In the US: Mondays, 10/9c, TNT

Bugger originality. Bugger quality. What the viewing public really want from TNT is yet another show with an ampersand in the middle.

Yes, fresh from having cancelled the superb Southland, TNT just about calls it quits for quality TV with yet another show about two semi-quirky crime investigators. Fitting in nicely with the equally mediocre Rizzoli & Isles and Franklin & Bash, King & Maxwell is a procedural so bland, your parents and your parent's parents will love it. It harkens back to the time when private investigators ruled the airwaves and everyone had to guess "Will they? Won't they?" when a show had a female and male lead bantering in a way that was borderline sexual harassment.

It stars Rebecca Romjin (Pepper Dennis, Eastwick) as hardbitten former secret service agent Michelle Maxwell and Jon Tenney (The Closer) as hardbitten former secret service agent Sean King. They weren't in the secret service together, mind, but they work together now as private investigators, using their secret service skills and irritating banter to solve crimes those straight-laced, play-by-the-book FBI agents just can't handle.

And when you watch it, as well as feeling you're back in the 80s, right down to the terrible incidental music, you'll wonder if it's actually possible for writers to deliver scripts in their sleep or whether someone, probably Google, has actually developed software to automatically generate TV dialogue.

Here's a trailer. Try not to fall asleep, too - or to stab your monitor to make it stop.

Continue reading "Review: King & Maxwell 1x1 (TNT)"

Read other posts about: Southland

In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, USA Network

This is a true story, apparently. Once upon a time, US law enforcement seized a LA beachhouse from a drug dealer. However, rather than sell it, the agency decided to keep it as a safehouse. More than that, they decided to let other agencies use it, and before you knew what had happened, suddenly you had a whole bunch of undercover operatives from the DEA, FBI et al, all living together under one roof.

Graceland, which comes to us from USA favourite Jeff Eastin (White Collar), is a fictionalised version of the real Graceland, although it claims many of the stories told are real events. In it, preppie FBI graduate Mike Warren (Aaron Tveit) moves into Graceland and has to get to know and befriend the house's existing residents, so that he can learn how to be a proper FBI undercover agent. In particular, he has to befriend the Zen-like surfer Paul Briggs (Daniel Sunjata), who's also to be his training agent, with the help of "Charlie" DeMarco (Vanessa Ferlito from CSI: NY). Why does he have to do this? Well, that's a secret.

Now, if all of this sounds familiar to some extent, it's because it's Point Break. Except not as good.

Here's a trailer.

Continue reading "Review: Graceland 1x1 (USA)"

As you've probably noticed from previous weeks' entries in this strand, such as Scum, Contact and Penda's Fen, director Alan Clarke was responsible for many of British TV's finest - and toughest - plays. BBC2 Playhouse's Diane, starring the then 20-year-old Janine Duvitski (Waiting For God, Abigail's Party) whom Clarke more or less plucked straight out of drama school to play the 13-year-old protagonist, is one of Clarke's toughest, dealing with incest on a council estate. 

Written by 'David Agnew' (actually Clarke using a BBC pseudonym after re-rewriting Anthony Read's initial script), it's harrowing, subtle but still humane, and still packs a punch.