Dexter Season 3

...Finally it is here and it started with a bang again...

I don't really want to give away any spoilers so if you haven't seen it yet I should look away.

I love the way they are evolving Dexter but keeping him true to the original character. This season starts out with Dexter back to his old ways of killing off villains that the law have let slip away.
However in the proces he accidentally kills someone who initially seems innocent of any wrong doing. I think this will unfold and it will turn out that he has bagged an even bigger criminal.

The only thing I don't like about Dexter is all the gratuitous sex. I am not a prude but I don't like watching these full on sex scenes with my children. OK they are 16 and 15 and probably shouldn't even be watching it but I can't send them to bed at 10pm on a Friday night.

Anyhow Roll on Friday and the next episode

Dancing on Ice

When this series started it looked like an interesting line-up

As with other years they started out with a clear favourite - Ray Quinn - who was streets ahead of the others in skating ability and technique and skill. I would say behind him was Jessica Taylor and from then on it was a much of muchness. However as the weeks have gone on most of the other celebs have really improved. Zoe Salmon has stunned me as in the first week she seemed very clumsy but she really stepped up her game and challenged Jessica for the top girl spot.

There has been 1 blot on the score chart though and that is Collen Nolan. In the early weeks I really enjoyed watching her. She can't skate at all but she is a good dancer and she has a rhythm and style and she was fun. However once it gets down to the wire it is all about talent and skating ability. Coleen can't skate! Jessica and Zoe are doing lots of intricate skating moves unassisted by their partners and Collen never lets go of hers yet last week we had Zoe and Jessica in the skate off when they belong in the final and Coleen going through to the semi-final. It was so sad to see Zoe go as she has done so well.
This was Zoe's final skate.



Coleen is going to find it very hard this week as the required element is solo skate which she cannot do. If the stupid public still vote her through to the final then I will give up watching this show for good.

Celebrity cooking

I have got into 2 celebrity cooking shows this week.

First of all Celebrity Masterchef on Watch. I think it is from Last year. I haven't watched the whole series. I started at the last 2 episodes of the heats.

I am trying to understand why celebrities go on these shows. You would think they would want to give a good account of themselves.
In Masterchef, Gemma Atkins admitted she had never cooked anything before. So OK, first of all why would you admit that? Then how do you go from never cooking to making an omelette? or a Chicken stir fry for that. I do cook but I can't for the loife of me make an omelette that actually looks or tastes good. She did manage to spoil her stir fry by adding way too much Tabasco sauce but in the second round she pulled it out the bag. For one of the rounds the celebs have to go into a serving restaurant and cook food for punters. That is bravery.

So we are down to the final with Craig Revel Horward, Nadia Sawalha and Midge Ure and it is getting tense. I am enjoying seeing Revel Horward especially under stress and having to deal with the criticism. He is very out there with his food design.

Celebrity Come Dine with me is a whole different story. We have Abi Titmuss, Leslie Joseph, Paul Ross, Linda Lusardi and Rodney Marsh.


Rodney Marsh has never cooked in his life and I doubt if he knew where the kitchen was before this show. His daughter did most of the prep for him and in the evening when it came to cooking the meal, His guests did most of the work too.

Leslie Joseph was a complete disaster. The Lamb was hardly cooked so Linda Lusardi was slicing it up and grilling it. The veg were all rock hard and the chocolate mousse was bitter.

She is a complete mess so why would she let people see her?

I can imagine that Linda Lusardi will be wonderful as the mum of 3 and I think that Abi Titmuss will win it.

New season TV

My 2 favourite channels these days are Sci Fi and FX. They brought us such great shows as Heroes, Medium, Taken, Dexter & NCIS.

This week they both had new shows starting. First of all on FX was Burn Notice. They have been advertising it for ages and I have seen loads of stuff about in on LJ including caps and Icons. So I was looking forward to seeing it.


It didn't disappoint either. It must be made by the same people as Dexter as it is set in Miami with the same kind of photography and the same kind of script. Although it is like a cop drama there is a lot of humour in it too.

With the tagline Spies don't get fired, they get burned.The show is about Michael Weston A spy who is in the middle of an operation when he receives a call that he has been burned.

