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Review: Transporter 1×1-1×2 (RTL/M6/HBO Canada/Cinemax)

8 January 2013 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Transporter The Series

In Canada: Fridays, 9pm ET/MT, HBO Canada/Super Ecran 1
In the US: Acquired to air on HBO Cinemax, possibly in June
In Germany: Already aired on RTL
In France: Already aired on M6

Co-productions are the future. Allegedly. Ask the BBC, which regularly works with BBC America and also HBO on productions. Sky also does plenty of international shows in collaboration with US, Spanish, French and South African broadcasters.

The idea is that you unlock more money that can result in either better shows or shows that couldn’t otherwise have been made at all, or you can have overseas filming and exotic locations courtesy of the people who know the areas best and can give you firm advice on the cultures that can be incorporated into the scripts.

Sometimes this works: the Swedish/Danish The Bridge was excellent; Sky’s Falcón and Strike Back are good; Canada’s Flashpoint, originally produced in association with CBS, wasn’t half bad, despite its desperate attempts to appear as un-Canadian as possible.

Sometimes it doesn’t: BBC/Cinemax’s Hunted was dreadful.

Quite often, the problem is in making a programme that will appeal to audiences in all the countries involved. Anyone can import another country’s television, quite cheaply, but once big production money is involved, you often want actors from both countries, filming in both countries, writers from both countries and so on. And of course each country’s producers and network executives will want input into the show. As a result, more or less anything interesting gets filed off by the process.

It’s basically ‘death by committee’.

In particular, there is one unholy alliance of producing countries, familiar to anyone who watched TV in the 90s, that can be pretty much be guaranteed to co-produce rubbish: Canada, France and Germany. Forget how good each individual country’s television can be – united in co-production they are only a force for evil.

Remember Highlander? Remember its arbitrary location changes from Canada to Paris and back each season? Remember the contractually obligated French and German actors struggling to speak English each episode? Remember the guest Englishperson in any episode shot in Paris, since they needed someone who could act in English, who was cheap and who could be there quickly?

If not, let’s pretend 20-odd years haven’t happened and tune into Transporter: The Series. It’s based on the 2002 Luc Besson French-US movie that starred Jason Statham as Frank Martin, an ex-special forces, samurai-like car driver who would drive anything you wanted, anywhere you wanted for a price and would kick the crap out of anyone who tried to stop him – provided you stuck with his supposedly rigid rules. The series sees Chris Vance (ex of Prison Break and Mental but no action background whatsoever) take over the role of Martin, who’s still working in the South of France – and Germany – but now has the help of a comedic German car engineer and an East European female boss, and is being chased by both the French and Belgian police.

Creative compromises? I don’t know what you mean. Here’s a trailer for the movie, followed by a trailer for the series itself.

Continue reading “Review: Transporter 1×1-1×2 (RTL/M6/HBO Canada/Cinemax)”

What did you watch last week? Including The Amazing Spider-Man, Arrow, The Killing 3 and Homeland

3 December 2012 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

It’s “What did you watch last week?”, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I watched in the past week that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.

First, the usual recommendations: 30 Rock, Arrow, Don’t Trust The B—– in Apartment 23, Falcón, Go On, Grand Hotel, Last Resort, and Modern Family.

Still in the pile to watch from the weekend: Dexter, Wedding Band and The Killing. But here’s a few thoughts on what I have been watching.

  • Arrow: I’m not sure what’s more implausible: that John Barrowman could have a grown-up son or that Tahmoh Penikett could be beaten in a fight so easily. Still, this was the first effort by DC’s very own Geoff Johns, and noticeably the first clunker of the season, despite the arrival of Helena Bertinelli – Huntress, herself. FIlled with dreadfully bad dialogue and poor characterisation, it felt like a bad Geoff Johns comic rather than a TV script. Stick to what you know, Geoff. And just to reiterate, Tahmoh Penikett!

