What have you been watching? Including Bosch, 24, Agents of SHIELD, Hannibal Rising and Prisoners of War

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.

Thankfully, there wasn’t much new on this week, so I haven’t been able to play catch-up on a few shows, and in fact I was able to watch one new show:

Bosch (Amazon Prime)
Based on the Michael Connelly series of books (which my mother in law likes so they must be okay), this stars Titus Welliver (of numerous shows but particularly Lost) as LA police detective Hieronymous Bosch. No really. That’s his name. Apparently co-starring most of the cast of The Wire, including Lance Reddick and Jamie Hector, it sees Bosch dealing with a civil suit in which he’s accused of shooting an unarmed man while also dealing with the discovery of the body of a long-buried child. But there’s no resolution to any of these stories, since this is just the pilot episode and a series is now on its way. It’s above average as cop shows go and there’s a definite air of authenticity to everything, but fundamentally it features a preposterous lead character who is also simultaneously very ordinary – it’s not like he’s writing poetry or doing brass rubbing for a hobby but is off listening to jazz and drinking while having a silly name. Worth a glance, but nothing special.

I also watched a movie!

Hannibal Rising (2007)
Given it’s the one Hannibal Lecter story I’d neither read nor watched, I figured it was about time, despite the bad reviews, to give it a go. And it’s an odd little piece, a prequel story that gives us a teenage Hannibal Lecter escaping cannibalism in wartime Lithuanian to find refuge in France. It’s interesting as it both informs and is informed by other Lecter pieces, giving us a reasonable explanation as to why Hannibal’s Hannibal is so handy in a fight, for example, while also giving us some piggy foreshadowing for Hannibal (the movie). It’s also got a good cast, with Dominic West as a dodgy-accented war crimes investigator, and Rhys Ifans and Kevin McKidd as the naughty war criminals who ate Hannibal’s sister. But its low budget, poor French lead (Gaspard Ulliel) and equally French setting make this feel like an international co-production B-movie along the lines of Mr Frost, rather than any of the preceding blockbusters, it uses the same technique as Hannibal to try to make Lecter look a hero by giving him an even worse enemy to deal with (although as the name suggests, he does become monstrous towards the end) and it can’t be said to be scary or horrifying in any real sense. One for completists only.

After the jump, the regulars, with reviews of 24, Agents of SHIELD, The Americans, Arrow, The Blacklist, Continuum, Elementary, Game of Thrones, Hannibal, Prisoners of War, Silicon Valley and Surviving Jack.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Bosch, 24, Agents of SHIELD, Hannibal Rising and Prisoners of War”

Guy Pearce to romance Sean Hayes, Timothy West joins EastEnders and BBC4’s latest foreign acquisitions

Film casting

  • Simon Pegg joins Monty Python in Absolutely Anything

Trailers

  • Trailer for Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise

UK TV

UK TV casting

US TV

US TV casting

New US TV shows

Guy Pearce to romance Sean Hayes, Timothy West joins EastEnders and BBC4’s latest foreign acquisitions

Film casting

  • Simon Pegg joins Monty Python in Absolutely Anything

Trailers

  • Trailer for Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise

UK TV

UK TV casting

US TV

US TV casting

New US TV shows

Israeli TV

Review: Prisoners of War (Hatufim) 1×1

Prisoners of War/Hatufim

In the UK: Thursdays, 9.30pm, Sky Arts 1
In Israel: Aired 2009

Homeland has been a big hit for both Showtime in the US and Channel 4 in the UK, going great guns in the ratings. In it, POW Damian Lewis returns to the US after eight years in captivity in Iraq. CIA analyst Claire Danes, however, suspects he’s been converted by terrorists and has been released to do something horrific on US soil. Is he or isn’t he? Well, the last episode of the first season has already aired, but I won’t spoil it for you – go watch it, if you haven’t already, since it was the best new drama of the Fall 2011-12 season.

However, as I mentioned at the time, Homeland is not a wholly original show, having been adapted by some of 24‘s creators from an Israeli show, Prisoners of War aka Hatufim. Now Sky Arts 1, which is not only fast becoming a rival to BBC4 as my favourite UK channel but also a haven for quality Israeli TV (just as BBC4 now gets all the good Scandinavian shows), has decided to broadcast the original show on Thursdays in a 10 week run.

Intriguingly, Prisoners of War is both quite a different show to Homeland as well as very similar. After the trailer (which is all in Hebrew, unfortunately, but you can view an English-language promo here) and the jump, I’ll give you a rundown on the differences and look at it as a show in its own right.

Continue reading “Review: Prisoners of War (Hatufim) 1×1”

Israeli TV

Mini-review: BeTipul (In Treatment) (Sky Arts 1)

BeTipul

In the UK: Monday-Friday, 9.30pm, Sky Arts 1/Sky Arts 1 HD. Repeated Saturdays & Sundays
In Israel: First aired 2005

In Treatment was a show I really loved. Clever, engrossing, theatrical, it was fantastic TV. Terribly scheduled, mind. Half an hour, five nights a week? That’s not happening for me or for most people – as the ratings bore out.

For those who missed it (why? It was brilliant… Oh yes, now I remember…), it saw therapist Gabriel Byrne see a different patient each day, Monday to Thursday, before seeing his own therapist on Friday, where he’d discuss his feelings about his patients. Then the next week, you’d see the next session with each patient. Over the weeks, you saw his own family, occasionally the patients interacting and more.

But it was based on an award-winning Israeli show, BeTipul, that first aired in 2005. Now Sky Arts 1 is cleverly showing the original five nights a week. And it’s very weird to watch.

As with the the US remake of The Killing, it feels almost frame-by-frame identical, just in a different language. It’s not quite identical, for obvious reasons, but the dialogue is almost identical, as is the theme tune (which is slightly more upbeat in the Israeli version), and Assi Dayan (Re’uven) looks an awful lot like Gabriel Byrne.

But there are instructive differences. Unlike the very theatrical In Treatment which was largely shot in a studio, BeTipul is naturalistic and shot in a real apartment. Casting also affects things. The Laura-equivalent, Na’ama (Ayelet Zurer), is older than Melissa George, is less vulnerable and (sorry) less attractive. Their relationship, as a result, is different and speaks more to the therapist’s difficulties with his wife than Laura/Paul’s relationship did in In Treatment, which is correspondingly more about opportunity and desire than emotions.

There are also interesting cultural differences in terms of therapy:

All the same, despite the differences, it feels somewhat futile watching BeTipul having watched In Treatment. BeTipul is different rather than superior, but the differences aren’t big enough that having watched In Treatment, you don’t feel like you’re watching an odd re-run as you do so. It’s a case of watch one or the other – but not both.

Here’s a trailer with a crappy voiceover or you can watch some of the first episode on the Sky Arts web site: