Some interesting developments in the new series of Knight Rider this week. Despite ratings that have been slightly concerning, the studio’s ordered 4 more scripts. A good sign. And this week’s episode had a big spike in the ratings, which is also positive.  The show’s been performing well in its target demographic apparently, so that’s good news.

But most interestingly are the rumours that KARR will be involved in episode 12. His still-active CPU at the end of KITT vs KARR has been dangling plot thread for over 20 years. Is it about to be resolved? I certainly hope so. KARR’s always been a fan-favourite, and if he is being brought back, some heavy advertising should help give the show a boost mid-season.

Now if they can just sort out getting the Hoff and William Daniels back for a couple of episodes (heck, go for broke and tie them into the KARR storyline).

I really enjoyed this week’s episode as well. While the show still has its faults (largely for me, the Billy and Zoey “banter”, which comes across painfully forced) I’m enjoying it as a good, lightweight action show. This week’s ticking timebomb plot of Mike being poisoned rattled along well and while I can’t put my finger on anything specific, this week’s episode really felt like the best yet out of the 4 that aired. Here’s hoping the show settles in over the course of its run and goes from strength to strength. I’d love it to find its feet, and get a second season.

Another show I was watching and enjoying recently was By Any Means. The latest adventure from Charley Boorman, this time he was going from his home town in Ireland to Sydney by any means. The only stipulation they had was that comercial airlines were a last resort and for as much as possible, they’d travel by sea or land.

It was a great series, showcasing loads of beautiful countries, and highlighting a whole load of different types of transport. It was just a pity that most of their sea crossings seemed to end up cursed to one degree or other, with overlaiden ferries, boats that conk out leaving them stranded, or just straight up start sinking.

With the series now having aired on BBC 2 and the book released, Charley is now doing a tour around the UK, and we were fortunate enough to get tickets for his appearance in Glasgow. The first part took the form of a conversation, with the host asking him questions about the trip, and Charley getting the chance to recount various stories from not just By Any Means, but also the Long Way… series, and his attempt at the Dakar Rally. It has to be said, that this simply flew past. Charley made for an entertaining speaker with a wealth of tales from his travels both funny and poignant from discussing his near missed on the various boats, to talking about leaving Georgia just prior to the Russian tanks rolling in, or his experiences of Iran. He has a very relaxed, friendly attitude about it all that makes his stories captivating. Its very much a normal guy who’s just had the great opportunity to do these amazing things.

The second part of the evening was a traditional book signing.  Charley was really friendly with every one, and more than happy to continually get out of his seat to have pictures taken.  Sadly our camera phone can be a bit tricky, and caused a minor bit of confusion, and thus some slightly concerned expressions in the photos.  If the photo doesn’t take first time, you quickly become aware of the long queue of people waiting behind you.

Cracking night though, and Charley Boorman came across exactly as he does in the shows.  Really likable and easy to listen to.  Honestly, the conversation part could’ve easily been twice as long and I’d have loved it.  Can’t wait to see what his next trip will be (he mentioned a couple of times that he wants another shot at the Dakar Rally), and I hope he comes back to Glasgow afterwards, as I’d definitely be buying tickets again.

We’re now two full stories into this season of Sarah Jane Adventures, and so far I’m enjoying it as much as I did season 1.

The Last Sontaran was a nice follow-up to this year’s Sontaran Stratagem 2-parter in Doctor Who, with Sarah Jane and co stumbling upon the sole survivor of that fleet, determined to take revenge and restore their honour.

I really enjoyed the idea of having one of the spin-offs directly follow on from a Doctor Who story. It was nicely executed as well since you didn’t really need to have seen the Sontaran Stratagem to understand it, but similarly, the Sontaran 2-parter in Doctor Who didn’t require you to watch the Sarah Jane story in order to get the full telling of events. I’d love to see a bit (but not a huge amount) more of this kind of cross-referencing between the shows (similar to the reference to the Trickster in Turn Left). It builds on the feeling that this is a shared universe and as long as it doesn’t start to drag down any of the shows it can be fun for those of us who’re watching everything.

The Day of the Clown was another cracking story. I hadn’t really seen Bradley Walsh as anything other than a presenter (although obviously I was aware he’d been in Coronation Street) so it was really a nice surprise to me just how good he was in the role. Especially in a role that required several different aspects with Spellman, Oddbob and the Pied Piper. Walsh played all of these brilliantly, and I barely recognised him at all as Oddbob.

This story also brought in the new girl to the team. Rani (possibly the most amusing piece of fan-baiting ever, or is it just me?) is a breath of fresh air to me. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Maria character, and at times found the close relationship they gave her and Sarah actually felt like it undermined Sarah’s relationship with Luke. Rani seems a lot more fun, and I enjoyed her tenacity as Sarah Jane desperately tried to keep her from getting sucked into their world of aliens and monsters.

