Airdates

Every Friday, I let you know the latest announcements about what’s been acquired and when new, imported TV shows will be arriving on UK screens

Killing Eve
Airdates

When’s that show you mentioned starting, TMINE? Including Counterpart, Killing Eve, Future Man, Trust, No Activity and Elite

7 September 2018 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Every Friday, TMINE lets you know when the latest TV shows from around the world will air in the UK

This week, all the acquisitions have premiere dates so let’s just get right down to it – especially since practically everything starts in the next week, so we’ll need to get a move on.

Premiere dates

No Activity Christmas Special

No Activity (Australia: Stan; UK: BBC Two)
Premiere date: Sunday, September 9, 10:30pm

Cops sit around on a stakeout, during which nothing much happens apart from them talking a lot. I’ve only watched the US remake, so I can’t really advise you on whether the original is any good, but co-creator Patrick Brammall stars in both and he’s usually pretty reliable.

Future Man

Future Man (US: Hulu; UK: SyFy)
Premiere date: Monday, September 10, 10pm

Video-game playing loser is recruited by kick ass soldiers from the future to stop the world going to pot. A mish-mash of explicit references to every 80s sci-fi movie you might care to mention – The Last Starfighter, The Terminator, Back to the Future – that will probably be funnier if you watch it stoned.

Episode reviews: 1

Donald Sutherland in FX's Trust
Donald Sutherland in FX’s Trust

Trust (US: FX; UK: BBC Two)
Premiere date: Wednesday September 12, 9pm

Multi-season anthology series based on the real-life escapades of the somewhat eccentric and rich Getty family. Excellent cast and Danny Boyle behind the scenes, but the rich twats tried my patience so much I couldn’t even get to the end of the first episode.

Episode reviews: 1

Kim Bodnia and Jodie Comer in Killing Eve
Kim Bodnia and Jodie Comer in Killing Eve

Killing Eve (US: BBC America; UK: BBC One)
Premiere date: Saturday, September 15, 9:15pm

British spy Sandra Oh tries to catch glamorous international assassin Jodie Comer, but generally makes a mess of things. Excellent and stylish when the episodes are written by Fleabag‘s Phoebe Waller-Bridge, distinctly not excellent the rest of the time.

Episode reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-7, 8

Counterpart

Counterpart (US: Starz; UK: StarzPlay on Amazon Prime)
Premiere date: Friday, September 28

A cold war between two opposing superpowers who face off against each in Berlin. The twist? The two superpowers are parallel Earths and everyone has a ‘counterpart’ who’s just like them, including mild-mannered JK Simmons. Or are they identical? Have the two universes diverged? If so why? And if we could meet each other, would be our own best friend or our own worst enemy?

Generally superb bit of spying that has a bump in quality in episode two, but is otherwise excellent. Give it a whirl, assuming you can get through all the hoops needed to watch it.

Episode reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Elite

Elite (Netflix)
Premiere date: Friday, October 5

Spanish Netflix original, so I haven’t seen it. But here be the plot:

When three working class kids enrol in the most exclusive school in Spain, the clash between the wealthy and the poor students leads to tragedy. Starring: Danna Paola, Miguel Herrán, María Pedraza.

HBO's Succession
Airdates

When’s that show you mentioned starting, TMINE? Including Succession, Fangar and Carcereiros

20 July 2018 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Every Friday, TMINE lets you know when the latest TV shows from around the world will air in the UK

Only a couple of premiere-less acquisitions this week, with Walter Presents picking up Channel 2 (Iceland)’s Réttur (The Court) and C More (Sweden)’s Farang. The former will air in September, while the latter will air towards the end of the year.

Otherwise, everything’s got a date.

Premiere dates

Fangar

Fangar (Prisoners) (Iceland: RÚV; UK: Sundance)
Premiere date: Now

One of Sundance’s sneaky acquisitions, this Prix-Europa nominated drama sees 30 year-old Linda (Thora Bjorg Helga) accused of a deadly assault and sent to prison. She gets to know women of a different social class than her, from a broken environment. Slowly, a bond develops between her and the other women inmates and the series focuses on why things happen and how it affects the family and society as a whole.

