I found this cool little BBC Video on making a Bleach T-Shirt and thought it was pretty neat. I like anything that looks like even I can do it. Of course, I want to make my own London Bleach T-Shirt. Something like MIND THE GAP spring to mind. I have an old Mind The Gap t-shirt, so it might be time to make one of my own. The usual London suspects would make nice bleach London t-shirts-Tower Bridge, Big Ben, The London Eye, a Double Decker Bus, a Phone Box.
A t-shirt with Big Ben and LONDON on large letter would be easy enough to do with the bleach method, of course, it wouldn't be in color. But I'm sure it would be easy enough to rough out the word LONDON with some kind of a marker.
I like dark t shirt and I like London, so it's a match made in heaven.
American Public Television, Where The Sun Never Sets on The British Empire. I fell in love with London by watching PBS. Sally Lockhart was recently on Masterpiece Theater.
Sally Lockhart is a remarkable young woman with extraordinary strength and determination. Her upbringing was rather eccentric. Her father taught her all about book-keeping, how to fire a pistol, and how to speak Hindustani like a native. With these tools at her disposal, Sally Lockhart is ready to solve mysteries and right wrongs in the man's world of Victorian London.
The Ruby in The Smoke and The Shadow of The North were recently aired on PBS and I loved them both. Billie Piper of Dr Who fame does a wonderful job of being a strong woman in a time when women were not supposed to be strong. The supporting cast of stars is brilliant as well.
There are four books in the Phillip Pullman Sally Lockhart series and all four novels are being adapted into a TV Movie by BBC Drama for television and broadcast on BBC One-according to Wikipedia. Billie Piper is almost too pretty to be a Victorian, but I do like the way she looks in her long dresses and occasional posh hat.
One of the interesting bits of business in the Sally Lockhart stories is the issue of race. In America were all about the skin color, though not so much as we once were. So it is a bit strange to see an interracial marriage celebrated and a black man who is a Minister. The crux of the problem in the Ruby in the Smoke was an English woman having a one night stand with an Indian Maharajah-who was not a very nice fellow. There is also a Medium who is a black woman with an important part in the plot of The Shadow in the North. Were race relations really all that much sweetness and sunshine in London in the time of Queen Victoria?
Whatever the case in the real world, the world of Sally Lockhart and her adventures in Victorian London are fun to watch and I look forward to the next installment. My only real complaint was how the story seemed to jump by leaps and bounds between the two shows. There seemed to be a lot of changes and not a lot of explanations as to why. I might have to read the books one of these days and see what they have to say about it all.
Both Life on Mars and The Eleventh Hour are being remade for American TV, but its hard to imagine they will be as good as the original shows. We live in a modern world with all kinds of high tech gadgets, why can't the US Networks work out a deal with the British Networks to air their shows here the same time they are aired there? I like to see these shows when they are new, not several years down the road as some US Producer thinks they should look. I mean, they do show new episodes of House and LOST in London, don't they? Oh well, I do manage to see them anyway-eventually.
I've always had a soft spot for any kind of Time Travel story-maybe that whole idea of traveling back and knowing the future-who wins the big game, what stocks will rise, what collectibles will be hot, and all that kind of stuff. The plot in Life on Mars is simple enough, our hero is DCI Sam Tyler who is hit by a car in 2006 and wakes up a DI in 1973. Is it a dream or has Sam really traveled back in time? A recurring joke is that Sam doesn't do the Miranda Rights properly. During the first season he knows such things as which horse will win a big race and he invents the Sports Pub. All good fun things.
The big shocks are that all Police in 1973 are bent as crooked as a fishing hook-expect for Sam. Also, there is no two-way glass for suspect identification, no recording of police interviews, no reliance on CSI to solve crimes and no real desire to find the real criminals. Rounding up the usual suspects seems to be the law of the land. Everyone smokes and drinks all the time. The fashion is big collars and loud prints. And even a police women is given no respect and called a slag to her face. These were the good old days for sure.
This all takes place is Manchester, originally it was to be set in London, but the BBC wanted to branch out a bit. Our hero was a little boy and comes close to meeting himself in one episode. There are flashes of the 'real world'-we hear the sounds of a hospital room and the voices of his loved ones telling him to hang on. He knows he is in a comma, but the knowledge does him no good-he can't wake up and so he has to live out his life in the horrid past.
I really love this show. Sam Tyler talks about all these things that I am familiar with and it is filmed like an old style Cop Show. It feels like Cannon, or Starchy and Hutch, with its mad speeding cars and punch everyone and ask questions later attitude. The station doesn't have an interview room, or a line up room, and seems not to be too big on walls in general. Everyone seems a tad dim and no one respects the new man's odd views on Law Enforcement. For example our hero wants some blood splatter annalist and no one knows what he's talking about. Ambulance drivers are not paramedics and our hero knows more about caring for the wounded than they do.