Jeffrey Donovan who Plays Michael is quite Yummy as you can see and Sharon Gless plays his crazy mother

Eli Stone is the second show and played out on Sci Fi On Monday night. We didn't realise though that it was a double episode Premier so we had to Sky+ it and watch it Wednesday.
Interestingly George Michael makes a guest appearance a couple of times in episode 1. It is about Eli who is a lawyer and keeps hearing George singing Faith. It turns out he may be a prophet...

In fact it is quite hard to explain the idea of the show but is stars Johnny Lee Miller as Eli Stone and it really quite funny.

Its great that there are all these brill new shows but there are still many old shows to return.
Bones is already back on Sky but House is yet to return which will be on at the same time. Heroes is back too but we are also waiting on the return of Eureka, Lost, Gossip girl, Torchwood, NCIS and CSI (Vegas and New York)
Thank God we now have Sky+ and we may have to bring the Virgin box into play too.

Renewed Virgin

So last week I got a call from Virginmedia telling me that as a special treat for loyal phone customers they are sending out free cable TV boxes no strings with access to all the free package for life (Or as long as I stay a phone customer) Not only does the package include all the free to air/view channels but it also includes the On demand services and most importantly the BBC Iplayer.
All at no extra cost to me.

At first I nearly said no thank you as I already have Sky+ anyway but if they were giving it to me for free anyway I may as well say yes.

Today at 9am the UPS man turned up with my special delivery Virgin (Vbox) TV system.
It took me a few minutes to set up, as we had the TV package before the connections were all there so I didn't need any of the extra cable or the splitter they sent.
There were no instructions included with the box so It took me a bit of ringing round Virgin's numbers to finally get it activated but within 20 minutes I was watching Last weeks Bonekickers on the BBC Iplayer from the comfort of my sofa instead of in front of the Computer screen. (Unfortunately I did forget to SkyPlus it last week while we were out.)

So it might be a bit stupid having Sky and Virgin boxes next to each other but I have come to thinking that once we get back into the Autumn schedules there is always a build up of shows all on at 9pm every night so at least I will be able to watch one channel on the VBox and still record 2 other shows on the Sky YAY!

Its only taken me a year...

...But I have finally got Media centre set up on my Xbox.
I went through all sort of problems with different modding techniques and did get to the point where I thought I may as well give up. I soldiered on though and now It is all fully operational.

The main reason for my joy is that from now on I can download any TV show or movie onto the main computer and just watch it straight away on the TV through the Xbox without having to waste a DVD by burning it off. It is going to revolutionise my TV watching.

I have also finally got file sharing set up on my network so that I can utilise the external hard drive on my lappy without having to keep disconnecting it from the PC everytime. It is going to make my video producing so much easier and faster!

Is it that time of year again already?

I have had quite a good weekend.
OK not including the football scores.
Saturday was a really lazy slob about day where I didn't even get dressed until about 1.30 and that was to go across to a Christmas fayre that was all packed up by the time I got there.
DS was staying at his mate's and left about 3pm and DD was in town.

So I just made jacket wedges for tea for me and DD and we sat with them on our laps while we watched the footie.

In the evening it was the normal TV routine of Robin Hood then Casualty and then we watched the last half an hour of Celebrity jungle. After we saw that Chef guy evicted I put on this weeks episode of Heroes.
I went to bed and watched the season finale of Eureka and episode 8 of Bones.

Sunday was the annual visit of Ange's Godmother Wendy and her husband Charlie. They do just 1 weekend to travel round and visit everyone whilst delivering Christmas presents.

Things haven't been particularly good this year between me and my 2 sisters so it was nice that I was invited along to Ange's house. Wendy said beforehand that if it was too awkward they would have come to mine but I had a really good day. It was nice being with my family. My nephew was very playful and I loved that he wanted to play with me. Even my niece seemed relatively pleased to see me. When I left I even managed kisses from both of them too.

Wendy has recently lost 11 stone after having weight loss surgery and so has a lot of clothes that no longer fit. She has very kindly passed them on to me...All 4 bags of them. So a big chunk of the afternoon was taken up by my sorting through them. I actually brought 3 black bags home with me.

After the guests has left Debz and I stayed for a bit and watched some X-factor until Debz called a taxi to go back home. I would have walked had I not had the 3 black bags of stuff.

When I got home I spent the rest of the day watching Christmas movies with the children.

The Bionic Woman

I just watched the pilot episode of The Bionic Woman and To be honest I was very surprised.
In case you haven't heard, this is a new remake of the old Bionic woman starring ex-EastEnder Michelle Ryan (Zoe Slater) in the lead role. You wouldn't think it was her though with her newly acquired American accent and she has definitely had a few more acting lessons since leaving the soap.



