Wendy's Week of TV: Part 35: The finale

When I first started my weekly TV update I was very diligent in writing part of it every day and then posting the whole thing at the end of the week. Now I find myself getting to Saturday or Sunday and trying to remember the details of just what I watched during the week...and often failing to do so. So I have decided that as I have reached Part 35 which matches my age Wendy's Week of TV will go into retirement, to be replaced by What Wendy Watched...in the hope that my writing about TV will be more timely and have some hope of being a little bit more substantial (for myself at least if not for anyone else).

But for this week....

Sunday: Sundays at the moment present a big evening of TV. Firstly Einstein Factor, which was its usual amusing, inoffensive half an hour. Then quickly switch to The Biggest Loser to see the weekly weigh ins. Excitement and relief as Holly and Mel fell below the YELLOW LINE and were voted off the following evening. Thank goodness. Go home and whinge girls. Megan and Julie were safe. But twists and turns aplenty as the week progressed whereby the end of the week saw the couples SPLIT UP....AAGGH...into the usual Red and Blue teams that we know and love so well. And then a punishing racetrack challenge. Nathan still believes he is manipulating everyone according to his own secret plans. I await the day we see him fall on his face. Although he is a strong player so may make it through to the end. Crossing fingers for not. I'm going for Bob...although because he is consistently the biggest loser, and the biggest loser in BIGGEST LOSER HISTORY (capitals essential here to match the overdone dramatic hyperbole of the program) the minute he has a bad week and falls below the YELLOW LINE...he'll be out of there because he is the biggest threat. Ooooh I'm getting excited already about tonight to see who loses the weigh in.
And then I watched Lost in Austen. I'm reserving my judgement somewhat until I see how it's all resolved this evening. The heroine Amanda finds a portal in her bathroom into her favourite book Pride and Prejudice whereby she and Elizabeth swap places. Naturally, Amanda's presence in the world of the book causes all sorts of problems and scrapes with the plot no longer unfolding as it should. Interesting to see a different take on Mrs Bennett from Alex Kingston. Anyway Amanda's trying her best to get things back on track but having great difficulty controlling the events around her. I thought there'd be more back and forth between the two worlds but clearly no...unless that's in tonight's finale. Did any viewers of the masculine gender watch and identify I wonder...or is this strictly girls only TV for those of us who swooned over Colin Firth all those years ago. Don't like to stereotype and generalise of course, just wondering. It was mildy entertaining. However, nowhere did I laugh out loud, so I believe Graeme Blundell's write up in the previous week's Australian to be more than a little over the top.

Monday: Choir...that's not on the telly. That's me going out to choir.

Tuesday: The Doctor defeated the cybermen. Well Mickey did really. Hurrah! Sadness, Mickey's staying behind in parallel London. Didn't feel sorry for Rose. Lesson: you can't have your cake and eat it too (or some such other inane cliche).

Wednesday: Spicks and Specks...as usual. Again same dna as the Einstein Factor here...amusing and mostly inoffensive. Without the gutsy rockin' style of Rockwiz.

Friday: Raising Helen. Why Wendy, I hear you ask, did you waste two and half hours of your life on this second rate Kate Hudson ve-hic-le? John Corbett is the answer to that. You know Chris in the Morning from Northern Exposure. I wondered how they managed to make such a mediocre movie and attract some really good actors to the project - Helen Mirren, Hector Elizondo, Joan Cusack. Still it was interesting to see Abigail Breslin before she got all Little Miss Sunshine famous. And her brother was played by her actual brother Spencer Breslin. And the eldest rebellious sister was someone whose name I believe I should know because she might be on Heroes? Not sure and not going waste internet time looking it up. Still, there could have been worse ways to spend a Friday evening. One of those movies you are glad you didn't pay money to see at the cinema or rent on video. Also one of those movies where you knew how it was going to end up after 20 minutes..but kept watching anyway.

Saturday: Gilmore Girls: I wouldn't say I'm a hardcore Gilmore Girls fan. That is, I don't own any DVDs, have never rented any out, but when it's surprisingly on the TV I will watch it if I'm free. Because it's like a fairytale, where everyone is beautiful or rich, or goodlooking, or quirky, or some combination of those qualities. It's zippy and fun. There are plenty of worse things I could be watching while I was eating my lunch. It's like Anne of Green Gables but in the 21st century.

">New Tricks: Brian (Alun Armstrong) is now definitely my favourite of the three. The scene where he was explaining how he'd put all his military band marches from LP into mp3s on his computer was great. And then he demonstrated with Colonel Bogey. Of course that was nothing to do with the plot which I only vaguely followed. Still, guest appearance from Stephen Berkoff as a "villain" was a treat.

Rockwiz: Was a repeat...Although it took about 15 minutes (until the point when the Hothouse Flowers man appeared for me to realise this). Still I watched it again. I was thinking that may mean I was little sad. But then when I got to the end decided that it was all worth it for the version of Across the Universe that he and the woman (whose name I shamefully can't remember either) sang together. It was very beautiful and John Lennon may have liked it too.

So on that Beatles note (and there are few better notes than those)...we leave Wendy's Week of TV. And Wendy is going to try and new writing about TV experiment. Stay tuned to the Spiralling Shape for What Wendy Watched.