Month: June 2015

What TV’s on at the BFI in July 2015? Including The Wednesday Play Where Adam Stood (1976)

4 June 2015 Rob Buckley Post a comment

It’s time for our regular look at the TV that the BFI is showing, this time in June 2015. This month’s output is devoted purely to the fourth part of the ongoing Dennis Potter season, this time focusing on the themes of sex and death. If that doesn’t sound much, you should probably see how many showings that amounts to, given it includes showings of all of Casanova, Blackeyes, Karaoke, Cold Lazarus, and The Singing Detective, as well as Blue Remembered Hills and Double Dare.

There’s also Where Adam Stood, Potter’s 1976 free adaptation of the autobiography of naturalist and fundamental Christian Edmond Gosse, whose father had trouble reconciling the Bible with the latest works of Charles Darwin, causing Gosse all manner of difficulties. Don’t want to wait to see it? Well, you don’t have to as it’s this week’s Wednesday Play (on Thursday):

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Australian and New Zealand TV

Review: Westside 1×1 (New Zealand: TV3)

4 June 2015 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Westside

In New Zealand: Sundays, 8.30pm, TV3

As we saw recently with AMC’s Better Call Saul, prequels can be tricky things. You typically only get a prequel to a show if it’s been popular and has a strong fan base, and those fans are going to want everything to line up nicely with whatever’s already been established in the original story. However, unless you want ever-reducing audience numbers, you have to ensure that the prequel is of interest to a wider circle than just the fans.

The show formerly and cleverly known as Westside Story, but which is now presumably for copyright reasons simply Westside, has these two issues to juggle. Now, I’ve already gone into the history of its progenitor Outrageous Fortune elsewhere, so I won’t bother here but suffice it to say, as esteemed New Zealand shows with a huge fan base go, you couldn’t find a bigger one than Outrageous Fortune. All the same, that finished five years ago and wasn’t widely known in its original form overseas – indeed, these days it’s perhaps better known as the show that the creators of The Almighty Johnsons ran before venturing into matters more fantastical and theological. As a result, there’s a potential new audience for Westside that never saw the original and who might be looking forward to Rachel Lang and James Griffin’s latest production.

So will the story of safecracker Ted West, his wife Rita and their son Wolf, the future prison-bound patriarch of Outrageous Fortune‘s West family, stand on its own two feet or will it simply be a piece of fan service from a creatively bankrupt team that have run out of ideas?

I’ll tell you after the jump.

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US TV

Preview: Crowded 1×1 (US: NBC)

3 June 2015 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Crowded

In the US: Mid-season replacement set to air 2016

It’s getting to the point where there’s a whole range of family comedies that could air anywhere and you wouldn’t be surprised. Crowded is one such programme – a multi-cam sitcom I could have sworn was set to air on CBS, but is actually going to be on NBC, but honestly could have gone on Fox, TBS or even TV Land without eliciting so much as a blink from me.

It stars former Tick and long-time inmate of Rules of Engagement Patrick Warburton and True Blood’s Carrie Preston as a happily married couple who are at first teary-eyed but are then overjoyed to watch first one then both of their daughters (Mia Serafino and Miranda Cosgrove) grow up then move out the family house to go to college, leaving the couple alone to drink, smoke pot, swear, walk around naked and have sex wherever they want in peace. Largely not on camera, of course.

However, in common with about a quarter of the US population, it’s not long before their children move back in when their relationships or jobs fall apart. And Warburton’s parents (Stacy Keach, Carlease Burke), who were planning to move to Florida, are now going to stay, too. And by the end of the episode, there’s another person moving in, too. Gosh, how Crowded.

The show comes across as Modern Family 10 years on, with Serafino the brain-dead fashion major who only cares about being popular, Cosgrove the epic nerd without any social skills who only cares about science and Keach the old school, emotions are for sissies, Ed O’Neill of the piece. However, it lacks that show’s subtlety, sensitivity and love for its characters, as well as any particularly funny jokes.

What it does have though is both Patrick Warburton, whose comic timing and delivery are masterly, and Stacy Keach who would make O’Neill’s army vet go running into the arms of the Viet Cong if he ever saw him coming. It also has a real sense of ‘been there, done that’ with Warburton and Preston’s relationship: while the show’s idea of married freedom is about as PG-13 as it’s possible to get, right down to the bleeped swearwords, there are moments of real pathos in the pilot episode, such as when the two are crying in each other’s arms as they say goodbye to their daughters on the steps of their colleges.

As sitcoms go, this is as conventional and generic as they come. But at least Warburton and Keach know how to make the audience laugh, even if the writers don’t especially.

If I could show you a trailer, I would, so you’ll have to take my word for it – for now, at least.

US TV

Review: UnREAL 1×1 (US: Lifetime)

3 June 2015 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

UnREAL

In the US: Mondays, 10/9c, Lifetime
In the UK: It’ll be on Lifetime or Living, you know it

It hopefully won’t have escaped the attention of regular readers of this ‘ere blog that I haven’t covered reality TV shows since its very early days, back when Big Brother was still a novelty. I just ain’t got the time… and I don’t watch it any more.

It has, however, escaped the attention of lots of PRs, who despite claiming to be ‘huge fans’ of TMINE, still want to know if I’ll cover reality show x, game show y or reality game show z.

Invariably, I tell them that I only cover ‘scripted comedy and drama’, but perhaps I should consider a different response. After all, look over the credits of even something like American’s Next Top Model and you’ll discover a host of writing credits; there’s also a genre known as ‘constructed reality’ that encompasses shows such as The Only Way is Essex in which although the responses of the participants are genuine – or as genuine as they can be on a TV show – the situations in which they’re involved are set up by the production teams.

Oftentimes, it can be hard to tell apart the true reality show from the constructed reality show and Lifetime’s new comedy-drama UnREAL hinges on just such a problem – the nature of truth and reality in supposed reality shows, as well as the symbiotic relationship between those performing for the cameras and the need of reality TV producers for them to perform in order that they can produce ‘interesting’ television that fits comfortable, stereotypical conventions.

Shiri Appleby (Roswell, Life Unexpected) is Rachel, a freelance field producer for a very Bachelor-like reality show called Everlasting. After a breakdown on camera the previous season that ended up with her becoming indebted to the amoral and immoral producer of the show Constance Zimmer (Love Bites, House of Cards), she’s forced to return to the job she hates – manipulating potential and current contestants into doing what Zimmer needs them to do and fitting into their pre-determined roles, all while she pretends to be their friend.

That includes dealing with the supposedly gentlemanly but actually womanising English heir to a hotel chain (Harry Potter’s Freddie Stroma) who’s really using the show to rehabilitate his public profile; Breeda Wool (Betas), a shy Christian woman and virgin who’s intended to be the show’s ‘joke’; Ashley Scott (Birds of Prey, Jericho), the ‘desperate MILF’ who’s going to be dumped by episode three; Arielle Kebbel (90210), the ‘bitch’ who’s the intended villain of the show; and Christie Lang (Arrow), the talented violinist and scholar who’s unfortunately too black to win.

Except Appleby is the kind of woman who goes around wearing a T-shirt saying ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ and faced with pumping out stereotypes that are demeaning to women and betraying her sisters, she decides to do all she can to rewrite the show’s narrative – all while trying to avoid being sent to prison if Zimmer finds out what she’s up to.

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