Been a bit too busy to do any reviews over the last couple of days, so I’m doing a few third-episode verdicts – Rookie Blue and Scoundrels – and some new shows – The Glades and Rizzoli & Isles – in abbreviated form.
- Burn Notice: Pretty much a nothing episode. I only watched it this morning and I can barely remember what happened. Lots of nice explosions though.
- The Gates: Enjoyable, but what’s Paul Blackthorne putting on an American accent, when all the other vampires are English – and so is he? Weird. But not a lot really happened, although the revelations about you-know-who were interesting – what’s up there?
- The Glades: Saints preserve us. A cop show about a maverick detective who plays by his own rules. True, it’s all set in the Everglades and this is more of a feelgood show, but it’s unoriginal and makes Memphis Beat almost stimulating by comparison.
- The IT Crowd: Bizarre but funny – as always
- Leverage: Reasonable enough. Nothing remarkable.
- Memphis Beat: Gave up on it on the grounds of it being incredibly, incredibly dull.
- Rev: Still enjoying it, but it’s not as funny as when it started, veering more towards “interesting thoughts about modern Christianity”. Still worth watching.
- Rizzoli & Isles: Is Angie Harmon contracted to only appear in things that are basically Women’s Murder Club? It’s like a cross between Sex and the City and Silence of the Lambs, if that doesn’t blow your mind – it’s certainly blown the writers’ minds, because one-minute it’ll be dark and horrible, with people getting nails hammered through their hands, the next Rizzoli will be having problems with her mom and adopting a dog, and Isles will be brain-dumping bits of the encyclopaedia on anyone who’ll listen, while parading in Prada next to her tortoise. The mood of the show changes almost every scene and sometimes within scene, it’s so schizophrenic. It might well settle down, since this is based on a couple of books, but it does show promise and it has some brains hidden away as well.
- Rookie Blue: Becoming increasingly fluffier, with just a hint of silly, but not bad. Not the first thing I’d cue up to watch, though. It’s just been picked up for a second season, but you’re not missing anything if you haven’t started watching it, beyond Missy Perygrym.
- Scoundrels: Oddly schizophrenic (although not as schizophrenic as Rizzoli & Isles), when it tries to be comedic, it’s actually quite fun, but when it tries to be edgy, it just fails horribly. So close your eyes and ears whenever they try to be dramatic and you could have fun watching this.
- Southland: Not quite as impressed by subsequent episodes as I was the first. There’s some good stuff going on, but it’s not as edgy as that first ep. I do like the fact that everyone swears in it, but it’s all bleeped out though – that’s nifty.
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).