  • Elementary: A bit more procedural than the previous week’s episode, but funnier, which the show could certainly do with. Definitely starting to feel like Sherlock Holmes, too. The one caveat: kind of demeaning to suggest that (spoiler alert)a woman in need of seed funding would become a prostitute. There’s a joke in there somewhere, possibly deliberate by the writers.
  • Falcón: Just noticed it’s got that nice Santiago Cabrera from Heroes in it. It’s also getting harder not to notice that no one – apart from Cabrera – knows how to pronounce Spanish words, and even he pronounces them in a Latin American way, rather than a Castilian way. We even had Falcón himself pronouncing General Pinochet’s name in a French style to rhyme with ‘croquet’ rather than ‘jet’, which is a little silly. Those niggles aside, it’s a compelling series, albeit quite a gruesome one, although frankly Falcón is a little self-obsessed and needs to man up. Sad to see Maurice Roëves get killed off within about two minutes, mind.
  • Go On: Oh yes. There’s an old blind guy in it. They seemed to have forgotten him for a while, but now he’s back for an episode with a reasonable amount of pathos. It also had Hayes MacArthur back and Laura Benanti had something to do for a change, which was nice.
  • Homeland: 15 minutes of probably the stupidest TV since season four of 24, followed by a decent half hour and ending. Why is it fundamentally so hard for Homeland to be consistent this season?
  • The Killing 3: So I’ll confess that I gave up after episode eight of the original – not because I didn’t like it but because two hours a week was a bit of a push for me. I didn’t bother with series 2 either. But I thought I’d give it a try for series 3. And… it’s okay. The acting’s good, the production values are good. But the plot, with the cunning kidnapper, feels very The Bridge (lite) – so much so that I started watching that again immediately afterwards – and the familial problems of Sarah Lund felt very implausible and cliched: it’s the standard trope that any woman who works hard in a police show will always lose her partner and end up with estranged kids as punishment for her transgressive ways. And of course she has to bump into her son at the station and get distracted. And of course the kidnapper has to call while she’s talking to her son and she can’t just say “It’s the kidnapper! I must take this! Lives depend on it!” But I am enjoying it and I’m going to try my best to keep up with it. BTW, is Danish politics really so low budget and amateurish that it seems more like Torquay council elections? And I’m assuming the name of the ship is a red herring, too (possible spoiler): that it’s not the mother who had her daughter abducted as punishment for the husband’s failings, as with Euripides’ Medea?
  • Last Resort: Apart from my complaint about the producers seemingly not knowing there’s a difference between the Caribbean and Hawaii, a decent enough episode that highlighted the problems of rape in the US military. Daisy Betts failed to rise to the acting challenge, however. A decent enough fight scene on the action side, but the show’s just kind of chugging along at the moment.
  • The Mindy Project: Not the funniest thing ever, but the “Iron Man novelisation” moment made me laugh out loud.
  • Vegas: The procedural was slightly duller this week, although the historical background to it was interesting. The episode did have some nice insights into Dennis Quad’s military background, with his sparring with the USAF investigator working well. Carrie Anne Moss also had a little more to do, now that the separate “Women Only” storyline is up and running, plus we have an extra female character to add to the mix, too. Needs to find some more verve if it’s to survive for a second season, though.

And in movies:

  • The Amazing Spider-man: The best Spider-man movie so far – far more Nolan-esque than the previous outings – with proper acting, some deeper moments than the first three, Emma Stone (redhead going blonde)’s Gwen Stacey being far less of a cipher than Kirsten Dunst (blonde going redhead)’s Mary-Jane, and Rhys Ifans doing a wonderful job as Dr Curt Connors aka The Lizard. Some great stunt scenes and the CGI felt solid, too, like it was actually a man doing the stunts, but the film still couldn’t avoid some cheese towards the end. Could have done with being more fun and shorter, though.

“What did you watch last week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

What did you watch last week? Including Grand Hotel, The Master, The Ghosts of Crickley Hall, Dexter and Vegas

26 November 2012 Rob Buckley 16 Comments

It’s “What did you watch last week?”, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I watched in the past week that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.

First, the usual recommendations: 30 Rock, Arrow, Don’t Trust The B—– in Apartment 23, Falcón, Go On, Grand Hotel, The Last Resort, and Modern Family.

Here’s a few thoughts on what I have been watching.

