In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, ABC . Starts tonight (June 14) In the UK: Not yet acquired
Not so very long ago, I ventured the opinion that remakes weren’t always inferior, awful and unnecessary – with the caveat that maybe you needed to start with something that wasn’t very good to begin with to notice an improvement. Now along comes Uncle Buck to test that theory.
I have fond memories of Uncle Buck, but only in the sense that it was the movie I took Jo Mercer to see on my first ever date, back in 1989. Those are the fond memories – I have almost no recollection of the movie itself, other than it starred John Candy. It was a date, after all. Here’s a trailer for it in case your memory needs jogging, too.
That helped a bit, actually. I also almost laughed a few times. I can see why you might want to remake that.
Now the mistake you might be making with Uncle Buck, ABC’s new sitcom with Mike Epps (“Black Doug” in The Hangover), is that it is indeed a remake of that original Uncle Buck. After all, they do share the same name. They also share more or less the same plot of a ne’er-do-well helping out his brother by looking after his kids for a weekend and despite making cataclysmic mistakes, somehow doing a good job (± some odd definition of ‘good job’). They even share a number of scenes, although largely they’re done far more weakly because who remembers Dragnet these days so why don’t we just have a kid asking some serious questions instead?
But that’s a rookie mistake. Uncle Buck is really just a remake of ABC’s black-ish, with its upper middle class, rich black family professional parents struggling to work out what it is to be black when you’re no longer back in the hood and your kids are all pampered nerds, brother Buck replacing Laurence Fishburne as the reminder of the ways of the street and the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Where it differs from this true original is having nothing cutting edge or intelligent to say. It occasionally elicits a mild guffaw, usually by treating kids amusingly badly, but largely this is weak stuff that for some reason didn’t bother to pinch half the funny ideas from even that mildly related 1989 relative’s trailer. To be fair, I quite liked the parents (Nia Long and James Lesure) and their relationship, which was mercifully gentle and loving for primetime US TV. But is it funny or better than either the (trailer for the) 1989 movie or black-ish? No. So bang goes that theory of mine.
Possibly one to show your kids as a cautionary tale, but definitely not one to show anyone on their first date.
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.
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 Girlscalled 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.
