Given it’s August and everyone’s going on their holidays, don’t be surprised that there’s not a whole lot of TV on at the BFI. However, it’s by no means a desolate wasteland. There are TV previews of the forthcoming BBC Sitcom Season, including Young Hyacinth, as well as the first episode of the new series of Poldark. There’s also a season of TV and film directed by Jack Gold, including Film4’s impressive Stalin satire Red Monarch. And for Cult TV lovers, there are three episodes of Thunderbirds 65. Full run-down after the jump.
In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, CBS In the UK: Thursdays, Amazon Prime
Summer novels are fine, if all you’re going to do is set on a beach all day and you just want to read something fun and untaxing. However, as weekly TV series, they often leave a lot to be desired. American Gothic seems to exist purely to fill a TV schedule somewhere, giving us the unlikely idea of a high-powered, multi-siblinged Boston family, all of whom potentially might be the so-called ‘silver bell’ serial killer. Each episode gives us evidence that one of the family might be the killer; the next episode then gives us evidence that refutes the previous evidence and suggests it’s someone else; and the third episode just decided to re-refute everything and suggest maybe it’s the first one. Who knows? Perhaps there’s more than one ‘silver bell’ serial killer or perhaps there’s just one but the others coincidentally happen to like murdering, too. Or something.
Trouble is, I’m not that inclined to care. While some of the cast seem happy to ham it up, only Justin Chatwin’s comic-strip drawing younger son and his very disturbed, cat-experimenting son have real characters. Everyone else is doing proper acting, except have to be just a bit grim and stoic because no one’s thought to give them much else to work with. Perhaps some people enjoy the sight of other rich people doing backstabbing, but I’m not sure “Oh no, you’ve only gone and bought that company through a Russian front company despite the fact we agreed you wouldn’t, husband” really has much resonance for me.
If rich people being rich, dull and potentially murderous floats your boat, American Gothic could be the show for you. If not steer a wide berth away.
Barrometer rating: 4 Would it be better with a female lead? N/A TMINE’s prediction: Cancelled at the end of the first season
In Australia: Mondays, 8.30pm AEST, Foxtel Showcase) In the UK: Not yet acquired
As I mentioned in my recent birthday round-up of lessons learnt over the past year, Australian TV is on the rise at the moment. There are lots of reasons for this. There’s the arrival of BBC First, resulting in the native channels having to create more of their own content rather than buy it from the BBC. Keeping a keener eye on selling to foreign markets means that co-production money can elevate or even gets shows off the ground where once they would have languished or not get made – Cleverman, for example, has benefited a lot from SundanceTV US’s budget contributions. There are also government and state funding bodies, with the likes of Screen Australia and Screen New South Wales giving TV companies cash and/or help in exchange for jobs-boosting filming (cf The Doctor Blake Mysteries) – which helps a lot.
All of this comes together in some way or other with The Kettering Incident, a production from Foxtel Showcase (think of it as Australia’s Sky Atlantic, UK readers) made in association with BBC Worldwide and Screen Tasmania. It’s also got its eyes firmly on what appears to sell well to the overseas market – beautifully shot, moody locations (Top of the Lake) and ‘Australian Gothic’ (Glitch).
Elizabeth Debicki, who of course was faux American in The Night Manager, is here a faux Brit – well, an Australian who used to live in the town of Kettering in Tasmania until she was a teenager. Then, while she and her friend were out in the forbidden woods one night, they see some lights, hear some noises and suddenly it’s eight hours later, Debicki is all alone and covered in blood and her friend has gone missing.
Fast-forward 15 years and she’s now a haematologist living in London. Problem is, she’s starting to have black-outs, during which she does weird things. She wakes up in the bins at the side of the street, covered in bruises. She wanders into her hospital and starts tap dancing. Then worst of all, she wakes up back in Kettering, having unknowingly bought a plane ticket and flown over there.
Before you know it, she’s having more time gaps, other people are disappearing having seen the lights, huge moths are gathering for no good reason, and she’s having visions. All while she gets angrily stared at by all the people who think she killed her friend.
Is there some secret military base, aliens, fairies or something weirder out in the forest? Or is Debicki psychotic like her mum and killing people when she blanks out?
The first two episodes are a tad on the slow side, something that’s not helped by the fact Debicki’s character is shit to everyone she meets or just spaced out the whole time. Most of it is Debicki milling around, meeting people, having a vision (usually of a moth) then passing out, only to discover something terrible/awkward has happened while she was out. There’s also not much by way of investigation of the central mystery, which given this first season is eight episodes and the showrunners are angling for additional seasons, makes me worry it’ll be about another five weeks before anyone does anything except pass out/complain about all the logging going on/have secret meetings to discuss Debicki.
But it does look very pretty and a bit eery, thanks to all the Tasmanian filming, the time losses are disconcerting (more so than in The Anomaly, thankfully) and there’s a good chance there might be a decent mystery behind it all, so I’ll probably stick with it for another couple of weeks at least. I’m not going to recommend it just yet, but I’ll keep my eye on it for you for now.
