David Nykl to star in HBO Europe’s Czech spy drama The Sleepers (was Oblivious)
Turner Latin America/Dopamine green lights: series of US-Mexico werewolf border drama Coyotl, romantic and family drama Amarres, and empowered 1990s murdering divas drama Tu parte del trato
Trailer for final season of Comedy Central’s Broad City
US TV show casting
Chandler Riggs to recur on ABC’s A Million Little Things
New US TV shows
The CW green lights: pilots of Jane the Virgin spin-off Jane theNovela; Riverdale spin-off Katy Kenne; a Nancy Drew adaptation; and Lost Boys adaptation
HBO green lights: small town detective limited series Mare of Easttown, with Kate Winslet
NBC green lights: pilot of insurance-less parental debt comedy Uninsured
It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week
It only took about a week before WHYBW missed its scheduled slot, but given how much new stuff has recently arrived and how much old stuff has returned to Tuesdays and Wednesdays, please forgive me. Still, I was wondering what I was going to do on Thursdays…
Please peruse them at your leisure, whether you intend to watch the shows or not.
ABC’s Schooled
New shows
Coming up in the next week, I’ll be reviewing The CW’s Roswell reboot, Roswell, New Mexico. Season two of The Punisher will be hitting Netflix this Friday, so I’ll undoubtedly be watching that. And if anything else pops up I’ll review that, too, if I can.
After the jump, though, despite my already extensive viewing schedule, there’ll be reviews of two other new shows I managed to catch: Schooled (US: ABC) and Fam (US: CBS). Gosh, mid-season replacements that are also sitcoms. Cos they’re always funny, hey?
I’ll also be talking about series five of Cuckoo (UK: BBC Three), which I know isn’t a new show and it’s not even a show new to me, but I think it’s probably the first time I’ll have talked about it on the blog.
The regulars
Although Counterpart decided to take a break this Sunday, a whole bunch of other shows decided to return this week. That means that after the jump, there’ll be the season (and probably series) finale of the one remaining regular, HappyTogether, as well as new episodes of returning regulars Magnum P.I., Corporate and True Detective. Joining them will be the second episodes of both Cavendish and Project Blue Book.
And for reasons that will become clear, I’ll also be talking about every episode of The Orville that’s aired since I gave up on it after its third episode.
Every week or so, TMINE flags up what new TV events BAFTA is holding around the UK
Following on from last week’s February listing, there’s been a quiet announcement this week of an additional February BAFTA event – ie. I had to look on their web site just now to find it. It should be an interesting, too, given it’s a masterclass in TV writing by Matthew Hall – the bloke who wrote the books CBC (Canada)’s Coroner is based on, as well as S4C/BBC1’s Un Bore Mercher (Keeping Faith) and ITV’s Kavanagh QC.
Award Winners Masterclass: Matthew Hall on Writing
Wednesday, 6 February 2019 – 4:00pm
The Atrium, University of South Wales
A chance to hear from the BAFTA Cymru winning writer of Keeping Faith.
Matthew began life as a trial lawyer before landing his first TV writing commission aged 27 on ITV’s Kavanagh QC starring John Thaw. He has written over 50 hours of prime-time TV drama and five novels. He divides his time between his family home in Wales and London.
A TV series of Matthew’s novels called Coroner has just been made for CBC in Canada and is airing in the UK on Universal TV from January 2019 onward. The books are set partially in Wales, and have been adapted by Welsh-born writer, Morwyn Brebner.
The event is part of the University of South Wales’ TV Futures Day.
We have a limited allocation of tickets for members. Email Vicki to reserve your place.
Every Friday, TMINE lets you know when the latest TV shows from around the world will air in the UK
Four acquisitions this week, but only one with a premiere date. Let me elucidate:
Acquisitions
Universal has picked up Global (Canada)’s six-part event mini-series about a vanished aeroplane, Departure, which stars Archie Panjabi, Christopher Plummer and a host of others. However, there’s no premiere date as of yet, probably because it only started production in November and hasn’t aired in Canada.
Alibi has acquired Nine (Australia)’s “so dumb it hurts” serial killer drama Bite Club, featuring Lost’s Dominic Monaghan. That’s likely to air in February, but there’s no exact date yet.
Walter’s bought DR (Denmark)’s adaptation of Jakob Ejersbo’s book of the same name, Liberty, featuring Connie Nielsen, Carsten Bjørnlund and Sofie Gråbøl. No premiere date either, as ‘this year’ is the best information Walter is offering at the moment.
