In the US: Wednesdays, 8/7c, The CW In the UK: Acquired by Sky1. Starts 8pm, October 22 In Canada: Wednesdays, 9pm, CTV2 in Australia: Nine Network. Air date to be confirmed
Can you ever truly make a superhero realistic? It’s a tricky proposition. Christopher Nolan just about managed it with Batman, although fundamentally, it was still about a guy trained by ninja to dress up like a giant bat to fight crime. Think about that for too long and it all falls apart.
Nevertheless, while Marvel is enchanting the entire world with escapist fun superheroes, that’s the direction DC Comics is taking with Superman in the forthcoming Man of Steel and now on The CW with Arrow. Green Arrow, for those who don’t know much about the comic hero, is a sort of Batman/Robin Hood rip-off: a billionaire called Oliver Queen who discovers for himself the true costs of crime and vows to put an end to it using… the mighty power of archery that he’s learnt while shipwrecked on an island.
No, I didn’t mean to say a Heckler & Koch G36 5.56x45mm assault rifle. Archery. As in a bow and arrow. Hence Green Arrow.
See? It all starts to fall apart right there, doesn’t it? Yet that’s what The CW, former home of another bit of attempted superhero realism, Smallville, is trying to make realistic. The words ‘The Bourne Identity‘ have even been mentioned in terms of aesthetic and approach.
And you know what? If it weren’t for two things, it might actually have managed to pull it off and be a pretty perfect bit of gritty superhero vigilantism. The first is that it looks like Smallville trying to do gritty on a budget of thruppeny halfpence. The second is the voiceover. Every time the hero tells us what’s going on, all that effort goes out of the window and you want to laugh yourself silly.
But if you can avoid doing that, this is actually one of the most promising new dramas of the season. Here’s a trailer, complete with voiceover:
In the US: Tuesdays, 9.30/8.30c, Fox In the UK: Not yet acquired
Three episodes in and I can confirm we at last have the first decent new comedy of the season: Fox’s The Mindy Project. As I mentioned in my review of the first episode, it’s a funny, anti-romcom romcom. Since then, it’s dialled down the romcom name-dropping, but stuck to its romcom guns, while simultaneously adding in a bit more workplace comedy. There’s even a new character, although he’s more amusing when he has less to do.
And really, all I can say is “Watch it”, because although it’s not as consistently paralysingly funny as Archer, say, it still has its moments (the end scene of episode two was deliciously dark and nasty) and it’s a really good half-hour sitcom that’s better than all the other new comedies by miles. Oh, and that it’s got a crappy new title sequence, but don’t let that put you off.
Over the years, US TV has had numerous famous science-fiction and fantasy ‘anthology’ series: The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and The Night Gallery to name but a few. In the UK, we’ve been far less lucky. But we’ve had a few, the classiest and most sophisticated of which was Out of the Unknown, which I’ve already discussed a bit back in Weird Old Title Sequences (go and watch The Machine Stops – it’s great).
Initially, under the oversight of Irene Shubik, Out of the Unknown covered purely science-fiction concepts and adaptations. However, by the third and fourth series, a new production team was put in place, following Shubik’s departure from the programme. New producer Alan Bromly decided that in light of the Apollo missions, people weren’t impressed by space travel any more, so decided to go for more psychological horror stories instead – with mixed success.
Possibly the worst of his run was To Lay A Ghost. In this, Eric and Diana Carver move into a new home in the country, but a series of strange events soon cause Diana to suspect the house is haunted by the ghost of a man who seems to be interested in her particularly. She was sexually assaulted when she was a schoolgirl and ever since has had a complex about sex and intimacy. When they call in Dr Philmore, a paranormal expert, he suspects that Diana subconsciously wants to the dominated by this supernatural intruder.
To Lay A Ghost unfortunately still exists in the BBC archives – yes, from the same season, the BBC wiped Nigel Kneale’s one contribution to Out of the Unknown, Chopper, but decided to keep the “woman raped while a child can now only achieve sexual satisfaction by being raped” story. FFS. Watch it if you dare:
However, I wouldn’t leave you only with that ‘horror story’ to watch this week. Have more faith.
Instead, let me leave you with possibly the best remaining play of the fourth series (and possibly of all the fourth series), The Man In My Head, by John Wiles. Set in the near future, it features a group of soldiers who are carrying out a dangerous mission against a country they are not even sure they are at war with. Their briefing has been imprinted on their subconsciousnesses and can only be triggered by coded radio signals.
Acting automatically and without thinking, some of them begin to question the nature of their mission, especially after one of them accidentally triggers his own cover story, which was designed to fool interrogators if they were captured. But is their dissent all part of their programming as well?
The play features some dodgy CSO effects, but it’s well directed by Peter “I cancelled Doctor Who, I did” Cregeen who intriguingly makes use in the play of real news footage of the Vietnam war – something that got Doomwatch‘s Sex and Violence banned in 1972. Enjoy!