But they are coming around to his way of thinking as his brand of crime solving works better than theirs-at least some of the time. They fight crime, just like a normal cop show, but our hero is handicapped by the low tech world he finds himself trapped in. He also lives in a shockingly shabby flat and I think it would be a flop house in 1973. He's a single man with a real job for crying out loud, why can't he at least afford a real bed to sleep in?
Anyway-I haven't finished watching the whole thing yet, but I love the way it looks and sounds. I've always been a big David Bowie fan, even though I have often thought that most of the 1970s were just dreadful.
So I'll watch the US versions of Life on Mars and Eleventh Hour and let you know what I think.
And so is Doctor Donna and Doctor Who 2-Journey's End was really good.
Oh there was a bit of worry that David Tennant would be leaving Doctor Who, but then, his future wife did recognize him, didn't she? So he must not have changed that much.
I thought Russel T Davis being appointed an OBE by the Queen last month was a bit over the top, but then, Doctor Who is a really great show. I liked that whole the gangs all here aspect of this season's last two episodes. Good to see everyone from the Russel T Davis universe fighting over who gets the chance to save the Universe this time.
About 7.4 million people tuned in for the season's last Doctor Who episode-and millions more will be watching as the days go by. Doctor Who is a great show and I have been very happy the new series. There is still some question as to what will happen with Doctor Who now that the great and powerful Russel T Davis is stepping down. It is possible for the Clone Doctor and Rose Tyler to cross that Sealed Forever Gap one more time if they need to.
Captain Jack had the oblivious desire to spend some time with both Doctors and Donna after it was revealed that they were all three The Doctor. Jack always has been an ambitious lad. There was that whole possibility of happily ever after, but those never really work out, do they?
While I'm on the topic of great season endings, I loved the end of Sarah Jane-Mr Smith, how could you? I really didn't see that coming. It was great.
Anyway-Doctor Who is fun, no matter who plays him or who writes him. Of course, you do wonder how many times one Time Lord can save the Universe. So tell me, if the Daleks can constantly come back, why can't the rest of The Time Lords? I know they were all prats anyway, but they were good for a laugh once in a while.
Ok, Botswana is pretty far from London-unless you happened to watch The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency on BBC. Sydney Pollock died the other day, a great loss to the entertainment industry. As I was looking over his recent credits, I found that he was a Producer of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Since I am a great fan of the BBC and Sydney Pollock I decided to give it a look. No real surprise that it was great stuff.
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is the story of Precious Ramotswe and her quest to open the first Woman's Detective Agency in Botswana. There are not great building like you find in London, though there is a lot of traffic in the city that Precious settles into to open her business.
There are funny bits and serious bits and all kinds of silliness. I laughed, I cried, etc etc etc. This was a fun show. The accents are a bit thick at times, but the usual Detective story ploy of sometimes silly names helped me feel at home in the wild and open African landscape. One character is named Happy, our hero is named Precious and a night club is called the Hansom Man Bar. The actors are good looking and have very white teeth.
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was the first book by Alexander McCall Smith to feature Precious Ramotswe-there are currently nine books in the series. I don't know if the BBC is going bring all nine books to the London airwaves, but I certainly hope that they will.
I know, London has all kinds of things to do and see, why sit around and watch the telly? Because it's some of the best telly in the world, that's why. I love the new Dr Who, I'm a huge fan of the Disc World films, and I watch a ton of BBC stuff on Masterpeice Theater on PBS.
And while I don't watch nearly as much telly as I used-it is something to do after that hard day of using the London Pass to have another great day out.
Dr Who is very much a love it or hate it kind of thing. I pretty much love it and have for lo these many years. The new, new Dr Who has been fun to watch. This season we see the return of the runaway bride from a couple of Christmases ago that didn't want to run off with The Doctor. She has changed her mind and has been following every strange event she can find to track him down.
The Doctor is tired of people who just want him for his body, like Martha Jones and Captain Jack, and claims that he just wants a Mate. His new companion has not romantic interest in The Doctor at all and makes retching nosies at the very idea of mating with him. This is fine with The Doctor, as it is what he wants.
We see that dark side of the Doctor twinkle in his eye, but then he goes back to being all happy and sunshine-the villains in the story are children who don't deserve to die, even though they killed a few people being born. The real villain is a super nanny who looses the support of her charges parents.
The story was sort of funny and odd and the effects of the little aliens were shockingly good. But all that is small potatoes, the real shocker of the show was a glimpse of Miss Rose Tyler-apparently in some kind of transitional state of being. Rose looked anything but happy, what can her strange appearance mean?
Otherwise the show was fun, one of the many sight gags involved a man with a telescope looking the wrong direction when a huge flying saucer passes by. The plot was the same basic story of all the Earth bound Dr Who episodes, some evil something is here and the Doctor has to save us.
The new Doctor Who website has some fun stuff, like Captain Jack's Monster Files and clips from the first show and trailers of one sort or another. They have a bit of blurb on the site that they had some technical difficulties as the site has proved so popular. Lots of images and videos and games and the like.
This looks like it is going to be a very good season.
