TV Viewing for the Year Ahead

I love watching TV.  I used to be a massive film buff (and I’m trying to get back to watching films regularly), but I got drawn into watching TV by BattleStar Galactica.  Then I caught up in Lost, watched the much under-rated Invasion, Farscape (classic Sci-Fi!), and then True Blood… Before I knew it, I was watching 45 minutes of TV every night.  And I don’t intend to stop!!

I am not one of these people who deride TV. I find watching TV a great way to relax.  And there are some simply great TV series today.  Recent classics include Brotherhood and Deadwood, both of which I enjoyed immensely.  I strongly recommend that you watch them if you haven’t seen them yet.

Given this, I was really interested in an article on i09 on the Sci-Fi and Fantasy TV series coming this year.  In particular, I intend to catch up on the following:

• Camelot.  This looks to be a grown-up version of Merlin, with a simply amazing cast (Joseph Fiennes, Eva Green, Sinead Cusack and James Purefoy).
• Terra Nova.  Steven Spielberg’s first TV series this year.  Worth a look if only for Spielberg’s involvement.
• Falling Skies.  Spielberg’s second TV series, and for my money, the more interesting of the two.  I’ll look forward to seeing Noah Wyle again.

• Fringe.  I’ve been following Fringe for a while.  It is has been constantly under-rated by critics, though it hasn’t helped itself with 1-2 slow episodes at the start of each series.  I’m looking forward to seeing how Olivia, Peter and Walter  battle to save us from ourselves in the parallel universe.
• Game of Thrones. I’ve been looking forward to this series for a while now, and I’ve posted about it previously. The books by George R. R. Martin are simply fantastic, and the TV series looks to be shaping up to be a classic as well. The website Making Game of Thrones is well worth a visit – the production looks to be incredibly detailed, and true to the books.

• True Blood.  A great TV series, with so many laugh out loud moments in each episode.  And so much better than the books on which the series is based!
• BSG Blood and Chrome.  I’m still bitter about the demise of Caprica, but I’'ll give this a watch. So say we all!
• The Walking Dead.  An excellent first series (yet to be aired in the UK), and I’m looking forward to catching the new series later this year.  I’m even considering getting hold of the comics on which is based. Just one piece of advice – don’t get too attached to any of the characters.  The zombies aren’t just there for decoration…

Fevered Coding

I am suffering a nasty chest infection, and it has been tough getting to bed over the last few days.  As a result, I have been staying up late, coding on a few random scripts. 

The result of last night’s fevered coding was a PowerShell script to return the ratings for various TV shows on IMDB.  This is my first attempt at the script, and it makes use of the IMDB web service provided by Dean Clatworthy.

The script consists of two main parts.  The first is a call to the web service, and returning the details for the specified TV show, using an instance of the .NET WebClient.

  1: function Get-ShowDetails
  2: (
  3:   [string]$showName = $(Throw "TV show name is required!")
  4: )
  5: {  
  6:   $webClient = new-object System.Net.WebClient
  7:   $webClient.Headers.Add("user-agent", "PowerShell Script")
  8:   $queryString = $showName.Trim().Replace(" ", "+")
  9:   $query = [string]::Format("{0}={1}", $queryUrl, $queryString)   
 10:   $showDetails = $webClient.DownloadString($query)
 11:   return $showDetails
 12: }

The second part of the script extracts the rating details for the show from the plain text returned by the web service, using a regular expression:

  1: function Extract-RatingDetails
  2: (
  3:   [string]$showName = $(Throw "TV show name is required!"),
  4:   [string]$showDetails = $(Throw "TV show details are required!")
  5: )
  6: {  
  7:   $regexPattern = '"rating":"([a-z\\\/\.0-9]+)","votes":([0-9\"]+)'
  8:   $regexMatcher = [regex] "$regexPattern"
  9:   $matches = $regexMatcher.Matches($showDetails)
 10:   $showInfo = $null  
 11:   
 12:   foreach ($match in $matches)
 13:   {
 14:     if ($match.Success)
 15:     {
 16:       # To return all of the matched expression, use $match.Groups[0].Value
 17:       $rating = $match.Groups[1].Value
 18:       
 19:       if($rating -eq "n\/a" )
 20:       {
 21:         $rating = 0;
 22:       }
 23:       
 24:       $votes = $match.Groups[2].Value.Replace('"', '')      
 25:       $showInfo = New-Object PSObject
 26:       $showInfo | Add-Member NoteProperty "ShowTitle" $showName
 27:       $showInfo | Add-Member NoteProperty "Rating" $rating
 28:       $showInfo | Add-Member NoteProperty "Votes" $votes      
 29:       break;
 30:     }
 31:   }
 32:   
 33:   return $showInfo
 34: }

This isn’t a finished script, though it does work.  There is a limit to the number of calls that can be made to the web service (30 per hour), which means that I will have to revisit the script and instead of calling the web service, scrape the details of each TV series from the IMDB website. 

Download the current script from here.  If you have any comments, I would appreciate all feedback.  Thanks.

Also, just to note that the code for this post was highlighted using the Source Code Formatter for Windows Live Writer.

Absolutely Lost…

I was late comer to the Lost TV series.  In fact, it wasn’t until some time in September 2007 that I actually watched my first episode.  It was while I was working in Dublin, and staying at a hotel in Dublin.  It was a miserable night, and I only watched it while waiting for Battlestar Galactica to come on. As this particular episode (The Brig) was a climatic one in Season 3, I hadn’t a clue what was going on.  But I was impressed enough to go back and watch Season 1. 

 

From the first 5 minutes of the pilot episode, I was hooked.  Over 6 seasons, we have been treated to the most compelling TV.  And now it is all over.  I thought the last episode was bit long, and could have benefited from some editing. But I still cried at a beautiful and elegant end sequence.  And now I’m absolutely lost for some stimulating TV to watch.  Glee and Sons of Anarchy are decent– but Lost they’re not.