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2ACV18: The Honking
First UK airing: Sky One, 8:30pm, 7-1-01
"I can't keep running people
over -- I'm not famous enough to get away with it!"
With a bare minimum of fanfare (I saw exactly one
trailer and a brief write-up in the Grauniad), Futurama
returns to England -- oddly enough, in the same week that Frasier,
Buffy and Angel had their season premieres as well. Only a couple
of months behind the States -- quite a change from even a few
years ago, when the gap could be... well, a few years. Since
(hopefully, fingers crossed, wood touched, etc) Sky doesn't pre-empt
shows -- no such thing as 'sweeps weeks' over here, thank God
-- but runs them in a continuous block, this season should finish
in the UK within a week or so of the US. Who knows, maybe we'll
even have a Babylon 5/Andromeda situation where the UK gets them
first. Now that would be nice!
'The Honking' got an instant rating increase of one
pellet of Dark Matter from me when I saw what Bender turned into
when he was possessed -- the car from, er, The Car, one of my
guilty favourite cheesy films of all time. Like Firefox, The
Black Hole and Airport 80: The Concorde, it's one of those films
that as a professional film critic (well, DVD critic) I really
shouldn't admit to liking if I want to keep any credibility as
a journalist, but on the other hand we all have our little secrets.
The Knight Rider reference helped as well. Uh-oh, credibility
now well and truly circling the toilet bowl!
As for the story, it was obvious that this was a Halloween
episode (so nice work by Sky for putting it on in January), but
it still worked pretty well. I loved the hover-coach being
pulled to the castle by horses -- brilliant touch. As for Bender's
haunting, anyone would be terrified by the appearance of a Windows
icon! On a sidenote, I also liked the way Amy stole Zoidberg's
Mary Kay sample case while everyone was talking to Bender --
another understated disaster for our chitinous chum.
Having watched the episode twice, I thought the only
odd point was the lack of explanation for why Project Satan looked
so unhappy when the gang found him. It's almost like someone
forgot to insert a punchline -- either that, or Sky went and
chopped out a chunk of episode without me noticing. (See comment
on running time below.)
BTW: Some technical weirdness for you. Previous episodes
of Futurama usually ran for over
22 minutes, but this one only lasted 21:30. Why do I bring up
this trivia? Because the theme music sounded 'wrong', that's
why, as though it was running at the wrong speed. Some weird
PAL/NTSC conversion goof? New Fox system? Sky cocking things
up again? Whatever. On the other hand, since the return to an
8:30 timeslot should (hopefully) mean that the show will go out
uncut, I'm not going to complain too loudly.
Anyway, only a week into the new year and Futurama's
back on telly -- and it's been renewed for a fourth season. Now
that's good news!
Rating: 
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