Louise is too shy to post about it here, so I will: One of her favourite shows of late, Invasion, has been cancelled at the end of its first season. If you’ve been watching it too and want to see more, you need to sign the petition now.
I’ve got a heap of things to post about but mundane tasks, like clearing our gigantic backlog of laundry, have had to take precedence. I’ll attempt to make time tomorrow evening.
I’m glad to see that trials for terrestrial HDTV will start soon. I’m not so glad to hear that, “Freeview has no capacity for more national networks, and will not have enough room for national high definition broadcasts until at least switchover when existing analogue signals are switched off”.
Mark, in case you haven’t noticed, the latest series of Doctor Who is being repeated on BBC Three — two episodes every night! Now’s your chance to catch up.
I finally finished watching season one of Babylon 5 last week, which puts my a little behind schedule. It’s a fairly solid start, with patches of brilliance and patches of not-so-greatness. It certainly lives up to its title of “Signs And Portents”.
Having started season two, though — wow! The first three episodes are just gold. So much classic B5 in such a small place. If you haven’t seen them in a while, dig them out because I’d forgotten how much better they were than what came before.
Update: Dave Estall reminds me that it should be fried gold.
I’ve just found out that [Andreas Katsulas died of lung cancer](http://www.sliceofscifi.com/archives/andreas_katsulas_remembered.html) last week. This is a great loss, as Andreas was a truely excellent actor and brought so much to the character of G’Kar in Babylon 5. I for one will miss him, but in reading [JMS' announcement](http://www.jmsnews.com/msg.aspx?id=1-17526) I can’t be entirely sad Â?— clearly he had lived life well.
Have you seen the [Bravia advert](http://www.bravia-advert.com/) with all the bouncy balls bouncing down the street of San Francisco? They did it with computers, right? No, [they just used tens of thousands of real balls](http://flickr.com/photos/sepiatone/sets/720725/). Fired out of [mortars](http://flickr.com/photos/sepiatone/32622099/in/set-720725/).
I got round to watching [Broken News](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_News) yesterday. It’s a great satire of rolling news stations, of particular note to me because it features [Claudia Christian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Christian).
I’ve just seen that the new series of [Scrapheap Challenge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrapheap_Challenge) starts this Sunday. Louise will be *so* pleased!
While putting the link in above, I noticed that the page says that the scrapheap is located in Basingstoke. I could have sworn it was just down the road in Wokingham. I wonder if they’ve moved site for this series? I will watch with interest!
**Update:** Yes, it appears that they’ve moved the site of the scrapheap for the new series. That makes me a little sad; it felt nice to know a secret about the show. Oh well. Tonight’s show was a corker and next week looks even better!
Fairwell, [Richard Whiteley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Whiteley). [Countdown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_%28game_show%29) was an indeleble part of my youth. You will be missed.
Cool news — for me, at least! My amazing wife has managed to get tickets for us to see the filming of [QI](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QI)… tomorrow! I’m really looking forward to this. QI probably only ranks behind [I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Sorry_I_Haven%27t_A_Clue) and [Just A Minute](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_a_Minute) in the list of shows I want to see recorded live.
In other matters televisual, Mark [lent us](/weblog/2005/06/02/robin-of-sherwood/#comment-27) the [Robin of Sherwood](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_of_Sherwood) first series DVDs, which we proceeded to watch entirely in a week. Louise seems to have taken (or rather retaken) a shine to [Michael Praed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Praed).
The only thing that’s really dated badly is, bizarrely, the sound effects. I suppose they weren’t mixed with 5.1 surround sound systems (complete with active sub-woofer) in mind.
What’s strange is that I have almost no recollection of the plots from when I first watched the programme. I did, however, remember all the characters vividly. Strange what 20 years does to the memory. All in all, very enjoyable, and I hope ITV3 airs the later series.
Finally — and this is something I’ve been meaning to blog about for weeks — I’ve started to re-watch [Babylon 5](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5) on DVD. Ten years ago, when B5 was first transmitted, I swore that I would buy a DVD player especially so that I could have all the series on DVD. Yes, I was that much of fan-boy.
What I hadn’t bargained on was Warner Brothers dragging their feet for *years* and the price of DVD players falling through the floor. What I *do* have now, though, is the aforementioned surround sound system. *Sven!*
I do have to admit, now that the fan-boy lust has subsided, that some of the dialogue in the first series is… a bit naff. However, knowing where it’s going, I’m more that happy to sit through it. If I keep up my viewing rate of a bit under an episode a week, you can expect to see my retrospective review of all the series posted here in September 2007. By which time Ben should be just old enough to start watching the first series with me…