Remember Why Don’t You…? Maybe not. It was a 70s/80s UK kids’ activity show that almost uniquely exhorted its audience to not watch it – ‘why don’t you…?’ being short for ‘Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go Out and Do Something Less Boring Instead?’
I say ‘almost uniquely’ because I’m starting to get the impression that US TV network The CW now has a similar message for its only slightly older audience. Or maybe it’s just feeling a bit maudlin and wondering if it should set up a ‘bucket list’.
Last season, we had No Tomorrow, a pleasing little show in which a previously staid young woman discovers the fun of living life to the fullest when she meets a man who thinks the world is about to end. ‘Live life like it might be your last day on Earth – because it might be!’ the show enthused. Well, okay, but I might not be watching The CW if it was my last day on Earth. Sorry guys.
That, ultimately, did have a resolution of sorts once it was cancelled, but new CW show Life Sentence feels almost like a continuation. It sees Pretty Little Liars‘ Lucy Hale playing a young woman who had been diagnosed with cancer. Her family rallied around. Her brother encouraged her to live life to the fullest. So she did. She went on trips to Paris. She married. She’s just about ready to have her ‘living funeral’ to say goodbye to everyone she loves when she gets shocking news.
She’s going to live. Her cancer is cured.
Yay?
Apparently not. And not just for her either. Sure, everyone’s happy that she’s going to live. It’s just that to make her life as perfect as possible before she died, they may have made some sacrifices. And hidden a few things from her.
Yep, it turns out that they should have switched off their TV sets and done something less boring instead. And now they’re going to.
Crime, by and large, is a grim, unexciting, depressing business, which is why so many crime shows try to find a way to liven things up. It might be by doing science experiments in CSI, or making your investigator immortal in Forever or an author in Castle.
But for a touch of show business, you can’t knock magicians. Not only do you get the glam, you can get the excitement of magic – ooh! That’s why the idea of the magician-detective isn’t that new. Think Alan Davies in Jonathan Creek, Simon Baker in The Mentalistor more obviously, Bill Bixby in The Magician. Even Mission: Impossible was largely about con artists and magic tricks, rather than proper spying, right down to having Leonard Nimoy’s agent, Paris, being an actual magician.
Add to that list the decidedly inferior Deception, which sees yet another magician think he can help the cops by doing card tricks. It stars Jack Cutmore-Scott (Cooper Barrett’s Guide to Surviving Life) playing Cameron Black, the world’s best magician. All looks rosey for him and his largely British team of assistants until one day he’s framed for a murder by fellow illusionist Stephanie Corneliussen (Mr Robot) and it’s revealed that for the past 30 years, he’s been secretly doing a Prestige and swapping out for his twin brother, Jonathan (also Cutmore-Scott). Jonathan ends up in the nick, while Cameron is left at large, his career in tatters.
When he sees on TV that a drugs kingpin has literally disappeared in a trick identical to one he himself performed, he volunteers to help the FBI agents involved – Ilfenesh Hadera (Baywatch), Laila Robins and Amaury Nolasco (Telenovela, Work It, Chase, Prison Break) – because he suspects that Corneliussen is behind it all. Before you know it, he’s brought his team – Lenora Crichlow (Being Human, A-Z, Back in the Game), Justin Chon and Vinnie Jones (yes, that one) – on board to help the FBI catch the bad guys, clear his name and free his brother using all the illusions he can muster.
The first season of Marvel’s Jessica Jones was a refreshing and surprising tilt at the genre. Rather than follow in the footsteps of its predecessor Netflix series, Marvel’s Daredevil, and give us a female vigilante out beating up New York’s criminal underclass, it was instead a feminist deconstruction of the entire superhero genre. Want to dress up in a suit and fight criminals? There’s probably something wrong you – maybe power issues, maybe toxic masculinity. The use of power to control others is something to be avoided by the individual, as it leaves both user and used damaged and changed by the experience. Combined with its use of the female gaze, in short, it was probably the first superhero show both by women and for women.
Since then, of course, we’ve had the underwhelming, rushed Marvel’s Defenders, which saw our Jessica team up with Daredevil and the rest of the Netflix Marvel crew to fight a scary new enemy. But while Defenders certainly was able to use our Jessica’s sarcastic PI ways with alacrity, it somewhat missed out on all that feminist subtext, turning her into a reluctant but still punchy advocate of extreme violence, murder et al. Was this character development, you might have wondered, with Jessica changed by her murder of arch-enemy and rapist Killgrave (David Tennant) into a different kind of heroine? What would season two of Jessica Jones be like? Would it be our Jessica in a costume at last?
Nope. It’s more of the same – at least as far as Jessica is concerned. The other supporting characters? That’s maybe a different story. A short, non-spoilery review after the jump, followed by a full review for those who don’t mind spoilers or who’ve already watched it.
