TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: Baskets 1×1 (US: FX)

27 January 2016 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

In the US: Thursdays, 10pm ET/PT, FX

Sometimes, it can be hard to tell not only if something is funny but if it’s actually trying to be funny. Consider the clown. The very name ‘clown’ evinces the ides that humour is his raison d’être. Yet all he does all day is dress up very weirdly, squirt others with water from a flower and have big shoes.

Do you know anyone who finds clowns funny? I don’t. Do kids, the alleged target audience, find clowns funny? Most seem to get nightmares about them and their horrifying nature is supported in all manner of movies.

Yet clowns continue to exist.

Consider then the irony of Baskets. It’s written and created by Zach Galifianakis and Louis CK, both noted names in comedy. It stars Galifianakis not once but twice as twin brothers Chip and Dale Baskets, which again suggests the show is a comedy. And Chip Baskets is himself a clown, having gone to a prestigious clown school in Paris and who styles himself as ‘Renoir’.

All indicators, surely, of comedy?

Yet sitting through it, I had to ask myself many many times: “Am I missing something or is this just not funny? At all.” Is it supposed to be funny that Baskets has enrolled in a Paris clown school but doesn’t speak French? Or that the first five minutes of everyone else’s dialogue are in unsubtitled French? I didn’t laugh. Maybe it was because I could understand what everyone was saying and you’re not supposed to be able to, I thought.

So is it funny that when he has to return home to the US because he’s run out of money, the Frenchwoman he loves agrees to marry him but with the proviso that “I don’t love you. It’s only because I want a Green Card. I do not find you attractive, so if I find someone who is attractive, is it okay if I go off with him?” It’s dark. Very dark. It could be funny, if a little xenophobic. Maybe I’m supposed to laugh. I don’t know.

Is it funny when Baskets has to get a job as a rodeo clown? Or when he has a crash on his moped and he meets a very low key, underplayed, monotone insurance agent (Martha Kelly) and asks to borrow $40 from her so he can pay for his fiancée’s HBO connection? Is Louie Anderson in drag playing Galifianakis’ mum funny? Is Galifianakis being pronged by a rodeo bull funny?

I. Just. Don’t. Know.

It might well be that this is hilariously funny stuff for some people. The kind of people whom Aaron Sorkin thought would lap up commedia dell’arte sketches in a primetime Saturday night sketch show.

But not me. Is that funny?

UK TV

Review: Stan Lee’s Lucky Man 1×1 (UK: Sky 1)

26 January 2016 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

In the UK: Fridays, 9pm, Sky 1
In the US: Not yet acquired

Stan Lee’s the kind of guy who gets to have his name in the title of things. While opinion is divided about exactly how responsible he, rather than say Jack Kirby et al, is for creating Spider-Man, The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, the X-Men, Daredevil and Doctor Strange, he did enough that he gets to have movies and TV shows called Stan Lee’s Mighty 7, Stan Lee’s Superhumans, With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story, Stan Lee’s Mutants, Monsters & Marvels, Stan Lee’s Academy of Heroes and Stan Lee’s Oscar Campaign, and to cameo in pretty much all the Marvel universe movies.

By now, he has both name and face check familiarity with the general populace. At least in the US. In the UK? Maybe.

Anyway, that’s what Sky 1’s probably gambling with Stan Lee’s Lucky Man, in which James Nesbitt is a London police detective with a gambling problem who gets possibly the worst thing in the world for a man with his addiction – a magic bracelet that gives him incredibly good luck.

Lee contributed a one-page synopsis for the show, so by normal naming rights, this should probably be called Neil Biswas’s Lucky Man, given Biswas (The Take) developed the synopsis into the series and has written most, if not all of the first season’s 10 episodes. However, Sky 1 almost certainly figures the show could do with a boost in the ratings/overseas exports sales through Lee’s presence in the show’s name since in the scheme of things, Lucky Man is probably on a par with Crime Traveller and other mildly science-fictiony/fantasy TV series without a huge amount of oomph.

Here’s a trailer.

