TV reviews

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

Australian and New Zealand TV

Review: The Beautiful Lie 1×1 (Australia: ABC)

21 October 2015 Rob Buckley 13 Comments


In Australia: Sundays, 8.30pm, ABC
In the UK: Not yet acquired

So, obviously, I watch an awful lot of TV to do this blog. In part, that’s because as I spend most of my days reading things, I don’t want to spend my evenings doing that, too. That means that, essentially, I only read books when I’m not working and I’m not blogging.

In that particular intersection of the Venn diagram of my life is August.

Don’t judge me too harshly then when I say that I’ve never read Anna Karenina. It’s a classic, I know, but quite a long one and it’s by Tolstoy and it’s probably got one of those genealogy tables at the beginning so you know who’s related to whom. Plus, you know, holidays.

Anyway, that means I’m coming at ABC (Australia)’s The Beautiful Lie fresh. An updating of Karenina, it sees the action shifted from the late 19th century Russian aristocracy to modern day Melbourne and Australia’s very own aristocracy. Sarah Snook is Anna Ivin, a former women’s tennis champ married to a former men’s tennis champ (Rodger Corser, who’s best known from Underbelly and Rush but who also appeared with Snook in W’s Spirited). When Ivin’s brother (Daniel Henshall) cheats on his wife (Celia Pacquola), Anna flies into town to provide support for them both, but at the airport meets hipster musician Skeet Du Pont (Benedict Samuel). There’s a spark, in part caused by their witnessing the accidental death of a nearby taxi driver, but that’s it… until they meet again later – it turns out that Skeet is actually the fiancé of Kitty (Sophie Lowe), Pacquola’s sister, and the spark becomes something more. Dare the two act on it?

Normally, I have quite a low tolerance for this sort of thing, particularly when you have a knowing narrator throwing out aphorisms about life and love like she’s just been given a particularly cynical, Russian “quote of the day” calendar and fancied looking a few months ahead. Throw in some hipsters, moody, unrealistic sex scenes and the occasionally wooden performance, and I’m reaching for the off switch.

Yet, actually, The Beautiful Lie is very good. Maybe it’s because there’s some classic plotting and dialogue working under the show’s covers, but the characters are interesting and engaging, even when they’re being dicks, all the repressed emotion and love is heart-wrenching, and even with the 17,000 characters and relationships to juggle, it all fits together well. And despite all the potential Russian miserablism to mine, it all feels quite hopeful and even fun at times.

At six parts, The Beautiful Lie is clearly a much easier read of a classic to get through than Anna Karenina itself, too. I’ve no idea if it’ll get picked up in the UK, since BBC Four probably won’t want it since there’s no crime element, but I imagine Sky Arts might give it a look in. I certainly think it deserves a bigger audience than it’s liable to get.

 

A bit of A Bit of Fry and Laurie

Review: The Romeo Section 1×1 (Canada: CBC)

20 October 2015 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

In Canada: Wednesdays, 9pm, CBC
In the UK: Not yet acquired

If there’s one thing Canadians can’t seem to get enough of, it seems to be spy shows. Whether it’s as a stupid comedy (Insecurity), a reasonably smart cross-border politicking drama (The Border), or as a very smart undercover cop show (Intelligence), sneakiness and lies have been a mainstay of Canada’s TV output for the best part of a decade. 

In part, that’s down to Chris Haddock, the Canadian writer/producer behind cop shows Da Vinci’s Inquest, Da Vinci’s Town Hall and CBS’s The Handler, who first launched the genre in Canada with the slow-moving Intelligence. He’s now back in the game with The Romeo Section, an even slower-moving spy show. 

It stars the inexplicably Glaswegian Andrew Airlie as the equally inexplicably named Wolfgang McGee, a globe-trotting Vancouver university professor who runs ‘the Romeo Section’ – a group of male and female undercover spies involved in sexy time with various intelligence targets, international and domestic. It’s their job to inflitrate the Triads, crime rings, cartels and other criminal groups, to get the information Canada needs to destroy them.

To get them to do this, Airlie goes around Hong Kong and Vancouver, visiting shops, libraries, dark gloomy places, racetracks and numerous other places, where he has mumbly, Glaswegian-accented conversations with people that are so arch, you can’t tell if it’s bad writing or some kind of spy code. Then he goes away again, information gathered, so he can brood back in his office or mumble with his handler (Eugene Lipinski from Intelligence, Da Vinci’s Town Hall et al, but also the original BBC Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), while his assets go off and have more sexy times. Main asset is the conflicted and bearded Juan Riedinger (Narcos), who spends a lot of his time shagging mental mob wife Stephanie Bennett (UnREAL, iZombie).

The whole show has the veneer of quality and intelligence, except it’s one of those veneers where you assume that it’s good and intelligent because nothing much happens for great long chunks of time and no one talks above a whisper, not because it’s telling you anything you don’t know or because of the gripping plot and characters. Not by a long chalk is this another Rubicon. You want it to be Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but I’m about 90% sure it’s actually A Bit of Fry & Laurie.

It’s not badly written, it does avoid the excesses of a lot of spy shows, it does have some smarts to it and I’m sure it’ll have its proponents and fans, who’ll be addicted by episode eight, when something might actually have happened. But I won’t be sticking around until then, I’m afraid.

 

US TV

Review: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend 1×1 (US: The CW)

19 October 2015 Rob Buckley 11 Comments


In the US: Mondays, 8/7c, The CW

Each year, as the Upfronts season comes round, I post all the summaries and trailers for the new shows set to appear on our screens in the new season. Usually, these trailers have been pretty reliable indicators of the quality of shows, with sucky shows having sucky trailers and good shows having good trailers. Sucky shows appeal to people with sucky taste, good shows appeal to people with good taste – this is how trailers should work.

