On a whim, I decided to look up the case of Brian Lachlan MacKinnon, who went back to his high school 15 years after he graduated and posed as a 16-year-old pupil. I saw it on BBC Scotland’s Public Eye at the time (around 1995), though I think I had also heard of the […]
Category: TV
Television-related posts and trivia.
Remembering Nehemiah Persoff, 1919–2022
Nehemiah Persoff as a corrupt Latin American finance minister, Phillipe Pereda, in the Mission: Impossible episode, ‘The Vault’ (1969). I read that the wonderful Palestinian-born character actor Nehemiah Persoff passed away this month last year, aged 102. I remember Nehemiah most from the third-season Mission: Impossible episode, ‘The Vault’, which is among the best […]
A format so old, it’s new and radical
Above: I spy Natasha Lyonne and a Plymouth Barracuda. So the car is part of her screen identity? So it should be, it’s television. I might have to watch this. Two very fascinating responses come up in Wired’s interview with director Rian Johnson on the Netflix release of his film Glass Onion. I’m not […]
The expectation of invisibility
I rewatched Princess of Chaos, the TV drama centred around my friend, Bevan Chuang. I’m proud to have stood by her at the time, because, well, that’s what you do for your friends. I’m not here to revisit any of the happenings that the TV movie deals with—Bevan says it brings her closure so that […]
An introduction to smart TVs for a complete novice
Earlier in December, we decided to put a TV into our guest room. One catch: there is no aerial there, so initially we thought, ‘We have some great DVDs, let’s plug in the DVD player.’ But it didn’t quite feel right. We’ve stayed at enough places with smart TVs, including some running the Android TV […]
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The reality of Chinese Language Week for many Chinese New Zealanders
‘Chinese Language Week’ has rolled around again, and if you look on Twitter, there are plenty of Chinese New Zealanders (myself included) and our allies miffed about this. And we get the usual trolls come by. First up, it’s not Chinese Language Week. It’s Mandarin Language Week. I have no problem with the promotion of […]
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My tribute to David MacGregor
Digital art by David MacGregor I hope the media will say more because David MacGregor had packed so much into his 50-something years on this planet. Here is my tribute on Lucire. Not everyone can claim to have discovered Rachel Hunter, created the Family Health Diary TV commercial format (and others), founded the first online […]
RIP Lionel Blair
It’s not Harp Lager. It’s much funnier. Mind you, I watched this to remember Lionel today. You may also like The history of the ITC white Jaguar Mk I, recovered More TV Dregs, please Finding the heart on Top Gear again History of the 2010s: a look back at the decade that was The […]
The return of Van der Valk
I came across an old post of mine on Euston Films remakes, at the time the American version of Widows hit the big screen. My last question, after going through Minder, The Sweeney and Widows reboots, sequels and remakes: ‘Now, who’ll star in a new Van der Valk?’ Since local TV programmers and I […]
Nostalgia: Money for Nothing
Money for Nothing—image from Amazon Prime, where, as of yesterday, you can watch a presumably cleaner copy than what’s on YouTube. As a young lad, I enjoyed the Screen One TV movie Money for Nothing (1993), which aired on the BBC in the UK and TV1 here. Not to be confused with the John […]