ProseCast

30 Rock: Breaking the Rules of Sitcom Writing

Many a stuffy comedy critic will tell you that to make a great sitcom, there are certain rules you have to follow. You can’t overload the show with superfluous characters, drop narrative trails unexpectedly, or ignore the comedy appeal of the situation itself. Such a show, they would claim, would simply never work.

There have been, of course, any number of sitcoms in recent years that have pushed the envelope in different ways. They have generally sprung from this side More

Hulk Mania!

Here’s a fine question if ever there was one, a question which I think you’ll find will matter to you–if you’re a boy, or an all-action film loving girl–even if you’ve not thought once of this green angry man since your childhood: who or what could challenge the Hulk? Personally I’m stumped. To let your opinion be known, hit the link!

OK, so I’ve done some serious thinking. It’s hard to show that with only a sentence but trust More

A Waste Of Good Wicker

Why was I hoping that The Wicker Man would be any good? I ask myself that question every time I walk past a wicker basket–which happens far too much–see Nicholas’s Cage’s mug on TV–ditto–or hear the hallowed name Alan Whicker. I suspect the ending was only part of it; more than anything—even more than the bit at the very end where the terrible thing happens which should not happen to anyone, however naive—I was looking forward to seeing how the More

A very good question

Now, when it comes to getting lucky—winning the National Lottery for the second time in a row lucky, that is—Angela Lansbury, as ridiculously successful amateur detective Jessica Fletcher, really takes the biscuit. Not only is she a bestselling author, who merely needs to splash ink on to a page to create captivating prose, but she solves a complicated a murder every single week, and almost always while in the process of either finishing yet another novel or embarking More

I’ll take A Touch Of Frost over the Large Hadron Collider any day

You can’t beat a good forum discussion for invigorating brain stimuli, can you? You can find absolutely anything on forums (so people tell me, of course..): do plants feel? Does the sun ever get a bit cold? (Four year old Sammy from Liverpool.) And sometimes actually quite intriguing things which really do matter–no offfence Sammy–one of which is the subject of this article: Is David Jason too old to play detective Frost and should he think about changing his mind More

Cult Television Classics

Some television shows are so different to anything that has come before, so challenging and yet entertaining at the same time, that they transcend television norms and become cult classics. A forum on the Universal Playback website, http://www.universal-playback.com/forum/twin-peaks/437-among-prisoner-x-files-twin-peaks-one-do-you-think-had-bigger-cult.html, is debating which programme had the bigger cult following: The Prisoner, Twin Peaks or The X-Files.

As a committed fan of all of these programmes it was hard to make an initial judgement, and opinion seems to be divided on the More

How David Lynch Changed TV.

Every now and again something really special comes along on television. A prime example of this is when ‘Twin Peaks’ was first shown. Suddenly, everyone you talked to seemed to be keen on discussing the fate of Laura Palmer. How did she die? Who killed her? And just what in the name of God is going on in the small town of Twin Peaks???

This Twin Peaks forum about the show brings back lots of memories; the brilliant theme music More

Twin Peaks

I have to say that out of all the seasons I enjoy watching on DVD my favourite has to be Twin Peaks. I have always loved David Lynch (to the extent that I don’t even know how many times I have watched Mulhulland Drive) but I had never really seen anything that he did that wasn’t a film. Turns out that the TV show is amazing, and even though it was made in the early 90s it has not gone out of date at all. The only recent show that I could even compare it to is Carnivale, which has a similar pace and audience. All in all, if you guys haven’t watched this show, it is amazing!