TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: Wicked City 1×1 (US: ABC)

28 October 2015 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

In the US: Tuesdays, 10/9c, ABC

There was a time when the anthology show ruled US airwaves. Jobbing actors would show up for a week in The Twilight Zone, The Night Gallery, General Electric Theater, Studio One or whatever, then move on to the next gig. But increasing production values, logistical difficulties and viewer choice started to make that weekly anthology show more or less impossible; the power of stardom also meant that if you could get an actor or actress with a significant fanbase in a starring role, people would watch week after week, no matter what the story, which made the anthology show less and less attractive.

But over the past few years, the format has started to return. It began, oddly enough with Love Bites, a somewhat terrible NBC romcom that featured a different couple every week. That failed very, very quickly, in part because the scripts were just awful, but also because the formula wasn’t quite right. Weekly wasn’t the way to go.

Instead, it was cable that developed the correct format for a modern anthology show, with first American Horror Story and then True Detective. With an audience who likes serial drama but who wants eventual conclusions to their stories that haven’t been drawn out too long, what could be better than a season-long story with a beginning, middle and an end, the next season then telling a completely new story in the same vein? With a bit of cleverness, you can even appease fans of the shows’ stars by having the cast come back to play different characters if they want – or just let them go off to the next job if they’d rather, just like in the old days, since that way you can get big names with limited availability to come in for just a season.

It’s a scheme that certainly worked with ABC’s American Crime, a ‘so good it could have been HBO’ drama about the terrible effects of the American judicial system and all the other systems that have evolved around it. Now ABC are hoping to repeat the show’s success with Wicked City, a “a character-driven, true crime procedural that explores sex, politics and popular culture across various noteworthy eras in LA history”.

The first season is set in 1980. Or maybe 1982. A few years after LA’s Hillside Strangler struck, anyway. Ed Westwick (Gossip Girl) is a serial killer on the make, emulating his idol, the Strangler, by killing girls he picks up in bars then leaving them dead in the same places. It’s something to do with his father having left when he was eight, apparently.

Then one night, he’s about to chop the head off Erika Christensen (Six Degrees, Parenthood) and then have sex with her corpse, when she reveals she’s a single mother. Things get even better when it turns out that not only does she have sociopathic tendencies of her own – she’s one of the killer nurses you hear so much about it these days – she quite enjoys pretending to be a corpse while Ed Westwick has sex with her.

It’s a match made in heaven, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, a couple of brave male, squabbling cops – Jeremy Sisto (Kidnapped, Suburgatory, The Returned) and Gabriel Luna (Matador) – are on Westwick’s trail, hoping to stop him before he can kill yet more young women. All while listening to as many 80s classics and using as many pagers, rotary dial payphones, old Mustangs and 4:3 TVs as the music and props departments can provide.

Unfortunately, there is one problem with the modern anthology format that Wicked City fails to overcome: you actually need to make people want to watch the next season, or even the next episode, hopefully by writing some good scripts. And avoiding complete moral bankruptcy.

Continue reading “Review: Wicked City 1×1 (US: ABC)”

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend 1×1 (US: The CW)

27 October 2015 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

In the US: Mondays, 8/7c, The CW

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has been something of a puzzler for me. Ever since I saw the trailer, I was looking forward to it, but the pilot was a surprising disappointment and having watched the first three episodes, I’m now giving up. And the problem has been puzzling out exactly why it hasn’t been working for me.

On paper, it should be a much-watch, being very clever, innovative, satirical and, despite the title, feminist. Starring the show’s co-creator Rachel Bloom, it sees a successful New York attorney quit her job and fly to small-town California to chase after the boy she had a summer camp romance with a decade previously. Suddenly a big fish in a small pond, she nevertheless fails to take advantage of her opportunities, as well as the other interesting men around her who might make better choices of partner, in favour of chasing after her ‘ex’, single-white-femaling his current girlfriend and so on.

The show plays with meta-analysis, sending up romcoms, comedies, musicals and various other genres, in a clever, self-mocking but also mocking feminist analysis of society and the things it does to women, embracing and using the bugbear of the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend stereotype to explore its point. It even has nifty song and dance numbers that take in everything from Enchanted to Katy Perry.

Unfortunately, I think the show’s biggest problem is that you have to find mental health problems unproblematically funny. Or at least not to feel slightly concerned for a psychotic, hallucinating former pill-pusher whose last happy moment in life had occurred 10 years previously. TV fiction is obviously filled with plenty of protagonists who are mentally disturbed, sometimes for comedic effect, whether it’s Gurney Slade, Des Kinvig, Carrie Mathison, Nurse Jackie or Mr Robot. But those characters’ shows all felt like they were on the side of their protagonists and sympathetic towards them. 

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, however, seems to keep an ironic distance from its subject and is half-laughing at her as it runs with her to California. At times, it’s almost Equus-like, the third episode giving us a look into the sad, bleak life of her new best friend, as if to say “Sure’s, she’s got problems, but she’s sane; Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is happy, even as she’s throwing her life away and everyone around her knows it.” Yet it also is clear that reality’s still better than delusion and that her happiness is not something truly to be envied.

