Year: 2012

Tuesday’s “Manimal movie, a second US Pulling and P Diddy goes to Philly” news

18 September 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Doctor Who

  • A Town Called Mercy gets best ratings for Doctor Who since 2010

Film

Trailers

  • Trailer for Mike Newell’s Great Expectations, with Helen Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes et al

Canadian TV

UK TV

US TV

New US TV shows

  • Howard Gordon sells Vigilant superhero show to Fox
  • Laura Prepon and Taylor Schilling to star in Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black
  • ABC having another go at adapting Pulling
  • The CW adapting Embrace
  • ABC Family orders pilots of Terminals, Phys Ed and Continuing Fred
  • Annie Potts to star on Paging Dr. Freed
US TV

Preview: The Mob Doctor (Fox) 1×1

17 September 2012 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

The Mob Doctor

In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, Fox. Starts tonight
In the UK: Not yet acquired.

Watching this, I could have sworn I’d mysteriously tuned into CBS by accident. No way could this be a Fox show. It has CBS fingerprints all over it.

But, no. It’s on Fox. It’s a procedural. It’s efficiently made, efficiently acted and has high production values, just like a CBS show. It has no need to be a procedural – as with CBS’s A Gifted Man which was originally a show about a haunted doctor, this has medical procedural grafted onto it. But a procedural it is, with My Boys‘ Jordana Spiro as a doctor who – in between being brilliant and saving lives – has to do some medical work for the mob, it being Chicago n’all, because her brother was in trouble and she now owes them a debt that she has to pay off.

Then, one day, a mob informer comes into her hospital for an operation and the mob want her to kill him while he’s on the operating table or else they’ll hurt her and her family. What’s a surgeon to do?

And actually, that’s not the show’s biggest ethical dilemma, because somehow – I know not how, particularly on Fox of all networks – one of the patients who comes to her is a teenage girl. Who’s had sex with her boyfriend. She’s now pregnant. It’s going to ruin her life.

And to its credit, despite every other unremarkable, uninvolving aspect of the show, The Mob Doctor not only countenances the idea of letting this girl have an abortion, the doctor goes ahead and performs ‘the operation’.

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Preview: The Mob Doctor (Fox) 1×1”

UK TV

Question of the week: Is it wrong to recast Yes, Prime Minister?

17 September 2012 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Yes Prime Minister

Yes, Prime Minister is a true classic of British television. With characters almost inextricably linked to the actors who created them, Nigel Hawthorne and Paul Eddington, it was a telling, comedic look at the British civil service by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn.

Since the programme ended in the 1980s, Jay and Lynn have since created a version for the stage starring David Haig and Henry Goodman, and now UK Gold are taking that cast and creating a new series of Yes, Prime Minister, with Jay and Lynn writing that as well.

Today’s question, though, is:

Is it wrong to recast Yes, Prime Minister or should Jay and Lynn create new characters for the series? Is it disrespectful to the memories of Eddington and Hawthorne to have these same characters revived? Is it just impossible to imagine anyone else performing those roles as well as the originals? Or does it make no difference – a character’s a character and we might as well object that people are still playing Hamlet, even though the original actor is dead?

Answers below or on your own blog, please?

What did you watch last week? Including Robot Chicken, Lilyhammer and Homeland

17 September 2012 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

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

First, the usual recommendations: Perception and Doctor Who. I’m adding The Thick Of It to the list, which I negligently forgot to mention last week, despite its being brilliantly funny and making Veep look like luke warm cup-a-soup in comparison. The new coalition characters are excellent as well.

So here’s a few thoughts on what I have been watching:

  • Perception: Fabulous episode that took the precepts of the show to their logical conclusion. You’ll spot exactly where the episode is going about 10 minutes in, but knowing actually makes it more painful and heart-breaking to watch. Worth watching a few episodes before, if you haven’t already watched any, so that it’ll have the maximum impact.
  • Hunderby: Not quite funny enough to make me watch the whole of episode 2.
  • Screenwriters – The BAFTA and BFI lectures: showing on Sky Arts, a series of half-hour interviews/lectures by famous screenwriters. A bit variable, but with some great names (William Nicholson, Moira Buffini, Charlie Kaufman), with John Logan (Gladiator, Coriolanus, et al) being a great way to finish the series.
  • Go On – episode two was actually okay, a bit more Community-ish, although less ensemble than that show. Still an odd combination of the tragic and comedic, but it’s now starting to pick up, I’d say.
  • Robot Chicken – The DC Comics special, this was actually really funny. Not as funny as it could have been, but if you know your DC Comics, it had a lot going for it, particularly the relentless kicking of Aquaman.
  • Lilyhammer – a BBC4/Netflix piece about a New York gangster relocating to Lilyhammer in Norway as part of a witness relocation scheme. Baffling, rather than funny, it essentially has every joke in Norwegian, followed by a character saying “Oh, you don’t speak much Norwegian, do you?” then repeating the joke in English. It’s therefore at least 50% less funny than it needs to be, and I suspect most of the jokes work better in Norwegian. And Norway. I switched off after about half an hour. Fargo‘s a better bet, I reckon. Some people seemed to love it though – maybe they watched the second half.

  • Homeland – the first 20 minutes of season two only, mind. After watching the original Israeli show Prisoners of War, it’s a little harder to watch the more escapist Homeland than it used to be, but this preview does a good job of re-establishing everything, showing how Carrie and Brodie’s lives have changed, and we even get to go to Beirut. If you’re worried that season two won’t be as good as season 1, your fears should be assuaged.

“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?