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.
Last week, I had the bright idea to shift ‘What have you been watching?’ to Mondays, as several Sunday shows were finishing and Thursdays were starting to fill up with new shows.
Stupid idea. Very stupid idea. A quick glance through the schedules revealed that I should leave things as they were, as as well as replacements for the existing Sunday shows and a couple of returning shows, there was a whole bunch of new Friday shows to deal with, too.
Thankfully, I’ve just about made it through this week’s viewing selection, with only Sunday’s Humans to work my way through still. Elsewhere, I’ve reviewed the first episodes (and sometimes more) of:
That means that after the jump, I’ll be looking at the latest episodes of the usual regulars: Halt and Catch Fire, Hannibal, Humans, Stitchers, Tyrant, Westside and The Whispers. We’ve also got the return of The Last Ship,Suits and True Detective to consider, as well as the second episodes of Clipped and Proof. Some of these are getting the chop. Can you guess which, Tigers?
But first, some theatre!
Rules For Living (National Theatre) A dark comedy starring that Stephen Mangan (Episodes, Dirk Gently, Green Wing), Miles Jupp (Rev, Neville’s Island), Claudie Blakley, Maggie Service and Deborah Findlay from off the tele, as a family getting together for Christmas. Jupp and Mangan are brothers, Findlay the mum, Service Jupp’s actress girlfriend and Blakley Mangan’s wife whom Jupp has pined for ever since they were kids.
The play’s focus, oddly enough, is cognitive behavioural therapy and the idea that we acquire ‘rules for living’ over time that while initially helpful, can eventually lead us to fixed behaviours that only make us unhappy. Only by learning what our rules are and breaking out of them can we become happy.
The play’s conceit is to put each character’s rule on a scoreboard at each end of the stage, so that the audience knows the rule, when the character has to obey it and what the exceptions to the rule might be. At the end, everyone’s score gets tallied up and the winner ‘rewarded’.
Rules For Living is both very funny and uncomfortable; it’s also uneven and occasionally forced, with elements of plausibility being stretched very far at some points. But it’s still very enjoyable, occasionally saddening, occasionally raw and by the end of it, you’ll be wondering what your own rules might be.
Another quirk of the the play is that it’s staged ‘in traverse’ – that is, the play is in the middle of the theatre almost like a pit, with the audience mostly on either side of the stage.
We were in the front row, which meant that we were as little as a couple of feet away from the cast (and some nice looking cake) at some points. However, if you want to avoid (spoiler alert) being hit by food during the food fight I’d recommend sitting a couple of rows further back or wearing something that can be washed clean easily.
Without having watched Outrageous Fortune, it’s getting increasingly harder to work out Westside, TV3’s 1970s-set prequel to the most popular drama in New Zealand history that isn’t called Shortland Street. Telling the story of OF’s safecracking grandpa Ted West when he was still young, vibrant and married to his still-alive wife Rita, does it feel like Outrageous Fortune 30 years earlier?
Dunno.
Is it true to the characters of the original show?
Dunno.
Does it tie into and sort out all kinds of plot threads from the original show?
Dunno.
Are its Shakespearean episode titles as good as the originals’?
Does it really matter?
To be honest, though, it might be a two-edged sword, knowing Outrageous Fortune well while watching this. There are sub-plots and plot threads from the first couple of episodes that I thought might be interesting for Westside to explore in later episodes. Except having looked them up, it turns out they were all answered in the original show. And having now looked them up, I know there’s going to be a sad ending, too.
So in retrospect, I was probably better off not knowing about Outrageous Fortune, instead getting to enjoy a fun Bonnie and Clyde meets Life on Mars down under comedy crime caper, with a swaggering, smart and likeable young buck of a semi-ethical criminal, his scheming, adulterous but apparently equally good-hearted wife, his dopey gang and their equally dopey relationships with other criminal gangs of various ethnic origins.
My first recommendation for anyone who never watched the original show is therefore to not look up anything about the original show, at least until this season is over. Let it stand on its own two feet, because it does this very well.
After a very decent start to the show, the second episode was a slight come down, losing some of the fun, while bravely making most of our heroes casual racists in a 1970s-stylee. Rita’s scheming was nevertheless good to watch and we got our first Almighty Johnsons cameo (Eve Gordon) – here’s hoping for more to come.
Episode three saw a return to the fun of the first episode, as well as a continuation of the darker themes, with 1970s attitudes to domestic violence coming under the spotlight, as well as New Zealanders’ then attitudes to other islanders. Thankfully, this was all a lot more tasteful than Australia’s Jonah From Tonga.
It’s hard to dislike and very easy to like Westside. It could do with tightening up here and there, and there are a couple of duff actors in the supporting cast, but the leads are great, the setting is marvellous and the plots strong. It may be a prequel but it feels like it has the potential to run and run (and I’m sure that’s the intention, too). Just don’t spoil it for yourself by reading what happens 30 years later.
Barrometer rating: 2 Rob’s prediction: Could run for multiple seasons
