In the US: Wednesdays, 11/10c, TV Land. Starts January 13 In the UK: Not yet acquired
The trouble with reviewing things is you actually have to have opinions about them. This means Teachers is causing me a fundamental problem. I’ve sat here for ages, staring at the screen, trying to have an opinion about Teachers and it’s almost proving impossible. So how I can review it?
I’ve thought about merely stating the facts. Teachers is based on a web series created by and starring improv comedy group The Katydids, who presumably named themselves after the famous children’s book, rather than the crickets, pop group, boat or even the sculptures. It’s about six elementary school teachers who have their own personal issues about things like dating, friendship, body image, etc, and have a marked tendency to bring those issues into the classroom, which is in no way like pretty much any show about teachers of the past 20 years, including Channel 4’s Teachers. It’s produced by Alison Brie of Community fame. It’s on TV Land, which with shows like Impastor and Younger is trying to reinvent itself as a network watched by people other than those one heart bypass surgery away from death.
That at least gets me a few words further into a review. Then I figured if I described the plot of the first episode that will get me even further. Here, the teachers are tasked with developing an anti-bullying programme in a school that has no reported bullying. Rather than search the Internet for any anti-bullying campaigns who could advise them, go to their teachers union for best practice advice or ring another school and ask what they did, they come with a whole bunch of ill advised ideas based on their own personal issues, which ends up with an outbreak of bullying.
See? Halfway there already in terms of word count. But the key to the whole review thing is to have an opinion about a show, and I’m struggling to have one. The characters are pretty much what you’d expect – a whole bunch of comedic stereotypes that you’ll have seen before and probably work well in improv, but aren’t really innovative or individual in any way. Dumped woman still hung up on her ex? Check. Single woman desperate for a man, particularly hot dads? Check. Vain woman who thinks kids’ drawings of her are unflattering? Check.
But now I’m getting stuck, trying to remember if any of the other characters had any significant character traits. That’s no help, is it? I can’t even few inspired or insulted by them if I can barely remember them, let alone care about them, can I?
What I do remember is that about 10 minutes before the end, Alison Brie turned up and was funny. A lot funnier than anyone in the regular cast. I thought that was probably a bad sign. Do I think the lack of comedic acting talent will destroy the show? I honestly don’t know. I just can’t decide.
Oh yes. I remember now. It was quite funny that the anti-bullying campaign was called STAB (stop teasing and bullying) and that they got the kids to say mean things to one another. Erm. Ish.
So there. I can’t review it. It feels like I’m covered in some kind of space age material that causes opinions to roll off me without leaving a trace when it comes to Teachers. So I guess all I can say is Teachers is there. It’s a programme on TV that you can watch.
In the US: Thursdays, 9.30/8.30c, CBS In the UK: Not yet acquired
Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how good your cast is if your script sucks. Sometimes, even if your script doesn’t totally suck, it doesn’t matter since you’ll be airing on CBS – the network that likes to make comedies that leave the viewer feeling they’ve just been licked by a random stranger on a subway train.
Angel From Hell has a good cast. A good cast. It’s got Maggie Lawson from Psych and Back In the Game, as a workaholic dematologist who lives to help everyone else but whose own life is a mess. It’s got Jane Lynch from Glee and Party Down as a crazy stalker woman who claims to be – and might actually be – Lawson’s (foul-mouthed, sinning) guardian angel, breaking the rules by directly intervening to help Lawson fix her life. It’s got Kyle Bornheimer (Worst Week, Family Tools, Perfect Couples) as Lawson’s recently divorced brother, who now lives in her garage. And it’s got Kevin Pollack (The Lost Room, Family Tree) as Lawson’s widowed dad.
So, good cast. But not a great or original concept – someone ambiguously claiming to be a guardian angel/deity and trying to do their good (or evil) works on Earth is the grist of Cupid, Mr Frost, The Muse et al, while the angel who’s no angel, sometimes comedically so, has been worked to death everywhere from The Prophecy through to Supernatural.
The show doesn’t give either Lawson or Lynch much to work with either. Everything’s incredibly predictable. Lynch, doing her normal schtick, isn’t that sinning, usually just stealing things, drinking and having to go to the toilet after a bad taco. The ambiguity about whether her character is an angel or not, which arises from her spooky knowledge about Lawson’s life, is constantly explained away by her ability to hack computers and social media, which is funny the first time, less the fifth or sixth time. Lawson, in turn, is sweet yet still surprisingly manages to hold her own against Lynch, but her character is thanklessly dull. Bornheimer’s funny when flirting with Lynch, underserved the rest of the time, while Pollak’s pretty much only there so that the cast list has ‘with Kevin Pollak’ in it.
So good cast, the occasionally funny joke and some obvious intelligence in the writing. But by contrast, there’s plenty to offend anyone moderately Christian and nothing that makes Angel From Hell anything but exceedingly average. I’m pretty sure it’s going to die a death in the ratings. Whether that’s because it’s just no good or because of God’s wrath I suspect will turn out be less than ambiguous.