If I had one complaint its that this story brought back up the issue regarding the public’s awareness of aliens. Rani made it clear that if she started talking about them, no one would believe her. For the sake of argument, I’m going to assume that these episodes are taking place prior to The Stolen Earth (although the gap between the two which had Maria settle into her new life in the States may be at odds with this), but there’s at least the issue of the Sycorax spaceship a few Christmases ago, the Racnoss Christmas Star, 5 million Cybermen invading Earth, Daleks wiping out people on Canary Warf (although the Doctor nipped that in the bud quite quickly) and The Toclafane (although that particular Prime Minister was a nutter, so probably not hard to discredit them).

Its a problem with Torchwood as well. Whereas the parent show has moved on to a point where most people know that aliens are out there and have a tendancy to turn up at Christmas and trash London, both spin-offs still have the general public oblivious to aliens (heck, Torchwood also has the whole argument of exactly how secret the organisation is supposed to be - they clearly took a leaf out of the 70s/80s UNIT manual for running a secret organisation). Its something that’s quite jarring when moving between the shows, no more so than in light of the Stolen Earth. If no one in Sarah Jane Adventures will believe Rani about aliens, what exactly were they doing when Earth was moved to the Medusa Cascade and humanity was enslaved by Daleks before being towed back to our usual solar system by a Police Box? The shows may try to be consistent within themselves, but in the larger scheme of things it falls apart horribly.

However that’s a side issue. When I’m just looking at the Sarah Jane Adventures, the simple fact is that I love this show. Yes, its supposed to be for kids, but frankly I’ve always found it incredibly consistent and enjoyable. And season 2’s off to a cracking start. Now I just hope we get a full third season next year. With only the specials from Who, and 5 episodes of Torchwood, it’d be nice if one of the shows got a full run.

Its always nice when music videos reference old shows I love, so here’s the video to No More Kings’ Michael (Jump In) which is a nice treat for us fans of classic Knight Rider

Ok, I’ve ended up staying up far to late after getting sucked into Youtube videos again.   But here’s a good rocking Tenth Doctor tribute I found

Well, we’re now two episodes into the first series of the new Knight Rider, and so far I’ve been enjoying it a lot.

The second episode was probably the stronger of the two so far. The first serving more to setup the arc-plot regarding Mike’s past in black ops and, of course, explain his name change to Michael Knight. This allowed the second a bit more free reign as an adventure of the week type story to throw in some nice character moments (loved the scenes with Mike and KITT watching the western) with the first episode having set things up.

Both episodes have been high on the action quota, and the second especially harked back nicely to the feel of the original series, with Mike travelling to a remote town, getting involved in street races and, as I mentioned, some nice building in the friendship between Mike and KITT.

Its also interesting to note some of the changes Gary Scott Thompson’s brought in. The “KITT cave” makes a lot of sense for the scale of the operation (realistically one engineer maintaining KITT in the back of a truck isn’t likely) although the humour from the supporting techs is sometimes forced. The arc plot with Mike’s past is welcome, and much in the style of Doctor Who, seems to be something being drip-fed into episodes for the regular viewers, while the episodes themselves remain stand-alone, probably building up to some revelations in the finale.

The changes to KITT are a bit of a mixed bag. I definitely appreciate the reasons they changes KITT’s attack mode. In the pilot, it wasn’t instantly obvious which car you were looking at in a particular scene without checking closely (the spoiler usually being the quickest give-away), and there’s no doubt this is a more aggressive-looking attack mode. However I prefer the sportier lines of KITT in his regular mode, and the blue underlighting (forming the Knight Research logo) is really just a bit over-the-top. However the good news is that the attack mode is also being used quite sparingly so far, with the Shelby remaining the main “hero” car of the piece which I definitely like.

I do miss the iPhone-inspired screen from the pilot, but the new HUD works well. Although there have been a couple of times when Mike’s been driving and its clearly obscuring his view of the road. It perhaps needs to be more obvious that KITT’s driving while Mike’s using the screen (safety first ). KITT’s new vocaliser (for want of a better term) seems a little busy to me, but I do love how they’ve included the three bars from the original series in it.

How the series fairs in the modern age of networks being quick off the mark to cancel shows remains to be seen, but, while its still finding its feet, Knight Rider strikes me as filling a gap in the market with some good “switch your brain off and enjoy the ride” action.

We’ve now had two episodes of the BBC’s latest entry to the “Doctor Who” Saturday teatime slot: Merlin.

The show is basically Smallville meets Arthurian Legend. A young Merlin is sent to Camelot by his mother, who is finding it increasingly difficult to help him with his growing magical talents. So she sends him to stay with Gaius, who appears to have some knowledge in the ways of magic although not a magic-user himself. He quickly identifies that there’s something different about Merlin, who is able to use magic without the use of potions or spells, unlike all other magic-users. However, with King Uthar having banned all magic in the kingdom on pain of execution, Merlin has to balance keeping his powers discrete, while at the same time, embracing them.

