Year: 2014

In the US: Thursdays, 9/8c, Fox
In the UK: Acquired by ITV. Will air in 2014

Three episodes into Gracepoint, Fox’s remake of ITV’s acclaimed Broadchurch, and it’s becoming clear that the show works best when it’s not a murder-mystery. Now to a certain extent, you’d expect that. In common with The Killing, the first episode of the show focused on the reaction of a small community to the murder of a child, the grief of the family and how the murder affected everyone involved, right down to the police who knew the affected family. Beautifully shot, wonderfully acted, it was obviously several notches above the ordinary crime show, which treats such things as incidentals that can at most add an extra couple of scenes to an hour-long episode.

On top of that, fresh from Broadchurch came David Tennant to reprise his role as the investigative detective, a traumatised city cop who has to deal with small town thinking and small town people, not to mention the resumed glare of the media’s eye which affected a similar previous case of his and his own demons. True, Tennant seems both verbally and physically out of place next to the American cast – although much less so than the mysteriously English Sarah-Jane Potts, who runs this small American town’s hotel for no particular reason and no one seems to notice that she’s English either – but he’s as good as always, otherwise.

But the mistake the second episode then made was to assume that we’d be interested in finding out more about the personalities of the supporting characters and that a great big shoal of red herrings was what we really wanted, as we’re all busily trying to work out whodunnit and a few twists and turns always go down well. That didn’t work for The Killing (US) and it didn’t work for Gracepoint.

Fortunately the third episode returns to the concerns of the first episode – the grieving family and friends, and Tennant interactions with local detective Anna Gunn. Tennant’s character is a multi-layered thing, not a traditional maverick cop but someone who’s simply not good with people, thinks being good with people stops you solving crimes since you make allowances, thinks local policing is inferior to city policing and indeed hates small towns and everything about them completely. In return, Gunn hates Tennant and doesn’t accept his methods, and it’s in their arguments and conflicts that the show finds a unique perspective as a crime drama, with both Gunn and Tennant being shown to be both correct and wrong, depending on the situation. It’s their dialogue and mutual antagonism, rather than the case itself, that are truly interesting and different.

My worry is that the original eight-episode first series of Broadchurch is now a ten-episode story and that the show hasn’t got enough grief, depth and analysis to push everything out to that length and avoid numerous run-arounds and yet more red herrings. The temptation is clearly there, as the second episode shows, and there could well be more to come.

All the same, as it stands after the first three episodes, Gracepoint is still an excellent TV show. It’s not a happy little thing at all, full of misery and pain, people struggling with problems and secrets, with barely a smile or a joke in the first three hours, so if you’re hoping for something a little lighter, this really isn’t your show. But if it can maintain the quality and you’re prepared to deal with the misery, it’s a rewarding piece – surprisingly so, given it’s in on Fox. But then the same could be said about the original ITV show and look how well that turned out.

Barrometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Will undoubtedly make it through to the end of the first season unscathed, but it’s not getting the ratings Fox was hoping for, so I’d be surprised if it makes it through to a second season. And given the reaction to the original’s ending, despite the changes, there’s always the possibility of a similar backlash with Gracepoint

In the US: Thursdays, 9.30/8.30c, NBC

Three episodes into A To Z and we’re seeing signs of improvement from that initial, not very enticing first episode. Unfortunately, those signs are also of “Everything Else Syndrome”. For those who don’t know “Everything Else Syndrome”, it’s when a TV show has a focus – in the case of a rom-com, the two would-be lovers – and it’s dull and uninteresting, largely because everything else is more interesting.

In the case of a rom-com, that’s usually because of co-morbidity with “Best Friends Syndrome” – that is, not only are the central characters quite dull, their best friends are a lot more interesting. Think The Big Bang Theory, Mad Love, Will and Grace, and so on – you’d rather have been watching shows about the supporting cast, wouldn’t you?

A To Z ostensibly is about Andrew (Ben Feldman) and Zelda (Cristin Milioti), a boy and a girl who meet and are apparently well suited to each other, the big rom-com twists being

1. He’s the romantic one, but she’s been hurt so is the closed-off one
2. Each episode charts (from A to Z, since calling the show A To Z simply because of the characters’ names would be incredibly weak, wouldn’t it?) the ups and downs of their relationship from beginning to end. Yes, end.

Now, that’s not really much to keep you watching and if you’re already rooting for Andrew and Zelda to get and stay together, you need to get out more, since they are unremittingly dull, even when they’re revealing their own deep dark secret pasts in the the third episode. Equally, narrator Katey Sagal has made it clear that there is an end to the relationship, and while you can certainly hope for there to be a get-out clause that reunites them, you really are hoping against hope there.

So instead, if you are going to watch A To Z – and on the whole, I wouldn’t recommend that – it’s because of everything else except Andrew and Zelda. Andrew works for an online dating company and actually, everyone who works at that company is more interesting than Andrew. There are a couple of programmers who used to go out together and are quite funny together (Parvesh Cheena, Hong Chau); there’s a human resources person (Ben Falcone) who has to deal with the overbearing, intrusive, amoral, empathy-free and occasionally very weird CEO (Christina Kirk); and there’s Stu (Henry Zebrowski), Andrew’s best friend and habitual online dating liar.

To complicate matters, Stu used to go out with lawyer Zelda’s best friend and work colleague Stephie (Lenora Crichlow from our very own Being Human and who’s come fresh from best friend duties on ABC’s Back In The Game), when Stu pretended to be a jazz musician, so the two exes now have to get along because their best friends are now dating.

And because of both “Everything Else Syndrome” and “Best Friends Syndrome”, these are the parts of the show it’s possible to both enjoy and look forward to, since not only are the characters more interesting and given more comedic situations and lines, the actors also get more to do, too. Indeed, increasingly more and more of the show is dedicated to the supporting cast.

Trouble is – as Mad Love showed – if you have a rom-com and the audience would rather be watching the supporting cast, you’re probably not going to last long. And I think with A To Z, it’s pretty clear that cancellation is hanging over it in the exact same way that Katey Segal’s doom-laden voiceover does.

So not even a cautious recommendation from me. While there have been some laughs from the office side of things and the third-episode was an oddly innovative look at how Google and the Internet have changed online dating, all of which lift the show above the likes of Manhattan Love Story, we’re still talking about a show with not enough appeal to justify your tuning in for half an hour every week.

Life’s too short for doomed relationships, so it’s time to move on.

Barrometer rating: 4
Rob’s prediction: Cancelled before the end of the season