TV reviews

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

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 2

Third-episode verdict: The Player (US: NBC)

13 October 2015 Rob Buckley 28 Comments

In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, NBC 
In the UK: Nearly acquired but not quite

‘Regression to the mean’ is one of those laws of statistics that gets bandied around without it necessarily meaning what people think it means. However, I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t a regression to the mean over at NBC. 

On the face of it, we have two action shows that are basically the best action shows that NBC’s done in a long time. We’re not talking Banshee- or Strike Back-level awesome, despite the presence of both of Strike Back‘s leads in these shows. But for network TV and certainly for NBC, both Blindspot and The Player are top efforts.

Both, however, had problems. Blindspot‘s biggest problems, apart from an incredibly stupid premise, was that it took itself very, very seriously. It lacked any sense of fun. Despite being about a woman with special powers who wakes up amnesiac, naked and tattooed in a bag in Times Square.

The Player, on the other hand, apparently knew it was daft from the outset and was going to have fun. Set in sunny Las Vegas, it sees a man fight crime in order to win bets for rich people. Possessing not only some great stunt coordinators but the martial arts-tastic Wesley Snipes as the ambivalent ‘Pit Boss’ of ‘the game’, The Player was never going to win any awards, but it knew it would have a laugh along the way.

Since those opening episodes, Blindspot has slowly improved, with last night’s episode being its best – and most fun – yet. Poor old Sullivan Stapleton even got to crack a smile.

Meanwhile, The Player has slowly been trying to take itself seriously, despite essentially being Hard Target set in casinos. Angsty Philip Winchester has been getting more angsty, while Snipes has been glowering a lot and has stopped doing his funny characters. Meanwhile, ‘The Dealer’, Charity Wakefield, has implausibly been revealed to be both ex-Royal Marines and ex-SAS. Despite neither the Marines nor the SAS accepting female recruits.

The result is that Blindspot has gone from being an absolute waste of time to being almost preferable to The Player, which has become a bit yawny.

The Player still has a lot going for it, particularly the locale and the cast, but especially its action scenes, which are probably the best on broadcast US TV – its second episode had some outstanding aerial stuntwork. Its ongoing story arcs are moderately intriguing, too, as we learn a little about ‘the game’ and the FBI’s investigations into it, as well as what happened to Winchester’s ex-wife.

But it needs to rediscover the fun it had in the first episode and let Winchester enjoy himself. It also needs to unleash Wesley Snipes. Let him do whatever he wants to do, guys – you’ll be grateful for it.

Barrometer rating: 2
TMINE prediction: If it continues on its current path, it’s liable to get cancelled within a season. But if it can rediscover the fun, there’s no reason it couldn’t make it to two or even three seasons

What have you been watching? Including The Martian, Arrow, The Flash and Continuum

12 October 2015 Rob Buckley 12 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 got a bit snowed under with work on Friday and then went out for the evening, which meant ‘What have you been watching?’ didn’t happen. Sorry about that. Fingers crossed, things will be back to normal by the end of this week.

Anyway, here it is now. Unfortunately, I’ve not yet had a chance to watch last night’s Quantico, Blood & Oil, and Y Gwyll, but never fear third-episode verdicts of the first two will be arriving in the next few days, as will a third-episode verdict on The Player and a review of BBC America’s new Vikings v Saxons show The Last Kingdom. 

However, the delay does mean I’ll be able to provide my thoughts on Friday’s Dr Ken and the last ever Continuum, as well as Saturday’s Doctor Who. You’ll find them after the jump, snuggled in the warm embrace of reviews of the latest episodes of: 800 Words, Arrow, Blindspot, Code Black, The Flash, Grandfathered, The Grinder, Scream Queens and You’re The Worst. 

Just in case you think I was slacking, though, elsewhere I did manage to review the first episodes of new shows This Life (Canada: CBC) and Dr Ken (US: ABC), as well as provide third-episode verdicts on Blindspot (US: NBC; UK: Sky Living), The Muppets (US: ABC; UK: Sky1) and Limitless (US: CBS; UK: Sky Living).

