TV Connections

I was watching an episode of Supernatural this week and I got distracted because I recognised an actress guest starring in the show, and I couldn't quite remember what I'd seen her in before. It turns out her name is Emmanuelle Vaugier and she plays a recurring character in One Tree Hill. I also watched 2 episodes of Castle and one had Riley from Buffy guest starring and the next one had Alyssa Milano from Charmed.

This got me thinking because it seems like I can't watch anything lately without reaching for IMDB. Either TV casts are really incestuous or I clearly watch way too much TV (probably both). Anyway I thought it would make an interesting challenge to see if I could link all the scripted programmes I watched in the last week through their cast members, and here are the results:

The Walking Dead to Raising Hope = 6 degrees of separation!

OK so I had to use some extra shows (shown with dotted lines) but they're all things I've watched in the past and I recognised the connections myself. There were actually far more connections between them when I looked in IMDB because it seems nearly all TV actors play a victim on Law & Order or CSI at some point in their career!

Walking Dead and Raising Hope

Two new shows have hit our TV screens in the last few weeks (well at least they have if you have Sky).

The first one, "The Walking Dead", is a big budget dramatisation of a graphic novel by the same name. It's about a deputy sheriff who wakes up from a coma to find that most of the world has been hit by a virus that's turned them into zombies. He's on a mission to find his wife and son, but while he was in a coma they fled to a commune with some other survivors and his wife, believing he wasn't going to wake up, started a relationship with his best friend and partner. The lead is played by Andrew Lincoln, who you may remember as "Simon" in the Channel 4 comedy "Teachers". It's been interesting watching him pull off a Deep South accent as the show is set in and around Atlanta, Georgia. Seems like more and more Brits are stealing the leads in US shows lately with Stephen Moyer in True Blood and Hugh Laurie playing House, accent coaches must be raking it in!

Rating: 7 out of 10, I'm not usually a fan of zombies because I don't really like being scared, but I'm finding this show well written and pretty gripping so far so I'll stick with it.

Now on to the second new show. "Raising Hope" is a comedy from the makers of "My Name Is Earl" about a white trash family. The show centres on the son, Jimmy.  He had a one night stand in his van with a girl he picked up on his way back from getting ice cream. She turned out to be a wanted serial killer who'd murdered most of her previous boyfriends. She went to jail, and was later executed despite having a newborn baby, so Jimmy was granted custody of "Princess Beyonce" (renamed "Hope" at the end of the first episode). He's pretty clueless about how to raise a baby, but he means well and refuses to abandon her at the fire station regardless of what his parents say. Now I know all this sounds a bit dark, but the family have a refreshingly naive and lighthearted outlook on life which actually makes it quite uplifting. My favourite scenes so far have probably been the first time Jimmy changed Hope when he had to run out to get paper towels because he accidentally threw up on her, and when Hope got stuck in the garage under a precarious mountain of clutter that the mother had been hoarding, and the senile grandmother had to play Jenga with it while listening to "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" to free her.

Rating: 8 out of 10, novel and witty show, the 30 minute episodes are always over too quickly!

The Power Is Yours!

This week there was a viral Facebook campaign trying to get everyone to change their profile picture to a cartoon from their childhood to increase awareness of child abuse. While I thought the reason for the campaign was pretty lame, I did think it was fun seeing all the cartoons popping up and bringing back memories so I opted for Captain Planet and the Planeteers on my profile.

This inevitably got the theme song stuck in my head, and it got me thinking about the impact of enviromentalism on recent generations. I remember growing up learning about the greenhouse effect, the hole in the ozone layer, and global warming. And then there was climate change and carbon footprints. I can't remember a time when I didn't feel guilty for throwing away something recyclable or boiling a full kettle of water for one cup of tea. But what's really sad is that it doesn't feel like we're any closer to changing our behaviour en masse and actually doing something to reverse the damage we're doing. Seems like we're all just waiting for everyone else to make a change because we can't see the point if it's just us.

However on a lighter note, the end of the world has made for some excellent music. I was driving into work today listening to the new Disturbed album "Asylum" when I realised "Another Way To Die" is about the environment (which I wouldn't expect from a band like Disturbed so it shows how wide reaching this issue is). I also love the opening song on Rise Against's "Appeal To Reason" called "Collapse (Post-Amerika)". Its lyrics are full of such vivid imagery as "When our rivers run dry and our crops cease to grow" and "When the air that we breathe becomes air that we choke". The catchy chorus and power chords don't hurt either.

Sidenote: I found it particularly amusing that the Daily Mail accused the Facebook campaign of being a smoke screen for paedophiles, so typical of them!