TV reviews

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

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Blindspot (US: NBC; UK: Sky Living)

6 October 2015 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

In the US: Mondays, 10/9c, NBC. Starts September 21st
in the UK: Acquired by Sky Living

As I remarked on Friday, in common with many of this autumn’s new US shows, Blindspot is gradually getting better after having a crappy pilot. Whether or not the networks rushed into production with shows that had not been given enough development time, I don’t know, but whatever the reason, a number of new shows have slowly been fixing their problems in the subsequent episodes.

Blindspot‘s pilot had all sorts of problems, not the least a startling lack of originality, despite its ‘high concept’ idea: a naked, amnesiac woman is found in a bag in Times Square and the tattoos that cover her body turn out to be clues to crimes that are going to be committed. Who is she? Who left her this way? Why tattoos?

Who cares? We’ve seen better in Prison Break, John Doe, Kyle XY et al.

Certainly, given the lack of chemistry between the two leads (Jaimie Alexander and Sullivan Stapleton), as well as the lack of humour and the general dark moody fightiness of show, by the end of the first episode it would have been hard to come up with a good answer to that last question at least.

However, despite my prediction that the show would drip feed over many episodes the few answers to the other questions, Blindspot has managed in the past two episodes to quickly drop all mannner of hints and even answers that help both to flesh out Alexander and also Stapleton, pulling off the near impossible trick of creating a shared background for the two characters that’s not romantic (yet) but which nevertheless gives them a bond.

Hopefully, the show will then lighten up a bit, since Sullivan’s guilty, growly, haunted FBI agent isn’t really an enjoyable presence and Alexander is naturally a traumatised blank slate. A few smiles wouldn’t go amiss.

Now the show’s biggest problems are its plots and action scenes. For a high concept show, it has a certain mundanity, with special forces soldiers turned bad and aggrieved suicide bombers being the show’s stock in trade. Where are the Carlos the Jackal and the Treadstone of this Bourne Identity? 

Even if they did show up, the programme needs some improvements in direction. Again, dark and moody can set an atmosphere, but if you can’t see what’s going on, what’s the point? There’s no tension, no excitement, in blurs and shadows.

To be honest, on this score, Blindspot could learn a few things from NBC’s other new action show starring a former Strike Back lead, The Player, despite the latter getting worse ratings than this. But then Blindspot does have Jaimie Alexander quite naked, quite a lot.

While Blindspot is still largely an average US action TV show, it does at least show some promise now, as well as an ability to adapt and change and a welcome desire not to keep its cards too close to its chest. So while I’m not recommending yet, I will be sticking with it for the forseeable future. 

Baromer rating: 3
TMINE’s prediction: Will certainly last a full season, but it ever faces any decent competition in the schedules, it’s likely to get cancelled

US TV

Review: Dr Ken 1×1 (US: ABC)

5 October 2015 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

In the US: Fridays, 8.30/7.30c, ABC

If there’s a message to take away from the latest crop of medical dramas that the networks have foist so far on us this autumn, it’s that the American public like their doctors to be dicks. Dicks who are right and will make you better medically, but fundamentally, who are complete dicks with the bedside manner of a marine drill sergeant. We’ve already had lone-wolf racist surgeon dick Jennifer Beals over on TNT’s Proof and an entire hospital of nurse and doctor dicks over on CBS in Code Black – particularly Marcia Gay Harden. And now we have ‘actually used to be a doctor in real life’ dick doctor Ken Jeong in Dr Ken.

I’m not sure the cause of this. Maybe it’s ‘the Donald Trump effect’ making viewers crave a complete dick to order them about. Maybe it’s nearly a decade of House that’s conditioned everyone to be expect doctors to be misanthropic geniuses. Or maybe it’s a realistic reflection of the US medical system. After all, Alec Baldwin was kind of a dick surgeon in Malice all the way back in 1993.

Whatever the reason, that’s what we’ve got in Dr Ken. Now admittedly, Ken Jeong has made a career out of being a dick, first as a doctor (I’m assuming), then as a stand-up, then as the insane teacher, Chang, in Community and then as the funny naked crime lord, Leslie Chow, of The Hangover and its sequels.

He’s funny and edgy. However, beyond the fact he’s been a doctor in real life and he’s also a producer and writer for Dr Ken, it’s not clear why he should be shoe-horned into a multi-camera family sitcom in which he makes proctology jokes. Beyond the fact that TV doctors are apparently all now dicks and Jeong’s good at playing a dick, even a mild dick.

And he is quite mild in this. The show dwells on two areas: home and office. Home is home. It’s the same as any other sitcom family, with Jeong and his therapist wife (Suzy Nakamura) tusselling for control over home and children, Jeong being less sympathetic to his kids than she. Because he’s a mildly dickish TV doctor, but also because that’s how US family sitcoms work. 