And, I went to see a movie, too:

The Martian (2015) (in cinemas now)
Ridley Scott and Drew Goddard’s adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestselling ‘MacGyver in space’ novel, in which an astronaut is accidentally left behind on Mars and must use his advanced knowledge of science and engineering to survive, re-establish contact with Earth and then somehow get home again. Despite being very faithful to Weir’s original plotline and dialogue, it’s neverthless a different beast to the book, which was originally published online a chapter at a time, presenting a different scientific or engineering challenge with each installment. Most of the science and a lot of the tension have gone, to the extent that huge chunks get replaced with a ‘seven months later’ caption, although you can still see some of it left behind in various places.

All the same, it’s different, rather than inferior to the book – a cinematic experience rather than a literary one that’s more about survival than solving problems single-handedly – and is easily Scott’s best work in years, as well as probably his funniest ever. A great cast in a movie that largely tries to get science right, doesn’t pick sides and actually looks great in 3D for a change.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including The Martian, Arrow, The Flash and Continuum”

Canadian TV

Review: This Life 1×1 (Canada: CBC)

8 October 2015 Rob Buckley 2 Comments


In Canada: Mondays, 9pm, CBC

There are certain themes for drama that are quite hard to base a series around, for the simple reason that they aren’t really very enjoyable. Some ideas, particularly the more escapist ones divorced from real life, are fun to start with and it’s up to the programme makers to see if they can make them less fun (eg travelling through space and time with an ancient alien in a police box that’s bigger on the inside than on the outside); other ideas, particularly those close to home, are miserable and it’s up to the programme makers to see if they can somehow entice viewers to watch.

Cancer’s one of those topics that really has to woo viewers. If you don’t believe me, try listening to one of the current crop of interviews with Toni Collette and Drew Barrymore as they try to explain how much buddy-buddy fun and ‘girls night out’ Miss You Already is, despite being about breast cancer.

Canada’s This Life suffers from a similar problem. An adaptation not of the iconic 90s BBC Two show but of ICI Radio-Canada Télé’s French-language show Nouvelle Addresse, it sees Torri Higginson (Stargate Atlantis) playing a 40-something single mother who writes a popular newspaper column about being a 40-something single mother (what’s up with all the heroic 40-something parental newspaper columnists in the colonies, by the way?). 

She’s a bit dull and consumed with her family, rather than herself, as younger, free spirited sister Lauren Lee Smith (The L Word, CSI, Good Dog, Mutant X, The Listener) is happy to point out to her. So she decides to carpe diem, perhaps even go out with that new high school principal who seems to be into her (Shawn Doyle from Endgame). 

Except then she discovers that the cancer that she’d thought had gone away six months earlier has returned, and this time it’s terminal. She has less than a year to live. Now she needs to prepare her kids for when she’s not around, while deciding how she’s going to spend her final year on Earth.

Want to watch it yet? Of course you don’t. It sounds miserable. And often it is. You’d practically have to be inhuman not to be weeping buckets when Higginson gets her diagnosis and prognosis.

This Life attempts to make itself more palatable in a number of ways. Firstly, it gives us Lauren Lee Smith. She boxes in her spare time and does the Walk of Shame so regularly, she even has spare dresses in her office. She’s even toying with having a regular threesome with her latest one-night stand and his girlfriend.

Then there’s Higginson’s teenage children, who have their own things going on, involving boyfriends and girlfriends (or lack thereof), school work, squabbling, etc.

Still not persuaded? 

Fair enough. None of that is really that appealing or as fun as it thinks it is, either. Neither does This Life really establish in this first episode why you’d want to watch a show that ultimately is going to be about someone slowly and painfully dying, leaving her children alone. After depicting Higginson wanting to seize the day before she finds out her cancer is back, and then taking the ‘gut punch’ of the episode title that stops these plans in her tracks, it’s unclear if she’s going to properly seize the day for the rest of the series or simply start going to lots of lawyers and investment brokers to try to establish a legacy for her kids.

Maybe it’ll be uplifting, maybe it’ll be depressing, but given Nouvelle Addresse has lasted three seasons, I’ll bet on option one. This Life also has a strong cast, with Higginson particularly good, and some good direction.

It’s just it’s a programme about someone dying of cancer, without much to relieve the pain. And that could be too close too home for a lot of people.

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 2

Third-episode verdict: Limitless (US: CBS; UK: Sky Living)

7 October 2015 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

In the US: Tuesdays, 10/9c, CBS
In the UK: Acquired by Sky Living

In contrast to all the other shows that decided with their second episodes to improve on their crappy pilots this season, Limitless appears to have been planned this way all along. Which is odd. The first episode was generic dullness – a continuation that bolted a police procedural format onto the superior Bradley Cooper movie about a slacker who takes a drug that gives him incredible mental capabilities but which has lethal withdrawal symptoms.