If this were on Showtime as originally intended and with a little less ironic detachment, it might work, feeling like a dark, human satire, but on The CW it feels more like the cool kids mocking the odd kids in the corner.

Barrometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: I’d be surprised if it gets another season, but I’m surprised it’s on The CW in the first place so miracles could still happen.

What have you been watching? Including Hamlet (NT Live/Barbican), Limitless and The Player

26 October 2015 Rob Buckley 41 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.

So I had a last minute ‘Cumberemergency’ on Friday, which meant that I suddenly didn’t have the time to write ‘What have you been watching?’ Sorry about that, but hopefully, this will make it up to you.

Last week on the blog, I reviewed a big slew of first episodes from all manner of different countries:

And today I passed a third-episode verdict on BBC America/BBC Two’s The Last Kingdom.

That means that after the jump, you can find reviews of the latest episodes of 800 Words, Arrow, Blindspot, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, CSI, Doctor Who, The Flash, Grandfathered, Limitless, The Player, Y Gwyll and You’re The Worst. Yes CSI, since I finally got around to watch the final ever episode of that.

One of those shows is getting promoted to regular. Can you guess which one it is? Not CSI, obviously.

(Actually, I haven’t managed to watch the very latest episodes of either Y Gwyll or The Beautiful Lie, because it’s really Sunday and this is a scheduled post I’m writing before both of them have aired. I’ll let you know about them next time.)

I did try to watch the first episode of Con Man as well. However, I gave up 5 minutes when it started becoming cringe comedy on the plane and Tudyk tried to get a fan to give up his seat for him. No extended music sequences in my TV shows, no cringe comedy in my comedies – those rules are sacred.

Anyway, let’s talk about the ‘Cumberemergency’, since I was called upon at the last minute to accompany my mother-in-law to the theatre. Or was it a movie? Maybe it was both. Or neither.

Hamlet (The Barbican)
The National Theatre’s latest version of Hamlet, performed at the Barbican and starring that Benedict Cumberbatch from off the telly. Except it was one of those NT Live things where they film the play as it’s performed and beam it into cinemas everywhere. Except the cinema in question was at the Barbican, so they might as well have just knocked a hole in the wall and let us look through it.

Anyway, Hamlet‘s one of those plays where every director tries to make his or her mark by doing something radically different. The last version I saw at the Barbican was the Stephen Dillane (The One Game, The Tunnel, Hunted, Game of Thrones) one where he went naked for a scene.

On top of that, Hamlet exists in three different versions, some which have scenes that aren’t in the others. The result is that I always forget what’s in the play and spend the whole time thinking “I don’t remember this. Is this in the original?”

In this version, our Benedict is playing a very bereaved, but generally good-egg Hamlet, who’s a bit annoyed his mum’s remarrying so soon after his dad died – except his dad’s ghost reveals that actually, he was murdered. He doesn’t get very pissed off like Mel Gibson or naked like Dillane, but does plot his revenge, all while his girlfriend goes super-loopy.

Unfortunately, the NT Live experience is basically the worst of both worlds. Despite my flippancy, the NT production does look very innovative, interesting and surprisingly funny, giving all the scenes genuine meaning. Bennie gives a great performance as Hamlet, making interesting choices such as the removal of any hint of sarcasm from the ‘what a piece of work is man’ monologue to make him a disappointed optimist rather than an embittered child-man. Siân Brook is marvellously barking as Ophelia. Ciaran Hinds’s Claudius is the surprising weak link, straining to effect a Yorkshire accent for no discernable reason, but still a decent stage presence.

But any sense of theatre’s immediacy is lost in the cinema. It looks nice, but you don’t feel anything, because the actors aren’t there on stage in front of you. Similarly, it’s not cinematic enough, despite the director’s best efforts to include crane shots and the like, for you to get the benefits of the directorial options and camerawork available to movies.

The play’s split into two acts, the first 2h, the second 1h, and the first certainly feels the full 2h as a result of these problems. It’s not the production’s fault, it’s simply a problem of the medium.

So don’t do NT Live if you can. The play’s the thing, after all.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Hamlet (NT Live/Barbican), Limitless and The Player”

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: The Last Kingdom (US: BBC America; UK: BBC Two)

26 October 2015 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

In the US: Saturdays, 10/9c, BBC America
In the UK: Thursdays, 9pm, BBC Two

It seems that it’s not just US TV that’s fallen for this season’s “crap first episode, much improved second episode” rule – UK TV in the form of The Last Kingdom is doing the exact same thing. True, it’s a co-production between BBC America and BBC Two, but it’s interesting that this seems to be the new rule on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps it’s time for the return of the ‘pilot movie’ to give shows enough time to both establish the ground rules and then settle down to telling the story?

A dramatisation of Bernard Cornwell’s ‘Saxon Stories’ (how much did he want to call them the Saxon Chronicles, I wonder?), The Last Kingdom tells the story of how King Alfred managed to defend England against the Vikings and set the foundation stones for a future unified England. Unfortunately, episode one was a tedious, uninvolving mess that made all the mistakes of modern TV historical drama but without having any of the virtues. In particular, it had a desperately uninteresting hero Uhtred (Alexander Dreymon), a Saxon noble raised by Danes, who discovers in adult life that neither side really likes him.

