TV reviews

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

US TV

Mini-review: Younger 1×1 (US: TV Land)

2 April 2015 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Younger

In the US: Tuesdays, 10/9c, TV Land

Ah, TV Land. The network for people who like TV to be how it was in the olden days, with studio audiences, jokes you can see coming a mile off and no one doing anything that came into fashion in the past two decades.

Or at least it used to be, because over the past few years, with shows such as Hot In Cleveland and Jennifer Falls, the network has been trying to crack a slightly younger demographic – fortysomethings. Particularly fortysomething women.

Never has this been more explicit than with Younger, TV Land’s latest, most audience-flattering show, in which the recently divorced 40-year-old Sutton Foster (Bunheads) tries to find a job, only to discover that that’s a lot harder than it sounds. However, when she gets mistaken in a bar for a twentysomething, she gets a full on makeover and lands herself an assistant job at a publishing firm – by pretending to be in her late 20s. Now all she has to do is keep pretending to be a youngster with their Twitters and their krav maga and their mobile phones, while putting up with her new, overbearing, idea-stealing 43-year-old boss Miriam Shor (GCB).

Created and written by Sex and the City creator Darren Star from the novel by Pamela Redmond Satran, Younger is the kind of idea that can work in the fantasy world of a novel written more or less pre-Internet, where you can cast whom you like and not have to worry about Google et al, but which fails horribly onscreen in a series made now.

Foster is 40 and – not to be uncharitable – could probably get away with 35, but only someone in their 40s (or mid-50s in Star’s case) would believe her to be 26. And if that were the show’s only problem, it might be able to get away with it. But Star’s not exactly either down with the kids or the 40 year olds for that matter. He does his best, but the idea that a 40-year-old woman who used to work in publishing would need to Google “How to open a Twitter account” doesn’t wash. Neither does the idea that young co-worker Hilary Duff wouldn’t immediately Google and Facebook her new co-worker and immediately see through the lie. When Satran wrote the book in 2005, it was plausible, but not now.

It doesn’t help that one of Star’s target references for what all the young people are talking about is Judge Judy.

Even if we excuse the logistical and cultural problems, we have the show’s next dilemma, which is that its content is largely wearisome. Foster, desperately trying to hide her age, almost gives herself away… How? Do you want to guess? Is it because she inadvertently let’s slip some childhood memory of growing up in the 80s? Maybe it’s because someone from her college days turns up? How about when she said she’d been to Princeton and spent the time studying rather than organising protests and sit-ins? Less than a decade previously…

No, it’s because she takes off all her clothes in a women’s changing room revealing her pubic area isn’t as well groomed or free of grey hairs as those of her younger friends. Cue long discussion with best pal Debi Mazar (Entourage) about the kids of today and their styling fashions. That’s about as deep as it gets.

As a side note, maybe I’m just not very studly and toned for my age, but if I were trying to hide my true age from someone 15 years younger than me, taking off all my clothes in front of them probably wouldn’t be top of the list of things I’d do. I might wear a towel at least.

Anyway, back on topic, occasionally, the show veers into slightly more interesting, Sex and the City territory, with Foster trying to help Duff be more assertive with her boyfriend and Duff quoting Taylor Swift to justify her helping other women. But this feels like a show written by someone who doesn’t really have much contact with any of the groups it’s about and who only wants to sell its audience a fanciful piece of flattery – yes, you, too, could be young again and better at it than those youngsters are…

To be honest, if that is your bag, you might as well go whole hog, bring in some time travel and go off and watch the very, very similar, much better and actually more plausible Hindsight. That’s also got a better soundtrack. And Laura Ramsey.

US TV

Mini-review: Weird Loners 1×1 (US: Fox)

2 April 2015 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Weird Loners

In the US: Tuesdays, 9.30/8.30c, Fox

Normally, when you hear the phrase ‘weird loner’, it’s being used to describe someone who went off on a killing spree or who turned out to be some kind of sex criminal. Now, even though Fox’s new Weird Loners incorrectly uses the phrase to mean ‘someone who’s older than 30 but isn’t married yet’ (no judgement), you should probably edge away from it as though it’s got a sniper rifle or someone locked in its basement.

The general premise is that four individually single people, through the interconnected nature of fate, etc, end up living together in the same Queens townhouse. Or next door to each other. Or both. It’s not 100% clear.

Neither is it clear exactly why they’re weird – apart from Nate Torrence (Hello Ladies, Mr Sunshine), who’s the kind of man who puts on glove puppet plays for kids on his front porch, even though there are no kids around. However, Becki Newton (Love Bites, The Goodwin Games, Ugly Betty) is simply someone who commits too quickly and gets a bit annoyed when men won’t commit quite as quickly as she will. Meera Rohit Kumbhani is a generally monogamous free spirit who doesn’t want to commit, while Zachary Knighton (Happy Endings) is equally commitment-phobic but far more into having sex with as many people as he can.

They’re loners. But they’re not really that weird.

This pilot episode, written by The King of Queens creator Michael J Weithorn, acts as an introduction to the four characters, with Newton and Torrence already living next door to each other, Knighton being Torrence’s cousin, and Kumbhani someone Torrence gets a lift from after buying a painting from her. And since they’re pretty much all homeless except Torrence, they all end up living in his house. Except Newton’s only homeless because she gives Torrence her house, so have they all ended up moving into her house or do they all have two houses between them now? I’m not sure.

For about 90% of the episode, the only weird loners you’ll spot are the occasional jokes that actually make you laugh. It’s only once we get into the final 10% and we get a scene of bad lip-reading that things actually start to get consistent.

