Month: October 2008

US TV

Review: Eli Stone 2×1

17 October 2008 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Eli Stone

In the US: Tuesdays, 10/9c, ABC
In the UK: SciFi, probably (season 1 now airing)

Eli Stone was a show I really disliked at first sight. A high-flying lawyer gets a brain aneurism and starts to have visions of the future, usually involving singing, dancing and/or George Michael, that enable him to save people or fix problems in their life. Where are these visions from? God? Somewhere else? Eli Stone didn’t seem to want to make an actual decision on that one because then it would, you know, have to be saying something.

But it improved slightly and by the third episode had started to have a few moderate things going for it, even if it had got both wishier and washier. By the sixth episode, the producers seemed to have worked out that the format needed a bit of tweaking and by the season finale, the show was actually pretty good and occasionally moving as the producers got progressively bolder.

Now it’s back, just as fluffy as before, but willing to lay down a few hard “this is what we stand for”s, along with a few properly tear jerking moments – and Sigourney Weaver.

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Friday’s space Odyssey news

17 October 2008 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film

British TV

US TV

  • Mad Men gets a third season, but Matthew Weiner’s not signed on yet
  • Clip from Showtime’s United States of Tara, starring Toni Collette
  • Brian Cox to co-star with Katee Sackhoff on Lost and Found
  • ABC to adapt E4’s The Inbetweeners
  • Jaime Ray Newman to appear in Eureka
  • The French shows going stateside
  • Sage gets a love interest in Privileged
The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 2

Third-episode verdict: The Mentalist

16 October 2008 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Time for a third-episode verdict. As suspected, back when I wrote my preview of The Mentalist, in which fake psychic Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) uses his skills in trickiness to help fight crime, this is very much a show dependent on its writers and directors. The opening episode was something of a cracker, with good writing and good direction that showed signs of subtlety and intelligence.

Since then, we’ve had what can only be described as relatively mediocre episodes, in which generic crim-chasing scripts get a little psychic goodness sprinkled on them, usually in the form of a magic trick at the beginning, as a sop to the format. Otherwise, you’d be hard pushed to differentiate them from any other police near-procedural, beyond the fact the format allows the writers to skip whole chunks of working out and leap scenes, simply through Jane’s skills (which often aren’t really explained).

The one exception to this been there, done that feel is Simon Baker, who manages to make every scene better just through his mere presence. Nevertheless, while everything feels like quality, it’s pretty much an illusion. There’s not much wrong with The Mentalist – it just needs to have something right as well, and all that was right in the pilot seems to have been forgotten about.

Predictions
The show’s now been acquired by Five in the UK and has gone to a full season, so should be around for a while for both UK and US viewers.

Carusometer rating
Two – a Partial Caruso

US TV

Review: Samantha Who? 2×1

16 October 2008 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Samantha Who

In the US: Mondays, 9.30/8.30c, ABC
In the UK: E4?

Samantha Who? was one of those show that came out last year, that wasn’t bad but which I didn’t think I’d stick around for. But my wife started watching it on E4 a few weeks ago and thanks to a realisation that Christina Applegate is one of the best comedic actresses on TV at the moment, we ended up watching the whole first season. And it wasn’t bad and it was quite funny.

Applegate plays Samantha Newly (there’s a clue in that name) who wakes up after a car accident with amnesia. She can’t remember any of her old life and discovers, much to her horror, that she was an evil bitch – which is something she no longer wants to be. Sam (I am) tries to build a new, nicer life, with the help of her formerly estranged parents, her best friends and her ex-boyfriend.

Most of the fun comes from the evil old Sam and the fact all the people who knew her can now tell her what they really thought about her. But new Sam is entertaining in her own right, as are the supporting characters – mainly Sam’s mother (Jean Smart) and her party-girl attorney best friend (Jennifer Esposito).

The second season is set a year after the first which is all a bit confusing since everything seems to have gone backwards – in fact, there’s more than a hint of déjà vu here…

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US TV

Review: My Own Worst Enemy 1×1

16 October 2008 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

My Own Worst Enemy

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

I can’t imagine the NBC planning meeting behind this.

B: “What have we got on Monday nights? We need something in the 10pm slot”

A: “Chuck at 8pm, Heroes at 9pm”

B: “Hmm. Tell me about Chuck”

A: “It’s about a guy, a regular Joe, who accidentally becomes a spy”

B: “Huh. Cool. You know – and this is a completely unrelated idea – how about we made a show for the 10pm slot about a regular Joe who accidentally becomes a spy?”

A: “Um. Don’t we already…”

B: “No, I won’t hear any complaints. Let’s commission it!”

So now we have on what turns out to be “Accidental spy night” in the US, a straighter version of the comedic Chuck in which Christian Slater turns out to have multiple personality disorder and one of those personalities is a spy. For real.

I did say it wasn’t a comedy, didn’t I?

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