Premiere dates
NEW AMSTERDAM — “Pilot” Episode 101 — Pictured: Ryan Eggold as Dr. Max Goodwin — (Photo by: Francisco Roman/NBC)
The Black List: Redemption‘s Ryan Eggold playing a newly arrived medical director at New York’s largest, oldest and most famous public hospital, New Amsterdam. He reckons there’s a lot wrong with it, so plans to turn it upside down, ignore all the rules and fire everybody who’s part of ‘the system’, so that doctors can get back to being doctors rather than accountants/golf players. Why, he’s so optimistic and revolutionary, he might even inspire that Freema Agyeman (Doctor Who, Sense8, The Carrie Diaries) to stop touring all the TV talk shows to raise funding and come back to working as a doctor again.
Based on a real-life doctor at the real New York hospital of Bellevue, there is at least a germ of something different in New Amsterdam and it was moderately interesting to see Eggold doing some robust change management, listening to those on the front-line to see what could be changed and then putting it into practice. The show doesn’t make him an all-knowing genius, but one who makes mistakes and is prepared to listen to find out how to fix them. It’s also not entirely populated with pretty people, with nice old doctor Anupam Kher turning out to have almost House-ian diagnostic skills, if a much better bedside manner, thanks to the mystic skill of “taking your time”.
However, the rest of the time, it’s plain old medical procedural melodrama and soap, with Eggold turning out to have cancer, his wife nearly miscarrying their baby, doctors trying to have relationships and dumping their girlfriends for not being black enough and so on. That’s before we get onto the likelihood of random people being injected with Ebola by terrorists in order to destroy New York.
This is clearly not a production team confident in its ability to woo viewers with rigorous MBA framework analyses.
By the end of the first episode, I’d been pleasantly surprised by the show but not interested in it enough to want to watch much more of it. But at the very least, it wasn’t a waste of my time.
As I pointed out when I reviewed New Zealand’s Wellington Paranormal last year, some shows are aimed at a worldwide market, while some are aimed at only the local market. In days of yore, the latter group would probably never escape their home countries, since what foreign buyer in their right mind would pick up a show that contained references only the locals would understand/find amusing?
But thanks to Netflix and its compatriots, these days, sooner or later, pretty much every show ends up being available worldwide, no matter how impenetrable it might be to outsiders.
As a result, the year is probably 2025 and you’re only just reading this review to see what Netflix’s new Canadian ‘Original’, Cavendish, is like, given no one probably acquired it until now. Or maybe you don’t understand it because it’s so Canadian.
Whatever the case, you’re probably laughing because it is surprisingly funny, even to non-Canadians and those who haven’t read Anne of Green Gables.
Seaside fun
Cavendish is a sort of love letter to coastal resorts such as… Cavendish, PEI. That’s the province of Prince Edward Island, non-Canadians, which is where Anne of Green Gables was set. Think Margate or Blackpool if you haven’t read it. Or maybe something even weirder and local. In fact, it’s getting on for The League of Gentlemen‘s idea of local at times.
It sees Mark Little (MrD, Gary and His Demons) and Andrew Bush (Picnicface) playing two brothers returning to Cavendish more than 20 years after their mother left their father and took them away to Toronto. Daddy’s sick and despite never having spoken to them in the intervening years, the two brothers decide it best to go and see him.
The first oddity to notice here is that daddy is played by The Actor Kevin Eldon.
There’s no explanation for why their dad is English. Or why Eldon is playing him like a cross between Father Jack in Father Ted and Norman Wisdom. Just accept it.
The oddities continue. Together with his new partner and her daughter, Dad runs a Museum of Curiosities that contains a stuffed wrestling bear, a foetus in a jar, a sarcophagus and many other pieces of strangeness. Typical stuff for tourists, basically. That’s not the oddity, though.
The oddity is the whole town. Cavendish is odd. The brothers arrive on ‘Beast day’, which is the day that everyone stays indoors to avoid being abducted by the Beast (it has the top half of a wolf and the bottom half of a wolf and might be a wolf, but isn’t). They say a special prayer at dinner to avoid being snatched away by the Beast. People even have Beast dreams that predict the future and which the cops trust as evidence. The town flag even includes the Beast.
And that’s just the first episode. In later episodes, there’s an Anne of Green Gables cult. There’s an actual witches coven. Or maybe two. There are possessed ancient statues.
Again, though, this is more League of Gentlemen stuff than Eerie Indiana or The X-Files. It’s a comedy, just one set in a place that the stars/writers found weird enough to mock.
Canadian self-mockery
For the most part, though, the jokes aren’t about the truly weird. They’re Canadians sending themselves up. There are jokes about rural Canadians with impenetrable accents and small-town life. Jokes about hunters. Jokes about mayors. No one’s immune. There may even be more jokes than that, but I’m not Canadian enough to have spotted them.
Fortunately, it’s the family interplay that really makes the show work. There’s the constant bickering between the two brothers, jokes about the baldness of one, and jokes about how no one remembers him. The daughter who runs the museum is hilariously acerbic, too. This works internationally for sure.
It’s just a shame no one outside Canada will get to see it until 2025, though. There might even be more than one promo video accessible outside Canada by then, too.
