They’ve done it before and this week they’ll be doing it yet again: it’s a CSI/CSI:NY crossover. Mac’s girlfriend kidnapped in Las Vegas tonight, then it all moves back to New York on Friday. Yawn.
The first DB and Mac meeting is over here, if you’re really interested.
Film
Film casting
Canadian TV
UK TV
US TV
US TV casting
New US TV shows
New US TV show casting
It’s time for our brief season of Ron Swanson wisdom to conclude this week. He has much wisdom to impart, but unfortunately, it’s not been uploaded to YouTube very well. So we’re going out in a blaze of appropriately small government glory: a single entry with all the best bits of Ron’s many monologues that leaves you, the citizen, to decide for yourselves what to watch. It’s as Ron would want it.
Oh, oh. I didn’t laugh once at this. Please let this just be NBC’s notorious inability to put together a decent trailer, rather than a sign of Community‘s impending descent into awfulness now Dan Harmon has left. Please?
In Canada: Sundays, 9pm, CTV
In the US: Acquired by ABC for summer 2013
In the UK: Not yet acquired
In the never-ending struggle to come up with new crime drama formats, there are generally two methods of differentiation used by writers: character and gimmick. If you differentiate by character, you end up with shows such as Monk, Elementary, The Mentalist or Psych, in which someone over-laden with personality has to solve crimes while less interesting, more plodding individuals stand around filling up dialogue time and generally failing to solve crimes.
If you differentiate by gimmick, you end up with shows like Justice, Murder One, and The Whole Truth, in which quite dull characters stand around filling out plot time while the gimmicky plot mechanism that drives the show plays itself out.
In both cases, I should point out, you still need to have involving crimes and investigations or both techniques will be for naught.
Now Motive wants to have its cake and eat it, attempting to stand out from the crowd with both gimmick and character. The gimmick here is that as the show’s title suggests, it’s all about the motive: as much time is dedicated to why the crime was committed as to solving it, with huge chunks of the story told in flashback. But it also has character: no special character ticks here but cool, over-acting, intensely irritating detective-mom Angie Flynn, who’s just so down with her kid.
Does it work? Well, it stands out, but it’s forgotten that golden rule and as a result is still a very boring show that makes Cracked look like The Shield in comparison. Here’s a trailer: note, as with all Canadian TV shows, the contractually obligated appearance of at least one person from Stargate as well as Roger Cross from 24 (okay, he isn’t in the trailer but he’s in the show).
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