  • Dexter: Meh. While the show is playing all the right notes in some senses, it’s getting hard to care. Plus it looks like they’re handing over big bad duties for the second half of the season, which makes it even harder to care. But Ray Stevenson has been remarkable and last week’s scene with him and Michael C Hall was fabulous in an otherwise dull episode.
  • Don’t Trust The B—– in Apartment 23: A delightful piece of Thanksgiving evil. The return of Michael Landes was welcome, too.
  • Falcón: Is it just me or are more and more crime dramas forgetting they need to be solved somehow? Here we have the classic cop-out of the bad guy revealing himself for no very good reason, just so he can finish the plot off quickly within the run-time. All the same, an atmospheric piece of work with a surprising bit of casting for the villain (spoiler: Alexander Siddig from Star Trek: Deep Space 9). Good to see they didn’t write Hayley Atwell out immediately the story ended, too. I’ll be tuning in this week.
  • The Ghosts of Crickley Hall: Joe Ahearne of Ultraviolet fame adapting a James Herbert novel for BBC1. Unfortunately, it’s up to Herbert’s standards rather than Ahearne’s, and everything’s a bit dull and typically BBC – period trappings, nothing too nasty. Good cast, though, even if some of the actors think they need to act spooky for things to be spooky.

  • Go On: Hang on. So John Cho and Matthew Perry are supposed to be the same age? How’s that work? Despite that niggle and the return to the somewhat duller short title sequence, this was probably the best episode so far, with Lauren Graham of Parenthood turning up as Cho and Perry’s old college friend whom they both discover they have feelings for. Getting Graham in, who’s friends with Perry now but used to date him, is a genius move, since the chemistry they have was very obvious and the whole episode worked very well. The supporting cast got further rounding out, too, although Laura Benanti could benefit with a bit more depth to her character.
  • Grand Hotel: Best described as the Spanish version of Downton Abbey and currently running on Sky Arts, it’s actually a whole lot better than that. Both a period piece and a mystery, with one young man coming to the Grand Hotel to be with his sister, only to discover that she’s disappeared, it’s wonderfully made and acted. But it’s not my thing. But if you like Downton, give this a try. More about it here.

  • Homeland: After last week’s bit of silliness, it was a welcome return to form for Homeland, with everyone acting relatively sensibly and the story picking up at last. Grown up TV, again, thank God.
  • The Mindy Project: The return of Ed Helms for a fun episode that perhaps made us like all the characters more than Mindy now. And good to see an English character amused by the US rather than vice versa for a change.
  • Vegas: Another cracker of an episode and a bit of gamechanger, too, here blending the procedural in with the main storyline. And proud deployer of the line “What do you do for a living?” “Wholesale butchery”, which was lovely.

And in movies:

  • The Master: Beautifully made, beautifully acted and a fascinating character piece, essentially about L Ron Hubbard and Scientology, with Joaquin Phoenix playing an ordinary schlub who gets sucked up into ‘The Master’s’ (Philip Seymour Hoffman) post-war craziness. But one of the most meandering, plot-free films you’re ever likely to see, it stumbles from situation to situation for no well explored reason, relying on the actors to carry the whole thing with their performances because there’s no narrative drive or coherent message beyond “Learn to love yourself so that you can love others”.

“What did you watch last week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

Totally Serialized returns with Jean Reno and Jo, Spiral and Grégory Fitoussi, Ashley Pharoah, Doctor Who and more French & UK TV

22 November 2012 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Remember Total Serialized, the French and British TV Series Festival? Well it’s back again. Here beginneth the press release/

From 16 to 20 January 2013, Ciné Lumière at the Institut français will hold the second edition of Totally Serialized. It will showcase the best of new productions from both sides of the Channel and also European TV shows on the big screen – with actors, screenwriters and directors in attendance.

Highlights include:

  • The UK premiere of the first episode of Spiral series 4, followed by a Q&A with actor Grégory Fitoussi!
  • The first episode of the mini-series Labyrinth, based on the multi-million selling novel by Kate Mosse, followed by a panel Q&A with cast and key creatives
  • The UK premieres of new Scandinavian TV show Real Humans, and innovative French shows Rebound, Spin and The Church Men
  • A panel on TV screenwriting with Jack Thorne (The Fades, This is England), Ashley Pharoah (Life on Mars) and French screenwriters
  • The world premiere of Flight of the Storks directed by Jan Kounen
  • The world premiere of Jo attended by Jean Reno
  • A comedy medley of French and British sitcoms (The Thick of It, Peep Show, Kaboul Kitchen, Workingirls)
  • A Skins revival to say goodbye to the cult show ending this year, with a screening of the very first episode and a Q&A with the creator Bryan Elsley
  • A night of Doctor Who fun with fancy dress, music, quizzes and a writing masterclass with Toby Whithouse.

Other events will be announced in the next few weeks so please like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter (French Institute account) and check our website. The official Twitter tag for the festival is #TS2013.