In the US: Thursdays, 8/7c, The CW In the UK: Acquired by ITV2
I am not a tweenie. I am not a teenager. I am definitely not a teenage girl.
So The Vampire Diaries is not aimed at me. It is not my show. So when I describe it as “very bad”, you might be tempted to think the problem is with me. That I don’t get it.
You might be right, but I do love my Gossip Girl and Privileged and a whole host of other programmes that aren’t aimed at me either. I can spot quality, I think, even in this area.
And I can spot a lack of it, too. Because, you see, The Vampire Diaries is very bad. Not supremely awful, but enough to make you almost want to take your own life rather than watch it.
TNT’s Leverage is of course basically an attempt to do a slightly less cool, funnier version of Ocean’s 11 for the small screen. So it was heartening to see last week’s episode, The Ice Man Job, homage Ocean’s 11 in an oblique sort of way – by taking the piss out of Don Cheadle’s accent.
At first, I thought it was just one of those typically bad British accents that US TV occasionally puts out – not as much as it used to, mind – confident in the knowledge that few people will care or even notice (cf Burn Notice). But as various characters started to take the piss, it became obvious that in fact, it was deliberately bad. Anyway, see/hear for yourselves: it’s a laugh.
Oh, and I’ve followed that with a clip of the character, Hardison, speaking in his normal Texan accent, just for comparison. And because it contains Rob’s GBE list member, Beth Riesgraf, at her best.
Good drama – good anything – is hard to find on ITV1 these days (even harder in Scotland, where STV is failing to carry almost any of ITV1’s programmes). Yet there are a few standouts, usually in the crime genre. The Fixer is one such standout. It features Andrew Buchan as a former SAS soldier, recruited by a shadowy branch of the police to do its very, very dirty work, usually involving murder but also resorting to other unpleasantries that are in no way legal. With a chav idiot sidekick and a hard as nails, unmovable boss, The Fixer is basically Callan for the 21st century.
Series one of The Fixer was properly classed as very good, rather than excellent. It came perilously close to excellent at times, but despite being an action show, it had very little action, it exhibited quite phenomenal amounts of misogyny at times, it veered towards the cliché and the occasionally silly, and Tamzin Outhwaite was pretty much there as a name to draw in an audience, rather than because she had anything to do.
Series two, which opened with a two-part story, seems to have spotted these problems and done its level best to fix them, because despite a slightly flat and occasionally bizarre opening episode, the second episode managed to pile on the suspense and action in bucketloads.
At last!
Here’s a promo – and yes, that is Mr Darcy from Lost in Austen as an evil member of the security services – followed by the first 10 minutes of the first episode of series one, just so you have an idea of what’s going on if you missed it: you can watch the rest on YouTube or DVD if you want.
Wonder Woman is one of those comic book characters that everyone’s heard of, but not too many people know much about or especially like.
No?
Quick quiz: can you explain Batman’s origins? Superman’s? Spiderman’s?
How about Wonder Woman’s?
Probably not. You have to be a special kind of geek to know it (a princess from a hidden island of Amazons, imbued with the powers of the Greek gods).
Okay, there’s many a boy (and girl) who rather enjoyed Lynda Carter’s interpretation of the role in the 70s Wonder Woman TV series. But a previous attempt in 1974 with Cathy Lee Crosby in the role didn’t do especially well, recent attempts to get a film version up and running have fallen flat, despite Joss Buffy Whedon’s best efforts, and sales of the comic haven’t exactly been stellar.
What you may not know is that way back in the 60s, just as Adam West’s Batman had become popular, the powers that be tried to create another Wonder Woman TV series. Unfortunately, they tried to use Batman as a template, and turned it into a comedy.
Here, for your delectation, is the pilot episode in glorious YouTube vision. See if you can work out for yourself while it flopped – it’s only five minutes long. Enjoy!
PS If you ever want to be fascinated, read up about the original intent behind the character of Wonder Woman. William Moulton Marston – the guy who invented the lie detector and a Harvard-educated psychologist – created Wonder Woman to indoctrinate girls and boys, ready for the day he believed was coming in which women would rule the world. It’s true:
“Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world… Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women’s strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.
