30 Days of Film - Day Six
• Day 06 - Favourite made for TV movie
This one was difficult because "made for TV movie" conjures up an image of those Lifetime movies where children go missing and die horribly of cancer. Sometimes there are horses. So yeah... Then I realised that what are labelled in my head as "one off feature length dramas" really probably count as made of TV movies.
So I managed to come up with two. One was Me and Mrs Jones (2002) but due to several factors such as me only being interested in it for the B Plot and Philip Quast, the B Plot getting no real resolution, a character being gay purely so we don't hate his wife for having an affair (Philip Quast plays the gay character and *his* affair with someone in his office is the B Plot) and Robson Green I decided instead to pick:
The Quatermass Experiment (2005)
I've picked this because as well as being a good example of some of the best kind of paranoid British Sci Fi around, it was also an interesting experiment in television. Namely, being the first live live drama broadcast on the BBC in over twenty years (thanks wikipedia).
Yes, so the plot is a little bit silly, and there are no big special effects, because it was live. But it is a remake of the original series that aired live in 1953, and I think the core elements of the plot stand the test of time. It is about a shuttle that encounters difficulties mid-mission and crashes to Earth, leaving only one of the three astronauts alive. However, something odd happened up there in the dark regions of space, something that the team on the ground must find out, before it DESTROYS THE WORLD. Quite wonderful really.
A couple of flubs and trips, but other than that a very successful broadcast.
It stars David Tennant, Mark Gatiss, Jason Flemyng and Adrian Dunbar, plus other assorted cast and they all hold up to the challange admirably. I love the commentary on the DVD, because everyone involved turns to Mark Gatiss as Fount Of All Quatermass Knowledge and also because you can tell that he and David Tennant have been friends for a long time.
It also contains a nice piece of history as David Tennant plays Doctor Gordan Brisco. This aired just after it was announced that he would be replacing Christopher Eccleston in Doctor Who (in fact I believe they were in rehearsal for this at the time) and so Jason Flemyng changed his line "Good to have you back Gordon" to "Good to have you back Doctor" just so that he could be the first person to call David Tennant "Doctor" on screen.
Its a fun, silly little piece of geek history and I love it.
This one was difficult because "made for TV movie" conjures up an image of those Lifetime movies where children go missing and die horribly of cancer. Sometimes there are horses. So yeah... Then I realised that what are labelled in my head as "one off feature length dramas" really probably count as made of TV movies.
So I managed to come up with two. One was Me and Mrs Jones (2002) but due to several factors such as me only being interested in it for the B Plot and Philip Quast, the B Plot getting no real resolution, a character being gay purely so we don't hate his wife for having an affair (Philip Quast plays the gay character and *his* affair with someone in his office is the B Plot) and Robson Green I decided instead to pick:
The Quatermass Experiment (2005)
I've picked this because as well as being a good example of some of the best kind of paranoid British Sci Fi around, it was also an interesting experiment in television. Namely, being the first live live drama broadcast on the BBC in over twenty years (thanks wikipedia).
Yes, so the plot is a little bit silly, and there are no big special effects, because it was live. But it is a remake of the original series that aired live in 1953, and I think the core elements of the plot stand the test of time. It is about a shuttle that encounters difficulties mid-mission and crashes to Earth, leaving only one of the three astronauts alive. However, something odd happened up there in the dark regions of space, something that the team on the ground must find out, before it DESTROYS THE WORLD. Quite wonderful really.
A couple of flubs and trips, but other than that a very successful broadcast.
It stars David Tennant, Mark Gatiss, Jason Flemyng and Adrian Dunbar, plus other assorted cast and they all hold up to the challange admirably. I love the commentary on the DVD, because everyone involved turns to Mark Gatiss as Fount Of All Quatermass Knowledge and also because you can tell that he and David Tennant have been friends for a long time.
It also contains a nice piece of history as David Tennant plays Doctor Gordan Brisco. This aired just after it was announced that he would be replacing Christopher Eccleston in Doctor Who (in fact I believe they were in rehearsal for this at the time) and so Jason Flemyng changed his line "Good to have you back Gordon" to "Good to have you back Doctor" just so that he could be the first person to call David Tennant "Doctor" on screen.
Its a fun, silly little piece of geek history and I love it.