It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week
September’s just around the corner and TMINE will be resuming normal(ish) service on Monday with the return of the Daily News – although there have been all kinds of exciting developments over August, such as the return of Patrick Stewart to the role of Jean-Luc Picard, which you could have heard about via TMINE’s Twitter feed and Facebook page, if you’d been so inclined. I mean are there other news sources? I don’t think so.
As I mentioned last week, although it’s been very quiet for new TV in both July and August (RIP the summer season), the schedules are about to kick in again. The US networks have already started putting out big clips from their new shows, including Manifest:
Meanwhile, today, Netflix released season two of Ozark and Amazon gave us the return of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan in the imaginatively titled Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, except now he’s played by that bloke from the US version of The Office. I doubt I’ll be able to boxset either of them over the weekend, but I’ll give it a whirl, although it might be next Monday before I can get through one/both of them.
I did promise last week, though, to try to boxset my way through at least one of various new releases last week: Netflix’s Ghoul, The Innocents and Karppi (Deadwind). After all, what were the chances of there being three duffs? Well… We can talk about that after jump.
Also after the jump, I’ll be chatting about the latest episode of Shooter, as well as the rest of the first season of Au service de la France (A Very Secret Service).
I’ll just mention in passing before we pass into that nether-realm that TVNZ has just released the first few episodes of an experimental non-linear show called Alibi. The innovation? You can watch the episodes in any order.
The way we view drama shows is about to change as a new non-linear TVNZ OnDemand series Alibi is about to arrive.
The show will call into question all your preconceived ideas as viewers navigate their way through six suspects’ witness statements given to a detective over the death of a young schoolgirl in Awatahi.
Just like a choose your own ending book, viewers get six episodes to watch and you draw your own conclusions.
The list of suspects includes a gang member, teacher, the local handyman and perhaps the creepiest of all – Father Sebastien, the leader of the local cult.
Who was playing the role of the murderer was even kept from the actors during production.
The final episode will be released on 13 September and that will reveal whodunnit. I imagine you have to watch that one last.
I’ll try to sneak that one in if I can, as I imagine it’ll end up on either Netflix or Amazon at some point. Plus it’s got Joel Tobeck (Xena, Westlife, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Ash vs Evil Dead). I like him.
It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week/month
I’m calling it – summer season is dead. It has ceased to be. It is an ex-season.
Before TMINE went away on its holidays, I pointed out how quiet July had been worldwide, but while I was away, the number of new shows has been small. Very small. Castle Rock (US: Hulu) and Dead Lucky (Australia: ABC) were released and Netflix gave us Insatiable, but that was basically it.
Sure, there have been returning shows, but new shows haven’t had a look-in and a lot of shows that used to air over July and August have postponed their returns until the end of the month or September. That even includes the final season of The Lost Ship, which was filmed a year ago, so production concerns clearly weren’t stopping it from being aired in its usual slot.
I’m guessing that ratings haven’t held up for any TV shows. Probably because everyone’s been on holiday. Or maybe it’s because of my fearsome “if it starts in August, I won’t review it rule.” That’s probably it, isn’t it? Still, it does make my life easier.
Thankfully, new shows have already started coming online. Netflix has this very day given us Ghoul, The Innocents and Deadwind, while Amazon has woken up again and is giving us Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan next week. I’ll try to watch some, if not all of them, and give you at least one Boxset next week. After that, I’ll be struggling to catch up with the release schedule, with new Iron Fist coming, The Last Ship back, and season two of Ozark due on 31st.
In the meantime, I’ve been continuing with the usual viewing queue, although that’s now down to just Shooter, given Condor and Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger finished their runs while I was on holiday. All of them I’ll discuss after the jump.
I also scoured around for new shows to watch, as well. Of the shows I mentioned last time, I could never quite bring myself to watch the rest of Jongo but I made a brave stab at the properly subtitled second season of You Are Wanted. I also managed to catch the movie version of Stargate: Origins, and started a new French show: Au service de la France (A Very Secret Service). But we can talk about all of those after the jump.
In New Zealand: Wednesdays, TVNZ 2, 8.30pm
In the UK: Not yet acquired
Taika Waititi is so hot right now. Eagle V Shark may have had a cult following, but it didn’t elevate him to stardom. You might have noticed him in Green Lantern…
…but it didn’t exactly give him free rein to be hilarious. 2014 vampire house-sharing comedy What We Do In The Shadows, which he co-wrote with Flight of the Conchords‘ Jemaine Clement, might have done better business than the original short film, but it still didn’t quite set the world alight.
However, the marketing muscle of Marvel Studios meant that Thor: Ragnarok finally unleashed the hilarity of Taika Waititi around the world. Naturally, that has meant there’s a lot of interest in his latest projects, which include a US series of What We Do In The Shadows with Toast of London‘s Matt Berry.
Wellington Paranormal
Before that, though, we have a somewhat more niche project that’s actually more of a Jemaine Clement affair, given he’s the co-writer of the first episode. It’s a New Zealand TV show called Wellington Paranormal that’s a spin-off from What We Do In the Shadows, and features two of that movie’s characters, Officers Minogue (Mike Minogue) and O’Leary (Karen O’Leary), but none of the vampires. A sort of cross between Cops and The X-Files, it sees the hapless duo Mulder and Scullying up to haplessly investigate incidents of the paranormal at the insistence of their sergeant (Maaka Pohatu), who’s been collecting evidence for years suggesting that Wellington might have its own hellmouth (maybe).
The first episode concerns a case of demonic possession that might ultimately lead to the dead coming up from hell to take over the Earth through the Bucket Fountain in Wellington, which was apparently created by Satanists in the 60s. As you might deduce, just like The Almighty Johnsons before it, Wellington Paranormal plays on the low-key, friendly, not especially Earth-shattering nature of New Zealand life, as well as satirising genre conventions. O’Leary and Minogue generally have little to do in their regular line of duty and when they experience a demon projectile-vomiting, they merely advise it where to direct its bodily fluids. They chase after ‘unusually athletic’ housewives, castigate people for breaking the laws of gravity, and advise them not to rotate their necks 360º as it’s bound to hurt. Minogue’s claim to there being a sexual tension between him and O’Leary is met merely with an uncomfortable, embarrassed silence.
However, if you’re expecting something designed to ride on the backs of both Clement’s and Waititi’s current popularity to achieve worldwide success, you’ll be surprised. This is a low-budget affair clearly devised as something for a New Zealand audience watching TV NZ’s second channel (not even its first). There are plenty of jokes that you might need Wikipedia to get if you’re not from NZ – the Bucket Fountain joke only really works if you’ve ever spent time watching it in real-life – and you really do have to have an appreciation for the New Zealand style of comedy to find Wellington Paranormal a laugh-a-minute, rather than a titter-a-minute show.
There is plenty to raise a giggle most of the time, and there’s even a belly laugh from time to time (such as O’Leary’s encounter with a fence), but it’s not something that even tries for the hilarity of Thor: Ragnarok, let alone achieves it.
Not Ghosted
On the plus side, it’s at least light years ahead of Ghosted and the 25-minute runtime does fly by, as there’s never really a let-up in the show’s antics. The characters are more jokes and set-ups for punchlines than real characters, but that’s often usually enough to work, and the genre pastiching does score more than a few hits.
Just don’t expect something that’s going to set the world alight or make your sides hurt from all the laughing.
