I Am A Swede

A while ago we got that list of top 10 episodes people felt defined Emmerdale. () Well, in honour of the show's upcoming 50th anniversary I thought I would choose the top 10, not episodes, but storylines, that I feel have been important during the years. I'm sure you all will have your own lists, but this is mine:

Yes! And then he could come and rescue The Woolpack from the Dingles! (I'm sure Henry and Amos are spinning in their graves right now)

Being a 30-minute show hasn't done that for Emmerdale. According to the cast list on Wikipedia Emmerdale currently has 61 (!) regular characters, and 25 recurring characters. I know that Wikipedia might not be absolutely correct, but at least it gives an indication.

Some sort of incestuous love triangle? After all, we are talking about Dingles here....

Trailers for Disney's new live action re-make of Pinocchio I guess it was only a matter of time..... This feels almost sacrilegious. You can't improve on perfection, so why even try? It's almost like doing a re-make of Casablanca or Gone with the Wind. And I don't even think it looks all that good either. When everyone else is a human, having Honest John and Gideon still be a fox and a cat looks strange. And I guess that seagull is going to be some sort of wisecracking sidekick for Jiminy. We must get some silly jokes in there somehow.....

I'm sure we're all positively giddy with excitement over these spoilers for the 50th anniversary month..... 12 early spoilers for Emmerdale's 50th anniversary episodes

^^ Thank you. Unfortunately it already has disappointed me to the extent that I have no plans to ever watch this. I was hopeful when the news first broke, but it has been downhill ever since. I can still remember being very excited after the Hobbit films, but in hindsight I think it was the sheer spectacle that wowed me. But for all the problems those movies had (and let's face it, they had quite a few) at least they didn't change Tolkien's story. They added a lot, and turned a really rather short story into three mega-epics. But when you look closely they didn't change the characters, or the story. This show is doing exactly that, changing established characters, and distorting the world that Tolkien wrote. I first read The Lord of the Rings before I was 10, and The Silmarillion shortly thereafter. I go back to Unfinished Tales frequently, and I love diving into The Book of Lost Tales and the other parts of The History of Middle-Earth. This is a fantasy world that is so close to my heart and has been for almost 4 decades. Watching Peter Jackson's movies (especially LotR) I had the feeling that those involved shared my love for the source material. Yes, there were changes, some of which were fine, and some of which I disliked, but the overall feeling was a feeling of respect for Tolkien and his work. I get nothing like that from the people involved in this show. I was disappointed by what they turned the Chronicles of Narnia into (I still haven't even watched The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) and I was appalled by what they did to The Dark Is Rising, which is probably the worst adaptation of anything I have seen up to this point, but this is on another level. It will, in all likelihood, still be a success, but I will not be a part of it.

Novak Djokovic unable to travel to New York for US Open

A new teaser trailer was released today. I'm going to say something nice, and admit that some of the visuals look good. But at the same time, with the budget it has it should look good. If this was a new show, set in a newly invented fantasy world, with other names, then I could even get a little excited. But, alas, it isn't. This is supposed to be Middle-Earth and Númenor, and the characters created by J.R.R. Tolkien. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing in this trailer that has anything to do with anything he created, except for the names. Such a pity.....

Thank you. That was great!

Although I'm not all that familiar with Catherine Hickland I'm gonna go out on a limb and say no. KKL may not be a master thespian, but she has managed to imbue Brooke with enough positive characteristics to survive some really awful writing. Add to that the chemistry she has/had with her co-stars, especially Susan Flannery, and you have a recipe for success. For me the big draw with B&B was never the love triangle Brooke/Ridge/Taylor. That wore thin very fast, and by now it's more off-putting than the opposite. No, this show was always at its best when Stephanie and Brooke was at the forefront. Flannery and Lang worked so incredibly well together, and I doubt that Hickland would have worked as well.

I thought General Hospital was older than Days of Our Lives?

And the creative bankruptcy of the entertainment industry continues to manifest itself.... How many old tv-shows have had re-boots or revivals in recent years? The list has grown very long. Granted, not all of them have been bad, but is it really that hard to create something new? Or do they simply don't have any confidence in their own abilities to create something original so they have to latch on to something that already exists and hope that name recognition and nostalgia will help turn their new show into a success by default?