As I mentioned at the time, it was inherently not much different from any number of other CBS “clever people solve crimes” shows, such as The Mentalist, Numb3rs, Elementary, Criminal Minds, Intelligence, Scorpion, and CSI, beyond a little more spit and polish, presumably acquired through experience of making so many identikit shows.

The oddest feature of the first episode was its messed up casting, with livewire Jennifer Carpenter from Dexter cast as the dull FBI agent who plays second fiddle to twentysomething musician-slacker Jake McDorman from Manhattan Love Story. What were the producers thinking, I wondered?

Well, it’s quite clear what they were thinking now, since apparently, the pilot was intended to lure in the fans of the movie. But as of episode two, the series officially became a comedy with occasionally dark undertones. It became Chuck. A better Chuck than Chuck in fact, since at least it can manage to do action and Carpenter doesn’t have to look like a lovesick puppy the whole time (poor Yvonne Strahovski). 

And as a comedy, it’s actually quite fun, warm, engaging and inventive – considerably better and nicer, in fact, than just about anything CBS classes as a comedy. Best touch of the show so far, beyond some wildly inventive fantasy sequences, has been the recruitment in the third episode of McDorman’s fellow lead from Manhattan Love Story, Analeigh Tipton, as his ex-girlfriend, newly impressed by the NZT-improved McDorman.

What it isn’t any more is either a good police procedural, since its plots wander between dull and unrealistic, or a continuation of the movie Limitless, beyond constant acknowledgements of the existence of Bradley Cooper’s character and the NZT MacGuffin. Tonally, it’s off completely here: Cooper has evolved into something a tad evil, and NZT does little except make McDorman a bit more energetic, focused and smarter. There’s little of the OCD, drive and mastery of the world that the movie’s NZT brought to Cooper.

Indeed, McDorman is well cast as the driftless and not-that-smart-even-on-NZT lead, well suited to the idea of an amiable shmuck who can drag up inspiration from old episodes of Miami Vice and dream-sequence all manner of hard-boiled shenanigans and adventures for Carpenter, since he isn’t allowed to go on missions with her, only stay in the back room analysing things on his regulation one pill a day.

I still think Carpenter would have been a better lead, and it would have been interesting for a change to have a show about a female slacker turning her life around, and not through setting up a cupcake business. The vestigial dark through-narrative about Cooper blackmailing McDorman also sits oddly next to the rest of the almost exclusively comedic and heartwarming qualities of the show.

But as it stands, Limitless is now a considerably more interesting, albeit different show than when it started. 

Barrometer rating: 2
TMINE’s prediction: I’m not on NZT, but I think this has the potential to run and run. However, I’m not convinced it quite has that magical ingredient needed to make an audience love it.

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 4

Third-episode verdict: The Muppets (US: ABC; UK: Sky1)

7 October 2015 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

In the US: Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC
In the UK: Mondays, 8pm, Sky1. Starts October 19th

I think it’s fair to say the universal reaction to the first episode of The Muppets was “Oh my God, what have you done?” An attempt to update The Muppet Show as a mockumentary set behind the scenes of Miss Piggy’s supposed late night chat show, it tried to give us adult, cringe comedy and depth of relationships.

It was horrible. It was wrong.

In common with a number of other new US shows this autumn, subsequent episodes have been an attempt to correct the pilot and put the programme on a stronger footing. Here, episode two seemed to show the right direction, effectively ditching most of the adult-oriented content in favour of what was basically a single-camera version of The Muppet Show, complete with a plethora of celebrity cameos, only with less slapstick and fewer laughs. It wasn’t great, but at least it didn’t make you want to a hug a toy Kermit and cry out “What have they done to you, old friend?”

Unfortunately, episode three started edging back towards the adult. Not hugely, but the joke count plummeted again, despite Christina Applegate’s best efforts.

It might well be that given time, The Muppets would end up being the comedic delight it should have been. But it’s not right now, so I guess it’s time to lower the curtain on this one.

Barrometer rating: 4
TMINE’s prediction: Will probably last a season thanks to the name value of the show, but will be lucky to be renewed