Doctor Who Club of Australia

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Found out from TV WEEK that Bones featuring former Angel, David Boreanaz is coming soon to 7 this year.

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While watching Boston Legal on 7 last night, I saw an ad for Bones and it is coming sometime next month. Like what I saw so far.

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Madds at Buffy Down Under has posted information saying that Bones will debut on Thursday August 10at 9:30pm straight after the season 2 final of Lost. However at this time it is not known whether Bones will be replacing Lost in its 8:30 timeslot from the week after.

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Bones' debut on August 10 gets three stars from Who Magazine.

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The second episode on August 17 is TV WEEK's highlight of the day and it looks like it will stay in the 9:30pm slot as Celebrity Survivor takes the 8:30 slot.

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Michael Idato a well known Who fan has wriiten an article about Bones in SMH:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/tv--radio/test-of-character/2006/08/05/1154198370793.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

"Test of character
Michael Idato
August 7, 2006

Think of two characters wrestling with the age-old clash between humanity and science - say, Dr McCoy and Mr Spock or agents Mulder and Scully. The new forensic drama Bones walks a similar line with Booth, an FBI agent who depends on instinct, and Brennan, a forensic anthropologist in the clinical CSI mould.

"This is struggle between the rationalist versus the humanist," executive producer Hart Hanson says. "Star Trek did it, Moonlighting did it, certainly The X Files did it. It's a time-honoured tradition in storytelling."

Bones is set in the fictional Jeffersonian Institute (a thinly veiled take on the US's venerable Smithsonian) and focuses on the crime-solving work of top-of-her-field forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and FBI agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz).

The series is based on the work of author and forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs, who was profiled in a TV documentary watched by Hanson (Joan of Arcadia, Judging Amy) and his co-executive producer, Barry Josephson (The Tick). In a curious, complex homage, the fictional Brennan sidelines as an author of novels about a fictional (in her world) anthropologist named Kathy Reichs.

Hanson concedes he was reluctant to produce a procedural drama. "It's heavily travelled territory. I really wondered what was I going to do differently. They're great shows - CSI, Cold Case, Without a Trace - they're just not my kind of show.

"There is a certain kind of writer that likes a procedural, that likes doing the puzzle, and to me the puzzle is secondary to what the people go through - what is it like for someone to work with hideous remains and bones and what kind of person goes into that line of business?"

Hanson and Josephson eventually settled on something with a different tone - a procedural structure with a lot of character emphasis. "We have a lot of digression, a lot of tangents," Hanson says. "These two different people, the FBI agent and the scientist, have very different approaches. And we wanted to put in a lighter touch because procedurals do not normally have much humour in them."

Of all the elements, the last was the most challenging. "It's risky," Hanson admits. "The tonal shifts in our show are large; it's our strength and it's our weakness. At every stage I have said this could fail because when you have characters joking, even if they don't know they're being funny, if there's a light sense of humour over a dead body, you run the risk of offending people. I don't mean prudishly. I just mean in some human sense.

"But I, like most TV writers, have spent time with cops, coroners, doctors and emergency room people when they're working, and they're very funny. It is their way of coping with their world."

Hanson and Josephson pitched the series to three networks but Fox eventually bit. Sitting in his office on the 20th Century Fox lot in Century City, Los Angeles, Hanson reveals one of the black arts of the TV trade - that each pitch was different.

"Every network you go to you actually tailor the pitch for the character of that network," he says. "At [older-audience skewing] CBS, for example, the lead character would have been older and the tone would have been slightly more orthodox. For Fox, we needed someone younger and a tone that was a little edgier."

Boreanaz was cast first. "We needed the qualities of an old-time Gary Cooper or Spencer Tracy, a guy to be the humanist so he wouldn't be weepy and New Age," Hanson says. Brennan needed to be "sexy, smart and funny and we constantly had two of the three come in. Emily had all three plus a gravitas that puts her beyond her years."