This year, however, it’s all gone a bit Pete Tong. When CBS rolled out its trailers for the new season, a groan could be heard around the world as millions of people saw the trailer from Supergirl and thought, “WTF?”

Except, of course, the trailer was misleading, and while not perfect, Supergirl is really a whole load of fun.

Meanwhile, despite it being a musical, I was looking forward to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: 

Coming from the director of 500 Days of Summer and with animated sequences, musical numbers and more, this is actually quite a funny, innovative-looking little piece that could go pretty much anywhere, so I’m certainly going to be giving it a try.

But now I’ve seen it and all I can say now is “Oh, arse. Bloody trailers.”

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US TV

Review: Truth Be Told 1×1 (US: NBC)

19 October 2015 Rob Buckley 11 Comments


In the US: Fridays, 8.30/7.30c, NBC
In the UK: Not yet acquired

We recently discussed Buckley’s ‘All producers live in Islington’ Hypothesis, which suggests that TV producers don’t actually watch TV shows. They may have heard of them, but they don’t watch them.

The latest piece of proof for this hypothesis – we’re dangerously close to calling it a theory now – is Truth Be Told. To show you how weak from the outset the whole idea for the show is, I’ll tell you that the working title for the show was People Are Talking. That’s not a proper name for a TV show – that’s a name for a reality show mockumentary.

Anyway, it’s fair to say that despite allegedly being based on the life of show producer and general death knell for quality and humour, DJ Nash (Hank, Accidentally On Purpose, Til Death, Traffic Light, Bent, Up All Night, Guys With Kids– is there a producer with a worse track record?), whose last sitcom, Growing Up Fisher, was also allegedly semi-autobiographical, Truth Be Told is basically the result of someone having heard about Black-ish and deciding to do their own version. Except badly.

It stars Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Raising the Bar, Franklin and Bash, but mainly Saved By The Bell) as a professor of ethics. Yes, Mark-Paul Gosselaar. As a professor of ethics.

Seeing any problems yet? At the very least with the US education system?

Well, stick with me anyway. Gosselaar’s married to Filipina Vanessa Lachey (Dads), while his best friend and neighbour Tone Bell (Bad Judge) is a black standup comic newly married to Bresha Webb (ER, Grey’s Anatomy). Ooh, how diverse.

So guess what. They’re going to talk about modern ethical dilemmas to do with race, sex, gender, politics and more. You know, the things that people can’t talk about in real life, but which a daring modern sitcom can. You know, one like Black-ish.

Oh yes.

So what’s Truth Be Told going to go with? Well – prepare yourself for the controversy – it’s going to talk about whether it’s racist for someone to assume a car driver is white because he has a Jonathan Meyer CD in his car. Or whether it’s okay to ask the hot babysitter whether she’s done porn. How about whether you should hide the fact you have tickets to the Adult Film Awards from your wife or just tell her?

Typical modern day ethical dilemmas, hey? How could even the highly developed ethical mind of Professor Mark-Paul Gosselaar deal with these sort of issues, which we face every day but to which until now no one has developed adequate moral frameworks in response? Thank the gods for Truth Be Told, hey?

Alternatively, encase it in concrete, bury beneath the ocean floor and pray no one opens it for a thousand years. Or better still, never, in case future archaeologists think this is our equivalent of Aristotle.

US TV

What have you been watching? Including The Oresteia (Shakespeare’s Globe), Y Gwyll and The Flash

16 October 2015 Rob Buckley 8 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.

I haven’t quite managed to review the first episodes of everything I’d intended to, this week. The CW’s My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is still on the pile, as is CBC’s The Romeo Section, which will both have to wait until Monday or Tuesday next week.

However, miraculously, I’m up to date with everything else. Elsewhere, I reviewed the first episode of The Last Kingdom (US: BBC America; UK: BBC Two), and I passed third-episode verdicts on The Player (US: NBC), Quantico (US: ABC; UK: Alibi), Blood & Oil (US: ABC), The Grinder (US: Fox) and Grandfathered (US: Fox).

And after the jump, you can find reviews of the latest episodes of 800 Words, Arrow, Blindspot, The Flash, Limitless, The Player, Y Gwyll and You’re The Worst.

On top of all that, though, I managed to find time to go to the theatre, too.


The Oresteia (Shakespeare’s Globe)
The second of the three Oresteia‘s this year (Almeida/Trafalgar Studios, this, HOME), the Globe’s adaptation isn’t as radical a reinterpration as the Almeida’s, giving us pretty much the original text bar a few excisions. There’s even singing, too.

However, text is one thing, production is another, and between director Adele Thomas and the cast, what we have is every bit as radical, giving us comedy, thanks in part to a Klytemnestra who is quite clearly bonkers, and even sci-fi and horror towards the end, with the Furies/Erinyes reinterpreted as zombies. And while the the Almeida gave us an entirely new first act derived from the myth, here we have just the slightest incursion in the final moments from what would have been the fourth accompanying play to the Oresteia. Which is all almost as bonkers as Klytemnestra. 

As well as some really interesting staging – a lot of which unfortunately requires the poor ‘pit audience’ to scoot out the way of the oncoming action – there’s some excellent costuming, too, that combines early 60s fashions with classical Greek armour, and that gives us an Athena who makes you think for a moment there really has been an epiphany.

The first act/play could probably have done with some trimming, since it does plod along a bit and drift into inaudibility when it’s mostly the chorus, but the rest of it goes along at a clip and is imaginatively handled, for once showing us why the second of the plays is called The Libation Bearers. Generally good, with some horrifically gruesome moments, but probably a bit funnier than it should have been, too.

Agamemnon in the Globe's Oresteia

Klytemnestra in the Oresteia

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including The Oresteia (Shakespeare’s Globe), Y Gwyll and The Flash”