Well after a week of absence, I'm failing miserably at being a reviewer person but as the Post's
TV Ranter I think I do quite well...

Anyhoo... the week I was gone saw the end of Fraiser, the superior to Cheers
spin-off, and I think it left quite well. At least better than Friends did. All the characters
believably moved on which is strange because it paralleled the Friends similarly: Child born,
plane flight, moving to new home.

Could this be because the last two episodes entitled Goodbye Seattle (part one and two)
were Frasier's flash back of his past three weeks? Possibly. It could also be because, as a spin-off,
the character had already moved on so crossing over again was a simple step. Or it could have been
that the characters grew and extended whereas the Friends cast remained in a perpetual
twentysomething where plotlines bounced back and forth between the six. Almost the same plotlines
at that. Could be all of these, could be none but this connects onto my next rant...!

Comedy Connections¹ is a new documentary thing which links sit-coms' histories to the cast
and where they went from there etc. Following me? Good well neither am I, but bare with. Well here's


the link to it anyway: BBCi
website.

The selection is rather strange for eight programmes including The Goodies (never thought
that was a sit-com mind²), this week was Birds of a Feather I believe and the king of sit-coms,


the greatest, most fantastical, almost overactical, Red Dwarf.

Now ignoring my Red Dwarf obsessed mind for a moment, these aren't exactly considered the

cream of British sit-com now are they? Having watched the Goodies episode I think this factor

actually works for the better, showing its rise and fall, the programme gives an interesting look at

their success and where they went after (Yay Bananaman). I think every Brit knows as much as

there is to give on the creation of Fawlty Towers. They just couldn't afford David Jason

possibly, although for the Only Repeats and Christmas Episodes star I would have enjoyed seeing a

bit on Dangermouse and Count Duckula and Andrew

Sachs³ talking about Monkey and (heh

heh heh) Gingerbread Man.

Oh dear, still got more page to fill...erm... Oh yeah. Last Sunday I watched the Top Ten Comic
Heroes and although it was a one-off I have every faith that it will be repeated because I was
waiting for this repeat for months⁴. Seemed overly
patronising to me, but then again Tom Baker does tend to come across as such when talking about
things he doesn't seem to like. He's weird anyway so it's hard to tell! 'That's Stan Lee. He's a comics
genius!!!' and the definition of 'hero' does seem to be loosely implied. Tin Tin... Well okay... but
Akira? The kid who destroys the world with his mind isn't exactly a hero in my book. And shouldn't
the X-Men be separated instead of grouped?

No surprises that Batman got to number one when Spider-Man was number 2 and as I much as I

disagree with that there was the interesting statistic by a man that has way too much time on his

hands: 73.4% super villain fights occur on rooftops. Now you
know where to find them...

And now the Small Screen Supplement... because you deserve it.

HPB's Guide to Getting Published as per the Getting Published programme about
three wanna be publishers:

1. Write novel
2. Send manuscript of novel to agent
3. Wait for positive response to novel
4. If negative repeat Steps 2 and 3 accordingly
5. Once you have Agent repeat step 3
6. Get paid £3000-£8000

It's that simple! As is this: Keep Surfin'! *wink*

Small Screen Surfin'
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