In the US: Tuesdays, 10/9c, ABC

I'm getting an eerie sense of déjà vu here. ABC's newest 'romantic dramedy' (yes, that is a genre, apparently), Cupid, is about a man who claims to be the Roman god of love, Cupid, sent to Earth by the other gods to give 100 couples true love before he can return. Sounds kind of original, doesn't it?

I'll tell you why I'm getting déjà vu. For one thing, not more than half a year ago, The CW was running Valentine in which Eros/Cupid along with Aphrodite and a bunch of the other Greek gods were out and about trying to bring people together in true love to avoid their own extinction. Okay, that died a death on the grounds of scheduling, not being very good, Jaime Murray, etc, but Cupid really isn't that different.

But the other big déjà vu score comes from the fact this is a remake. There's already been a Cupid - a mere 10 years ago - on the same network, with the same writer and the same scripts, just a different cast.

You've got to love it, haven't you?

Continue reading "Review: Cupid 1x1"

Read other posts about: Studio 60

In the US: Friday, 10.30pm ET/PT, Starz

This 'comedy' has been sitting, waiting for ages to be made. So long has it been waiting to be made, that the original star Paul Rudd has become famous - too famous to appear in it any more - so now he's exec producer.

Which is a shame, because at the moment, here's the tally on the show:

Good things: Lizzy Caplan
Bad things: Everything else

They could have done with two good things.

Continue reading "Review: Party Down 1x1"

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

There's a long and honourable tradition on television of mystery authors going out and fighting crime. Obviously, back in the 80s, there was Murder She Wrote, more appropriately entitled Large Scale Holocaust She Wrote or Little Old Lady of Death - Don't Let Her Come Near You.

But in the 70s, there was Department S and spin-off Jason King, which saw the original Austin Powers, novelist Jason King, solve crimes the police couldn't; Edward Woodward's crime writer Maxwell Beckett cowered his way around murder scenes in the 90s with the help of his more able assistant, Nikki, in Over My Dead Body; and in the noughties, we have forensic anthropologist-come-author, Temperance Brennan, helping David Boreanaz in Bones.

There's probably more, but I can't be arsed to list them: fancy a go anyone as part of a weekend meme?

Now comes Rick Castle (Firefly/Serenity/Drive/PG Porn's Nathan Fillion), a bad-boy novelist with extreme writer's block who's unfortunately just killed off his lucrative main character. Fortunately (?), a killer starts copying scenes from his books and he finds himself having to help the police with their enquiries. Except the police happens to be attractive fan Kate Beckett (Heroes' Stana Katic).

Suddenly, he feels his creative juices flowing again. Cue Moonlighting for the 21st century?

Continue reading "Review: Castle 1x1"

Read other posts about: CSI, Heroes

In the US: Sundays, 10pm/9c, AMC
In the UK: Probably FX again

Breaking Bad is one of those TV shows that no matter how hard you try to describe it properly, no amount of description really gives it justice.

Essentially, the plot is this: a brilliant high school chemistry teacher (Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston, the dad in Malcolm in the Middle, here almost unrecognisable) discovers he has cancer and that even if he survives the disease, the medical bills will mortgage his family's future. So, despite the fact his brother is a DEA agent, he decides to get into the lucrative crystal meth business, making the purest, best crystal meth on the market using his advanced geek skills to safeguard his family's future.

See? Doesn't sound promising, does it..

Yet the show, now starting its second season, is one of those quality shows that's allowing AMC to make a mark in drama after years of re-runs and cowboy movies. It looks at issues like the state of healthcare in the US, High Schools and indeed the drugs trade, giving the probably quite comfortable viewer a glimpse of the scary side of the drugs business, without the insulation from reality, make-believe and training the characters get in other shows - what would you do if you were trying to sell drugs, how long would it be before you got killed or had to kill, and what effect would it have on you, your loved ones and your relationships?

Now season two's here after the first season was curtailed by the writers' strike, and things are even darker than before, if that's even possible.

