Sky Atlantic - Has Dustin Hoffman sold us a dud?

Am I the only one who is finding Sky Atlantic a little disappointing? It was heralded with over sincere ads, fronted by a vaguely creepy Dustin Hoffman and all sorts of goodies were promised. But the excitement seems to have dwindled for me.

The flagship show Boardwalk Empire while good, isn't great. And it was constantly beaten in the ratings by the far superior The Killing over on BBC Four. I'm sure Sky didn't envision their much vaunted, Martin Scorsese produced, series getting its arse kicked by a dark,twenty part Danish thriller. Then there is Blue Bloods, passing fair, but pedestrian. It lacks the power of say, an NYPD Blue.

Next Treme, I was looking forward to this David Simon effort. Although I hadn't really liked Generation Kill, I hoped this would be a winner. I lasted half an hour. I found the characters uninteresting and didn't really want to hang around a Katrina torn New Orleans with them for ten episodes.

Bored to Death, the new comedy, I just don't get. That maybe a personal failing on my part, but it just passes me by. Even Weeds, which I'm still enjoying, is not as good as the first three seasons.

The HBO features have been pretty dour. You Don't Know Jack, with Al Pacino was very good. But it took a lot to sit through it. Same with The Jack Bull, a doom laden western with John Cusak. And I didn't have the stamina for Temple Gradin. I just looked at it sitting there on my planner and thought, I haven't got the energy. But perhaps things will pick up. Game of Thrones, which starts on the 18th might be a winner. It looks good.

Then again, I could be moaning about nothing. I've watched more Sky Atlantic, over the last two months than I have ITV in two years. Let's think about it how many ITV shows could we all gripe about. I've talked myself out of it. Sky Atlantic could be better than I thought. And who knows, I might even give Treme another go when it gets repeated.

Over.

Mad Men without Joan - Unthinkable!

So there is good news and bad news. The good news is Mad Men has been renewed for a fifth season the bad news is we have to wait another year for it.

A couple of weeks ago it looked like there was a real danger that Mad Men could have ended up just like Deadwood. A great show cut off in its prime because creative directors and networks just couldn’t get along. This doesn’t seem to be the case anymore but whether we get the same Mad Men back is a completely different matter.

Talks between Matthew Weiner and AMC stalled because AMC wanted to cut two minutes off of the show, put in product placement and axe two regular characters. Wiener was dead set against the changes and instead wanted $30 million to continue for the next two seasons.

Seeing as we now have a return date we can only hope that these problems have been resolved. We wont be getting episodes that are half an hour long, episodes without Don and Peggy and we wont be watching Roger drinking diet coke in front of the camera, I mean that would be ridiculous, everyone knows Roger only drinks Martinis.

However there is one little problem…

Now there’s a lot of speculation going around at the moment (and I stress speculation) but a worrying story is going around that what with the delay in filming it seems season 5 will be lacking one key character… the beloved Joan! I know, I know it doesn’t bear thinking about! It seems that Christina Hendricks has signed on to do some movie and filming for that and Mad Men is scheduled for the same time. Unless Hendricks has a twin (and we know that’s not true, there’s only one Christina Hendricks) then it looks pretty impossible that she is going to be able to do the two.

Anyone who watches the Mad Men will tell you one thing, Mad Men without Joany unthinkable! It would be like having 24 without Chloe, Lost with Kate, Glee without Rachel. She is the matriarch, the glitz and glamour, the brains behind the operation, the one who makes sure SCDP runs smoothly and keeps the men in check. Also if she doesn’t come back we would be missing out on the storyline of Joan being pregnant with Rogers baby. Not much happens in Mad Men, that’s a given but I thought this could have brought some major drama to the show.

Of course it wouldn’t be the first time shows have wrote out characters that are integral to the plot line and if AMC were so desperate to get rid of a regular character it seems they may well have go their wish. One thing I do know is that if Joan doesn’t feature in Season 5 then they better start working on a way to get Betty more involved because we cannot rely on Peggy to bring the sixties glamour.

I for one am slightly worried. Mad Men really is the best show on TV. It’s classy, visually perfect, the acting is second to none and every character is integral to the show. If all these changes means Mad Men is on the verge of jumping the shark then perhaps it shouldn’t come back at all.

Weeds has lost it's charm.

I have decided to give up watching Weeds. It wasn’t that hard of a decision to make to be fair. After waiting two years for it to come back on to TV in England, I realised I hadn’t missed it that much in the first place. It wasn’t anywhere near as funny as I remembered but Nancy was just as obnoxious and flash as I remembered her to be.

In the first few seasons I could kind of see how Nancy could have become a drug dealer, what with the dead husband and shed loads of debt. I felt sorry for her, trying to hide her double life from her family and neighbours and then having to deal with her suppliers, Conrad and Haylia. I never found myself able to root for her completely; there was always something about her that annoyed me (I think it was her obsession with Starbucks) But now she is running all over town like a pretty Pablo Escobar, I find her completely intolerable. It seems to me that the charm Weeds had in its first three seasons has completely disappeared making way for a show that just seems obnoxious filled with unlikeable characters.

I stopped watching a couple of episodes back, after willing Nancy to get caught whilst crossing the border, I realised there was no point watching a show where I couldn’t get behind the main character. I even liked Tony Soprano at his worst! However someone told me that in the most recent episode, Shane masturbates over a picture Nancy! So maybe her youngest son is still deranged but just not funny anymore. Either way I’m officially done with Weeds.

Sky Atlantic - The advert channel.

Tuesday marked the launch of Sky’s new TV channel ‘Sky Atlantic’ so as a Virgin Media customer that was a hard day to get through.

The new channel is exclusive to Sky TV customers (not us mere Virgin customers) and is the home to new shows such as Boardwalk Empire and Blue Bloods but I’m not upset about missing these shows, you can’t miss what you’ve never had. It's the other shows I’ve become accustomed to watching that are now unavailable to me, which bothers me the most that I am going to miss. Shows like: Curb Your Enthusiasm, Weeds, 24, Prison Break, Breaking Bad and worst of all Mad Men.

After 4 seasons of watching Mad Men on BBC4, it has finally gone behind a pay wall. I knew it was coming; good shows like MM always go behind pay walls. I have no problem with shows going behind pay walls, I don't mind paying for good quality shows, I just wish it were behind a pay wall that I had access too. Sky say they will treat Mad Men with the respect it deserves and show it at a decent time (unlike BBC4's shocking treatment of it) but what they have failed to mention is that Mad Men will now be littered with adverts. (something no UK Mad Men viewer will be used to) Very little, if anything happens in an episode of Mad Men so there wont be any exciting ad break cliff hangers. Perhaps Sky could fit an advert in after Don tells Peggy she has to work late again.

Really I’m just being bitter that I can’t get the channel. Living in a flat prevents me from having a dish on my building, hence why I have Virgin Media. In fact I would have said six months ago that Virgin was probably better value for money due to their film and TV on demand services, but seeing as I don’t have Sky Atlantic I am slowly changing my mind.

Luckily I have parents with Sky TV so watching these shows isn’t impossible, but when you pay for cable television you expect to have all shows and channels avaliable to you.

There have been some rumblings on Twitter that the Sky and Virgin are in talks, but no one is sure if and when the channel will become available to Virgin customers. You have to hope that the two do sort this mess out as soon as possible. It’s clearly only a matter of time before Sky start poaching the likes of Dexter and True Blood from FX, leaving Virgin viewers with literally nothing to watch (and if that happens then maybe I’ll have to think about moving) Until then I’ll have to keep changing the channel whenever that bloody advert with Dustin Hoffman comes on!