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US TV

Review: The X-Files 10×1 (US: Fox; UK: Channel 5)

25 January 2016 Rob Buckley 25 Comments

In the US: Mondays, 8/7c, Fox
In the UK: Acquired by Channel 5. Starts early February

Behold! Feast your eyes! Do you know what this is?

The Pharos Project 2 #1

Well, firstly, it’s epic testament to how sh*t I was at Aldus Pagemaker 4.0, 22 years ago when I was still at university. Did you know there’s a difference between black & white and greyscale? I didn’t, apparently.

But secondly, you are looking at what is the very first magazine in the UK to contain an article about The X-Files. Well, the second magazine to be exact, but it was the first article written by someone who’d actually seen it. It was certainly the first magazine to have one Fox Mulder and one Dr Dana Scully on its cover.

See, I’d recently read that TV Zone, which contained an article about The X-Files culled from a press release, saying how good it was. Intrigued and since I had Cambridge Cable (which became NTL which became Virgin Media), which carried that new fangled Sky 1 and therefore The X-Files, I decided to watch it. I was sufficiently impressed by the episode, Squeeze, to decide to dedicate the cover of the university TV society magazine I edited to The X-Files.

Before you knew it, I was publishing the UK’s very first X-Files (and Baylon 5) fanzine. Probably the only one, too. And learning about greyscale and even colour printing at the same time. And thus my career in TV-magazine publishing was born.

We did very well for ourselves, once BBC2 decided to show The X-Files and it became a national phenomenon. In fact, we lasted a good few issues.

The Pharos Project 2 #2The Pharos Project 2 #3

The Pharos Project 2 #5But to fill our pages, we came up with all sorts of exciting wheezes. We reviewed the episodes. In fact, we came up with the hugely novel and mind-blowing idea of importing NTSC videos of the episodes as they aired in the US, converting them to PAL, and then watching them so we could preview the episodes before they aired in the UK and tell people if they were any good. Can you imagine the cunning?

How we thrilled as we watched FBI agents Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate the supernatural, particularly aliens who liked to abduct people, especially Mulder’s sister. How we – or rather I – tried desperately to prove that Mulder and Scully were ‘a thing’ in ‘The X-Files romance guide’, while my partner in crime, Jonathan Templar, poo pooed the evidence right in front of his eyes. I wanted to believe… he didn’t. How silly did he feel eventually, hey?

But all good things had to come to an end. In particular, we discovered, as young people often do, that time is not infinite and neither is energy, and if you’re working two jobs to make ends meet, it’s hard to publish a magazine as well. Particularly one that involves having to talk to that beardy bloke in Forbidden Planet who likes to have sex with teenage girls because they ‘have no frame of reference’.

Shudders.

Also, we went off The X-Files, which somewhat ruined the whole magazine. I can’t remember the exact point we fell out of love with the show. Was it the first time or the second time it turned out that the previous definitive explanation for Mulder’s sister’s abduction was an elaborate government hoax? Maybe it was the third time. Perhaps it was when David Duchovny decided to leave. I can’t even remember seeing those Doggett (Robert Patrick) episodes, let alone the ones with Annabeth Gish when she replaced Anderson. I think the last one I saw was with Scully staring at a spaceship underwater off the coast of Africa.

Or perhaps it was just because The X-Files was of its time. It fit the zeitgeist of the early to mid-90s nicely, with government conspiracies, UFOs, a man and a woman working perfectly happily and largely platonically together, mutually respectful of each other’s skills (can you imagine that?). And then the late 90s hit and suddenly all those conspiracies seemed just a little bit passé.

Now, of course, conspiracy theories are back in vogue. Fox News used to have Glenn Beck literally drawing on blackboards to illustrate how the world is run by any number of secret conspiracies.

He may be gone, but Fox News carries on his work and with Edward Snowden revealing that Big Brother really is watching us all, some conspiracies don’t look quite as unlikely as they used to.

