Today we debut a new column that looks at fantasy and genre projects from the other side of the pond!

Nearly the whole of the UK has spent the last month covered in a blanket of snow and ice, but at least everyone has had great television to keep then entertained.

The cast of Being Human cozies up

January saw the return of the BBC breakout hit, Being Human, a supernatural Three’s Company. Being Human, which is in turns funny and terrifying, follows the lives of three twenty-somethings, John Mitchell (Aidan Turner), George Sands (Russell Tovey), and Annie Sawyer (Lenora Crichlow). It just so happens that these housemates are a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost, respectively.

Being Human premiered with nearly a million and a half viewers, well up from the second season’s finale. Perhaps this could be attributed to our apparent never-ending fascination with vampires, but I think it’s more the intriguing storylines (a vampire who doesn’t want to drink blood?), the fantastic score, and a cast that is not only talented, but so gorgeous they’re gracing the current cover of Gay Times.

In fact, Being Human has been so wildly successful, American TV has decided to do what it does best: make a remake! SyFy has chosen husband and wife team Jeremy Carver (Supernatural) and Anna Fricke (Privileged) to repackage the show for American viewers. This, combined with the announcement that Fox is developing a U.S. version of Torchwood, makes us wonder: can an Americanized Doctor Who be far off?

We hope so. We hope it’s very, very far off indeed.

Colin Morgan as Merlin

We’ve also got some news on the BBC hit show Merlin. BBC has announced that the series has been renewed for a third season. We got our first (often ham-fisted) glimpses of the Arthur (Bradley James) and Guinevere (Angel Coulby) romance in season two, as well as a new, darker Morgana (Katie McGrath) whose magic is no longer quite so secret, so it’s presumable that season three will start to look a little more like something that won’t make Arthurian scholars turn in their graves. No word yet as to when season three will begin production.

American Merlin fans have something to look forward to as well. The show was actually a co-production with the NBC network, which ran the show last summer — to disastrous ratings, alas. There’s virtually no chance that NBC will bring the show back to prime-time, but it seems likely that season two will appear on one of its sister channels — most likely, SyFy, though at this point, both NBC and SyFy have declined to comment on their plans to TheTorchOnline.com.

In more solid news, the first season will finally be available in DVD in the US starting April 20th.

David Tennant also ended his four-year run as the Doctor in Doctor Who in January, closing out with a two episode arc, “The End of Time”.

The episodes saw not only the return of the Doctor’s nemesis, the Master (John Simm), but of a whole slew of Time Lords, every companion the tenth Doctor has traveled with, even Gallifrey itself. After publicity photos of Donna (Catherine Tate), the Doctor’s previous companion (who lost her memories after a Human-Time Lord meta-crisis) surfaced, there was hope that the Doctor could restore her fuzzled brain and that together again they would save the world.

No such luck, but at least she made off with a new husband and a sackful of money which is, I suppose, someone’s idea of a happy ending.

Well, that’s it for this week. Until next week, mischief managed!

Looking to buy the first season of Merlin on DVD (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

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• Entertainment Weekly has a picture of James Marsters on Caprica. He looks like James Marsters on anything else. Do they make him bring his own wardrobe to guest spots these days? Because he doesn’t exactly vanish into roles. And nothing I saw in the pilot of Caprica looked as dirty and destroyed as this picture.

• Latest rumors say that the new Spider-Man reboot, which has a rom-com director at the helm, will get the Disney treatment, if you believe the rumors. David Henrie, who plays the eldest wizard brother on The Wizards of Waverly Place is rumored to be up for the role. It fits – he’s a goody-goody nerdy type on the show who got great pecs between seasons. Maybe he was bitten by a radioactive Mickey Mouse? He’s already fond of red and blue outfits.

• There’s a lot a gripe in the comic book world about a Marvel program that lets store owners trade in 50 DC comics (destroyed) for one special edition comic from the rival publisher. Marvel says it’s being economically kind, giving any credit for the unsold titles. I say they’re being unkind because the special edition they’re giving out is a blinged-out Deadpool straight from 1984.

• Stephen Fry was supposed to write a Doctor Who episode a few years back, but ran out of time in his life. Then it was too late, and Russell T. Davies had moved on. But while he was picking up his National Television Awards last week, he mentioned he’d love to try again. I can totally see Fry writing for David Tennant’s Doctor, but I’m not sure he could have done it for Chris Eccleston’s Doctor. Since I’m far from sold on Matt Smith, I’m ambivalent.

• AMC can’t decide what it wants to be as a network. It used to be true to the name, American Movie Classics. Then they decided “classics” could include Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which worked for me, but might have been stretching the truth, MTV-style. Now they’ve picked up a pilot called Walking Dead, about the zombie apocalypse. Yes, you heard it here: zombies have made it to television, so they’re done. Please rewrite all movie screenplays for angels.

• In random shopping news, Whedonites can pick up a Firefly replica keychain for only $9.95. It’s amazingly detailed, but having seen the damage River Tam can spontaneously dish out, I’m not sure I want that in my pocket, near things I care dearly about. Like my iPhone.

• Fantasy writer N.K. Jemisin has written a blog about some of the disturbing themes that appear in fantasy novels and movies, from inherited power (of the royal kind) to inherited power (of the magical kind). She thinks that it smacks of feudalism and eugenics, which is one way to look at it. Another is that every story about knights guarding the gate of a castle sells one copy, but if a dragon attacks the king and gets blasted by magical fireballs, well, then it’s not classified as a sleep aid.

• Because original ideas are so last century, the current buzz is that Fox’s Planet of the Apes reboot is now back on. It sounds very prequel, showing how the apes took over. Jamie Moss of Street Kings fame, is writing, while Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver are punching up the dialog.

• Sci-Fi Wire has this previously-told-but-still-amazing story about how Martin Luther King, Jr. kept Uhura from leaving Star Trek after the first season. He felt the role was the first post-racial character on television, and convinced Nichelle Nichols of how vital it was to the civil rights struggle.

• I’m vaguely creeped out by Lockheed-Martin’s HULC exoskeleton for soldiers, seeing it as the first step toward the cyber-apocalypse. But I had previously been consoled by the fact that the battery on the thing was measured in minutes. Now thanks to a fuel cell upgrade, the thing can go for three days, increasing strength and endurance, until it gains sentience and enslaves the wearer. Did we learn nothing from Doctor Octopus?

• Casting for Conan the Barbarian has been completed – Jason Momoa, of Stargate Atlantis and Baywatch, will be picking up the sword Arnold once carried.

• By the time you read this, Avatar will have passed Titanic as the top grossing movie of all time. Closing out the weekend, it was $1.841 billion worldwide, $2 million short of Titanic’s 1998 record.

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Looking to buy any of the projects mentioned in this article (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

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