Year: 2012

The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: The Almighty Johnsons (SyFy)

20 February 2012 Rob Buckley 15 Comments

In the UK: Thursdays, 10pm, SyFy
In New Zealand: Already aired. Season two coming soon

I have to say this is a borderline one for me. It’s a nice, amiable show in which a bunch of semi-dickish brothers turn out to be Nordic gods. The youngest is Odin and he has to go on a quest to find Frig, his wife, so that they can all become full gods; if he doesn’t, they’ll all die and so will big chunks of the population of New Zealand. Opposing him/them are a bunch of goddesses who want to run the world and don’t want a bunch of almighty Johnsons to be running it instead of them.

Cue the metaphorical and literal battle of the sexes.

And it’s all right. The first episode was fine. The second episode was a bit better, had a little more depth and fleshed out the other brothers and the supporting characters. The third rounded off the plot and let us get to know the goddesses a little better, too.

But it’s not much better than all right. It’s kind of fun. It doesn’t have a great attitude towards women, although the men fare little better. There’s a lot of pseudo-myth floating around but not really being capitalised upon. There’s the occasional fight scene, which isn’t bad.

So it’s okay. I’m tempted to drop it, but it’s amiable and different enough from other shows that I’m going to stick with it, despite its 3 on the Carusometer. Your mileage may vary.

Carusometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Well, it’s already on season two in New Zealand, so it’s clearly got a future.

Monday’s “John Leguizamo is US Del Boy, Matthew Perry joins Good Wife, and Steve Coogan is Paul Raymond” news

20 February 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film

Radio

British TV

  • Last Hustle watched by 5.3m
  • Jennifer Saunders to star in Sharon Horgan’s Dead Boss
  • Vision TV adds foreign channels to Internet-connected Freeview HD boxes [subscription required]

US TV

The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: The River (ABC)

17 February 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, ABC
In the UK: Available on iTunes. Not yet acquired by a network

The River is a show I really want to like. It’s trying something relatively new for US TV – ‘found footage’. It’s a horror show on network TV. Like Southland, it has characters who swear but get bleeped out. It tries to build character and to create tension through direction and writing, rather than gore. It has some good British actors including Paul Blackthorne (The Gates, 24, The Dresden Files), able to keep their own accents and in the case of the latest episode, save the day while all the Americans are cowering under tables. There’s a German actor who also gets to be a German and to be very cool. While it is a serial show, there’s a different beastie to deal with every week. And it does have the occasional scary moment.

But that’s the problem I remarked on when I reviewed the first two episodes: the scary moments are only very occasional. For whatever reason – and it’s always tricky with horror to work out what the problem is when it’s not scaring – it’s just not putting the willies up me as I watch it. It may be that with only a few minutes to name the threat and why it should be threatening, each one having to be novel and ‘Amazonian’, there’s simply not enough time in an hour-long show to create the build up. It might be that the direction is too obvious, with threats that should be ‘corner of the eye’ experiences dwelt on by automatic cameras that shouldn’t be bothering. It may be that the structure of advertising-riddled TV episodes is such that it’s impossible to build sustained tension.

Whatever the reason, a horror show that doesn’t scare built around a mystery that is thin at best isn’t one isn’t something that’s really going to prove of interest to many people, I suspect. Oh, look at the ratings. I’m right.

It’s a shame that a show that should be so close to greatness has ultimately failed by being just a little tamer than it should be. But it is what it is – even Glen Morgan (The X-Files, Millennium, Final Destination) couldn’t write something truly frightening within its format. So I’m afraid I can’t recommend it. I might keep watching for a little bit, just to see if it gets any better, and I’ll let you know if I change my mind.

Carusometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Will last a season