Tag Archive | "Magic with an Accent"

Magic with an Accent: Vampires on Twitter?

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What’s on the Telly?

Are you guys tired of talking about Being Human yet? I hope not! Because we’ve got two episodes and some exciting news to catch up on, and even some spoilers (for American viewers anyway, most of whom don’t have access to the magic I use in order to see these episodes as they air on British TV!).

Scroll down to the next section is you don’t want to know what Being Human viewers are currently seeing across the pond.

After a fair bit of faffing about and sketchy character development this season, Being Human finally hit its (albeit uneven) stride this week, and holy blood-stained Bible, it’s getting good!

We finally got some insight into why exactly Professor Kemp is so dead set on eradicating vampires — He was a priest! They killed his family! — which was obvious, but heart-breaking and nicely/creepily played by Donald Sumpter.

We also saw, in convenient flashback form, Mitchell’s (Aidan Turner) first attempt at going dry and how extremely needy and dependent that makes him, proving that he is yet another bad boy vampire in need of a woman to save him. Et tu, BBC? Say it ain’t so.

George (Russell Tovey) fell in love and moved out of the house he shared with Annie and Mitchell, and in with his new girlfriend, Sam, and Sam’s daughter, Molly, who is either creepy or downright manipulative (possibly both!). It’s still up in the air whether or not he’ll have any more luck with this girlfriend and what I mean by “luck,” well, not turning her into a werewolf would be a good place to start. Things don’t look great for George’s love prospects though, not with the apparent return of Nina (Sinead Keenan) next week.  She’s been hoodwinked by the nefarious Professor Kemp, who wants not only to destroy all of Bristol’s vampires, but to put all of Bristol’s werewolves into some sort of pressure chamber as well, and squeeze the wolf out of them. Good luck with that, Professor.

Annie (Lenora Crichlow) got a bit of something old and something new these past two weeks. She spent the entire fifth episode babysitting a ghost baby, who she named Tim. (Later to be revealed as Rufus. We prefer Tim.)

While this was clearly just a plot line to give Annie something to do during a heavily Mitchell-centric episode, it was adorable to see a ghost baby delighted by Annie’s poorly told ghost stories and come on: doesn’t the dead girl deserve a laugh?

Episode 6 also took us to the other end of the gambit, when Annie, distraught by George’s decision to move out, took to wandering the streets and wound up encountering a convenient plot point, Alan The Psychic. Through Alan, Annie made contact with her mother and helped her heal from the pain of Annie’s death. She also helped another ghost resolve his own death so that he could pass through Death’s Door.

(By the way, if anyone understands why Annie is so keen to help other ghosts pass over, but is herself desperate not to, let me know in the comments, yeah?)

And Mitchell. Poor, poor Mitchell fell off of the blood wagon and into love. Those supernaturals fall hard and fast, don’t they? Unfortunately, he fell for Lucy Jaggat (Lyndsey Marshal), who happens to be in cahoots with Professor Kemp. Together they plotted to blow up of Vampire Headquarters, with all of Bristol’s vampires inside. We’ll have to wait until next week to find out whether or not Mitchell was killed (I’m guessing not), but we did find out how vampires organize their meetings in their funeral parlor — they Tweet it!

Hey, why not? Works for the rest of the world.

For the record, here’s what I think those Tweets might look like:

Bits and Pieces

If you’re skipping past the spoilers, here is where you want to pick up! Exciting news of American Being Human fans. BBC America has announced that they’ve secured the rights to not only the show’s second season, to begin airing late this summer, but to the yet to-be-produced third season (which is moving to Cardiff — Torchwood crossover much?) as well. (Thanks to Vincent Austin for the heads up!)

But even though they’re losing Being Human, Bristol can continue to boast just a little. Keeping themselves entertained during this long, cold winter break, Star Wars fans took to the streets there on Saturday. More than 100 Jedi, of all shapes and sizes (and with all manner of light saber) turned out for a relatively impromptu flashmob, organized through the power of Facebook. If only we could get them all together with the Harry Potter fans who still have months to wait before the release of the first Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows film. That’s a duel I’d love to see.

If you still need to sort our your own wand work, maybe you should check out the new Harry Potter board game. Warner Bros. announced this week that they’re releasing a new Hogwarts game, as well as new Lego sets this fall, in anticipation of the upcoming films. Maybe that, along with the news that ABC Family will be premiering Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on February 27th will help make the wait a little more bearable.

Merlin fans are also stuck in a holding pattern, with the show’s third season just beginning production. Pierrefond’s (Camelot, to you Muggles) website has been updated to reflect the start of filming in April, with the show’s premier still set for September. And until then, C21medianet.com is reporting that Merlin has magicked up an iPhone app! It’ll be available in April in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian. Apparently, it’ll be a role-playing game and you can be either Merlin or Arthur.

Personally, I’m picking Merlin. He does hold the power of life and death, after all.

That’s all for this time. Until next week, mischief managed!

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Magic with an Accent: BEING HUMAN’s George Gets a Girlfriend (and a New Cage)

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WHAT’S ON MY TELLY

George howls at the moon

Lots of “gets” on this week’s Being Human! George (Russell Tovey) got a new girlfriend, a new job and a new cage in which to transform. Annie (Lenora Crichlow) got a new ghost (one with control over Death’s Door even), and Mitchell (Aidan Turner) got a coronation, apparently, as the new king of the vampires.

And we, the viewers, got a glimpse of what has made this show so great all along: George, Mitchell and Annie simply sitting together, helping one another and working toward a common goal.

This season has seen plenty of action: we’ve seen Nina, George’s no-nonsense girlfriend, transforming into a werewolf the first time, Annie got a job and a boyfriend (another crazy one, unfortunately — when will she learn?), and Mitchell’s story has been perhaps the most compelling of all, as he attempts to snuff out centuries of behavior and turn a coven of vampires into docile, non-blood suckers.

It sounds like a joke — a ghost, a werewolf and a vampire walk into a bar — but the heart of this show, the thing that keeps us coming back for more is these three, these unlikely three. We want to see the ways in which the defeat the odds, we want to see how they take care of each other, how they persevere, how they ultimately come out on top.

And, well, if it happens to come with awesome CGI and the sort of storytelling that has the power to make me both laugh hysterically and want to crawl out of my skin, all the better.

NEWS FROM ACROSS THE POND

The biggest new of the week is surely that Merlin has been picked up by SyFy to air in April.

While the network’s website has a 13-hour season 1 marathon listed on March 28th, the Powers That Be have informed TheTorchOnline.com that they will be airing season one every Friday starting April 2nd, and then season 2 after that. I don’t want to wait that long for season 2, but I for one am just excited that the show is returning to American airwaves (season 1 ran last summer, to pretty disastrous ratings, on NBC).

Unfortunately, there isn’t much more fantasy programming for you on the telly this week. There’s plenty out on DVD, though, so tug on your wellies and brave the weather for these new series: Merlin, Complete 2nd Series, Box Set; Doctor Who - The Masque Of Mandragora; Dante’s Inferno; and for the kiddos, Wolverine And The X-Men Vol.3 (from the CBBC show) and Blue Dragon - Series 1.

That’s it for this week! Until next time, mischief managed!

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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Magic with an Accent: BEING HUMAN Explodes, MERLIN Picks Up, and More!

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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 together

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

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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