In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, USA Network In the UK: Not yet acquired
They say the secret of comedy is timing. I think the same is true of TV. A bit over a year ago, I was asked on Radio 5 why I thought zombie shows were so popular. I went for the glib Zoolander quote “they’re so hot right now”, but also mentioned that there was an obvious subtext – just in case you weren’t listening, I was talking about rich versus poor, fear of diseases and the other, with an enemy that can’t be understood and negotiated with, only fought, and yet which keeps on coming, no matter what you do.
That, of course, was two years ago and was at the back end of the zombie/disease/Occupy Wall Street trend. Now the big fear is that immigrants are going to come in, swamp us, and take over our countries. They’re going to invade us.
TV, of course, can take a long time to get made, with years sometimes passing between genesis, gestation and eventual realisation of a show. Had Colony come out a year or so ago, back when I was doing that radio show, it would have looked prophetic and pioneering. Had it come out say two or even three months ago, it would have been riding a wave. Coming out now? It’s missed the boat.
In the US: Wednesdays, 9/8c, Fox. Starts January 13 In the UK: Not yet acquired
What’s in a name, you might ask. Quite a lot, it seems, in the case of Second Chance, given the contortions it’s gone through in its brief life.
The show stars Robert Kazinsky (Dream Team, EastEnders, Pacific Rim) and Philip Michael Hall (The Loop) as Jimmy Pritchard, a retired disgraced sheriff who consorts with prostitutes and has a ‘problematic’ relationship with his FBI son widower Tim DeKay (White Collar) and granddaughter Ciara Bravo (Red Band Society).
You might have noticed that I said that both Hall and Kazinsky play Jimmy Pritchard. For a change, that’s not a grammatical mistake on my part. You see, there’s a brilliant pair of rich twins (Dilshad Vadsaria from Greek and Adhir Kalyan from Rules of Engagement). Vadsaria is dying of a rare form of cancer and so Kalyan invents a process that could save her, provided they find someone genetically compatible and a bit dead. Because Kalyan can bring the right person back from the dead and in considerably improved condition – as a better version of themselves, stronger, faster and even younger. And then they can milk him for his curative white blood cells.
When the 70-something Hall finds DeKay’s office being broken into, the perps end up throwing him off a bridge. Kalyan brings him back as Kazinsky, who’s offered not just a second chance at stopping the perps, but also doing good and perhaps even improving his relationship with his family.
Now, originally, this was called The Frankenstein Code. Whether it’s because it had almost nothing to do with Mary Shelley’s original book or whether it was because ITV had The Frankenstein Chronicles coming out at roughly the same time, I don’t know. But the show soon got renamed Looking Glass – the name of Vadsaria and Kalyan’s social media company – and the only vestige of the original name is now Vadsaria’s name, ‘Mary Godwin’ (Godwin being Shelley’s maiden name). Apparently, though, Looking Glass was too cryptic and perhaps even too suggestive of Lewis Carroll, because the show was soon renamed Second Chance, which at least is a bit closer to what the show’s about.
However, I wonder how much of this name-changing is to distract us all from the fact that Second Chance is basically Now and Again, in which Eric Close plays a genetically perfect reincarnation of the dead John Goodman who’s created to solve crimes and do espionage, but spends all his time wanting to fix things with his family, now he can’t be with them.
Second Chance has rather a lot in common with Now and Again – a similar plot, similar concerns, better when dealing with family matters than with cops and spies. It’s different enough that lawsuits probably won’t be flying, but similar enough that you’ll feel like you’re watching a rerun when you watch it.
It’s not without a few saving graces. The idea that youth is wasted on the youthful and the idea of a ‘do over’ are timelessly appealing. This also isn’t ‘single point’ sci-fi, with the twin’s ability to resurrect the dead coming ex nihilo and everything else remaining the same. Instead, it’s set in the near future, where everyone’s house has computer displays in the windows and a portable of army of UAVs is available when you need it. The show also channels ‘superbeing shows’ of the 70s and 80s, such as The Gemini Man and Northstar, by giving our hero a time limit each day before he has to be returned to a tank to stop his super-powerful new body rejecting his enhancements and dying permanently.
But it’s still not great. Hall’s a more interesting character than Kazinsky, just as Goodman was better than Close, inviting his frequent return, I suspect. DeKay is either studiously doing serious acting or has lost the will to live, knowing he’s always going to be playing the FBI straight man to someone more interesting – I can’t tell which. The rest of the cast aren’t great shakes and the cop plots are pretty perfunctory and solved with a couple of punches.
Nevertheless, there’s at least potential here and the chance for the show to grow in interesting directions, since there’s no obvious fixed format for it. Maybe he’ll go off solving crimes; maybe he’ll try to bond with his family; maybe he’ll be the subject of scientific research every week.
At best, it’ll probably be easy viewing on an unchallenging Monday. But that’s still better than pretty much any other recent Fox sci-fi show.
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.
Things have got off to a quick start in the TV land, all over the world, with new shows airing this week pretty much everywhere the TV industry still has a budget (so not Canada these days). Elsewhere, I’ve reviewed the first episodes of Cooper Barrett’s Guide to Surviving Life (US: Fox) and Byw Celwydd/Living A Lie (UK: S4C), the first three episodes of The Shannara Chronicles (US: MTV) and previewed next week’s Idiotsitter (US: Comedy Central); and while I haven’t reviewed their latest episodes, since I couldn’t be bothered to carry on with them after Christmas, I did give you a flavour of Telenovela (US: NBC) and Superstore (US: NBC), both of which started in earnest this week.
