It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week
Not quite as complete a reviewing week as I’d hoped, as Impulsetook up more time than I’d expected, as did work. But I did manage to squeeze out a look at Paramount (US)’s American Woman. I did, in the end, give AMC (US)’s Dietland a try but given there was a close-up of a woman using a razor to cut open her own breast in the first minute, I decided it might not be for me and gave up pretty speedily.
I’m not sure I can bring myself to watch anything on OWN – that’s the Oprah Winfrey Network to you – so Strange Angel might be all I’ve got up my sleeve in the next couple of days as far as new shows go. However, as season 2 of Marvel’s Luke Cage is on its way, I feel a bit of a boxset coming on.
That’s all to come, but after the jump, I’ll be looking at the latest episodes of the newly replenished TMINE viewing queue: Bron/Broen (The Bridge),Condor, Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger, Mystery Road, Succession and Westworld.
In Australia: Sundays, 8.30pm, ABC
In the UK: Not yet acquired
As a rule, most Australian cinema passes the UK by. Occasionally we get a breakout hit, such as Mad Max, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert or Strictly Ballroom, but largely, we miss out on the industry’s richness. A slight exception to the rule is horror and thrillers, usually ones set in the Outback, with the likes of Wolf Creek often doing better than you might expect, which is perhaps why the Australian TV industry is waking up to their possibilities for adaptation as series.
Mystery Road is a sequel to not just one but two movies that might have largely passed the UK public by, were it not for the likes of Amazon: the original Mystery Road and its sequel Goldstone, both of which starred Aaron Pedersen (Wildside, Water Rats, The Circuit, City Homicide, Jack Irish, A Place to Call Home) as an impressively craggy, lone detective, working in Western Australia near Perth. Essentially, a Wild West sheriff, it’s up to him to stand up for truth, justice and the Australian way when no one else will – usually because there is no one else.
Mystery Road: the series
ABC’s new six-part Sunday night thriller Mystery Road is more or less a direct continuation of those films that expands them out, even if Pederson is virtually the only actor to make it over from the original movies as the action has moved onto another location. It sees the rather highly nominated Judy Davis playing a small town police officer who calls in Pederson to help her when a local boy goes missing. However, it’s not long before they discover another boy is missing and that it might all tie into an old crime involving the boy’s uncle, who’s just getting released from prison – which is something no one wants.
Every Friday, TMINE lets you know when the latest TV shows from around the world will air in the UK
Last week, I talked about Walter (of Walter Presents)’s habit of acquiring things without telling us. Turns out he’s not alone and the BBC is getting in on the act.
For example, last week, lots of news services were reporting that BBC Two had picked up Picnic at Hanging Rock, thanks largely to the Beeb’s own press release. And it’s true that we didn’t know which channel it would air on until now. But the Beeb actually bought it back in December.
Nick Forward, Stan’s Chief Content Officer said “No Activity has made its way around the world, from Hulu in the US to the BBC in the UK. With another season of the US version to come later in the year, now feels like the right time to bring the team back to Australia for a very special production and we can’t wait to see what kind of havoc Trent, Patrick and the team wreak on Christmas 2018.”
Yep, apparently, the Beeb has bought the original Australian version of No Activity. It just hasn’t told anyone yet.
Meanwhile, it was announced today that Sky Living is going to rebrand as Sky Witness (ooh, puntastic). Tucked away in that announcement was the fact that it’s bought up not just ABC (US)’s For the People but also Epix (US)’s forthcoming ten-part, Patrick Dempsey-fronted The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair.
No word on airdates for any of those, of course, but at least we know Sky has them. In fact, we have but one new airdate to focus our attention on this week.
Premiere dates
Thanks to TV Wise for this week’s no longer closely guarded secret.
Girl with a brain disorder is able to enter the memories of newly dead people to find out why they were killed and solve the crime. Trouble is, it’s hard to deal with her newfound empathy and on top of that, it’s all part of a top secret government project run by young science nerds who may not know what the Powers That Be are really up to…
Basically, it’s Inception but “as stupid as a bag full of spanners wearing toupees”, to quote myself, so this is good scheduling by Syfy, since it’s a great summer show, breezy, silly and full of fun (each week, a fun game: guess the science-fiction TV show or movie the head nerd is quoting).
However, Freeform messed up by running the second season in the winter and nobody bothered tuning in, so it was cancelled. Equally, its summer scheduling and breeziness were a two-edged sword for me – it was fun enough to watch episodically, but I missed some episodes when I went on vacation and I didn’t care enough about it to play catch up when I came back.
Still, at least it’s better than NBC (US)’s rather similar Reverie…