At the office, Jeong spends his time being dickish to his annoying patients, quarrelling and gossiping with his diverse, joke-playing co-workers, and tusselling for control over patients and staff with administrator Dave Foley (Kids In The Hall, How To Be A Gentleman, Spun Out). Even though Jeong and the cast do their best, the script never really delivers the funny in either domain, although Foley’s inadvertent racism almost manages to raise some chuckles. Unfortunately, it crosses a line and just becoming unpleasant. The only other joke of note? Jeong looking for his daughter, Molly, in a night club and finding something quite different instead. And I’ve just spoiled that one for you.

Perhaps the only point where the show ever really becomes interesting is when Jeong acts and talks like a doctor. It may be dry stuff, for just for a moment, you might find your sleeping brain cells stirred into life.

Other than that, consider this the next Cristela.

What have you been watching? Including You, Me and the Apocalypse, Limitless, The Muppets, Scream Queens, Doctor Who and Y Gwyll

2 October 2015 Rob Buckley 38 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 always forget. I always go “Look how much I’ve done!” in the first week of each new Fall season, then forget that in the second week I’ve got to watch all the new programmes that start airing that week as well as the ones that began the previous week.

My, what a lot of tele I’ve watched this week.

Still, unbelievably, I’m actually up to date. This week, I reviewed the first episodes of the following new shows:

And after the jump, you’ll find reviews of the latest episodes of: 800 Words, Blindspot, Continuum, Doctor Who, Heroes Reborn, Life in Pieces, Limitless, Minority Report, The Muppets, The Player, Rosewood, Scream Queens, Y Gwyll and You’re The Worst. Some of them won’t be making it to a third-episode verdict, particularly since the Barrometer is currently in a tanning salon somewhere in the Gorbals so too busy to pass judgement on anything, but you can find out which after the jump.

On top of all that, I also managed to watch the first episode of another new show, this time from the UK.

You, Me and The Apocalypse (UK: Sky1; US: NBC)
As with most US/UK co-productions, particularly those involving Sky, this is a lukewarm affair that satisfies no-one, perhaps best evidenced by the change in the show’s title from Apocalypse Slough. It sees a comet approaching the Earth, meaning that everyone goes a bit whacky at the prospect of the coming Apocalypse that will result when it hits. However, the action of the first episode is all set in the lead-up to the lead-up to the comet, introducing us to several different groups of people from around the world who are going to all end up together at some point. These include Mathew Baynton, Joel Fry (Plebs), Pauline Quirke (Birds of a Feather), Rob Lowe (like you need to know who he is), Paterson Joseph (Peep Show), Jenna Fischer (The Office US) and an almost unrecognisable Megan Mullally (Will and Grace). Unfortunately, it’s all a bit weak and pathetic, not really knowing who its audience is, despite the occasional choice joke. The only exception to this is Rob Lowe’s bad minded Catholic priest who is the Vatican’s Devil’s Advocate. Otherwise, eminently missable.

But if you think after all that I had any time to watch any movies or go to the theatre, you have a higher opinion of me than I do.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including You, Me and the Apocalypse, Limitless, The Muppets, Scream Queens, Doctor Who and Y Gwyll”

US TV

Review: Code Black 1×1 (US: CBS; UK: Watch)

1 October 2015 Rob Buckley 3 Comments


In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, CBS
In the UK: Thursdays, 9pm, Watch. Starts October 29 

CBS is, of course, the king of the police procedural in the US. Police procedurals of all ilks dominate its schedules and the ratings, and arguably it does them better than any other network.

However, for years, it’s tried to extend its procedural dominance into the medical realm, with a seemingly neverending stream of shows that quickly turn out to be low-rated, instantly forgettable one-season wonders: Three Rivers, 3 Lbs, Miami Trauma, A Gifted Man.

In fact, I’ve written pretty much this exact same intro to every new medical procedural CBS has come up with every year, so much so I’m bored of it. Maybe you are, too.

Trouble is, I fully expect I’ll be writing it again next year since CBS’s latest medical procedural, Code Black, is a yawnfest that’s almost certainly going to get cancelled by the end of the season. It’s based on Code Black, a 2013 documentary about LA County General, which is one of the largest and busiest teaching hospitals in the US, employing more than 1,000 residents at a time. The name ‘code black’ refers to when an emergency department’s resources are so overstretched by an influx of patients, it can’t take it any more, and while most EDs in the US only experience four such events a year, LA County General experiences it 300 times a year.

Time for more resources, obviously. Except that wouldn’t make for a great TV show.

And neither would Code Black, in which a whole bunch of competitive, disparate, highly dull medical residents all learn how to be ED doctors at the hands of ‘dad’, aka Marcia Gay Harden (The Newsroom, Damages), ‘mom’ being Luis Guzmán (Narcos), the senior nurse who looks after them all. Harden’s a bit hard and lacking in bedside manner following ‘an incident’ three years previously, something that concerns caring, sharing fellow doctor Raza Jaffrey (Elementary, Homeland, Spooks) but not so much hospital administrator Kevin Dunn (Samantha Who?), since Harden’s abrasive training produces the best doctors.

And that’s it, really. It’s basically ER but busier, not taking the time to do more in terms of characterisation rather than have people explain who they are and how totes awesome they are, before performing perfunctory acts of dickery. It’s just blood on the floor to blood on the floor, while a camera unsuccessfully rushes around to try to convey the impression of the original Code Black documentary. Nice, if you like medical porn, dull if you want an actual drama.

