Year: 2010

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).