Curiously, Bones reflects a broader trend in procedural dramas. Without a Trace has exploited character material, particularly the agonising divorce of Jack Malone (Anthony LaPaglia), with great dramatic effect. Even CSI, the most clinical of the procedurals, is now dabbling in character stories.

"If the audience is devoted, they will start recognising the rhythms of the show and get bored," Hanson says. "Character stories are a way of disrupting that rhythm and I think every writer and every actor wants to do character stories. They want to play more than 'this looks like a hair'."

Bones begins on Seven on Thursday at 9.30pm."

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Pilot:
Two hours before this started, saw Alyson Hannigan in her regular role in How I Met Your Mother. Looks like I will be seeing two former Buffy stars on the same night in weeks to come.
What a fun way to begin the series with Angela flashing her lingerie.
Got a shock upon seeing that skull in Temperance's bag.
Mulder and Scully gets referenced. When it was originally shown on FOX in the States almost 11 months ago, it was not the only program that night to make a reference to Mulder and Scully. As I found out from TV.com, Supernatural on the WB also namechecked them as well and it was shown the hour after Bones' debut.
Directed by Greg Yaitanes. He had also directed on House including the episode Sleeping Dogs Lie which coincidentally was shown on 10 the previous night.
Quite like the songs played here.
Senator Bethelem did not endear to me at all.
The plot wasn't perfect but it was a good enough start for the show.

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The Man in the S.U.V.:
That was quite an explosion at the beginning.
A Chinese restaurant is featured in this episode. Coincidentally a Chinese restaurant was also seen in the How I Met Your Mother episode The Duel featuring Alyson Hannigan shown earlier in the night.
Funny line by Booth about the door already being opened.
How despicable Farid pretending to be a Christian in order to conceal the fact that he is a terrorist.
This was slightly better than the pilot.

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A Boy In The Tree:
Eew!!! What a gruesome sight of the body and quite a shock when the head fell down. Seeley says "heads-up" afterwards. Shouldn't it be "heads-down" instead (even though it was just one head).
Didn't really engage with the plot until towards the end. Not spectacular but OK.

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A Boy In The Bush:
This is episode 5. 7 has skipped episode 4!!!
What a shock that Hodgins is really their boss.
So glad that Angela decided not to quit.
This was both a sad and lovely episode. Sad about Charlie's death. Lovely the way the episode was presented.

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Madds at Buffy Downunder has posted information saying that episode 4 will be shown in due course. The information however does not mention when that would be.

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Bones on September 14 is TV WEEK's Pick of the Day.

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The Man In The Wall:
Unbelievable that Bones unwittingly started a brawl.
Shocked at the discovery of the mummified body as well as Bones wearing a hand from the body.
Best scene of the episode is that of Booth and the victim's father. Quite moving.
Like the negotiate being in jail scene.
I thought it was too predictable on who the murderer was as it was no stunning revelation about it.

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Bones comes third in TV WEEK's What's Not On TV Barometer saying that while they love David Boreanaz the sexual tension just isn't there in the show.

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A Man On Death Row:
Like the display of the clock on-screen.
Jeffrey Nordling is a familiar face I have not seen in a while. Here he plays David Ross (which of course sounds a bit like Davros).
This episode show what is not a good way to meet a judge.
The twist towards the end was very unexpected.
In comparison to previous episodes this was very well done.

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Bones on September 21 gets three stars from Who Magazine.

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The Girl In The Fridge:
A familiar face from Buffy, Leonards Roberts. Of all the Buffy episodes that Leonard appeared in, only Pangs & The Yoko Factor also featured David but they did not share any screen time unlike this episode of Bones.
Guest star Alicia Coppolla was also seen in the pilot of Jericho which was on 10 just prior to The Girl In The Fridge being shown.
Funny that Bones did not return the punch to Zach and then Seeley's fists.
Bones' two testimonies in court is a contrast to one other. Her first was very funny while the other was very compelling.

Three episodes of Bones next week: Wednesday September 27 8:30pm and a double episode on Thursday September 28 8:30pm. In regard to the Wednesday episode, it is a very good thing for me that is no new House on 10 at that time.