To me, this show has proved much stronger so far than the other “Doctor Who” slot candidate, Robin Hood. There’s a confidence in this show in what its trying to be, and the cast all suit their roles well (while I’ve enjoyed episodes of Robin Hood, and its got some nice ideas, its never quite gelled for me, although I did quite enjoy season 2). The first two episodes were good fun, with some nice character building, with the first establishing Merlin and the setting in Camelot, while the second episode took the arrogant young Arthur from the first episode and showed the pressure he’s put under by his father as prince.

If I have any worries at this early stage, its that there could be a trap of falling into a predictible pattern, with some magic-related threat to the kingdom, Merlin discovers it, however is angsty about revealing the threat without being able to use his own powers.  Merlin manages to discretely foil the threat.   However, as I say, its only two episodes in, and I hope that with setting and characters established, we’ll see some more arc elements start to emerge.   We obviously know the outcomes for these characters, so it’ll be interesting to see if Morgana’s villainous future is hinted towards, and you have to wonder how often Merlin will be able to visit the Great Dragon before someone notices…

Its great teatime TV, and its definitely something I’m looking forward to every Saturday.  I’m very interested to see how the storyline develops.

Its been a strong year for new genre shows from the States. Granted, some didn’t survive their first season, but still Journeyman, Terminator and Chuck have all been really solid offerings.

Coming a bit later than the others is The Middleman, originally conceived as a television show, before being launched as a comic series, things have come full circle with the show finally being made.

Wendy Watson is enjoying a normal day at her temp job at the genetics factory when a monster escapes from the lab and attacks her.  She tries to fend it off but is rescued by a mysterious man, who goes on to recruit her as his new assistant.  It turns out that the kind of alien warlords and insane scientists that comic books love also exist in real life, and its his job to stop them.   He’s supplied with an impressive array of advanced technology, but he doesn’t know where it comes from.   He’s just the Middleman.

This is a brilliant show.   Daft as a brush and not afraid to show it.   The show follows Wendy as she goes into training to become the next Middleman, working alongside the current one.  This involves her dealing with the aforementioned insane scientists and alien warlords, as well as dealing with the impact her new job has on her personal life (her friends think she’s working for a temp agency), while receiving training from the likes of Sensei Ping in the art of being a Middleman.

If I had to compare this show to another, its probably the closest (and most successful) we’ll get to an American version of the Avengers.  There’s a very similar vibe coming off of it (although this show played more for straight out laughs than the Avengers was).

Definitely one to check out.  I hope this enjoys a long run.

Another show I’ve been really enjoying every week, but not really mentioned here, has been the new series of Gladiators. While it took some time to bed in during the opening episodes, by the time it got to the quarter finals it really picked up steam, with the Gladiators personalities starting to establish and them showing how much more comfortable in the events they’d become.

Its been good fun to watch, and I’ve gotten really into it, although I do feel it suffers slightly from the added adverts we have these days, which means one less event, and less mike time for the Gladiators themselves. However overall its been a lot of fun, and I’m really looking forward to the second series.

To wrap up the first series, Sky decided to bring back some of the original Gladiators and have them face off against the new Gladiators. Added to this, they boosted the length of the show, which allowed another event, as well as lots of time for mucking about and post-event interviews. This really added to the atmosphere of the show, and really added an element of fun to the proceedings. It was great to see the classic Gladiators again, although it was such a shame Hunter had injured himself prior to the recording and couldn’t compete more. Still, he absolutely destroyed Spartan in Duel (that first hit looked painful).

Wolf was on great form. His hair may be shorter, but he still gets what the audience want. His big fight with Oblivion was worth the wait, and had me in stitches as Ian Wright jumped in to try and separate them before ending up red carded by John Anderson. I’m really pleased to hear he’s coming back full time for season 2 in his new “Team Manager” role. There was a great sense of fun in this special that they need to build on in the main series.

It was interesting to see the Gladiators running the Eliminator as well. Atlas managing to hold onto the cotton reel was impressive, but then got promptly blown out of the water by Predator on the hand bikes. And Lightning really demolished the monkeybars, although Tempest really showed how fast she can be as she nearly caught her on the Pyramid.

Great fun, and makes me hopeful that season 2 should be really good now they’ve had a season to settle in. I hope they tweak the eliminator though. I’m not keen on the water start (removes most of the benefit in the head start) and the cotton reels are just a bit pointless.

While this show seems to have been nearly universally derided, I’m going to step up to the plate.

I’m enjoying it.

Being a bit behind on things, I’m only now catching up with the show (just watched episode 4 of 6), but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen.  There’s no denying that its silly and over-the-top, but that’s what I’m finding fun about it.  I’ve been enjoying switching my brain off and going along for the ride.  The over-arching plot with the mystery behind Gillian’s mother’s breakdown and Gillian’s continuing obsession behind what her mother was looking for adds a bit to the episodes (super-duper sword?  British history?   Hmmmmm ).

Sadly, as I mentioned it took a fair kicking from the critics.  I’ve no idea what the ratings were like, but I’d certainly be happy to see a second series.  There’s nothing wrong with a show just being a bit silly and fun, and as long as it doesn’t start taking itself too seriously then I think there’s a place for it.