After the jump then, the regulars, including Grandfathered, Limitless, Supergirl and episode four of The Shannara Chronicles, as well as the return of American Crime, Man Seeking Woman and Endeavour, and a special guest reappearance by The Grinder.
But I did promise you reviews of a few other new shows, and while I didn’t manage to get round to Deutschland 83 (you can ask Walter what he thought of it – he can probably ask you about Spin, too, which is on More4 right now), I did manage to watch the rest, as well as a couple of surprise guest new shows.
Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands (UK: ITV; US: Esquire) If it’s on ITV, unless it’s a crime drama, period drama or period crime drama, you can be about 95% sure it’s going to be rubbish, and Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands does nothing to disprove this rule. ‘Based’ on the Anglo-Saxon epic, in the sense that it has a few characters with the same names, it sees famed warrior Beowulf (Kieran Bew) return to ‘the Shieldlands’ (no, not Scandinavia) to mourn the death of his dad, Hrothgar (William Hurt, who seems to be doing a lot of UK TV at the moment). Unfortunately, all manner of beasties, including the ‘terrifying’ Grendel are lurking around Hrothgar’s halls, so Beowulf and his Danish lothario mate are going to have to get out their swords and give him a stabbing.
In just about every sense possible, this is woeful stuff, ranging from the lack of fidelity to the original through to the Primeval-level special effects. While the colour-blind casting that gives us both Supergirl/Homeland‘s David Harewood and Numbertime‘s Lolita Chakrabarti is in a sense commendable, it’s a little jarring given quite how early it’s set. And if you are going to spend your time being ahistorically politically correct, don’t spend your entire time justifying it as though it’s just turned 1974 and the first female doctor in your hospital has just turned up; also, if you are going to cast an Indian woman as a fifth century AD blacksmith, can you at least hire an Indian woman who looks like she spends all day working iron?
Although Grendel is a little bit creepy at a distance, it’s too boring to be a good fantasy show, too PC to be a realistic historical drama and just too badly written on any terms and too badly acted to qualify as any kind of drama. Go and read the poem instead.
Rebellion(Ireland: RTÉ One) While last year saw Australia and New Zealand celebrating their birth as nations in the cauldron of Gallipoli with a numberof shows, this year it’s Ireland’s turn with Rebellion, a five-part drama that follows the Irish Nationalist movement from the 1916 Easter Rebellion all the way through to the 1919 war for independence. Featuring all manner of famous Irish and Northern Irish actors actually getting to use their own accents for a change (including Game of Thrones‘ Michelle Fairley and Ian McElhinney), it’s a show that doesn’t set out to be a piece of propaganda. Indeed, most of those involved in the rebellion seem to spend more of their time fighting each other, cocking things up, debating whether independence would be good and shagging than fighting the English. The show itself also seems more interested in the plight of women at the time than with demonstrating any oppression by the Overlords. But it’s a lavish, well put together piece of work, happy to have parts in Gaelic where necessary, and was good enough to make me want to watch at least the second episode – if only to remind myself of all sorts of history I’d learnt at school but completely forgotten about.
100 Code(Sweden: Kanal 5; UK: Sky Atlantic) Oh goody. Two mismatched cops chasing a serial killer in a show that uses a veneer of intelligence to mask its exploitativeness. I’ve not seen one of these before. Even the fact it’s set in Stockholm and one of the cops is American (oddly enough, Dominic Monaghan from Lost), the other Swedish (Michael Nyqvist from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, John Wick and the best-forgotten Zero HourandMission Impossible: Ghost Protocol), isn’t that new. But as with pretty much any Nordic Noir (or even crime story these days), originality isn’t the thing – what surrounds it is more of interest and pretty everything surrounding the central crime of 100 Code is a lot more interesting than YA serial killer. Here Monaghan is doing an Insomnia, screwed up and sleeping drug-taking because he accidentally shot his partner; meanwhile, Nyqvist is desperate to give up being a cop so he can be a security guard and spend more time with his teenage daughter.
But what separates 100 Code from a lot of other shows, beyond its incorrect use of Greek myth, having half the dialogue in Swedish and acting like a Stockholm travelogue the whole time (“It’s the Venice of the North – look at this lovely vista”), is that when it’s not pretentiously exploring its own arse, it’s frequently funny. Monaghan is by no means hard-boiled, getting travel sick in cars, boats, and aeroplanes, and doesn’t know how to drive in Stockholm, so frequently has accidents. Nyqvist’s recipe-centric relationship with his daughter is amusingly quirky. And the Swedes are not taking any sh*t from Monaghan and entertainingly exclude him at every possible opportunity, usually linguistically.
I’m going to keep watching since Peter Eggers (Anno 1790) is in the cast – although since he’s not turned up yet, I suspect he might turn out to be the killer – but also because it’s nice to see Nyqvist demonstrating just how good an actor he is in native language.
