Articles by Rob Buckley

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, The CW

Payback, as they say, is a bitch. Or a geek girl.

Last year’s “as near as The CW can get to a hit” drama was the rather lovely Gossip Girl, which followed the trials and tribulations of very rich girls (and boys) in an Upper East Side New York private school. With nothing much else doing well in the ratings other than the usual suspects (America’s Next Top Model, Smallville, Supernatural), The CW’s bosses cast their nets wide for something in the same mould.

90210 was the first obvious, easy-to-build clone and had built-in nostalgia value to lift its viewing figures into the (relative) stratosphere. But given the exciting world of literature was the source of Gossip Girl, The CW also turned its attentions towards the book How To Teach Filthy Rich Girls to make sure it wasn’t putting all its money on one horse.

Adapted as Privileged, it’s a somewhat different show than either Gossip Girl or 90210. While those two shows look at the hardship of life as a rich teenager, Privileged is for those who never were in the popular cliques. It’s for geek girls who love their books but wished they could be in those cliques.

Revenge will be theirs – complete with Spiderman quotes.

Continue reading “Review: Privileged 1×1”

In the US: Mondays, 8/7c, Fox

In the UK: Virgin1 at some point

It’s back. Woo hoo? Not exactly. I’m almost getting tired of repeating myself* but by the looks of it, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, apart from having the most needlessly long, pretentious title of all TV shows, is pretty much the same as it was last season so that’s what I’m going to have to do.

All the same, there are enough new wrinkles in the set-up that it’s worth having a brief chat about the second season and whether it’s worth joining if you’ve not seen it before.

Continue reading “Review: Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2×1”

In the US: Showtime, Sundays, 9pm. Starts September 28
In the UK: Probably FX again, some time next summer

It can’t have escaped many people’s notice that the story-telling structure of intelligent – and unintelligent – American television has changed substantially over the last few years. As well as the impact of 24, which has made serialised television possible again, The Wire‘s use of Shakespearean rather than Aristotelian storytelling techniques has spread to other dramas, while premium cable channels and DVD box sets have made “slow burn” TV shows viable.

All of which makes reviewing just the first episode of a new series a pain in the arse – or ass – particularly with something like Dexter. One of the first shows to demonstrate there was life on cable outside of HBO, it’s now on its third season and continues to demonstrate that some TV shows can’t simply be judged on their first episodes, since all the goodies are in the evolving plot still to come.

Continue reading “Preview: Dexter 3×1”