Year: 2017

Baywatch
US TV

What have you been watching? Including Baywatch, Bang, Get Krack!n and Professor T

26 September 2017 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

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 reviews of all the TV shows TMINE has ever recommended, but for a complete list of TMINE’s reviews of (good, bad and insipid) TV shows and movies, there’s the definitive TV Reviews A-Z and Film Reviews A-Z. But it’s what you have you been watching? I bet it’s better than what I’ve been watching.

And lo! The floodgates have opened. Coincidentally in the week I’m busiest this month. Why couldn’t it have been last week? Pfft.

I’ve already reviewed The Brave (US: NBC) and the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery (US: CBS All Access; UK: Netflix), and I’ve passed a third-episode verdict on The Orville (US: Fox; UK: Fox UK), too. But still in my viewing pile from last night are Young Sheldon (US: CBS; UK: E4) and Me, Myself and I (US: CBS); I’ve still to write a preview of Ghosted (US: Fox), although doesn’t start until October 1; and I have to admit to having been a bit tardy in getting round to watching Bad Blood (Canada: City), too. All of those I hope to review within the next week, but you can bet your bottom dollar there’ll be a bunch of other shows joining them soon.

I’ve only watched one movie this week, Baywatch, so after the jump, I’ll be discussing that along with the latest episodes of Get Krack!n (Australia: ABC), Halt and Catch Fire (US: AMC; UK: Amazon) and The Last Ship (US: TNT; UK: Sky1). I’ve also been playing catching up with Bang (UK: S4C) and Professor T (Belgium: Eén; UK: More4). More on all of those in a mo.

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NBC's The Brave
US TV

Review: The Brave (US: NBC)

26 September 2017 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

In the US: Monday, 10/9c, NBC

And so it begins. Spurred on by the success of both USA’s Shooter and the defence-spending happy Donald Trump, this US Fall season is going to be marked by a whole slew of almost certainly interchangeable military dramas designed to appeal to the ‘rust’/’flyover’ states. First up is The Brave.

So interchangeable are these shows that right up until I started writing this entry, I thought The Brave was a CBS programme. It looks just like one. We have a tiny unit of special forces operatives (cf CBS’s The Unit) tasked with going overseas to defend Americans (cf CBS’s Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders). We have a bunch of manly men (and a woman) out in the field, while back home in Washington DC, we have a bunch of nerds led by a woman in a suit (Anne Heche) telling them what to do while she stands in front of a big array of monitors (cf CBS’s CSI, CSI: Cyber, Intelligence).

It’s just so CBS. It even starts with a ridiculous statement at the start that in no way would piss off any other US or other government’s agencies:

You’ll note ‘increasingly’ offers the show a little latitude here.

And when our team gets sent on its first mission of the series to rescue a member of Doctors Without Borders who’s been kidnapped in Syria, we get dialogue like, “When are these bleeding hearts going to learn it’s just too dangerous to help people out here” and “We are fighting people who want to wipe us off the planet. That means we have to be as ruthless as they are.”

Except The Brave‘s not a CBS show. It’s on NBC.

Huh.

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Vanity Fair
News

E4 acquires Young Sheldon; Amazon acquires 4 Blocks; iPlayer’s ‘From the Archive’; + more

26 September 2017 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Internet TV

International TV

  • Suranne Jones and Michael Palin join ITV/Amazon’s Vanity Fair

German TV

  • Tom Wlaschiha, Vincent Kartheiser, James D’Arcy et al join Sky Deutschland’s Das Boot

UK TV

US TV

US TV show casting

New US TV shows

New US TV show casting

Star Trek: Discovery
Streaming TV

Review: Star Trek: Discovery 1×1-1×2 (US: CBS All Access; UK: Netflix)

25 September 2017 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

In the US: CBS All Access. New episodes Sundays
In the UK: Netflix. New episodes Mondays

One of the most controversial aspects of the recent Star Trek movie reboot was Admiral Pike’s statement that Starfleet is a humanitarian and peacekeeping ‘armada’. It wasn’t an organisation dedicated to discovery but to war, it seemed.

Which cut straight to the heart of what many fans though Star Trek should be. Was it a marvellously liberal show about war being bad and tolerance being good, or not? The official line is that Star Trek is a show all about peace and love – and discovery. ST:TNG – discovery in a spaceship. ST:DS9 – discovery by having everyone come to a space station… and then in a spaceship. Star Trek: Voyager – attempt to be edgy and full of conflict for three episodes before it’s discovery in a spaceship. Star Trek: Enterprise – discovery in a spaceship.

Star Trek: Discovery

Ironically, we now have Star Trek: Discovery, the first Star Trek show to be about full on warfare from the outset and which therefore has people questioning if it’s proper Star Trek.

Well, maybe in retrospect Gene Roddenberry decided that Star Trek was totally anti-war, but you only have to look closely at that original series for a few minutes before you notice that there’s a lot of mentions of war and of the Federation having fought wars in the past. How many Neutral Zones are there, for example, to stop various empires coming into conflict with the Federation again? Why exactly are people training hard in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan to fight Klingons as part of their academy training? Hell, Captain Kirk even says in Errand of Mercy “I’m a soldier, not a diplomat”, which should tell you something.

So, it’s fair to say that Star Trek: Discovery is as much Star Trek as any of its predecessors. It also wants you to know it, too. Set ’10 years’ before the USS Enterprise goes off on its five year mission, Discovery sees Sonequa Martin-Green playing a girl orphaned by Klingon raids as a kid and who’s brought up on Vulcan by Spock’s dad Sarek (James Frain). Subsequently, well versed in the art of logic, she ends up as first officer on Michelle Yeoh’s slightly clapped out old starship. Seven years later, they’re off investigating a damaged space-thingy on the edge of the Federation’s border with the Klingon Empire when you guessed it, the Klingons pop up for the first time in a century. Anyone reckon they’re interested in peace?

Queue the start of the next great Klingon War.

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