Sounds a bit Orange is the New Black.

 Jailers

Carcereiros (Jailers) (Brazil: Globo Play; UK: Sundance)
Premiere date: Now

The second of Sundance’s new prison shows – what’s that all about then? – is from Brazil. The difference here is that as well as being about blokes, it’s from the jailers’ point of view. Based on Dráuzio Varela’s novel of the same name, it stars Rodrigo Lombardi as Adriano, a correctional officer who endures the difficulties of prison life – both his own and those of the inmates. Adriano is charged with keeping the peace inside the jail but also faces pressures in his home life, from his wife who wants a baby, to his teenage daughter and his father, a former jailer himself. Tested daily with ethical and moral dilemmas, he lives between walls and prison bars, weapons, threats and conflicts – both human and psychological.

Jeremy Strong in Succession

Succession (US: HBO; UK: Sky Atlantic)
Premiere date: Thursday, August 2, 9pm

Created by Peep Show‘s Jesse Armstrong and with support from some The Thick of It writers, Succession follows the Roy family – Logan Roy and his four children – which controls one of the biggest media and entertainment conglomerates in the world, tracking their lives as they contemplate what the future will hold for them once their ageing father begins to step back from the company.

Cough, cough, the Murdochs, cough, cough.

It’s already been renewed for a second season, and stars Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Hiam Abbass, Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin, Alan Ruck, Nicholas Braun, Matthew Macfadyen, Natalie Gold, Peter Friedman and Rob Yang. I found the first few episodes very funny, but it slowly switched from being a comedy with some drama to being a drama with the occasional comedy, which didn’t work for me.

Episode reviews: 1-2, 3, 4

The Outpost
Airdates

When’s that show you mentioned starting, TMINE? Including Kim’s Convenience, The Outpost, The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, White Famous, Insatiable and Ghoul

13 July 2018 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Every Friday, TMINE lets you know when the latest TV shows from around the world will air in the UK

A big bunch of premiere dates this week, with only one new show getting picked up with just a vague date (“Some time in August“) – ABC (US)’s pretty dreadful Ten Days In The Valley. Otherwise, we know where and when all of the following will be showing up on UK TV and laptop screens:

Premiere dates

Kim's Convenience

Kim’s Convenience (Canada: CBC; UK: Netflix)
Premiere date: Today

Adaptation of the hugely successful Canadian stage play about a Korean family who run a convenience store. Fun but not always the funniest, I enjoyed it enough to stick around for three episodes at least.

Episode reviews: 1-2, 3

Bletchley Circle San Francisco

The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco (US: BritBox; UK: ITV)
Premiere date: Wednesday, July 25, 9pm

US-made spin-off of ITV’s The Bletchley Circle that sees a bunch of former Bletchley Park codebreakers head off to San Francisco, where they link up with some American code-breaking friends to solve crimes.

White Famous

White Famous (US: Showtime; UK: Sky Atlantic)
Premiere date: Wednesday, July 25, 11:05pm

Series supposedly based on the life of Jamie Foxx, in which comedian Jay Pharoah decides he wants to be famous not just to black people but to white people as well. And that’s going to involve some compromises, some of which might involve dealing with the rather bizarre ‘Jamie Foxx’.

Sometimes funny because of its takes on ‘soft racism’, it felt more like a weak Entourage and Jamie Foxx wanting to get a few things off his chest than anything worthwhile.

Episode reviews: 1

Insatiable

Insatiable (Netflix)
Premiere date: Friday, August 10

Insatiable tells the story of Patty, who for years has been bullied, ignored, and underestimated by those around her because of her weight. But now that she finds herself suddenly thin, Patty is out for payback against anyone who has ever made her feel bad about herself. Bob Armstrong, a disgraced attorney whose true passion is coaching beauty pageant contestant, is the only one who sees Patty’s potential, and takes her under his wing – first as a legal client, and then as a pageant contestant whom he coaches toward becoming the top pageant queen in the country. But Bob and his wife Coralee have no idea how deep Patty’s rage goes, or how far she will go to exact revenge on anyone who has ever wronged her. Bullies beware: payback’s a bitch, revenge is sweet, and if you cross Patty, you’ll be her next treat.

