TV reviews

A complete archive of The Medium is Not Enough’s reviews of TV programmes since 2005

What We Do In The Shadows
Streaming TV

What have you been watching? Including What We Do In The Shadows

15 June 2020 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

Previously on TMINE

TMINE’s ever-increasing workload means that somehow WHYBW has slowly slipped from Wednesday to Thursday to Friday and now to Monday. This is despite the recommended list and the number of new (and interesting) shows appearing on your screens dropping to an all-time low.

I don’t think I’m operating on some sort of weird lunar calendar, but it’s always a possibility. Still, at least Monday makes some kind of weird sense for WHYBW, as a way to round off the weekend and start the work.

And I did at least manage to review all of season 3 of The Crown (Netflix).

Hannibal
Hannibal

What TMINE has been watching

The lack of reviews isn’t down to a lack of viewing. Season 3 of Baron Noir continues at pace and continues to be great. For a bit of light, concentration-free relief, I’ve also been watching some previous greats from the TMINE archives: Hannibal (US: NBC; UK: Netflix) and Travelers (Canada: Showcase; UK: Netflix).

Travelers is proving to be as great as it seemed at the time, whereas Hannibal, beyond that blinder of a pilot episode, is getting quagmired in a greater pretentiousness than I recall season one having, as well as those initial Criminal Minds style episodes that really dragged. However, there’s usually at least a few genius moments in each and it remains as sumptuous to watch and listen to as before.

I haven’t managed to tuck into season two of Das Boot (Germany: Sky; UK: Sky Atlantic), but I’m sure it’ll only be a matter of time.

Covideodrome has also been hard at work. I did give 21 Bridges (2019) a try, seeing as it’s currently free on Amazon Prime, but that was bad enough that first Lovely Wife gave up on it after about 20 minutes and then I did 10 minutes later. Bad, bad dialogue. However…

Next on TMINE

…with a Disney+ subscription and access to almost all the movies that Disney has ever made, we decided to fill some gaps in our collective viewing and work our way through a whole bunch of movies we’ve never watched, including The Jungle Book, Mulan, Moana, Brave, Aladdin and The Lion King. More on them later in the week. Probably.

Covid has now really kicked into the schedules and the only new show that I can see coming up this week is Hulu’s new series, Love, Victor, but I honestly can’t be bothered with teen/YA romances, gay or otherwise, particularly if they’re spin-offs of movies I haven’t seen. Australia et al don’t seem to have anything new either, so I’ll see if I can find something on Netflix or Amazon instead

What We Do In The Shadows

After the jump…

After the jump, I’ll be looking at the final episodes of the first season of Space Force. Otherwise, it’s just the ridiculously small list of regulars: Operation Buffalo, Star Girl and What We Do In The Shadows, which is about to get two-thirds smaller… Eek!

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Streaming TV

Review: The Crown (season three) (Netflix)

10 June 2020 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the UK: Available on Netflix

Roger Ebert famously said that cinema is ‘a machine that generates empathy’. The odd corollary of that is Netflix’s The Crown is a machine that generates empathy for the British Royal Family. A project that will supposedly run from Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne in the early 1950s up to the present day, this quasi-biopic’s first two seasons took in the 50s before moving on to the early 60s.

But it’s The Crown, not The Queen (which was also created by showrunner Peter Morgan), so it’s not as much a biopic as you might think. This isn’t a languorous year-by-year examination of everything that’s happened to the Queen. Rather, it’s a look at the nature of the monarchy and its evolving constitutional position. While there are character stories that run across the seasons and the series, the episodes are largely episodic, dipping into years almost at random to pull up historical incidents that defined both the country and the monarchy.

For the first two seasons, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip were personified by Claire Foy and Matt Smith respectively. Arguably exceedingly flattering choices, the pair of them made you care for the then-young monarchs with ease, portraying them as well-meaning, would-be modernisers, thrust into jobs neither of them wanted, constrained by the nature of their office, but doing their best to bring the country together.

Olivia Colman in The Crown
The Crown © Sophie Mutevelian

Queen II

We’re now onto season three and as befits a show that starred a former Time Lord, the Queen and Prince Phillip have regenerated. Olivia Colman (The Favourite) is now Her Majesty, while Tobias Menzies (Outlander) is Prince Phillip as we head into the late 60s and make it as far as the late 70s.

Colman and Menzies gives first-rate performances that verge on the supernaturally accurate – perhaps more so than Foy and Smith’s – so strangely, in season three, we’re less on the side of our former protagonists than we were: they’re not as likeable as they once were, because they’re closer to the real thing, who are no longer young modernisers but have become the establishment.

Perhaps even stranger still, we instead feel sympathy and indeed empathy for two people we never thought we would – the two new protagonists of the piece, Prince Charles (Josh O’Connor) and Princess Anne (Erin Doherty). And Camilla Parker-Bowles (née Shand) (Emerald Fennell).

Didn’t see that one coming.

Continue reading “Review: The Crown (season three) (Netflix)”
Operation Buffalo
Streaming TV

What have you been watching? Including Operation Buffalo and Love Life

5 June 2020 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

Previously on TMINE

TMINE has had a little bit more time to watch things this week – and more importantly, to write about them. Interested in Steve Carrell’s new show, Space Force (Netflix)? Then not only can you read TMINE’s third-episode verdict from earlier in the week, I’ve watched a few more episodes since then – I’ll tell you about them after the jump.

