British television continues to surprise, and this time it’s not the BBC but ITV: the Guardian revealed that Rowan Atkinson will be taking over the iconic role of Jules Maigret in two feature-length movies. The first one, titled Maigret sets a Trap, will be aired on March 27, Easter Sunday, at 8pm GMT on ITV1. But can Atkinson, to many viewers primarily known as the bumbling Mr. Bean, pull this off? I believe so, because he is actually a terrific character actor, which you can see in Blackadder or even Johnny English, where he is much less a clown but more serious most of the time. There may be a bit of subtle comedy infused into this new incarnation of the french detective, but I’m confident that this could be Rowan Atkinson’s finest hour. Viewers expecting an Inspector Clouseau clone should probably stay clear of this adaptation, but as the Guardian article remarks, this could fill the gap that David Suchet’s retirement as Hercule Poirot, also an ITV production, has left.

More good news also comes from the BBC: Planet Earth 2 has been announced, to be aired later this year and it will again be presented by David Attenborough, who will also be honoured by an hour-long interview programme for his 90th birthday on May 8th. There is also an interesting remark in this article about Attenborough making a documentary about luminescent lifeforms called Light on Earth for BBC2 which will also air this year.

With only six episodes in the new tenth season of the X-Files, it looked like the small band of writers wanted to include one each of the more common story types of the series. The previos episode made an amusing detour into comedy, but Home Again does a complete 180 degree turn deep into drama mixed with horror – a combination that sometimes worked on previous episodes, but was not so successful this time. The somewhat frustrating second half of the new X-Files series is partly a reason why I’m so hopelessy behind with the reviews and even though all episodes have now aired everywhere, I’m still write about them because my impressions seem to deviate from the overall consensus. Is this the point where the X-Files go off the rails or is it just a one-time blunder? We’ll see…

It’s time to bring the first batch of Matt Groening’s other animated series to a finish, although Futurama Season 4 was not the end of the series by a long shot, even though it looked like it back in Summer 2003 when the ‘final’ episode was broadcast. Even after 72 episodes, the series had only produced a few bad apples and the fourth production season – which was actually partly the fourth and fifth broadcast season – was the best one yet. Futurama had evolved from a science-fiction workplace sitcom to epic storytelling with often complex plots developing an overall mythology of the series’ own universe – combined with the brilliant animation and the indespensable voice acting, this made the series into a classic far ahead of its time. Back in the early 2000s, there was no was to watch it in its original English version here in Germany except from the DVDs, which were thankfully quickly released in the UK and were absolutely indespensable – and a lot of fun because of the great extras. This review is, as usual, primarily about the series itself with a technical DVD review tacked on almost as an afterthought.

Continue to Review »