And so it is, into this age of the Internet and smartphones and stealth drones above us, Fox has given us back The X-Files in a new series in which The Truth Is Out There, We Want To Believe, and it really all could be a case for Mulder and Scully. If only they were still together. And working for the FBI.

And even if I can’t remember exactly why I stopped watching it the first time round, it did remind me of at least one reason: FFS, Chris Carter. Would you just quit it with “That thing we know definitively was true? That we actually saw happen? That was just an elaborate government plan. This is the real truth.”

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What have you been watching? Including Room, Marvel’s Agent Carter, Arrow and Endeavour

23 January 2016 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

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.

It’s been another huge week, full of new shows, continuing shows and returning shows. I’ve struggled manfully with them, but despite delaying WHYBW to Saturday to give me a little extra time to get through everything and then write about them, I’m still to cover three new series:

  • Mad Dogs (Amazon Instant Video): Shawn Ryan’s US remake of the Sky 1 original brings back Ben Chaplin in a different role but none of the other cast for this relocated show about a bunch of old friends (in both senses of ‘old’) who reunite for a plush holiday in the middle of sunny nowhere. Before you know it, everything ends up going a bit criminally pear-shaped and holiday heaven becomes holiday nightmare. I haven’t even watched the pilot of this, which has been sitting on Amazon for a while now, but given the original didn’t overly impress me and I gave up after about three episodes, I’m not sure I’m going to be in much of a rush to watch this version either. I do hope they explain why it’s called Mad Dogs, given the lyrics are ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun’.
  • Baskets (US: FX): Co-created by Louis CK, Zach Galifianakis and Jonathan Krisel, this sees Galifianakis playing dual roles as twin brothers, one of whom aspired to clown school in Paris, but who ended up becoming a rodeo clown. It’s apparently a bit Marmite, but I’ll try to review it in the first half of next week.
  • Stan Lee’s Lucky Man (UK: Sky 1): Marvel’s Stan Lee gives us James Nesbitt as a Brit cop, down on his luck, who gets a magical bracelet that reverses his fortunes. It’s Stan Lee, so could be fun, but it’s also Sky 1 so could be stupid/mediocre beyond belief. Again, first half of next week for this one.

Despite those three failings, I have managed to cover rather a lot this week already, with reviews or previews of the first episodes of:

As well as a third-episode verdict on Cooper Barrett’s Guide To Surviving Life (US: Fox).

The meat of the week’s viewing has, however, been continuing and returning shows, so after the jump, you’ll find reviews of the latest episodes of (deep breath): 100 Code, American Crime, Arrow, Billions, Byw Celwydd (Living A Lie), Colony, Endeavour, The Family Law, The Flash, Grandfathered, Limitless, Man Seeking Woman, Occupied (Okkupert), Rebellion, Second Chance, Les hommes de l’ombre (Spin) and Supergirl. Oh yes, and the two-hour premier of the new season of Marvel’s Agent Carter. Pardon me if you were hoping I would carry on with Idiotsitter, but no thank you.

I’m pretty sure something’s going to have give on that list soon, but I’m not quite sure what yet. Pity the first show to turn in a duff episode.

This week, I also moseyed on down to the cinema to watch a movie:

Room (2015)
Adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s book of the same, which sees five-year old Jake (Jacob Tremblay) discovering that the small room he’s lived in his whole life may not be the extent of the universe and that his mother (Brie Larson) has been keeping some important and very disturbing details from him. While that scenario (inspired by real cases) doesn’t sound like a very enjoyable subject matter, both the book and the movie quickly switch things around and give us a genuinely moving tale of parental love, the adaptability of children and finding hope in extremis, so if you think it’s not your thing, you might find you’re completely wrong.

Not quite as initially claustrophobic as the book, the movie is still a magnificent piece of work, with Larson and Tremblay justifiably getting all kinds of award nominations. William H Macy appears for almost no good reason, except to remind you of all the roles he used to get before he ended up doing Shameless (US). Recommended – you won’t even be able to watch the trailer again afterwards, without wanting a cathartic little cry.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Room, Marvel’s Agent Carter, Arrow and Endeavour”

US TV

Review: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow 1×1 (US: The CW; UK: Sky 1)

22 January 2016 Rob Buckley 10 Comments


In the US: Thursdays, 8/7c, The CW
In the UK: Thursdays, 8pm, Sky 1. Starts March 3 (TBC)

Well, here it is. Finally. After months of cameos and dicking around with the storylines of both Arrow and The Flash, we finally have DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. 

