International TV

An archive of blog entries about international TV programmes and production, including co-productions and shows from countries other than usual

What have you been watching since Christmas? Including Mr Selfridge, End of Watch, The Hobbit, Premium Rush, Doctor Who, Elementary and Last Resort

11 January 2013 Rob Buckley 11 Comments

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

Now that Christmas is out the way and I’m back from my holidays, hopefully this will once more be a weekly feature, hopefully always on a Friday, but what with work n’all, maybe on Monday, instead. But weekly.

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

Second, a new recommendation: Mr Selfridge, which is an ITV period piece written by Andrew Davies that looks at how American retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge came to found his Oxford Street department store and how various women’s lives were changed by the freedoms it offered them. I really liked it – beyond an occasional bit of woodness from a few of the younger cast members and Piven, who’s otherwise superb, the first episode was pretty much perfect, I thought. Yes, an ITV drama that’s actually good. Surprise 1. Secondly, a Jeremy Piven drama that’s good. Surprise 2. No surprise that Spiral‘s Grégory Fitoussi, who plays the store’s chief window dresser, is good, though.

And here’s a few thoughts on what else I’ve watched. There’s more than a few shows in the pile still to watch, thanks to my extended absence, including Ripper Street, Restless, A Young Doctor’s Notebook, Hard and Spies of Warsaw, as well as the return of Cougar Town and Modern Family. Let me know if any of those are/aren’t worth the effort. But here’s what I have seen:

  • Borgen: I’m midway through episode one of the new series. Please tell me it gets better, because it’s even worse than The Killing 3 at the moment. Confusingly, it even has the Danish PM from that show playing another character who isn’t the Danish PM. But I am liking the lead (Sidse Babett Knudsen) a lot and the switch into English whenever anyone foreign turns up is pleasing.

  • Doctor Who: Yes, the Christmas episode, which I think was probably the best Matt Smith one so far. Funny and fun, with just a hint of intriguing tragedy, too. The links to good old Troughton villain The Great Intelligence were lovely, too.

  • Don’t Trust The B—-: Two unremarkable episodes for the show, but they’re still a cut above most comedies and a lot darker than you’d expect from a network show.
  • Elementary: Despite the presence of Vinny Jones, who was actually pretty good as (possibly) Moriarty (spoilers: not actually Moriarty but the famous Colonel Sebastian Moran, Moriarty’s helper monkey from the books), probably the best episode so far. Quite why Vinny was such an Arsenal fan and quite why Arsenal were playing so many games that week, I don’t know, though.

  • The First Family: Essentially, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air but in the White House and not funny.

  • Go On: Good to see them moving away from everything being Ryan-centric now, with various characters interacting and having storylines without him.
  • Last Resort: Well, it looks like they’re actually going to wrap this baby up in two episodes’ time, and things are progressing apace. As always, anything naval is superbly handled and tense, anything domestic is dross.
  • Little Crackers: Various semi-autobiographical pieces by stars including Sharon Horgan and Dylan Moran. Like a lot of Sky comedies, not as funny as they should have been, and obviously in need of an edit or two, but all had odd merits.

  • The Mindy Project: And I’m giving up. Only a few chuckles per episode now – the switch away from rom-com to office comedy has been a real let-down after such a great start. Oh well. More time to watch other stuff, then.
  • Vegas: You know, I only noticed this last episode but Sarah Jones from Alcatraz is the new lady in town, isn’t she? Well, she’s far more versatile and chameleonic than I realised. Glad she’s moved onto a better show, too, because she was wasted there. This week’s episode, getting back on topic, was a big uptick in quality, getting away from the episodic crimes in favour of more serial story-telling, with an almost Wire-like attempt to show that the system can’t be changed. Carrie Anne-Moss actually had something to do, too, and Michael Ironside even got to appear. Keep it up, Vegas, and you’ll be promoted to the recommended list, soon.
  • The Wedding Band: The first excellent episode of the show so far, despite starting with the tired old “all Indians have arranged marriages” cliche. As always, surprisingly sensitive and sophisticated, despite the guyisms, and there’s not many shows that can have you sniffling from the romance of a plotline and then end the episode with a cover version of ’99 points (but a bitch ain’t one)’. Good use of soccer rules in it, too.

And, as you can imagine with my being on two transatlantic plane flights, I saw a lot of movies:

End of Watch
Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña find themselves in a slightly implausible episode of Southland. Probably one of the best cop movies you’ll ever see, but the demands of the A-plot swamp most of the virtues of the movie, which are the everyday small talk between Gyllenhaal and Peña and the encounters they have with normal LA citizens.

