What have you been watching? Including The Night Manager, Outcast, The Americans and Cleverman

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

The usual “TMINE recommends” page features links to reviews of all the shows I’ve ever recommended, and there’s also the Reviews A-Z, for when you want to check more or less anything I’ve reviewed ever. 

Sunday’s got a bit busy all of a sudden. As well as Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley, we now have Secret City and the returning The Last Ship, as well as Preacher once it catches up with me. So unless I take every Monday off work or forgo sleep, I’m thinking I’m not going to be able to watch all of those in time for WHYBW. So this week, WHYBW will be returning to Fridays (or more probably Saturdays. Sob), given Thursday’s worldwide TV schedule currently consists of Cleverman. Hold your thoughts on Silicon Valley, Secret City and The Last Ship until then, so we can share.

Anyway, thanks to the world unleashing a huge swathe of new shows for us all to try out, this week I reviewed/previewed elsewhere:

I’ll be previewing/reviewing Uncle Buck (US: ABC) and Still The King (US: CMT) in the next couple of days, and after the jump, I’ll be reviewing the latest episodes of Cleverman, Game of Thrones and Outcast, as well as the season finale of The Americans. But first, over the weekend, I finally got round to boxsetting a show you’ve almost all probably seen and forgotten already!

The Night Manager (UK: BBC One)
The first John Le Carré TV adaptation in 20 years, Tom Hiddleston’s audition tape for the role of James Bond sees him playing a former soldier turned hotel night manager sign up with SIS (in the form of Olivia Colman) to defeat international, improbably accented gun runner Hugh Laurie as he tours all manner of shiny places in HD. It all looks lovely and it’s got a great supporting cast (Tom Hollander and David Harewood), but the UK production aesthetics (music, title sequence) make it seem a lot cheaper than it is, and to be honest, Le Carré’s plotting stretches into the clunky, simplistic and improbable at times, with few surprises. The ending is also a disappointment, essentially relying on Laurie giving an almost total stranger who’s a thief and a murderer exclusive control over $300m – after the set-up, I was expecting something a lot smarter. But the low-fi spying, Hiddleston and the locations make it more memorable.

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Weekly Wonder Woman

Weekly Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman: Rebirth #1

It was a relatively quiet week for Diana last week. For the young ‘uns and the light of heart, there was a trailer for a new movie based on DC SuperHero Girls called DC Super Hero Girls: Hero of the Year, which is due out in August in the US:

For the oldies and the dark of heart, there was a trailer for the extended Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which is due out in June, and looks like it’ll have a bit more of our Wondy than the cinema release did, albeit mainly more fighting:

In comics, there were only two appearances of note. The first was DC Bombshells #47, in which Mera flashed back to a time when her ex-husband Nereus was getting a bit jealous of her and Diana spending so much time together (I wonder why…):

But much more importantly, we also had Wonder Woman: Rebirth #1, which not only starts setting out the tentpoles for how Diana is going to fare/get rebooted in the Rebirth universe, it also marks the first time the legendary Greg Rucka has written for our Di since he was unceremoniously booted off her title at the end of Volume 2, back in 2006 – yep, it’s been a decade, guys. 

But more on that after the jump.

Continue reading “Weekly Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman: Rebirth #1”

News: Nashville rescued; Mallrats, Patty Hearst, Scarlet TV series; Eva Longoria’s Decline and Fall; + more

Internet TV

  • Kate Walsh to co-star in, Derek Luke joins Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why

New UK TV show casting

US TV

New US TV shows

New US TV show casting

  • Alan Ruck promoted to regular on Fox’s The Exorcist