Where's Buffy?

In their usual slap dash fashion, Southern Cross appears to repeating early episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Little Mr Square Eyes was going to include details of when it was being broadcast but TPTB at Southern Cross have apparently decided that the Tasmanian program schedule isn’t important enough to be included with the other states on its website.

It’s difficult to accurately describe the erratic nature of Southern Cross Tasmania’s programming style**. Suffice to say, even armed with an up-to-date, dead tree television guide, surfing over to SX usually means at least one surprise (nasty or otherwise).

Haphazard scheduling aside, the return of Buffy gives me the chance to point out an amusing article on the future of TV by the program’s creator, Joss Whedon. Below are snippets. For the whole thing point your browser here.

Many people have asked me, "Joss, what is the future of television? What will we watch? And how will we watch it? Surely you must know, for you are wise, and slender."

The networks will all be creating exciting, innovative new spin-offs of today's shows. Approximately 67 percent of all television will be CSI-based….

… we'll see advances in technology….. But don't listen to the talk about having shows beamed directly into your brain. That's science-fiction nonsense. Shows will be stored in the pancreas and will enter the brain through the bloodstream after being downloaded into your iHole.

And what of me? My short-lived series Firefly was the basis for the epic action film Serenity (now available on DVD! I have little or no shame) … the future will see even more incarnations of this visionary work…. I promise it'll be as heartwarming and exciting as the original Serenity, now available on DVD. (Explain again this thing you call shame....)

Whedon apparently spent some of his formative years in the UK, which explains the little cross-cultural flourishes both Buffy and Angel exhibited. He’s also one of the few people to take a middling film and spin it into a great TV series — the Buffy movie was released in 1992 and featured Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, Luke Perry, Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman), Hilary Swank and David Arquette.

As he alludes to in the article, when he attempted a reverse ferret with Firefly/Serenity the manoeuvre was less successful. Nevertheless, Whedon makes highly entertaining television so more power to his arm


**Although if I did, the description would probably contain the phrase “the visual equivalent of coitus interruptus".