The Hobbit
So incredibly dull for the first hour, I actually fell asleep twice. However, once the trolls turn up and it becomes a lot more Lord of the Rings, then it becomes a far more enjoyable prospect. Richard Armitage does a decent job as Thorin, Martin Freeman boggles the mind by being Martin Freeman… but not, and it’s nice to have the return of all those Rings actors – it brought a little tear to my eye. Even Sylvester McCoy works in context. However, it’s still fundamentally a story for kids rather than for adults, with a lot more fart gags than the previous movies had.

No Strings Attached
An interesting attempt to do a gender-reversal rom-com, with heart-on-a-sleeve, IQ-challenged Ashton Kutcher hooking up with the emotionally stunted brainiac doctor Natalie Portman, who wants a no-strings attached sex-only relationship. At one level, it works quite well, with Portman having to go through all the emotional and physical challenges the heroes of romcoms normally go through. But despite being written by New Girl-creator Elizabeth Meriwether and starring most of the casts of Fox’s current shows, including The Mindy Project‘s Mindy Carling and New Girl‘s own Jake Johnson, it’s not actually funny. Rom but no com isn’t great. Also, when did people stop doing foreplay?

Percy Jackson
Harry Potter meets Greek myth… badly. Strictly for the kids.

Premium Rush
When you think about it, there are surprisingly few movies or TV shows about people who ride bikes (remember ITV’s Streetwise with Andy Serkis, anyone?), which is what makes Premium Rush so refreshing. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a cycle courier in Manhattan who has to deliver a package before 7pm or else bad things will happen. Except Michael Shannon from Boardwalk Empire wants to stop him. Very indie, with a non-linear timeline, elements of Witness and more, probably the worst thing about it unusually is Shannon, who goes for comedic when he should be threatening. But if you’ve ever ridden a bike seriously, the adrenaline surge you’ll get from the racing scenes will be something chronic. Loved it.

Ruby Sparks
Writer imagines a perfect girlfriend and Weird Science-like, she comes to life. So painfully twee, though, I lost all patience with it within about 10 minutes.

The Social Network
David Fincher is back on form. Hooray! With this, Aaron Sorkin takes the plunge and decides to deal with this new-fangled Internet thing – specifically, how Facebook was created. Horribly misogynistic, both in the attitudes of the people involved and in Sorkin’s authorial choices, but Jesse Eisenberg is fantastic as Mark Zuckerberg, a man who apparently has the most obvious case of Asperger’s superiority complex since the dawn of time. Great movie (apart from that annoying misogyny).

Unknown
Well, I guess if you’re going to do a Euro spy thriller, Liam Neeson is the person to call. Here, he plays an academic who wakes up after a car accident to discover no one knows who he is, not even his wife, and someone else has taken his place. A sort of combination of Taken, The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Identity (indeed, in some ways it’s more The Bourne Identity than The Bourne Identity was), it’s surprisingly better than you’d think, playing with cinematic conventions to make you think it’s one thing when it’s really another. When the explanation comes, it’s not as deep as you think it’s going to be, but in some ways that makes it better. Worth a try, but January Jones is incomparably bad in this, though, and the trailer gives everything away, so don’t watch that if you actually plan on seeing the movie. Oddly, German actress Diane Kruger (currently playing the US version of Saga Noren in the remake of The Bridge) is here playing an East European immigrant.

“What did you watch this 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?

Competitions

Competition time: see the first episode of Spiral season 4, Q&A with Grégory Fitoussi and more!

10 January 2013 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Clement and the judge in Engrenages

As I’ve mentioned before, the second Totally Serialized is about to take place in London. Featuring international cinema and TV, as well as UK shows such as Doctor Who and Peep Show, it’ll offer you the exclusive chance to see:

  • 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 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.

Full details of what’s on are here and here’s a trailer:

And I have a pass to give away to one lucky person for all of Friday 18th’s events, which will include:

  • The UK premiere of the first episode of Spiral series 4
  • The UK premiere of new Scandinavian sci-fi show Real Humans
  • Episode two of the French political series Spin
  • A Q&A with actor Grégory Fitoussi

Here are some trailers – yes there will be English subtitles:

To be in with a chance of winning, all you have to do is leave a comment below before midnight on Tuesday 14th January, after which the results will be announced. Good luck and spread the word!

French TV

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 this month? Including The Killing 3, Arrow, The Wedding Band and The Hunger Games

21 December 2012 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

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

As you can probably tell from the temporary retitling of this feature, it’s been a busy old time for me of late, which is why I haven’t been updating you on shows and why I haven’t been watching as many. Oh, and the Sky+ box as been doing lots of “PART-REC” and “RECORDING FAILED” and even deleting things I have recorded, including Young Doctor’s Notebook. That’s helpful, huh?

But since a load of shows have had their finales, now seems a good time to give my thoughts on those, at least.

