Year: 2012

It’s "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.

First, the usual recommendations: The Almighty Johnsons, Archer, Being Human (US), BeTipul, Community, Cougar Town, The Daily Show, Happy Endings, House, Mad Men, Modern Family, Portlandia, Ringer, Shameless (US), Southland, Spartacus, Suburgatory, 30 Rock and Top Gear. Assuming they’re on where you live, of course. 

Now, some thoughts on the regulars, apart from Mad Men, which I’ve still to watch:

• The Almighty Johnsons – I’m now on New Zealand time, BTW. The darkest episode yet but signs of light at the end of the tunnel. Loki’s getting irritating and the goddesses are getting maltreated. Not much Axl this week either, and very little Anders, too, but he’s off filming The Hobbit, so what can you do?
• America’s Next Top Model – is now being officially boycotted in this house for anti-Scottish racism
  
• The Apprentice – the same old, same old, but don’t you just love it?
• Archer – the finale wasn’t as funny as the first part, but it was still a pretty good episode
  
• Awake – again with the dull procedural. Stop it. More fleshing out of secondary characters is needed, but it’s still intelligent, moving and insightful. It needs more on why this is all happening though.
  
• Being Human (US) – Good to see that Sally now effectively has an addiction like the others, putting her on an equally monstrous footing with the others
• Community – classic Community in that it was dark and weird but not hugely funny. But some character moments of joy, including Jeff and Britta, and the return of dark Abed.
• Cougar Town – a lovely get out for a thorny dilemma that’s plagued the show for a while, plus a return of the Travis-Laurie dynamic
• Dirk Gently – Probably the best of the bunch: funny with decent characterisation. Still not loving it, but it’s now not bad
• John Bishop’s Sport Relief Hell – I only watched a minute of it and nearly cried.
• Missing – Jesus of Montreal himself Lothaire Bluteau made an appearance to not much effort. More preposterous than the opening episode, with linguistic tricks around the phrase ‘hard drive’ needed for a very uninteresting reveal. The break-in was silly, the whole Netleaks thing was even more ridiculous and the narrow squeak at the end preposterous. But still a tense hour.
• Ringer: Juliette still can’t act, but last week’s episode made slightly more sense than the previous week’s
• Southland – an anti-climatic ending to the season, which overall was very strong.
  
• Spartacus – phenomenal: shocking, surprising and finally we get to see the Romans as something less than cannon fodder and more the most powerful fighting force in the world (cf Rome).
  
• 30 Rock – quite the best season since the first, I think. Some wonderful cameo appearances, including one of the Baldwins doing a great impression of Alex, and a vast amount of almost Community-level meta-ness, particularly the part where Tracey comes off his meds and (spoiler) thinks he’s in a show within a show and his real name is Tracey Morgan. Even Kristen Schaal is just about funny for once.
  
• Touch – basically an episode of Highway to Heaven. Nice to have a mini-24 reunion, with Jude Ciccolella, even if the show does all it can to avoid the memory of Jack Bauer by having Kiefer Sutherland get his arse kicked in fights. Danny Glover basically did nothing, as did Guru M-R. The lack of regular characters also makes it hard to care about the show. But at the end of the day, despite all those caveats, quite heart-warming.
  
• Two and a Half Men – Only watching it because Sophie Winkleman (Big Suze from Peep Show, but also Charlotte from NBC’s 100 Questions) is on it. Has to be said – not a great show and the usual American TV problem of being mildly bemused and unable to cope with the existence of foreigners, but she’s good.
  
• The Voice – I don’t normally do reality, but with Tom Jones on it, how could we refuse? Actually quite enjoyable, although Reggie Yates and Holly Willoughby were entirely superfluous. Surprised will.i.am didn’t get more people, though. And Tom really did seem unimpressed to discover one of his was gay.

And in books:

• The Go-Between by LP Hartley: bored me rigid. Sorry.

"What did you watch this 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?