I was very tempted to give up after the first episode as a result, but as King Alfred was a no show in the first episode, I decided to hang on in there until he made his appearance. And I’m glad I did, because Alfred is the show’s saving grace – a very different portrayal than we’re used to of the wise king who moonlit as a shoddy locum baker.

Here, he is a coldly calculating yet pious man who also suffers from terrible pains and David Dawson gives a blinding performance as the invariably cleverest nobleman in the room.

The trouble is that while Dawson’s great to watch, taking Alfred in an unsuspected direction, and Cornwell’s characterisation gives him a lot to work with, the rest of The Last Kingdom is considerably less interesting. Indeed, the show is almost the mirror image of Vikings in that as soon as we start dealing with anyone even slightly Scandinavian, the show becomes terribly, terribly stupid and trite. As I said when I reviewed the first episode, the show could really have benefitted from watching Vikings, just to learn how to make them interesting and not complete idiots – and to learn the sunlight really isn’t the enemy of good drama.

That’s meant the second and third episodes have varied in watchability as we’ve seen increasing amounts of both our hero and the vikings. The second episode was the superior of the two, as we also had Alec Newman (Frank Herbert’s Dune, Spooks, Star Trek: Enterprise, Rogue, Waterloo Road, The Bastard Executioner) as Æthelred, Alfred’s elder brother, who is as well drawn and portrayed as Alfred is himself. Unfortunately, episode three was more interested in Uhtred and his girlfriend Brida.

The Last Kingdom is at its best when dealing with Alfred and to a lesser extent the Saxons, where it’s fascinating and engaging, at its worst when it’s dealing with the vikings, when it becomes eminently missable, hokey and historically dodgy. I can only hope that as the show progresses, Uthred simply becomes more Saxon, since he might then be interesting. Until then, though, I’m equivocating. I want to see more Alfred, but I’m concerned I’m just going to get loads of Uthred, worrying about whether he’s going to get some land. I’ll let you know next episode how it goes.

Barrometer rating: 3
TMINE prediction: Probably won’t make it to the second season, since it’ll offend historical purists with its frequent distortions, and offend regular viewers who quite fancied a new Game of Thrones. But BBC America and BBC Two don’t place as much of a premium on ratings as other networks so it might get a stay of execution.

Australian and New Zealand TV

Review: The Ex-PM 1×1 (Australia: ABC)

22 October 2015 Rob Buckley 2 Comments


In Australia: Wednesdays, 9.10pm, ABC
In the UK: Not yet acquired

Comedy is a funny thing. Some of it transfers around the world very well. The less dialogue the better usually – Mr Bean pratfalling is the same in any language – but the delights of Cheers, Modern Family and Blackadder work in pretty much any country you care to think of, either in English or dubbed. 

Satire, on the other hand, is a much trickier prospect. By its very nature, it’s targetting something that it expects the audience to know about already so they can think about it in a new light. It’ll use cultural references that it shares with the viewer to raise a laugh at the same time.

All of which is a slightly pretentious way of saying that I didn’t get a lot of The Ex-PM. But that’s not necessarily the show’s fault. Nor does it mean it’s hilarious for Australians.

Shaun Micallef is one of Australia’s most familiar and celebrated performers, having appeared in TV comedy shows, usually as himself or a version of himself, since the 1980s. Chances are, though, unless you’ve been to Australia or are Australian, you won’t have heard of him, despite Channel 4 (or maybe it was BBC Two) having picked up one of his shows a decade or two ago. I think. I seem to remember seeing it anyway.

These days he’s most famous (in Australia) for his comedy news programme Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell, which has aired on ABC since 2012 but which is the latest in a series of programmes bearing his name (eg Shaun Micallef’s World Around Him, The Micallef Program, Micallef Tonight, Shaun Micallef’s New Year’s Rave). 

But he’s an all-round performer. He appeared in SBS’s 60s action TV show and movie parody Danger 5 for example, and if you cast your mind back to Ten’s Mr and Mrs Murder, he played one half of a husband-and-wife crime scene-cleaning team who solved mysteries together. 

I didn’t really like Mr and Mrs Murder. Neither, to be fair, did most of Australia, judging by the ratings. However, I was told after the fact by TV-literate Australians of my acquaintance that a lot of what Micallef was doing was playing on a shared history of performance with his co-star Kat Stewart in another show, Newstopia.

See what I mean? Sometimes, you need to be in on the joke and the cultural references to really get comedy.

All of which is an even longer way of saying that Shaun Micallef has a new comedy series called The Ex-PM in which he plays Andrew Dugdale, the retired third-longest serving prime minister of Australia. And that I didn’t get a lot of the jokes but that doesn’t mean it’s not funny, if you know what the jokes are referencing. I think.

Continue reading “Review: The Ex-PM 1×1 (Australia: ABC)”