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. And if you want to know when any of these shows are on in your area, there’s Locate TV – they’ll even email you a weekly schedule.
I’ve had a heavy workload this week, which is why my output has slightly dwindled to a mere two TV reviews:
Sorry about that. But I have been managing to squeeze in some viewing, so after the jump, I’ll be looking at the latest episodes of: Ballers, Dark Matter, Glitch, Halt and Catch Fire, Humans, The Last Ship, Mr Robot, Stitchers, Strike Back: Legacy,Suits,True Detective,UnREAL, and The Whispers. Two of these I’ll be dropping from the viewing queue. Can you guess which ones, Tigers?
Hannibal’s been shunted to Saturdays in the US, by the way, so that’ll have to wait until next Friday now.
I’ve also watched a couple of movies.
The Equalizer (2014) (Now TV)
Denzel Washington reunites with Training Day director Antoine Fuqua for this adaptation of the famous Edward Woodward 80s TV series. Washington is Robert McCall a former CIA agent who retires after promising his deceased wife that he would stop doing the bad things. However, when a child prostitute (Chloe Grace Moretz in little more than a 10-minute cameo) is beaten up by her Russian pimp and Washington exacts revenge, everything escalates as he has to take on mob fixer Martin “I may be a Hungarian-New Zealander but I’ll play any other nationality” Csokas (Rogue, The Bourne Supremacy, Falcón).
There’s not a huge resemblance between this and the original TV series, with the whole movie essentially being the origin story that the pilot episode briefly touched on, it, too, setting up a potential franchise at the end. But surprisingly there’s not much action or even espionage work, to replace the episode-long drawn out violent politicking of the original series. Indeed, we bet the occasional shootout and fight scene and a series of incidents to which Washington presents fait accompli solutions to everyone’s problems.
Not an awful movie, though, there’s a certain degree of intelligence in the script and Washington makes for a very stoic lethal old buffer. But a disappointment for both action fans and fans of the original series. There’s not even a Rolls Royce in it.
X-Men: Days of Future Past: Rogue Cut (2014/5) (iTunes)
Not technically a new film at all, as I’ve already seen and watched the cinema release, but this new cut of the movie promised an entirely new sub-plot involving Rogue that had been excised from the original for running time. This version gives us just a few early additions in the first 90 minutes – a line here, a brief extra scene there – but is otherwise much the same as before. It’s not until towards the end that we get the big additions, and there is indeed an entire new sub-plot that gets added involving rescuing Rogue so that she can take over from Kitty. Everything makes a little more sense as a result and it’s interesting to see they must have refilmed certain scenes as some of the Rogue material conflicts with the cinema cut.
However, to be honest, it’s not that much extra, the extra plot was obviously only in it to crowbar Rogue into the movie, and its excision was no great loss as it all feels a lot slower as a result of the addition. So save your pennies, unless you’ve not seen the original but particularly if you were thinking of buying it on iTunes, as the promised two hours of additional material has so far been a no-show, thanks to an Apple cock-up.
In Australia: Thursdays, 8.34pm (no, really), ABC in the UK: Not yet acquired
The dead are coming back to life and this time they’re Australian! Well, most of them are, anyway.
Indeed, ABC’s new Glitch is exploring a path that the likes of Les Revenants, The Returned, Resurrection, Babylon Fields, et al have already trod well, with a small isolated town shaken up by the return of people once thought dead – thought dead because they actually were dead. And indeed, tonally, it’s very similar, being slow, thoughtful, consumed with the emotional impact of such a miraculous event and its real-world consequences.
So is there anything that makes Glitch different? Well, it’s Australian. That’s a bit different, isn’t it? And they all had to claw their way out of their own coffins, rather than just appear out of nowhere (although that’s Babylon Fields, too, now I think about it).
It’s also got a variety of dead people, including an Irishman and an Italian, although how big a variety is a bit tricky to say at this point, given most of them can’t even remember their surnames, let alone details about their lives. But certainly, as well as the recently deceased, there are zombies who died during the Second World War and even one who passed away during Victorian times. Are they coming back at random or because of what they can say about Australian history (this is ABC, after all)?
There’s also some comedy, surprisingly enough, with the Victorian Irishman (Ned Dennehy) being something of an ‘hilarious’, slightly racist alcoholic and getting into all kinds of scrapes with his new, teenage aboriginal partner in crime (Aaron McGrath from The Code, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, The Gods of Wheat Street).
And lastly, there appears to be a rule that if the dead try to leave town, their eyes start to bleed and they revert back to dust. Or maybe it’s if they return to where they were killed. The rule’s not yet clear.
But otherwise, if you’ve watched any of the shows listed above, you’ll know what to expect: a prestige production with some lovely filming in some lovely locations, with people really getting to act and do tragedy because their dead wife’s back and they just loved her so much.
The cast is strong, including Patrick Brammall (Power Games: The Packer-Murdoch War, Upper Middle Bogan, The Moodys) and Emma Booth (Underbelly). The central premise doesn’t quite feel like a retread of previous shows. There’s a slight tension from Brammall’s attempts to keep everything secret from the rest of the town, including his suspicious sergeant (Andrew McFarlane), as well as another character who doesn’t show until right at the end of the first episode.
And there are the central mysteries of who the remaining characters are and why everyone’s coming back from the dead – which the show’s characters do at least seem moderately interested in, which is more than you could say of Resurrection‘s.
Yet despite the short run (all six episodes are now available on iView), I’m not sure how tempted I am to watch the rest of it. There’s something of an allure to it and with Thursdays looking a little light at the moment, I might be tempted to tune in. But the whole thing lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Perhaps because what it’s offering just isn’t new any more.