Continue reading "Review: Breaking Bad 2x1"

Read other posts about: Mad Men, The Wire

In the US: Friday, 9/8c, Fox

Ooh Joss Whedon. Ooh Eliza Dushku. Ooh Steven DeKnight. Ooh, Amy Acker…

And so on.

Because as you look through the credits of Dollhouse, Fox's new sci-fi spy show, you can't help but notice a few Buffy alumni in the list.

What you won't see is Gerry Anderson's name in the list, despite the fact this is perilously close to one of his old shows. Joe 90, although basically a bit of wish fulfilment for kids involving puppets, saw one boy become a secret agent thanks to a special gadget that gives him the brain waves of other people - and their skills to match.

Dollhouse, while slightly more malevolent, follows more or less the same plot. Eliza Dushku, plays Echo, a personality-less drone who gets given a new persona each week for various missions. One day a party girl, the next day a hostage negotiator, Echo remembers nothing (apparently) except what secret organisation Dollhouse wants her to, including all the special skills necessary for the job and a personality to match.

Ironically, Dollhouse is pretty personality-less itself; even more ironically, you might be hankering after the acting in Joe 90 by the end, too.

Continue reading "Review: Dollhouse 1x1"

Read other posts about: Battlestar Galactica

Time, I think, for a third-episode verdict on TNT's advertising dramedy, Trust Me, what with there having been three episodes of it now. Coincidence? I think not.

You have to give it something – it's been consistent. However, it's consistently been a mess. Not a bad mess, just a mess. 

It has two basic problems: it's playing it for the very long haul and it doesn't have quite the right focus. As I mentioned when I reviewed the first episode, we have three central characters: Eric McCormack as the stressed group director/art editor; Tom Cavanagh as his writing parter; and Monica Potter as the award-winning writer the company hire to add to the team. 

Now, the trouble is, for the last three episodes, McCormack's been a rubbish, not desperately charismatic boss and Cavanagh has been a far more entertaining (although not very entertaining) sidekick. If they'd switched jobs, the show could have been quite interesting – indeed, when Cavanagh briefly takes charge of a dinner event in the third episode, the show instantly becomes more involving. But as it stands, it all feels quite tame, like the school monitor's turned up and no one's allowed to run in the corridors any more.

Even worse, Monica Potter's character has been treated awfully. In fact, the bulk of her storyline has been about how badly she – the only woman on the team – has been treated by McCormack's inept leadership. No office, forced to work on the one account she said she didn't want to work on, no partner to work with, ostracised: sorry, but a not very wacky boys club with not much apparent talent dumping over the obviously talented woman is only excusable when depicted 50 years ago in Mad Men.

As it is, I have zero interest and sympathy for the supposed two main characters and something edging towards loathing for them. Again, if it had been Cavanagh and Potter or even McCormack and Potter as the embedded team, with one of the others turning up as the new hire, that might have been more interesting than what we've got right now.

But, as I said, the show is playing it for the long haul and there are signs that by episode 254 or something, the boys will have learned the error of their ways, Monica will treated nicely and might be partnered with one of the old hands, and all will be good. Whether the (small) audience for the show will wait that long remains to be seen.

There are some nice touches to the show, and it feels authentic to the ad industry in at least a few ways. But I can't help but feel that real life is actually more interesting than TV for once and the show really needs to get its groove on quickly, despite long-range plot planning, if it's to be worth watching – or if it plans on surviving.

Carusometer rating: 2
Predictions: Will get better before the end of the season if it's allowed to, but will probably be cancelled before then

Read other posts about: Mad Men

Time for a third-episode verdict on Lie To Me, in which Tim Roth stares intently at people and acts like House Jr in his Bones office with his Bones team to find out if they're lying.

After an extremely generic first episode, the series settled down a bit and almost found some character for the second episode, in which a soldier is accused of rape and Dr Roth decides to chat him up.

