What did you watch last week (w/e November 20)?

Time for “What did you watch last week?”, my chance to tell you what I watched last week that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case we’ve missed them.

My recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure this week: Dexter, Modern Family, Happy Endings, Homeland, Rev, Suburgatory and Community.

Things you might enjoy but that I’m not necessarily recommending: House and Ringer.

Things I used to watch, aren’t too bad, but are now desperately samey yet you might like: Boss, Burn Notice, Chuck, The Walking Dead. Let me know if they pick up again.

So, if you read the comments section of last week’s “What did you watch last week?”, you’ll know I’ve given up on a couple more shows:

  • Being Erica: which has just become so dull and samey, even though this season has essentially been “Let’s go and revisit all those old characters you used to like while simultaneously not moving the plot forward at all, but actually throwing it into reverse.” Bored now, and Alex says the latest episode has the most blatant product placement in history in it.
  • Chuck: same thing: bored now. Really, this show doesn’t have anything interesting to say any more, isn’t even fun and has actually become quite irritating.

But since last week, I’ve given up on:

  • Boss: as good as Kelsey Grammer is, the story itself is just too boring/too worthy in varying doses.

A few thoughts on what else I’ve seen this week:

  • Dexter: Oh. What a shame. Turned out the twist they served up was for one episode and one episode only. That was a waste.
  • Misfits: A combination of thrilling and daring with astonishingly stupid. So world history gets rewritten because the Nazis get hold of a mobile phone at some point before 1945 and use its technology to win the war? So how come life as we know it in the new present isn’t 65 years more advanced than it is now? Why is the Nazis, who still have a thing against gays, seem to have relented on the whole “master race” issue and don’t mind having the likes of Curtis around? But a lovely change of pace from the normal style of episode.
  • House: last week’s episode was much better, but it’s still not hitting the heights it used to.
  • Homeland: well, I was not expecting that. Either brilliant or more annoying than The Killing. I’ve yet to watch last night’s episode, which might sway my opinion.
  • Community: very funny, but slowly sort of petered out at the end.
  • Joanna Lumley’s Greek Odyssey: Mostly on fast forward to prevent me from stabbing myself in annoyance at the pointlessness of it all. We’re on Mount Olympus, so what are we going to do? Talk to marathon runners and fortune tellers. That’s it? You came all the way to Greece to do that?
  • Rev: Had to watch this one of fast forward too, mainly because it was cringe-inducing and I don’t like cringe comedy. Funny in the bits I could watch, though.

And in the movies and books sections, nothing I’m afraid. Too busy watching TV!

“What did you watch last week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. 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.