It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week
Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries
This week’s reviews
So I didn’t quite manage to find time to watch and review ABC (Australia)’s The Heights, as promised, but elsewhere I did review the first episodes of:
Orange Wednesday also brought reviews of The Breaker Upperers (2018), Hunter Killer (2018) and Velvet Buzzsaw (2019).
Il Miracolo (The Miracle)
New shows
As usual, I’ve no idea what’s coming up in the schedules, but I’ve just started watching Il Miracolo (The Miracle) (Italy: Sky; UK: Sky Atlantic), so I’ll probably be reviewing the first episode (but maybe not both seasons) before the next WHYBW.
The regulars
After the jump, we’ll be talking about: Corporate, Doom Patrol, The Magicians, Magnum P.I., Miracle Workers, Ófærð (Trapped), The Orville, The Passage and Star Trek:Discovery, as well as the season finale of Cavendish. One of these poor souls is going to be purged from the queue – which do you think it’ll be?
Every Wednesday, TMINE reviews two movies and infringes a former mobile phone company’s trademarked marketing gimmick
Orange Wednesday is back again and despite the format, it’s brought three movies along to be reviewed. Is that a breach of the rules? No, because one was so bad, I couldn’t get through more than half of it, so it isn’t technically a review.
Have a guess which of the three movies it is I couldn’t stomach very long:
The Breaker Upperers (2018) – A New Zealand comedy in which two best friends run a business breaking up relationships
Hunter Killer (2018) – Gerard Butler is a submarine captain who must avert a third World War
Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) – Jake Gyllenhaal is an art critic whose live falls under the baleful influence of a haunted painting
NBC may now be the number one US network again, but it’s not got there through originality. To be honest, it tried originality 10 years ago with the likes of My Own Worst Enemy and it took the network about five years to climb out from bottom place in the ratings as a result, so maybe that’s a good thing.
All the same, it does mean we get an awful lot of the same stuff reheated, once a show has proven to be popular. Like shows set in Chicago? Then have Chicago PD, Chicago Fire, Chicago Medand Chicago Justice. Like Law & Order? Then have Law & Order: SVU and Law & Order: CI, too.
The Blacklisthas proven to be one of the network’s more enduring shows. However, after five years, its twinkle is dimming and a spin-off, The Blacklist: Redemption, didn’t exactly pan out well.
So how about a sex-swapped version that’s a bit duller? Cue The Enemy Within.
The Enemy Within
Taking over from James Spader in the role of “evil criminal who helps the authorities to catch other evil criminals for some reason” is the potentially almost as fascinating Jennifer Carpenter. Best known as the titular sister’s foul-mouthed cop sister in Dexter but who was also a whole lot of fun in Limitless, Carpenter’s a firebrand who can set the screen alight – when she’s allowed to.
Here she plays the ‘most notorious traitor in US history’, Erica Shepherd, a brilliant codebreaker and former CIA deputy director of operations, who was convicted of treason for working with terrorist Mikhail Vassily Tal. Three years after she’s arrested by top FBI counterintelligence agent Morris Chestnut (Rosewood, Legends, V, Nurse Jackie), Tal is back and setting off explosives around the US, so Chestnut’s boss suggests he talk to Carpenter, who’s held Spader-style in a box of a prison. Reluctantly – because she was responsible for his fiancée’s death – Chestnut capitulates and Carpenter is soon bringing her valuable insight to bear to try to work out what Tal is up to.
And if she can escape from custody using her big brain at the same time, that would be a bonus…