The comedy series, which was created by Lauren Gussis, stars Debby Ryan, Dallas Roberts, Alyssa Milano, Christopher Gorham, Erinn Westbrook, Michael Provost, Kimmy Shields, Irene Choi and Sarah Colonna. The executive producers are Lauren Gussis, Ryan Seacrest, Nina Wass, Andrea Shay, Todd Hoffman, Dennis Kim and Andy Fleming.

The Outpost

The Outpost (US: The CW; UK: Syfy)
Premiere date: Monday, August 13, 9pm

I’ve just watched the first episode of this, so consider it a review as well, to save me writing a full review.

The Outpost follows Jessica Green, ‘a strong female hero’ and the lone survivor of a race called ‘Blackbloods’. Years after her entire village is destroyed by a gang of brutal mercenaries, Talon travels to a lawless fortress on the edge of the civilised world, as she tracks the killers of her family. On her journey to this outpost, Talon discovers she possesses a mysterious supernatural power that she must learn to control in order to save herself, and defend the world against a fanatical religious dictator.

And it’s dreadful. It’s nearly unwatchable, low-budget, badly written, terribly acted dredge that is a throw-back to the syndicated likes of Relic Hunter in the 90s. If you make it past the first minute of plot-dumping dialogue, I’ll be surprised.

It desperately wants to be Game of Thrones, but it doesn’t come close to even the qualities of the somewhat similar The New Legends of Monkey – somewhat similar in that it not only features our heroine wandering around some nondescript fantasy realm, fighting mildly-threatening fantasy things, it’s stuffed full of Australians. While the present day antics are almost unwatchable, the little momentum they have is broken up by dreadful flashbacks to Green’s childhood in which everyone speaks a ludicrous made-up language (sorry in advance if it turns out to be Gaelic, as there are a lot of Irish actors around, too). Except they only speak it for about five seconds at a time before switching to English for no reason then starting again a minute later. The child who plays the younger Green looks so unlike her, too, it makes me wonder if that’s potentially even a plot point.

The fights are about the best bit of it, although the direction is so poor that you’ll spot every time a stuntwoman subs in for Green. Avoid like the zombie-alien plague. No, really. They have zombies with Alien mouths.

Ghoul

Ghoul (Netflix)
Premiere date: Tuesday, August 28

Three-part Indian  horror series about a prisoner who arrives at a remote military interrogation centre and turns the tables on his captors, exposing their most shameful secrets.

Mr Mercedes
Airdates

When’s that show you mentioned starting, TMINE? Including Mr Mercedes and Burden of Truth

6 July 2018 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Every Friday, TMINE lets you know when the latest TV shows from around the world will air in the UK

Not a huge number of acquisitions this week. Netflix acquired ORF (Austria)’s Freud, but that hasn’t even started filming yet, so I can’t tell you any more than the Hollywood Reporter can. Otherwise, the following acquisitions also came with airdates.

Premiere dates

Mr Mercedes

Mr Mercedes (US: Audience; UK: Starzplay)
Premiere date: Available now

I missed this one as it started while I was on holiday, so all I can do is Wiki you:

Retired detective Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson) is still haunted by the unsolved case of ‘Mr Mercedes’, who claimed 16 lives when he drove a stolen Mercedes through a line of job-seekers at a local job fair. Meanwhile, brilliant young psychopath Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway), the real Mr Mercedes, reemerges to focus his attention on Hodges. What begins as an online cat-and-mouse game between the two soon has deadly real-life consequences as an increasingly desperate Hartsfield becomes bent on leaving his mark on the world.

Apparently, it’s also based on Stephen King’s ‘Bill Hodges’ trilogy, with seasons two (on its way right now) and three following Finders Keepers and End of Watch.

Burden of Truth

Burden of Truth (Canada: CBC; UK: Universal)
Premiere date: Tuesday, August 14, 9pm

Big city lawyer Kristin Kreuk returns to her home town to defend a big corporation from accusations of having poisoned some teenage girls. However, Kreuk discovers something else is the cause and decides to remain behind to help the girls and find out why everyone still hates her family after all these years.

