Fourth of July weekend seems to have knackered most of America's normal TV output – even stuff that airs during the week since loads of people have gone on vacation so ratings tend to be low anyway – so not much to watch. However…
Britain's Next Top Model: Can you really believe that Elle Macpherson is 47? No, me neither.
Caerdydd: I've been patiently saving all of the last series of Caerdydd on my Sky+ box to watch in one go. So what happens this week? I cue them up and discover that the vast majority are nothing but a blue screen and those that aren't didn't get the English subtitles saved with them – and were all from the previous series anyway. S4C is too backward to release them on DVD so all I'll say is DAMN YOU RUPERT MURDOCH!
The IT Crowd: The Countdown episode. Cracking.
Memphis Beat: Watched the second half of episode two and practically fell asleep. At least Jason Lee has something approaching a love interest now, but more or less every line of dialogue is designed to say "You're in the south now. They're a different breed here. They just like to talk slow and drink lemonade". Not sure I'm caffeinated enough to watch episode three yet.
Persons Unknown: Bit of a treading water episode in terms of revealing things, although it's good to know that the guys in charge of The Village are perfectly happy to kill people if necessary. The weird seems to have been dialled down a bit, though, which is a slight retrograde step since that was one of the best bits about it.
Rev: Less comedic than the first episode, but good to see them tackling quite a difficult subject – the differences in style between old school CoE and evangelicals. Nice to see the Archdeacon doing something Christian for once, too, but I found the handling of Colin's (? the mental one anyway) sexual harassment just a little bit suspect, with the Rev's attitude towards whether something bad had happened to the girl seemingly coloured by whether she was really "an innocent" or not. Might have been good to have got Colin to apologise to her at least.
Royal Pains: Part two of the Cuba storyline was fun enough, and still managed to be relatively even-handed about Cuba, which was nice. The Anastasia Griffith storyline was interesting, too, and I find myself siding with her rather than Divia for some reason.
Southland: Watched the first episode and was very impressed. Dark, realistic, gritty. The first post-Wire police drama that can withstand the comparisons. You should watch it too – More4, Thursdays, 10pm. Still on 4oD.
But what have you been watching?
As always, no spoilers unless you're going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please. If you've reviewed something on your blog, you can put a link to it here rather than repeat yourself (although too many links and you might get killed by the spam filter).
A while ago, I mentioned the virtues of Sky+. 'Series link' was one of those virtues - press the magic green button when you have an item selected in the TV planner and it'll record the entire series for you.
Except, apparently, if it's a new series. I've been scouring the listings for a while now but completely failed to notice that series four of Caerdydd has been running for five weeks now! Five weeks! And Sky+, despite that series link having been set up for series three, has been ignoring series four completely. Damn you Sky+!
Anyway, thanks to the miracle of the Internet, we can catch up through the S4C web site, although there's only four days left to watch the first episode before it disappears. I heartily encourage you all to watch it right now if you're not because it's ace. You can get Welsh or English subtitles online, so don't you be a-worrying you won't understand what's going on.
Incidentally, I have Dylan over at shitclic.blogspot.com to thank for this information - go visit him, too, because he's a very kind and useful person!
Hey Rob. Love the site - I log on regularly to get my daily fix for TV news and reviews. I noticed you were an avid fan of the popular Welsh soap-drama "Caerdydd" on S4C last year... and surprised you haven't mentioned the third series currently shown on Sundays at 9pm (repeated with onscreen subtitles for our English friends ;-) on Thursdays at 10.30pm. Check out the great new mini-website www.s4c-caerdydd.co.uk... oh, and my tv blog in the lingo of heaven as noted!
Cheers/Hwyl fawr!
Dylan
See? Kind and useful.
Just as a quick reminder, here's how series three ended. And for all you Torchwood lovers, here's Ianto Jones (aka Gareth David-Lloyd) when he appeared on the show opposite Siwan Morris.
You wouldn't know it from the BFI's celebration of 25 years of Channel 4 and S4C, but S4C does in fact produce television programmes, some of them quite good. Have a look at Caerdydd. Go on. It's good.
But it would be a mistake to think this is a recent development. A case in point is A Mind to Kill, Wales' answer to Taggart. Starring Welsh man-god Philip Madoc as widower Detective Inspector Noel Bain, A Mind to Kill was a dark and gritty 1991 TV movie about neo-Nazis set and filmed in South Wales.
Shot in both English and Welsh - as (Noson) yr Heliwr (which, I think means either The Night Hunter or Hunter in the Night. Anyone?) - the film, the charismatic Bain and the series format proved popular enough that a series of sequel films was made, running for five series from 1994 to 2004 - even making the transition to the rest of the UK by airing on Five. Yet almost nobody remembers it.
Praise be, then, the first series is being released on DVD by Network on March 16th.
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This is a UK media blog with daily news, views, exclusive reviews and good conversation. There's a bit of a bias towards the latest and greatest US TV, but we also cover UK TV ranging from new Doctor Who to old Z Cars, and BBC4 to S4C.
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"For most of us watching the telly of an evening is a way to wind down and relax, but for Rob Buckley it’s his blogging bread and butter. With reviews of cult classics and up and coming US and Brit television shows, The Medium is Not Enough is fast becoming essential reading for TV buffs, with over 50,000 hits a month."
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About me
I'm Rob Buckley, a freelance journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of, although you might have heard me on Radio 5 Live's Saturday Edition. I've edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for trade magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider and the equally short-lived Death Ray and Filmstar magazines; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it "web site for urban hedonists" The Tribe. I'm freelance now and have contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network and TV Scoop.