The trouble is if you just rush all the time in an attempt to convey pressure, you’re not going to end up with tension. You’re going to end up with confusion. And then boredom.

The camera goes here, the camera goes there, while the cast mumble their lines or shout them so that you never hear them. All you’ll really know most of the time is that people are ill and the doctors are trying to help them. Learn much about the US medical system from it all? Grow to love a character? Probably not.

There are scenes, almost all of them involving Dunn, where the show is allowed to breath and for characters to grow. But they’re few and far between, and sometimes oddly positioned, such as when Dunn starts talking about his eczema in the middle of surgery, to emphasise the point that people are spending too much time on characterisation and need to get back to some advanced doctoring.

But, ultimately, Code Black is just procedure with very little human interest. See you back here next year with the intro?

US TV

Review: Grandfathered 1×1 (US: Fox)

1 October 2015 Rob Buckley 13 Comments


In the US: Tuesdays, 8/7c, Fox

Last year’s big trend in new shows was the romcom, with a blitz that included Undateable, Welcome To Sweden, Marriage, Selfie, A to Z, Marry Me and Manhattan Love Story. Most of them deservedly died a fiery death, while others were better but have largely limped on or been put out of their misery this year.

The one deserved winner from the lot was FX/FXX’s You’re The Worst, a semi-realistic romcom about a narcissistic, awful couple, who somehow make you love them all the same. And it seems like it’s had some influence on broadcast TV, because now we have Grandfathered, a semi-realistic romcom in which a terrible awful human being is somehow quite lovable.

It stars John Stamos of Full House fame as a 50-year-old, narcissistic restaurateur who’s never settled down and spends all his time wooing 20-something models whose names he can never remember. The only woman he doesn’t chase after is his lesbian assistant – her being a lesbian was a job requirement.  

So far, so the plot of anything involving Adam Sandler, David Spade et al.

Then one day, he gets two surprises. The first is the 26-year-old son he never knew about turning up on his doorstep; the second is Stamos’ newborn granddaughter who he brings with him. Now Stamos has to learn how to be both a father and a grandfather as quickly as possible.

The plot, to a certain extent, should be setting off warning bells, if not a full-scale run for the hills. However, Grandfathered is surprisingly smart. For one thing, playing the mother/grandmother of the piece and ‘the one who got away’ is the fabulous Paget Brewster from Friends, Criminal Minds and Community – a woman whose IMDB profile photo is of her holding a fish.

Paget Brewster with a fish

Brewster has a great line in deadpan delivery, but she also gets some great lines. As soon as she starts delivering the standard clichés of “boy-men who are forced to grow up by events” comedies (“If you think one day looking after a baby makes you think you know what it’s like to be a parent…”), she almost instantly gets to subvert them (“…hell, I can’t believe you made me say that. I’m cool. I watch Portlandia. I almost went to Coachella last year until I decided not to.”) and because it’s Brewster, it feels real.

Stamos also gets some good lines (“I’m a 50-year-old bachelor. We’re society’s most worthless people”) but alarm bells go off again when it’s revealed that part of the show’s ongoing plot is going to be Stamos’ educating his newfound son (Josh Peck) in the ways of women so that he can woo the mother of his baby, who regards him as merely a friend and a good dad. Here again, though, rather than a neverending series of lessons in negging, ‘treat them mean, keep them keen’, etc, Stamos’ messages to his son tend to be more along the lines of, ‘Have you considered making an effort, wearing some nice clothes?’ and the like.

The show makes references to and even includes a clip from Kramer vs Kramer, but does a much better job than that movie does of creating loving male parents/grandparents without creating antagonistic female characters for them to fight. Grandfathered has a heart and Stamos isn’t incapable of change, he just has to learn.

Grandfathered‘s biggest issue for UK audiences is that a lot gets lost in translation. Even the title is a US pun that won’t be obvious to most UK viewers (to ‘grandfather’ means to make someone exempt from something), and that’s before you even start on the cultural significance of something like Coachella. 

The show also makes a big deal of Stamos, who was the star of the huge Full House during the 80s, something which also gets referenced a lot. His character is to some extent ‘Jesse Katsopolis’ all grown up and there are photographs in Grandfathered of him from that time just to emphasise the point; Full House star Bob Saget even makes the first of several series appearances in the pilot. 

And, of course, we never got Full House over here. To us, Stamos is one of the doctors off ER at best, but more likely a complete unknown. Full House references and parallels will be equally mysterious to most of us (heaven knows what we’re all going to make of Netflix’s sequel/updating Fuller House when it hits the Internet). 

So while Grandfathered is a surprisingly enjoyable, grown-up, unmisogynistic romcom that both male and female viewers can enjoy, it’s probably not going to be as funny for UK viewers as for those in the US. It’s definitely worth a watch, since it’s got bags of charm and heart, as well as Paget Brewster, but you might spend your time wondering if you’re missing out on something.