I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.
Great Hera! What’s that? The first ever film appearance of Wonder Woman is due this Friday but Weekly Wonder Woman is taking a break next Monday because it’s a Bank Holiday? Something’s got to be done about that. I’m not sure what, but something. Let’s see what happens next week.
This week, however, we’ve had a few appearances by Wondy in the comics world. Over in DC Comics: Bombshells, one of the Justice League has to die – but is it Diana? Meanwhile, in Superman-Wonder Woman, there’s some fighting to be done. Plus ça change, hey? Speaking of French, over in The Legend of Wonder Woman, Paris has been liberated from the Nazis with a bit of help from Diana, but the war’s not yet over. That includes the war on foreign languages. While a few years later in Wonder Woman ’77, there’s some undercover action as Diana faces off against one of Odysseus’ many enemies, somewhere near the Panama Canal – can you guess which one it is?
All that after the jump, but we’ve had a brief crossover with the movie world, too, with Gal Gadot getting interviewed about Wonder Woman in the back of various DC Comics. Here’s what she had to say:
It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.
The usual “TMINE recommends” page features links to reviews of all the shows I’ve ever recommended, and there’s also the Reviews A-Z, for when you want to check more or less anything I’ve reviewed ever.
Can you feel it? It’s springtime, everyone, and that can only mean a changing of the TV seasons. Some current shows are finishing their runs, while others are just starting, and there are more on the way. Others are just lounging around, eating chocolate eggs.
This week, I’ve reviewed Underground (US: WGN America) and Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders (US: CBS; UK: W), and if you cast your minds back to last year, I previewed Crowded (US: NBC), which has just started airing in the US. In the next couple of days, I’m going to be reviewing the entire second season of Daredevil (Netflix), which I somehow managed to binge-watch over the weekend, as well as anything else new that comes my way. Either that, or I’ll be toasting my eminent good sense in not bothering to watch ABC’s Of Gods And Prophets, given it was cancelled after a mere two episodes of Wicked City-bad ratings.
That means that after the jump, I’ll be looking at the latest episodes of 11.22.63, Billions, Damien, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Flaked, Limitless, Lucifer, The Magicians, Okkupert (Occupied), Second Chance, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man, Supergirl and Vikings. One of those is probably not long for this world, one is getting a demotion, but surprisingly, two that had surprisingly awful beginnings are getting promoted to the recommended list. Can you guess which ones?
Oh yes. The Americans is back, too.
But first, a movie!
Spotlight (2015) Journalism always seems exciting to outsiders, but if you actually look at what it involves, even if the results can be exciting, to be honest, the actual process is pretty monotonous. I use Excel in my day job just as much as I use Word – that should tell you something. Certainly, the most realistic movies and TV shows about journalism point out that it mostly involves endless note-taking, fact-checking, research, dead-ends and meetings, with even All The President’s Men being a major snoozefest most of the time – I think only the TV version of State of Play has ever managed to be both fun to watch while depicting something that a journalist would recognise as been similar to his or her day job.
So it is with Spotlight, a meticulously exacting recreation of how the Boston Globe‘s investigative journalism department revealed in 2001 that nearly 100 local Catholic priests had abused as many as 1,000 boys and girls in their charge over the years and the church had covered it up. Featuring a star-studded but unflamboyant cast (Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci), the almost pre-Internet story largely consists of Ruffalo, McAdams and Keaton setting up spreadsheets, looking in books, sifting through legal documents and trying to find evidence, all without a gunshot, car chase or even fist fight (it is Boston) along the way.
The film just about manages to keep the viewer’s attention, helped in part by the sheer horror of the story, but also by the attention to location, the period details – yes, it really does feel like a period drama – and the exploration of the politics of the situation, with powerful pressure being applied to the paper and its journalists through subtle means, as the social interconnections between the paper, the church, the police and other institutions worked to try to prevent anyone rocking the boat. But there were times when even my desperate need to nitpick the movie’s accuracy (I couldn’t) wasn’t quite enough to stop my attention from wandering.
Don’t get me wrong – this is undoubtedly not only the second best journalism film ever made, but the second best film about a member of the Bradlee clan (Mad Men‘s John Slattery plays Ben Bradlee Jr). It’s also marvellous to have a grown-up film, telling a grown-up and important story, in which journalists are the good guys for the change. It just would have be nice to have a car chase, too.
PS It’s coming up to the Easter double holiday here in the UK, which means this will be the last WHYBW until 1st April. Or maybe the 2nd. Or maybe, just to be wacky, 30th March. It’ll just appear at some point around then, anyway.
The question of whether people would really be fooled by Clark Kent wearing glasses into not realising he’s Superman has vexed many for years. Surely, oh surely, that’s not a great disguise. That’s not going to work. Only a complete idiot would be fooled by that.
Or a genius billionaire. But definitely not a talk show host – they’re smart puppies.
Or so you’d think. But apparently Henry Cavill can walk around Times Square wearing a Superman top and stand right in front of the Superman v Batman posters and no one will recognise him. So maybe we are all idiots.