I was well impressed both with the acting and the show as a whole. The effects were good and it wasn't far in to the opening episode before we saw the Bionic powers unleashed.
It is a bit corny that Jamie is dating a college lecturer who also happens to work on a secret project for the government capable of improving humans with specialized nanites. They just happen to be out together (Just after she has told him she is pregnant) when a juggernaut plows into the side of the car. The boyfriend is hardly touched but Jamie loses her legs an arm as well as use of an eye and ear.

I am looking forward to seeing the rest of the series.

Also this week I watched the pilot episode of Reaper.

It is a bit like The Collector in that it is about a guy who works for The Devil collecting souls but where the Collector was quite dark, this is very much lighter with your 2 comedy side-kicks and a lot of gags. I enjoyed it though and will be continuing with it.

MIA = LOST

For the whole of Friday I was MIA and incommunicado.
The reason was I finally received my DVD recordings of Lost from my friend Jill In the States.


I used to be an avid watcher of the Show when it was on E4, I would watch the show and then watch the repeat and then the Channel 4 showing too.
Of course when Sky took it over and then took themselves off Virgin, I could no longer watch it. Luckily we struck a deal and my only mission was to avoid all the talk and spoilers before I got to see it.

I almost managed it. Occasionally on UM the Lost talk would spill out of it's own thread into another but I would stop myself reading just in time.
The worst spoiler came though last Monday when Georgina Bowman on Radio 1 did a Lost feature and gave the game away about the finale. When people complained she said that as it finished weeks ago she couldn't see the problem of course until they had another onslaught by my fellow Virgin customer... A tongue in cheek apology followed.

So Friday morning I was dancing round the room when Postie delivered my DVDs. I cleared all the plans I had made and decided to get comfy with some snacks to catch up.

It was so easy to be sat there all day. 1 episode just merged into the next and before I knew it, the kids were home from school.

I was able to watch again from 6pm onwards as DD had gone to babysit for Ange and DS had gone off to Youth. I knew there wasn't much chance of DS coming home as he usually ends up sleeping over the road on a Friday. So I sat up and watched the whole season including the 2-episode season finale.
It was 4am by the time I got to bed but my head was buzzing with the whole 16 episodes.

So many questions now to ask. At last I can go and seek out the Lost communities and join in the theories and find out what others are summising.

I was sad to see Charlie go. Although all through the series it was kind of telegraphed in the storyline but Dominic Monaghan is such a great actor and charlie such a great character that I was hoping it wouldn't be true - Of course, what no one else has said is that we don't actually see Charlie die, the last time we see him is in this frame

So maybe, just maybe if we keep our fingers crossed...

OMG!

Deadline

Stumbled across this show by accident on Wednesday night and now I am addicted to it just like any other celeb reality type show.

The format - 10 celebs working together for a celebrity gossip mag. They are sent out on jobs to interview /pap other celebs.
Each week 3 people are up for the sack and Janet Street-Porter (magazine editor) will decide which sherker is binned.

Now don't get me wrong it isn't an A-list frenzy but there are some would be journos here that are worthy of themselves being papped on a regular basis.

• Yvette Fielding
• Dean Holdsworth
• Dom Joly
• Lisa L'Anson
• Imogen Lloyd-Webber
• Blair McDonough
• Chris Parker
• Ingrid Tarrant
• Iwan Thomas
• Abi Titmuss

As I watch, we are about to have this weeks sacking revealed to us. Chris Parker is the man to go - Bye Bye Spencer Moon.


The actual magazine that they are putting together will be available next Tuesday in Closer magazine. I just might have to go out and buy that. It looks like the cover shot is a picture of The Beckhams taken by ex-Rams no.2 Dean Holdsworth.

Have you met Miss Jones

So Saturday night saw the return of Doctor Who but without Rose.
New companion Martha Jones was introduced to the viewers much the same way as Rose was but she had the added bonus of a trip to the moon and a giant Rhino intergalactic Police Force known as the Judoon.



I have to admit that as I watched it Sunday night I wasn't very open to the change. My preconception was that I was going to hate Martha Jones but I gave way in the end. She is no Rose Tyler but I can see that she is going to give The Doctor a run for his money.

