almost witty

If you held John Barrowman’s first single in your hands, and saw it was a cover of the screeching karaoke classic All Out Of Love, you’d expect it to be a diva-ish affair with soaring vocals, and huge production values.

Prepare to be disappointed. He does have an orchestra behind him, but judging from this video, it has none of the passion and drama that you’d expect from Mr. Barrowman. He must have been taking his Hyperactivity tablets… I won’t even comment on the irony of having the out-and-proud Barrowman’s exclusive video debut next to a picture of a “Gay Dalek”…

Oh, and David Tennant as a bespectacled geek.

Simply hilarious.

Thinking about my previous post on how terrible an American version of Spaced would be, it occured to me that I have seen a film which features two twenty-something pop and sci-fi culture obsessives living life in the late 1990s, with pop culture references shoved in left, right and centre with a few film homages and girls who dig comic books (pah! fantasy I tell you!).

Granted, it being American, everyone is impossibly handsome - it starred the future Will of Will & Grace, had the gorgeous never-to-be-seen-again Lori Lively, the two people live in Los Angeles and have jobs most people would kill for (scriptwriter and editor). And of course, everyone is impossibly attractive looking. Oh, and it features William Shatner rapping.

The film whereof I speak? Free Enterprise. Have you heard of it? Even seen it? Am I the only one who’d draw a reasonable comparison? Obviously it’s not as good as Spaced - what could be? - but take a look, see what you think…

As you may know, I’m a bit of a fan of Spaced, a British sitcom that could only have been made in the cusp of the Millennium with its two key protagonists utterly consumed by geek culture and pop culture references, so much so that the two main characters never even kissed one another.

Skip to today, and Variety announce vague plans by Fox to make a US version of it. Brought to you by McG - the man who directed Charlie’s Angels and didn’t make Superman Returns because he was too scared to fly on a plane to Australia - and some guy called Adam Barr. So far, the original creators of Spaced haven’t been consulted. But even if they were involved, I can’t see how a US version of it would work.

Half the fun was watching British people essentially re-enacting a wide variety of Hollywood pop culture moments. Having Americans re-enacting Hollywood moments with a twist wouldn’t be funny - it’d just be Scary Movie 15. With extra mugging.

Way way back in the mists of dotcom time (1999), I worked for beeb.com - basically the website for the commercial arm for the BBC. Unfortunately, it eventually became the victim of a rather bitter squabble between public service BBC and BBC Worldwide, and the public service side won.

I’ve just stumbled across this article from The Economist which succinctly goes into the history of beeb.com. Unfortunately, it’s been put on a Facebook forum which isn’t exactly accessible, so without any copyright permissions whatsoever, I’m putting it up here.
(continue reading…)