First, the usual recommendations: 30 Rock, Arrow, Don’t Trust The B—– in Apartment 23, Go On, Last Resort, Modern Family and Peep Show. I’m adding Elementary and The Wedding Band to the list as well – more on that in a moment.

And here’s a few thoughts.

  • Arrow: Slowly been declining in strength and becoming more and more comic book in its implausibility. Geoff Johns’ introduction of Huntress to the show was just dreadful, too, with bad dialogue, bad acting and a script that was actually pretty detrimental to one of DC’s best-loved female superheroines. Still, Kelly Hu got to come back for a bit at least. And then we have John Barrowman as a ‘heavy’. HA HA HA! Still, the last episode was a bit of an up-tick in quality again, so all is not lost yet.
  • Dexter – So, hang on, Dexter literally thought he had a ‘dark passenger’? It wasn’t just a metaphor? Well, that’s just bobbins. Anyway, a distinctly uninspiring finale that at least wasn’t as ridiculous as last season’s and with a big surprise (or two) to boot. And at least the first half of the season was good because of Ray Stevenson and it was good to see Dokes back, even in flashback.
  • Don’t Trust The B—-: A variable three episodes with a real clunker and a couple of very funny ones. Glad to see them remembering that Chloe is supposed to be an evil b—–, too, not just kooky and a bit of a party girl. And a head nod to The Great Gatsby – you don’t get many of those these days. As always, too, full kudos to James Van Der Beek, who is really relishing playing… himself. And Dean Cain, too.
  • Elementary: So this is more of a guilty pleasure than because it’s a great show, but I do actually look forward to it now each week. It’s still working out what exactly a Sherlock Holmes mystery should be and no matter how hard they try, Joan Watson is still incredibly dull, but it’s good fun.
  • Go On: Unlike Community, the show still hasn’t worked out how to make its individual characters gel as a group, but it’s doing some nice work with at least some of the characters by themselves.
  • Homeland: So the season finally ended with two decent episodes in a row. While it was still a little daft, the finale had the right combination of thrills, twists and developments, none of which you probably saw/will see coming. Just about redeemed itself after a season of vastly variable quality.
  • The Killing 3: So the iPlayer deleted last weeks’ episodes before I had a chance to watch them (not letting me download them didn’t help). Again, this is just one of the reasons why I’ve had a hard time watching the three seasons of The Killing. Anyway, I watched the last two and was surprised by almost nothing. Seriously, I don’t get why people love this show so much. Okay, it’s well acted, but apart from its vibe and Sarah Lund, it’s daft, stupider than an episode of season two of Homeland and is just 1001 crime drama cliches. Or at least this season has been. It would have been more of a surprise if Sarah Lund had been able to ride off into the sunset happily. In particular, the criminal’s plan four episodes ago kind of relied on the police not being able to hit him even once with 30 rounds of ammunition… as he slowly sails under a bridge they’re standing on. Just silly. Bring back The Bridge.
  • Last Resort: Talking of daft and silly, that’s Last Resort. While having a few thrilling moments each episode, it’s also had some ridiculous matte work to help some of our heroes go to ‘the Philippines’ and we have had a daft series of abduction cycles for one character that’s worse than the Perils of Penelope Pitstop. Plus the stuff with the COB has been dreadful. Shame really, but at least it looks like they’re heading towards a decent ending.
  • The Mindy Project: Interesting to see some sign of work competency from Mindy, but the Zoolander-ish attack on midwifery was just bizarre. The Christmas episode was a bit dull, but had a good final 10 minutes.
  • Peep Show: While never quite hitting the delightful depravities of previous series and while feeling a little bit like we’ve been here before, it’s still a guaranteed source of laughter each week.
  • Vegas: I’m wondering what they promised Carrie Anne Moss when they asked her to star in this, because if it was ‘a lot of screen time and a decent role’, they were lying. Ditto Jason Mara. Over the last couple of episodes, we’ve had a very clunky ‘girl power’ episode and quite a dull Christmas episode. Such a shame after the initial promise of the pilot, but it’s still a relatively absorbing weekly watch.
  • The Wedding Band: While still a bit sexist and a bit ‘male gaze’, The Wedding Band is still proving to be an interesting subversion of the ‘bro comedy’ that plays with the sexist conventions and messes around with them. It’s not outstanding, but it’s enjoyable.

And in movies:

  • The Hunger Games: Despite being loved by the same demographic as Twilight, this is a very different, far more satisfying beast – a future dystopia heavily based on ancient Rome that sees kids take the place of gladiators in a high-tech country arena where they have to fight to the death. The always excellent Jennifer Lawrence is about 1,000,000 times better – and a better role model – than Kristen Stewart’s Bella, too. Give it a watch.

“What did you watch this month?” 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?