It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you each week what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently and your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching. TMINE recommends has all the TV shows TMINE has ever recommended and TV Reviews A-Z lists every TV show ever reviewed here
It’s Thanksgiving in the US this week, after which it’s basically December and Christmas, so everything’s just about coming to a halt on the broadcast networks, ready for a January restart. That means there aren’t as many regulars to worry about and WHYBW can revert to its normal time of Tuesday – at least for this week.
That does mean I’ve also not quite had time to watch the latest episodes of Babylon Berlin, though, but I hope to have caught up by next week. Lovely wife is poorly and since I’m worried that Marvel’s Inhumans might actually kill her, we’ve held off watching the series finale, too.
However, even if the broadcast networks are taking a break, the cable and streaming services are carrying on apace, as is the rest of the world. Elsewhere, I’ve reviewed the first episodes of Future Man (US: Hulu) and There’s… Johnny! (US: Hulu), while Boxset Monday took in Marvel’s The Punisher (Netflix). I’ll be passing a third-episode verdict on Frankie Drake Mysteries (Canada: CBC; UK: Alibi) on Thursday, and reviewing the first episodes of Marvel’s Runaways (US: Hulu) and The Indian Detective (Canada: CTV; UK: Netflix) next Monday. Sisters (Australia: Ten) will have to be consigned to the “never going to happen” pile, though, I’m afraid.
After the jump, I’ll be looking at the latest episodes of the current regulars: The Brave, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Mr Robot, SEAL Team and Travelers. See you in a mo!
TV shows
Shows I’m watching but not necessarily recommending
SEAL Team (US: CBS)
1×7 – Borderlines
Torture’s the name of the game this episode, with a CIA agent being tortured somewhere in South America, leaving our heroes – and Jessica Paré – to go and rescue her with the help and sometimes hindrance of various other countries’ special (and not so special) forces. At the same time, the young ‘un is back at HQ undergoing advanced SERE training, which doesn’t exactly look like a walk in the park.
Good to have Paré finally doing something other than giving people orders, there’s a really good shoot-out, and the team’s just about coming together. But the lack of a real serial storyline means it’s not quite coherent enough to get promoted to the recommended list, I don’t think.
Recommended shows
The Brave (US: NBC)
1×9 – Desperate Times
It was special forces shootouts last week, so tag team-style, we’re spying again this week on The Brave as we finally pick up on episode 1’s cliffhanger and its fallout. Albuquerque stands in remarkably well for Tehran, everyone speaks foreign languages well, even German (bonus points if you guessed it was Mike Vogel who Deutsched up – the clue was in the name), it’s all quite smartly done and then the cliffhanger just falls apart a bit at the end, unfortunately. Lovely taut stuff right up until that point, though, and the writers have definitely nailed writing team banter now.
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (US: BBC America; UK: Netflix)
2×6 – Girl Power
The first really duff episode of the season and perhaps the series, despite some marvellous imaginative magical moments, stupid soldier’s brilliant acts of stupidity and John Hannah’s realisations about the nature of reality. However, it all felt a bit tab A, slot B, with Dirk all depressed (and finally revealed to be Svlad Cjelli as per the books) and everyone else just doing plot-serving functions without really engrossing the viewer. Still, Alan Tudyk seemed to be having a lot of fun.
Episode reviews: First episode; third episode
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOMJEqc4szU
Mr Robot (US: USA; UK: Amazon)
3×6 – eps3.5_kill-process.inc
Back to multiple takes for this episode as Elliott continues his attempts to stop Stage 2 and Mr Robot continues his attempts to stop Elliott. Except everything goes a bit strange at the end. Thrilling and nice to have the “what’s real and what did I miss?” theme of the first two seasons back, if only for a bit. But where’s it all going now? Will Mr Robot and Elliott finally unite to save the world, like a somewhat limited Captain Planet? Let’s see…
Episode reviews: First episode; third episode
Travelers (Canada: Showcase; UK: Netflix)
2×6 – U235
Cunning! The world is saved by a reboot of the reboot of the reboot. I didn’t see that coming and it was quite a good reboot too, involving humour, some double-crossing and some lovely temporal mechanics. Ultimately, it all feels a bit more satisfying than the reboot in the first episode of the season and there’s the requisite “so cool” moment that makes it all worthwhile, too. Plus good to finally have confirmation of something I think we all knew was true already – (spoiler) (spoiler alert) the travellers are from Canada.
Whether we’re now going to go back to season 1 business as usual or the show will pick up the Enrico Colantoni storyline again, we won’t know until next week, though. Still, that’s the third reboot this season – wouldn’t it be interesting if this season’s theme was that all the time travelling was causing the show to reboot every episode?
Episode reviews: First episode; third episode
