to this, or are these researchers simply too used to spoiling their conclusions because they’re forced to write abstracts ?

Why Spoilers May Not Ruin Experiences

A close friend of mine is immune to spoilers. Quite how she manages this is beyond me: personally, knowing exactly where a plot is heading ruins the fun. Reading a list of spoilers in preparation for this article would have been like having my parents tell me the contents of each and every present under the tree, if I hadn’t already heard most of them elsewhere. That in itself is significant: spoilers do have a certain pull to them. But so do black holes. And when I’ve read about a twist, my interest in a plot becomes inevitably stretched.

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Image via Wikipedia

The title of this post should make you shudder in disbelief, but whether you love them, or most likely hate them, you can’t deny these crazy little Irishmen have a certain charisma about them, the likes of which we are not exposed to very often.

They hit our screens on X-Factor, where their instantly recognisable hair pieces and personalities divided the country in a ‘marmite’ like fashion.

Here are the adverts that they have been selling themselves towards, the indecision between self mockery or stone cold seriousness is partly the reason they can be so intriguing to watch.
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What is it with films and televisions shows travelling backwards and forwards in time? No matter how vaguely science fiction or fantasy-themed our favourite shows, they often have time travelling themes lying below the surface (for better or worse). Here are just some of the not especially great reasons for the Time Travel theme:

Padding Out The Show

Some of our favourite time travelling epics actually use time-travel as a device simply to generate content. This is especially true of those franchises that just run and run. Doctor Who springs instantly to mind: at the beginning, its use of historical and science fiction settings was only really an excuse to show educational programming with a dramatic skew. As the audience showed themselves receptive to the Science-Fiction theme, the ability to pick absolutely any time period kept Doctor Who fresh. Sick of visiting Romans? Visit the Egyptians. Sick of the Daleks? Create a new villain, add a hundred years or a billion miles and visit whatever creature you fancy creating.

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Image via Wikipedia

Now if you have read my blog and been paying attention to what’s been going on, you will remember the post I published about how @Syfy had decided to end the superb series Stargate Universe and that fans were trying to do their part in bringing back the show, now when I originally posted the article the Save Stargate Universe Facebook page had 26,549 fans joining together to help save the show and now, while typing out this post the Facebook page has 51,179 fans.

It’s In The Numbers!

This all goes to show that fans of the show are still not happy and are still protesting about the show being cancelled, but the count still needs to be increased and hopefully buy bringing you this update on the situation of a good show being put down in its prime and showing you that the numbers are indeed climbing, then hopefully the bosses of the studios etc will start to listen to the fans of the show and bring it back on our screens.

Why Try To Bring It Back!

Simple put, the show was just stating to make its way in the Stargate franchise, yes it may have been slow to start, but towards the end the show was developing its characters more and we were all starting to get to know their ways, which all helped to you feeling for the show and the situations that the characters were put in.

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