Actually not that bad and I might have carried on watching if my viewing schedule at the time had allowed it. Plus it actually does do some science now and then, rather than simply ask the audience to feel like something bad could be happening.

Episode reviews: 1, 2, 3

The Cleaning Lady
Airdates

When’s that show you mentioned starting, TMINE? Including Picnic at Hanging Rock, Reverie, Sharp Objects, The Raid and The Cleaning Lady

29 June 2018 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Every Friday, TMINE lets you know when the latest TV shows from around the world will air in the UK

Two acquisitions this week without premiere dates. The first is Hulu (US)’s Future Man, which has been picked up by Syfy. No big surprises there, other than that Syfy has started airing new TV shows again. I thought it had given up on that?

The other premiere-less acquisition, though, is FX’s Trust. What do you mean you thought that had already been acquired? Good remembering, gentle reader, because Sky had indeed acquired it for airing in Europe. However, for reasons best known to it, it’s decided it won’t bother in the UK and Germany, and now BBC Two has picked up the baton.

Otherwise, we know exactly when the rest are going to start, including a couple of Walters. No, not Walter’s. Walters – that’s my new name for shows that Walter Presents acquires but doesn’t reveal the premiere date until about two seconds before they’re going to be available.

Oh, Walter. Won’t you just stop waltering us with these Walters?

Premiere dates

The Cleaning Lady

La chica que limpia (The Cleaning Lady) (Argentina: Cine.ar; UK: Walter Presents)
Premiere date: Friday, July 6

When a crooked manager at the local boxing club is murdered, the club’s cleaner, Rosa, is forced at gunpoint to clean up after the mafia-related hit. Scared for her life, but handsomely paid for her part in the crime, single mother Rosa uses her immaculate cleaning skills and, with no choice in the matter, begins to act as the regular “cleaning lady” for the gang. As the clandestine clean-ups increase and as she continues to struggle to provide a normal life for her ailing son Felipe, Rosa finds herself pulled deeper and deeper into the mafia.

The Raid

Alemão (The Raid) (Brazil: Dunno; UK: Walter Presents)
Premiere date: Friday, July 6

Rio de Janeiro, 2010: Just as the Brazilian government launch a military-assisted siege on one of the city’s most notorious and criminally-controlled favelas, the identities of four undercover policemen operating in the slum are accidentally leaked. As violence mounts, the favela’s ruthless boss, Playboy, orders his men to hunt down those who have betrayed him. With their lives now at risk, the four undercover policemen stay low and do everything they can to stay alive. But while taking cover from the jungle of gunfire and warfare outside, they start to question if the traitor could in fact be amongst them…

That sounds suspiciously similar to a certain Indonesian movie I could name, doesn’t it? It might also be a movie, rather than a TV series, although I think it might be an extended version of the movie. You can guess I haven’t watched it.

Sharp Objects

Sharp Objects (US: HBO; UK: Sky Atlantic)
Premiere date: Monday, July 9, 2am/9pm

Based on the Gillian Flynn novel, Sharp Objects follows reporter Amy Adams, who returns to her small hometown to cover the murder of a preteen girl and the disappearance of another. Trying to put together a psychological puzzle from her past, she finds herself identifying with the young victims a bit too closely.

Haven’t seen it because it won’t start in the US until Monday July 9 at 2am UK time. Yep, it’s being simulcast.

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Picnic At Hanging Rock (Australia: Showcase; UK: BBC Two)
Premiere date: Wednesday, July 11, 9.05pm

Naff, long, not especially interesting adaptation of the classic Australian novel that also takes in the iconic movie and the final chapter to give us a somewhat supernatural thriller about the disappearance of some boarding school girls while they’re on a picnic and its effects on the townsfolk. While the quality of the original shines through, this is tonally all over the place and not very well directed.

Episode reviews: 1

Reverie

Reverie (US: NBC; UK: Syfy)
Premiere date: Thursday, August 2, 9pm

Former hostage negotiator Sarah Shahi tries to redeem herself of guilt over past failures by rescuing people who are in comas because they’ve been using a brand new dream VR tech and fancy staying in the dreamworld rather than living in the miserable real world. Not the most ambitious of shows in any regard and one that stands a good chance of putting you to sleep.

Episode reviews: 1