Category: Q & A

Critical reviews back when it first hit the US shores were quite positive from memory (as is typical of successful britcoms), but as Jan Mixon points out, the American remake (which shared little more than the overall concept and series title) did extremely poorly (why is a much more involved question covered here: Why do American versions of British programmes tend to translate poorly to American culture?).

Similarly, DVD sales seem to be quite low (though ratings at sites like Amazon are very high).

The original series seems to have aired at some point in the US on BBC America (which had very low market penetration in the early-mid 2000s), as well as being syndicated on a fair number of local PBS networks (who historically have purchased the majority of broadcast rights to british TV (but especially sitcoms). Getting viewership numbers for either is a task beyond my resources.

From my personal experience, anyone I know here who has watched (willingly) at least one british sitcom title, is at least aware of Coupling – either seen it, or heard that they should. It's a fairly common netflix suggestion when people inquire about a good date-night show. But yeah, not a big scale moneymaker, more of an evergreen long-tail sleeper like 'Allo, 'Allo.

Do Americans watch the British TV show Coupling?

I'm watching Doctor Who with my 3 year-old daughter currently… We haven't hit a single classic episode that has scared her yet, mostly she just pauses the video to ask questions about what Autotons are, why Cybermen are bad robots, or how the dinosaurs trying to eat the Doctor's land rover are "pwobably gonna hurt dere teef".

The new series, though, is not something she can sit through. She gets really really quiet, and I know that when I pause it to ask if it's scary, she'll nod and give me a big hug, before we agree to save that for when she's "sebben".

So, yeah, maybe I'm bringing her in a bit early… But the classic eps are all 22-24 minutes, which is a good length, and we get to talk about all kinds of science, espionage, language, culture, and architectural topics that don't come up at the park or preschool. Still, even I notice a huge difference in the seriousness in the newer eps, even the first season – it's very clear that people are gonna die, regularly, perhaps even horribly, and they'll stay dead.

So in short:

• Classic Doctor Who is aimed at children… I'd say everything up until the Colin Baker generation is completely safe[*], even for a 3 year old.

(Classic Who: Scary? Image courtesy of http://www.ovguide.com/tv_season…)

• And as Danielle Maurer says, I think the New Doctor Who series should be called more of a "whole family", or even "parental guidance" type show. It's not adults-only, but your kids should be really firm on fantasy versus reality stuff before they watch it.

(New Who: SCARY!!! Image courtesy of http://clariethelioness.tumblr.c…)

As for so-far-unmentioned adult SciFi, I'd add Life on Mars, which was originally a BBC One production, and later remade (and only semi-destroyed) for American TV. It features a modern police detective who is knocked out and wakes up in the 60s – adjusting to the new time and culture, trying to figure out how he got there, using modern investigation techniques, and even trying to solve a "cold case" or two before they are actually ever cold. No spaceships or aliens, it always reminded me a bit more of The Prisoner.

[* Colin and Sylvester McCoy's runs were… not creepy, more like pandering 80s network interfered-with craploads. This was at a time when the BBC heads were actively trying to cancel the show, so it's perhaps natural to expect some more over the top "what've we got to lose, and it may get ratings" type attitudes. ]

Is Doctor Who a children's show?

Maybe?
(Mac Mini to TV setup courtesy Dean Blackburn's messy living room)

In all seriousness, it's totally possible to set up your computer with just about any kind of TV these days… If it has HDMI, it's a no-brainer (though, in truth, nothing beats DVI to DVI when you can get it, or HDMI-HDMI failing that).

As others have mentioned, it's a pretty clear-cut issue of image quality and resolution – expensive computer monitors push a LOT more pixels, with MUCH better overall color/black quality than almost any TV/video monitor out there.

The easiest way to think of it is this: no matter how big the TV set, it's an 18" widescreen computer monitor running 1920×1080 resolution, tops. Bigger size means bigger pixels… And a lot of the time, that means a computer image that looks a little "hazy" or downright blurry.

This will not always be the case – Digital film and TV production is no operating at much higher resolutions, and 2K/3K/5K resolution tv sets are anywhere from technical prototypes to production stage already. The only problem is, when you start pricing those sets, they start looking like… well… computer monitors.

Long story short, a television is not a replacement for a computer monitor, but a large enough computer monitor could easily replace a (smaller) television set. In either case, though, you're bound to sacrifice some of the featureset of a single-purpose device in order to get the cost/space savings of a dual-role unit.

Can I use a LED TV as my Apple computer display if it has an HDMI port?

The opening credits on TV shows(*) work very similarly to those in the movies – it's just that absolutely no one cares who wrote on directed a TV show, pretty much ever. 😉

With notable exceptions, like all-alphabetical listing, the order the stars appear in is negotiated like everything else as part of their contract. The particular placement the querent refers to, however, is special – it's the equivalent in TV terms of the "marquee spot" – that spot usually reserved before the movie title to mention a particularly well known star, etc.

Pretty much everything about Mark Hughes' answer is correct as far as the many many whys of how someone ends up with the spot – for the newcomer who is being pushed as "studio product", it may be the name recognition angle. For a recurring role played by a big name, it's the glory of the last spot itself… And many times, it's just whoever fought for it the hardest.

Ironically, if you read some of the stories about who gets what in both TV and movie credits (dig, dig, dig, they are out there online, but it's easier to find in actor/show biographies, for sure), you start to dig up some really interesting behind the scenes gossip – many times, taking the "with… as…" spot meant giving up a bit of salary, or some other perk… But oh how glorious it must be, all these years later, to show up like a phantom as the last thing viewers see in the opening sequence… I definitely think whoever gets that spot laughs loudest, longest, and best compared to their on-set nemeses – who may have been better paid, appeared in more episodes, hand more lines, input on stories, etc.

(technically, we're just talking title sequences, as a lot of modern shows and movies either skip opening credits, or just run text credits in-frame while ACT I "starts cold" (which is, in the end, better for the viewer, it means we get that many more minutes of show back from the bean counters who somehow like to think of an hour as consisting of what're we down to these days, 42 minutes?!?)

During TV and movie credits, what does it mean when an actor has "as X" after their name?

It depends on whether you need someone who can "act like a barbarian", or someone who can, you know, "act".

I don't think he's cornered either market individually – but at least for now, he has a fairly good lock on the "Venn overlap" between the two.

Also, while this may sound borderline racist, there is also a factor in casting roles which gives him an advantage – he is exotic looking, without being seen as too exotic for a mainstream audience to accept… Or put more bluntly, he "passes for white" with the white audiences who care about that sort of thing – which, for really terrible reasons, is still a factor in casting larger Hollywood roles.

We'll have to see how re-watchable Thor is, though. Brian Helmsworth may be able to give Jason a run for his money at some point…

Has Jason Momoa cornered the market on Hollywood barbarians and exotic tough men?