TASTY CHIPS!
WILLY’S WONKY CHOCOLATE FACTORY (Sun Jan 18, ABC- 6:10pm) – Despite the show’s title, this new foodie series boasts not a single chocolate-covered penis, making it the most misleading cooking program since THE NAKED CHEF. Dessertophobes beware, merely glancing at this show momentarily whilst flipping between channels will make you more hypoglycemic than a Care Bears movie marathon.
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WOEFUL WEDGES!
KATH & KIM- THE US SERIES (Mon Jan 19, Seven- 11pm) – In an interview, actress Selma Blair (Kim Day) once offered to reimburse me the cost of the ticket when I told her I’d seen the execrable 2006 remake of John Carpenter’s THE FOG, in which she starred. That’s how awesome she is. Alas, this awful American remake of the awful and inexplicably popular Australian series is so cringingly terrible I don’t know what she could offer to reimburse me with this time. Although I suppose she could give me the hunky and appropriately named Mikey Day, who plays the Peter Rowsthorn ‘Brett’ character in the US version…
ORANGE ROUGHIES (Fri Jan 23, Ten- 10:30pm) – Orange Roughies is the codename given to the elite team of Kiwi Customs/Police in this new crime series. Appropriately, an Orange Roughy is *also* a type of very slimy, deep-sea fish found in the waters of New Zealand – as the show gets the ‘pointless homophobia of the week’ award by having a gay, Greek villain turn up long enough to be so stereotypical as to make Julian Clary look butch and shoot a team-member in the stomach. After which he is tracked down to Melbourne by the team and killed! Um…Just checking- it is January 2009, not 1809, right?
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STALE SPUDS!
HEROES (Thurs Jan 22, Seven- 10:30pm) – Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in! This once great superhero series may be continuing its journey into the Phantom Zone of suck (latest gaff: Unaware of a live microphone, series creator Tim Kripke called HEROES remaining fans ‘Saps and dipshits’). Despite cute actors and homoerotic hijinks aside, this show is still kryptonite to good writing…
THE CLONE WARS (Sat Jan 24, Ten-Midday) – The Force is not strong in this one… George Lucas continues to ravage his own STAR WARS franchise with this Jabba the Hutt sized turd of a CGI animated series set between THE CLONE WARS and REVENGE OF THE SITH. At this point, the only way to stop Lucas from further desecrations of our childhood is to freeze him in Carbonite…
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HOT POTATOES!
CORNER GAS (Mon Jan 25, SBS- 5:30pm) – Probably one of the best shows people aren’t watching (along with PUSHING DAISIES, REGENESIS and that fan made STAR TREK series which features actual queer Enterprise crewmembers), CORNER GAS is a quaintly, quietly funny comedy series about a petrol station that is the last place offering food and fuel for 67 kilometres in all directions in the (literal and metaphorical) wastelands of Saskatchewan, Canada- and the weird oddballs it attracts. The humour is wry and whimsical without being so deliberately; nauseatingly twee you’d mistake it for a rerun of FRIENDS. Adding to the appeal for my lesbian friends is Tara Spencer-Nairn as deadpan cop Officer Karen Pelly, whom holds a Canadian world record for holding her breath. There’s a ‘blue’ joke in there somewhere, I just know it…
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SPUDS IN SPACE!
THE X FILES (Thurs Jan 28, TenHD- 8:30pm) – A Deep Throat source over at Ten has told me that tonight’s repeat screening of a classic X File (read before it disappeared up Uranus with the awful seasons 7-9) will be one of the Conspiracy Mythos Arcs, featuring everyone’s (especially Mulder’s) favourite one-armed bandit, Alex Krycek (Nicholas Lea). The Mulder/Krycek relationship was really what kept me coming back to THE X FILES- the liver-eating, sewer-dwelling mutant monstrosity of the week was just gravy. It’s amazing how homoerotic all of Krycek’s ‘meetings’ with Mulder are in retrospect!