They had only been acquainted for minutes when Martha was lucky enough to snog his doctorness

"That was was a genetic transfer"

Each season seems to have a theme running in the background. With season 1 it was the Bad Wolf references and with 2 it was the Torchwood clues. I can guess that Saxon will be the thing to look out for this time. We know that The gorgeous John Simm will be playing Mr Saxon in a future episode and I noticed that there were several posters in shots saying Vote Saxon...



I will watch out to see if I am right.

By the way Am I the only one who wanted to sing "I've got a brand new Sonic Screwdriver" to the tune of the Worzels "brand new harvester"?

Heroes

For weeks now Chris Moyles and his team have been talking about the New blockbuster TV show in the States Heroes, Chris and his team have all seen preview DVDs of the whole first season and are raving about it. Jo Whiley and Edith Bowman have also been going on about it which is perfect for making you also want to see it.

The show doesn't start in this country until Monday 19th but surprisingly such a big show like this hasn't been brought to this country by SkyTV or even Ch4/E4 but is being shown on the SciFi channel. Whether the subsequent seasons will make their way to Sky like 24, Nip/tuck and Lost before them - Only time will tell.

Fortunately for me I found that some kind soul has the whole of season 1 for download and ready converted for the PSP.
Last night I watched episode 1 and you guessed it - I AM HOOKED!
Basically the show is about a group of people from all walks of life and all areas that find they have some kind of special powers. My favourite is a Japanese guy - aptly named Hiro - who has the ability to not only stop time by just concentrating hard but he also manages to transport himself from an underground train in Japan to the streets of New York just by willing himself there. I am looking forward to watching the rest and seeing how the characters develope.

At least now when Moyles goes on about it I will be able to understand what he is talking about.

TV and the internet are my favourite pass-times

...And for the past 24 hours I have been without them.

Can you believe it? I was sat there watching Waking the dead On Demand and suddenly it went off along with the broadband. I tried all the usual unplugging and plugging back in malarkey but to no avail so I had to phone up NTL and the only time they could get a tech out is the next afternoon. ARGH! what do I do for a whole 24 hours without my tele or internet? I was going to miss all my soaps!

It was quite refreshing actually. It's alright for DD she has all the channels on her freeview so she went and watchjed upstairs when she got home from school.

At tea-time I suggested watching some Dr Who. We watched the CIN ep that we never saw before and then DS asked if we could watch the Impossible planet and The Satan pit. I realised that however many times I watch them, I will never tire of them. After that we watched School reunion and then all the outtakes from the DVD extras.

At 10pm when the kids went to bed I had no idea what to do. Usually I would come on here for a while and catch up on my forums with the TV on WinTv. So I decided to go to bed. I found Charlie Brooker on BBC4 followed by Life on Mars so it wasn't too bad after all.

Today I wasn't sure what to do with myself. I had to wait in for the nice NTL man so I did a bit of housework, went out to the shops, then made myself a drink and settled down to finally watch Casanova (The movie starring Heath Ledger, not the TV show starring DT) Guess what, As soon as I was comfy the phone rang - It was the NTL engineer to say that he was on his way. AND he was early so that would give me the rest of the day clear to do what I wanted.

Nice Mr NTL man was done in a few minutes so after he had gone I sat down and finished off watching the movie (Stopping every now and then to go make homemade veggie soup then eat it)

It's Jade Vs Shilpa for tonights big CBB Eviction!!!

Nominations Announced to the House

Friday 19 January
Day 17, 10:58

Jade and Shilpa get the bad news...

The housemates have been told that Jade and Shilpa are this week's nominees.

Neither nominee looked surprised when the news came, although Jade couldn't hide her disappointment when her name was called first. She winced at the verdict, while boyfriend Jack also looked crestfallen.

As the pause between her name and Shilpa's dragged, the giggling actress gave Jade's arm an affectionate tug. Jade giggled too, but she seemed far from happy. When the second and final name was finally announced Shilpa continued to laugh it off.

"I knew I'd be up," said Jade.

"Me too," said Shilpa.

"Whoever goes will be happy, and they can sleep in their own bed," chirped the ever-optimistic Ian.

"Yeah," agreed Jade, adding: "And when I find out who nominated me, I won't speak to them ever again."

It wasn't totally clear if it was a joke or serious.. or a threat or a promise.

But will Jade find out tonight, or can her stay in the House be extended?

Voting details are here