What have you been watching this week (w/e April 15)?

My usual recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure this week: Archer, Community, The Daily Show, House, Modern Family, Stargate Universe and 30 Rock. Watch them (and keep an eye on The Stage‘s TV Today Square Eyes feature as well) or you’ll be missing out on the good stuff.

Separate reviews of this week’s episodes of Spiral/Engrenages are over here, but this is what else I’ve been watching this week:

  • Being Human (US) – an interesting way to end a series that actually became a lot more interesting over the course of the season than its first couple of episodes would have suggested. Once it found its feet, starting picking and choosing from the UK original and then twisting it to its own ends while sticking to the same template, it actually became better than the original in a lot (but not all) ways. It was actually able to take things that had been squished into a single episode and let them breath over a couple of episodes. To avoid Internet spoilers, the finale really wasn’t what you might have expected if you’d seen the original – and actually used expectations of what happened in the original to mislead you. So looking forward to the next season now!
  • Breaking In: Cleverer than the first episode and Alyssa Milano was rather a good guest star. But not really very funny at all and I don’t really care about any of the characters.
  • Chaos: after an acceptable start, episode two was actually rather dull, despite some quite nice spy stuff. James Murray’s toned down his Scottish accent a lot – and now is starting to sound English a lot more. Not awful, but not worth tuning in for. Disappointing.
  • Chuck was quite fun, but Chuck’s just a dull character now, Sarah still really hasn’t got a character and what’s happened to Linda Hamilton? The family Volkoff are the only things to look forward to on this show now.
  • Endgame was really quite excellent, bar a slightly disappointing ending, so it’s going to be promoted to the “you should watch” bit at the bottom
  • Happy Endings: Coming to a separate review near you, soon!

But what have you been watching?

“What have you been watching this week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched this week. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; 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. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.