Tower of Telly #1 - Thunderbirds Are Go

Hey yo! As it has often been noted that I watch a slightly disgraceful amount of TV, I figured I should perhaps turn this obsession into something a little more productive. So WELCOME to ‘JIMBO AGOGO’S TOWER OF TELLY’. If I see something good or shit, I shall endeavour to tell you about it.

I’ve just got back from a week in Cornwall with the family, so man have I got a helluva lot of tv to catch up on! I like to keep the ‘My Shows’ section on my Tevo box hovering around the 50% mark; I feel uneasy if it gets much higher and am forced to either binge on my recorded programmes or do a bit of ruthless deleting. Thinking about it, I think I need to modify my ‘Royle Family’ series link, there seems to be a number of duplicated episodes on there, causing an unsightly clog. There’s only so many times I need to watch Nana following through after laughing with too much vigour.

Anyway, near the top of the list, through chronology rather than preference, is the brand spanking new version of ‘Thunderbirds’, now going with by slightly punchier title of ‘Thunderbirds are Go.’ I used to spend many hours of my childhood attempting to draw ‘Thunderbird 1’ while my brother was more of a ‘T2’ kinda guy. Personally I thought Scott (T1’s pilot) to be way cooler than boring Virgil (T2’s pilot, you getting the idea?), hence T1 being the one for me. Over the years, ‘Thunderbirds’ seems to have been bunged in with all the cult sci-fi programmes supposed nerds are in to. If you say you like ‘Thunderbirds’, you’re likely to receive a similar reaction as those professing to be ‘Doctor Who’ fans, or ‘Star Trek’ fanatics, like you must be a total loner who’s better versed in Vulcans than vaginas. However, I seem to remember ‘Thunderbirds’ being a lot cooler than that. The Tracey’s, they were a pretty cool bunch of guys! The ships all looked cool, Thunderbird 2 looks amazing, T4 goes underwater for gawd’s sake. Tracey Island, that looked pretty swish, even when made of egg boxes and bog roll by Anthea Turner.

The advert for the new series is pretty worrying; I’m not convinced at all. For starters, there’s not a marionette puppet in sight. The character’s are now all CGI. If you’ve seen what Fireman Sam looks like these days (CGI and really shit) then you’ll have some idea of where my concerns lay. I suppose it means they won’t have to do that lame thing anymore, where if a character was doing something with their hands, they’d have a close up with a real human hand performing the task, picking up a phone, writing a letter etc; it always looked terribly incongruous with the whole vibe.  Anyway, it gets started; some geezer and his son have lost control of their hot air balloon in a storm, pretty standard. After hollering for help, and spiralling further out of control, the magnificence of Thunderbird 2 emerges from the black swirling clouds and Virgil pops out to help. He grabs the son over to safety but the balloon rips off the basket, sending the dad plummeting to his death. Virgil gets on his intercom “Thunderbird 5, I need you NOW.” Then all of a sudden we’re punched inn  the eyes with the familiar close up of the number 5 and the original “FIVE..DAAAAA.. FOUR..DAAAAA.. THREE…DAAAAA…TWO..DAAAAA..ONE..rumble rumble rumble, flames….Thunderbird 1 rockets off.” It all gives you a good shiver of “YEH! This is still cool!” The theme tune sounds revamped but is ultimately exactly the same, big brass and all that. The soundtrack to the whole thing sounds pretty grandiose. It all sounds and LOOKS really good. My concerns about the CGI were definitely misplaced. They’ve done a kind of mix, where all the sets are real, with actual models. According to my brother these have been done by Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings team, so as you can imagine, it all looks pretty grand and atmospheric, I really like it. Puppets among all the vast scenery would probably have looked very naff, so you soon get used to the CGI guys, plus they’ve all been given a sheen that makes them actually look like the material of the old marionettes.

I remember the old Thunderbirds being very white in terms of race, with the only person with any diverse ethnicity being the bad guy “The Hood”, which would seem a bit dodge in 2015 (or 2060 as we’re apparently in on the show), so this is all sorted. Brains is now an Asian chap, complete with his old stammer. There’s a new spunky female character Kayo, who appears to be mixed race, driving new ship ‘Thunderbird Shadow’ (hang on…is that racist??) and The Hood now seems to be a white guy, still rocking eyebrows that’d put Cara Delevingne to shame.

It all seems to be pretty funny and knowing; when The Hood makes some slightly ludicrous demands (or he’ll activate a load of earthquakes) sounding like a cheesy villain from some bad movie, Scott immediately comments “You have to be joking, that list of demands is right out of a bad movie” ha! I like it.

For me, it ticks all the boxes any old fans would have wanted; whether it catches on remains to be seen. If I had any complaints I’d say it was about 15 minutes too long at a full hour. Not sure I can deal with that on a weekly basis, I feel like I’ve heard the “5,4,3,2,1 Thunderbirds are go!” countdown about 50 times by the end of the episode.

All in all, I’m very impressed. You might say it was FAB! Waheyyyyy geddit?

So that’s one down on my ‘My Shows’ section, plenty to go.  I can’t see myself catching up on 6 episodes of Masterchef; I might have to write that one off for this series. 6 hours of Greg Wallace being a creepy get is not the one. Why does he always turn into a total cunt the millisecond someone goes over time? I always find it very unneeded.

Something else I enjoyed this week – Caught up on episode 1 of the new series of ‘Inside No 9’ – though it was very very funny. Laugh out loud funny. Probably my fave episode of that yet.

See you soon