Unfortunately, it lost it again for the third episode, which not only had a dumb plot and dumber sub-plot that made it spectacularly easy to guess whodunnit, it had some of the worst acting yet seen on US TV – as lovely wife put it, "Is Tim Roth really expensive? Because they don't appear to have any budget left and so they dragged some people in off the street for the rest of the cast."

Tim Roth remains as fantastic as always and his character does almost touch on being interesting at times. And the show does have some interesting ideas – what would it be like if you knew for sure whenever anyone, even your family, lied to you? And what if you had someone like that for a partner, a father or a boss?

But it's been saddled with a truly atrocious format, designed purely to cash in on the familiarity of existing Fox shows. The vague hints at bad deeds in Roth's past are so much tease and little pay off.

In fact, the only noteworthy bits are the science and the use of photographs of famous people demonstrating particular aspects of body language explained by Roth or his plot-explaining assistant.

Worth watching only for Roth – otherwise, steer clear of it.

Carusometer rating: 3
Predictions: Should die within a season, but then Bones should have done, too, so it'll probably last forever

Read other posts about: House

In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, TNT

Over the years, there have been surprisingly few shows set in the world of advertising. Given that it's a sexy, sexy industry, filled with volatile creatives, loads of money and gadzillions of product placement and sponsorship opportunities, you'd have thought it would have been a no-brainer, but apparently not. Bewitched and Mad Men and that's about it, really.

So, finally, at last, comes the show we've all been waiting for (?). Produced by former advertising execs and current producers of The Closer, Trust Me stars Eric McCormack (Will in Will and Grace, who recently had a brief sojourn on The Andromeda Strain), Tom Cavanagh (JD's brother on Scrubs and Eli's father on Eli Stone) and Monica Potter (Boston Legal and Martha in Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel & Laurence).

While the lack of class A drugs probably disqualifies it from being called a realistic portrayal of the advertising industry, in many ways it's a reasonably accurate look at the egos of the creatives in the boys' club that is the modern advertising industry, right down to the fact there's only one woman in it.

Pity it's not as funny as it thinks it is.

Continue reading "Review: Trust Me 1x1"

Read other posts about: Life on Mars, Mad Men, Scrubs, Studio 60

In the US: Wednesdays, 9/8c, ABC
In the UK: Sundays, 9pm, Sky One. Starts 25th January 2009

Ah, don't we all remember those glorious days when Lost was simple and easy to understand?

No? Just me? Oh wait, it was always a bit tricky, wasn't it? Now I remember.

However, relative to season five, season one was a breeze where everything was clear, well understood and you wondered where all the mystery was. Ever since then, we've been getting flashforwards, flashbacks, time travel, ghosts, Jacob, the others, the Dharma Initiative, Jim from Neighbours, mysterious not-French women and smoke monsters.

Season five carries on directly from where season four left off. Except three years later. And in the 70s. And the 40s. And possibly in the year umtidllyumptious as well. The dead walk the earth and maybe come back to life. Yes, it's the fabled zombie season, here at last.

Continue reading "Review: Lost 5x1-5x2"

Read other posts about: Lost

In the US: Sundays, 10pm, HBO
In the UK: BBC4 at some point within the next two months

Well, you can't say I didn't try. You begged, pleaded and even demanded that I try to watch and enjoy Flight of the Conchords when it came back. And I really wanted to.

See, I wasn't much impressed by the first season, featuring those loveable New Zealand folk singers Jermaine and Bret and their inept manager Murray. There wasn't really much diversity. Okay, the songs were good pastiches, but I've never been much of a fan of a spoof song.

My problem (which is mine) was that there was a joke. It was funny the first time. It's just that every single other joke was the same joke. One of the trio says something, trying to sound bigger, more important or more street than he actually is, then the others spend time cutting him down to size. Oh, wait, there was another joke: it's that New Zealanders are a bit inoffensive, a bit polite and nice, etc. Which is kind of related to the first one if you think about it.

Funny as that joke and a half was, it didn't really keep me wanting to watch it again and again over the course of a whole season, so I gave up after a while.

Now it's back, have they got a new joke?

Continue reading "Review: Flight of the Conchords 2x1"