Covideodrome made a reappearance, too, taking in the Very Important Movie Just Mercy (2019).

Das Boot
Das Boot

Next on TMINE

Usual lockdown rules, even though lockdown is easing: I’m going to try to watch all of these but there’s a fair chance I may end up watching none because Life.

As far as I can see, though, there’s not much on. Certainly not much new. Season 2 of Das Boot (Germany: Sky; UK: Sky Atlantic) starts on Monday. Italian drama Curon (Netflix) starts on Wednesday, but that doesn’t look any more appealing than Saudi Arabian drama Whispers (Netflix), which starts the same day.

Unless I start looking at some of the shows sitting in my backlog, next week is going to see more than a couple of visits to Covideodrome on TMINE…

Star Girl

After the jump…

After the jump, as well as the aforementioned Love Life and Space Force, there’s the infinitesimally small list of regulars: Star Girl and What We Do In The Shadows. Joining them will be new Australian Cold War dramedy Operation Buffalo. All of those in a mo.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Operation Buffalo and Love Life”
Streaming TV

Third-episode verdict: Space Force (Netflix)

3 June 2020 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

In the UK: Available on Netflix

It’s one of the clichés of modern times that the Trump presidency is beyond satire – it’s so inherently ridiculous that nothing satirists can do can possibly trump Trump.

That’s not quite true. Plenty of shows mock Trump every day and we’ve had the likes of the self-explanatory Our Cartoon President (US: Showtime) built entirely around sending him up. The Good Fight (US: CBS All Access; UK: More 4) has also done a decent job of mocking Trump’s input into the US’s legal and political systems:

However, most of the mockery is largely targeted at the man himself. His policies, meanwhile, are normally so horrifying that no one can think of anything funny to say in response. Maybe in that sense Trump might be beyond satire.

So you’ve got to hand it to Netflix’s new comedy, Space Force, for at least trying to satirise an actual policy position of Donald Trump – namely Space Force, for those of us who have been avoiding the news as much as possible. The question is: is this first real stab at Trumpian policy satire good or even funny?

Steve Carell and Lisa Kudrow in Space Force
Steve Carell and Lisa Kudrow in Space Force

A space force to be reckoned with?

Co-created by and starring Steve Carrell (The Office (US), Anchorman, The Daily Show, The Morning Show), Space Force sees Carrell playing a newly promoted 4* Air Force general at the height of his game. His predecessor and general bête noire Noah Emmerich (The Americans, The Spy) is about to retire and Carrell is set to replace him.

However, almost immediately, Carrell learns he is instead set to head up and largely create from scratch Trump’s Space Force, with the perpetual aim of ‘boots on the Moon by 2024’! That means moving to Colorado, something about which his wife, Lisa Kudrow (Friends), and teenage daughter (Diana Silvers) are not 100% jubilant.

Soon, Carrell is butting heads not just with chief scientist John Malkovich but with science itself, as he learns that reality has a liberal bias.

Continue reading “Third-episode verdict: Space Force (Netflix)”
Streaming TV

What have you been watching? Including Mythic Quest

29 May 2020 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

Previously on TMINE

It’s been another reviews-light week this week, thanks principally to there being a bank holiday and there not being much to watch. Plus I’ve been busy. However, things are going to be a little quieter for me next week and there’s at least a couple of new shows worth watching coming up, so I should have some reviews for you in June. Hoorah!

What TMINE is currently watching…

I’m a little further into season 3 of Baron Noir (France: Canal+; UK: Amazon), but not yet done, so hold your horses on that. I also watched Charlie Brooker’s Antiviral Wipe (UK: BBC Two), which was welcome but not totally different from all previous wipes. It was moderately depressing, since I’d given up watching the news of late on the general grounds of its general depressingness, so I got to watch all the depressing things I’d missed. But there was at least an element of optimism in there and it was nice to see the return of Cunk.

Could have done with some Adam Curtis, though.

Next on TMINE

Usual lockdown rules, even though lockdown is easing: I’m going to try to watch all of these but there’s a fair chance I may end up watching none because Life.

I haven’t got around to watching Anna Kendrick’s new thing, Love Life (US: HBO Max), but have every intention of catching that over the weekend. Lovely wife has expressed an interest in watching Steve Carrell’s Space Force (Netflix), so there’s a good chance I’ll have seen at least one episode of that before Monday, but hopefully more. Who knows? Maybe it’ll even be a Boxset?

That’s it from the US, though*, but Australia will be offering Cold War thriller Operation Buffalo (Australia: ABC) on Sunday, so that’ll be on the line-up, too.

* I really need to check What time, TMINE, to see if there are only foreign shows on Netflix that I’ve missed, don’t I? Because if I don’t read TMINE, who on Earth else will, hey?

Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet

After the jump…

After the jump is the diminishing list of regulars: What We Do In The Shadows and new arrival Star Girl, as well as the season finales of both One Lane Bridge and Mystery Road. But Apple TV+’s Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet made a surprise guest appearance with a quarantine episode, so I watched that as well. All of those in a mo.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Mythic Quest”