Last night, the much-hyped episode of The Simpsons was aired which was written by Ricky Gervais and starred a some-what similar character as himself in the form of a Charlie Heathbar. While some people love Ricky Gervais and think he is the best comedian to come out of British Comedy for a long time, I can happily say that I’m not part of this cult and, quite frankly, find his sense of humour too warped for my liking. However, I am an avid fan of the Yellow Family so perservered and sat down to enjoy two hours of The Simpsons on Sky One.

“Homer, have I done the right thing writing this episode?”

To be honest, I found the episode rather lacking. Gervais has been mentioning in some interviews prior to the broadcast that he found it really difficult to write anything that matched the quality of what has become one of the most successful cartoons in TV history. He wanted to get as many characters from Springfield into this episode as possible so started off with a party at Lenny’s house. Some of the jokes were spot on and were true to form but I found the majority of the humour was remote from Gervais’ character. The typical stupidity of Homer shone throughout and you couldn’t ignore the blatant digs at the current state of the US society, particularly television during The Simpsons’ visit to Fox Studios with shows such as “Dwarf or Midget: America Decides“, “Million Dollar Fart-Off” and “American Idol” being recorded.

However, I can’t say that the episode lived up to all the hype. I find Ricky Gervais’ humour very dry, moreso than typical British Comedy. He could never live up to the likes of Blackadder or Monty Python and I feel that Matt Groening should avoid introducing guest writers in the future. The reason The Simpsons has lasted so long (it now has over 370 episodes in the archive!) is due to its classic style of humour and story telling. It seems that Matt was only after some extra publicity from someone who has made a huge impact on the comedy circuit with The Office (again, a show that I rarely find funny).

Ricky, leave The Simpsons to the experts and stick to your day job.

When the BBC launched Backstage, I’ve got to admit that I got quite excited with what potentially could come out of the service. The fact that the BBC were willing to part with their much precious data showed that the TV licence fee finally seemed worthwhile (on my part at least). It was back in July when I thought we were finally going to see some interesting developments with a competition to develop a website that implemented the TV Listings data in a novel and useful way. The competition got extended in September for another month and in October, the competition was closed.

Yesterday, the winners were announced with some amazing entries. The winner, MighTyV, is a fine example of using current Web technologies in a usable and clever way. It implements AJAX into the system in the manner of the Search by programme look up and floating programme details in the day listings pages. The layout is spot on with a fully liquid design as well as easy navigation throughout (most of the text is linked to something or other). There is also an RSS option and you can also sign in and personalise the content. I’ve bookmarked the site and will definitely be using it in the future to plan my cheap nights in.

The runners-up were quite impressive too. Fraser Nevett’s Flash-based BBC Programme Similarity Visualiser is quite a simple idea of laying out similar TV programmes in concentric circles around a chosen programme, the more similar programmes closer to the centre. Thomas Scott’s TV Map is also a nice little piece of work using Google Maps with the TV data to try and locate where TV programmes are based by matching up place names within the description content (it’s not always accurate but the idea is cool).

All in all, I think the competition was a huge success in the fact developers can think outside the box and make dull content more interesting and fun. Hopefully, this is an opening to more exciting competitions from the Beeb and we might even see some video and audio content become available from the BBC Archive.

It’s the Eve of something big in children’s literature - JK Rowling’s sixth installment of the Harry Potter phenomena is launched tomorrow and it has already been all over the press even before it’s release.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was put on shelves nearly a week too early in a shop in Canada which had to be recalled. A court order was granted to stop any leaks occurring before the big day. The venue for the book launch has been moved from Kings Cross to Wimbledon after last week’s bombings. The book is also expected to break US records after Barnes & Noble announced over 3/4 million copies have been pre-ordered.

It comes to something though when adults are writing limericks about the book launch. While I enjoy the films and find them really well made, I have never understood this obsession adults have about the book. It’s written about kids for kids! It just proves that the reading age of the average adult must have dropped to about 12.

Anyway, at least London have got something to be happy about tomorrow. Enjoy your Summer reading the book - I’m just going to wait for the film to be made.

I’m having a bit of a dilemna at the moment - Derby are playing the all important 2nd leg of their promotion playoffs at the same time as Star Wars Episode III premiere which I have a ticket for. I can’t work out what to do… HELP ME!