For years now, these two shows has been building up a guest roster of superheroes and villains. That’s inevitable in TV programmes adapted from comic books that mass up a couple of dozen episodes a season, particularly since fans always want to see how their favourites shape up on screen. This process was initially organic. On Arrow, we had a whole season of former ninja assassin turned good, Sara Lance (Caity Lotz) aka ‘The Black Canary’, before her eventual and much lamented death at the start of season three. We similarly got a whole season with Superman Returns‘ Brandon Routh getting a second shot at superherodom as Ray Palmer aka The Atom, a man who wants to be a superhero so builds himself a shrinking, armoured exo-suit.

Meanwhile, over on The Flash, we got first Wentworth Miller as Flash nemesis Captain Cold (he has a gun that makes things cold) before, in a nifty bit of casting, his Prison Break brother Dominic Purcell turned up to play Captain Cold’s partner in crime Heat Wave (he has a gun that makes things hot). And on the superhero front, we got Victor Garber (Alias, Legally Blonde, Justice, Eli Stone, Charlie’s Angels, Deception) as one half of the nuclear-powered Firestorm, with Robbie Amell (The Tomorrow People) as his other half.

All of that worked pretty well. Then towards the end of the third season of Arrow and the first season of The Flash, suddenly someone had the cracking idea of assembling these popular supporting characters and a whole bunch of others into a spin-off TV show in which they’d fight a super-super-nemesis. And both Arrow and The Flash would be used to introduce – in just a few quick months – those extra characters and set the existing ones up to leave their current shows in favour of the new show.

That would naturally take some work and more than a bit of plot gymnastics. So on Arrow, we’ve seen the very dead and buried Black Canary dunked in Ra’s Al Ghul’s Lazarus Pit and brought back to life, then try to redeem herself (again) as White Canary. The Atom finds he’s only small fry so decides to go off to do something more worthwhile with his life than be, erm, a charming scientific genius philanthropist billionaire restoring a city to its former greatness.

Over on The Flash, Captain Cold and Heat Wave have been getting a bit fluffier and better motivated – sufficent to wanting, or at least not being averse, to saving the world. And with Robbie Amell not wanting to go long-term for another fantasy series, he gets sucked into a wormhole and replaced by BBC1/BBC3’s Franz Drameh.

That’s not been quite enough for a proper superhero team-up, so we’ve also had an Arrow/The Flash crossover to introduce Hawkgirl (Ciara Renée) and Hawkman (Germany’s own Falk Hentschel), a pair of repeatedly reincarnating lovers from Ancient Egypt who are repeatedly murdered throughout time by Vandal Savage, one of the DC Comic Universe’s Big Bads, who sucks them of their life energy so he can be immortal. 

Why do they all get together? Well, in the future, that Vandal Savage, who’s been organising wars throughout the centuries to distract attention away from himself as he slowly amasses power, finally gets what he wants and brutally takes over the world. A ‘Time Master’ from the East End of London, Rip Hunter, implores his fellow Time Masters to interfere and stop Savage’s reign of terror from ever happening. They refuse, because they don’t want to intervene in the timelines, so Hunter steals a time ship (amusingly, Arthur Darvil who played Rory on Doctor Who plays Hunter. How has there not been a copyright suit against this?) and goes back in time to the early 21st century to assemble our heroes (and villains) into a team who can take on Savage throughout the ages.

The big questions are:

  1. Will they succeed?
  2. What isn’t Hunter telling the alleged ‘legends of tomorrow’?
  3. Has all this effort actually been worth it?

Continue reading “Review: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow 1×1 (US: The CW; UK: Sky 1)”