But to be honest, you’ll end up either hating or feeling sorry for the characters, and wondering why the show’s writers think they’re to be mocked, as it doesn’t feel like they’re on their side at all.

Fox has only committed to six episodes for this one, so chances of this getting renewed, particularly with its low starting ratings are small, so it’s a comfortable recommendation from me not to move in with these faux Friends.

Continue reading “Mini-review: Weird Loners 1×1 (US: Fox)”

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 2

Third-episode verdict: iZombie (US: The CW)

1 April 2015 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, The CW

Three episodes into Rob Thomas’s iZombie, a strange amalgam of Veronica Mars and The Walking Dead in which a zombie medical student gets to solve crimes every week by eating the victims’ brains, and it’s hard not to feel like it’s missing some vital spark.

It has all the ingredients of a hit series and appears to doing all the right things: it’s got a Veronica Mars-alike heroine (Rose McIver) who has to juggle her affliction, her loved ones and her need to do spunky voiceovers; it’s got some fun supporting characters, including David Anders as a zombie drug dealer and Rahul Kohli as McIver’s very English, humorous confidant; and it has some good ideas, including its own zombie mythology and Anders’ evil schemes.

Yet as we discovered from the first episode, iZombie feels somewhat soulless, a simulacrum of a hit show rather than a real, living, breathing thing. Since then, it’s managed to add some seriousness to its previous glibness, with the third episode in particular giving us some emotional depth to McIver’s situation, as well as giving her friend and former Hellcat Aly Michalka something to do except guilt-trip her every episode. And Anders’ scheme is very evil.

But that’s not quite been enough to make it compelling viewing. The police procedural format really neuters the show, turning it into a hodge-podge of styles with a usually not very interesting murder that must be solved before the end of the episode. None of the bolder ideas of the original comic, particularly not were-terriers and chimp-granddads, have managed to make it through to the screen, giving us something that really rests on just a few quirks. And although McIver’s zombie status robs her of some emotions, there’s almost no chemistry between her and her former fiancé, no real sense of loss or grief.

So iZombie is fun enough viewing and it’s rarely dull, but if you were hoping for a new Veronica Mars, just with a bit more gore and brain-eating, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.

Barrometer rating: 2
Rob’s prediction: Not quite as impressive as it should be, so going to be lucky to make it to a second season

What have you been watching? Including Bloodline, The Good Witch, 19-2 and Fortitude

30 March 2015 Rob Buckley 25 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 it’s Easter next week and I’m away at weddings and then taking a brief break, which means this is the last round-up for a fortnight. Somehow, though, I’m practically bang up to date. How did that happen?

I even managed to try a couple of new programmes.

Bloodline (Netflix)
A family on a Florida island is big in the local community, having run a hotel for 45 years and one of their sons (Kyle Chandler from Early Edition) being the sheriff. Then their black sheep eldest son returns to the fold, brining all manner of misery with him.

That sounds quite exciting, doesn’t it? But on the strength of the first episode, I’ll be putting this on my low priority “To watch” list, since it was quite impressively dull, despite the lovely location photography. In particular, there’s a scene that lasts about three or four minutes in which the three brothers argue over about whether or not black sheep’s girlfriend can sit at the family table for lunch. I kid you not. The only thing that managed to make watching the first episode at all was a hackneyed flash forward to more interesting times, interspersed throughout the episode.

The Good Witch (US: The Hallmark Channel)
The Hallmark Channel’s one of those channels that I pay almost no attention to, whatsoever. I bet you don’t either. Did you know that Andie MacDowell has had a show running on it for three seasons called Cedar Cove? I bet you didn’t, unless you’ve been paying a lot of attention to my News pages.

Equally, since 2008, there have on the Hallmark Channel been no fewer than seven The Good Witch movies starring JAG’s Catherine Bell as the absurdly named Cassandra Nightingale, a good witch who moves into a small town and starts helping people with herbal remedies, magic spells, etc. Over the course of those movies, she’s got married, raised kids and had a kid of her own. And now she’s got her own TV series, which started last month. But because it’s on the Hallmark Channel, I didn’t notice any of this until now – because even I don’t pay that much attention to my News pages.

Anyway, I tried watching the first episode, in which somewhat miserably her husband from the movies has now died (Chris Potter from Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, who’s too busy filming Canada’s Heartland to do more than a movie now and then). So now she has a potential new love interest in the shape of new neighbour James Denton (The Threat Matrix, Desperate Housewives) – how long will it be before he works out she’s a witch?

And that’s when I remembered why I don’t watch anything on the Hallmark Channel – it’s all twee rubbish, with the emotional depth of a Hallmark card, and as dreadfully written, too. It makes Charmed look like 24 in comparison. Avoid.

After the jump, the regulars: 12 Monkeys, 19-2, The Americans, American Crime, Arrow, The Blacklist, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Community, The Flash, Forever, Fortitude, iZombie, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD and Vikings.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Bloodline, The Good Witch, 19-2 and Fortitude”

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of

Third-episode verdict: American Crime (US: ABC)

25 March 2015 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

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

So what is an American crime? Well, according to the rather brilliant ABC show American Crime, it’s a regular crime but observed as simply part of a wider picture, in which systems and attitudes lock individuals into situations and behaviours they can’t escape.

Following on from an apparent burglary in which a veteran is killed and his wife raped, the show depicts how the crime and the investigation affects the families of those involved. But it also asks why the crime happened, how society views the crime, whether the crime is indicative of larger problems and whether there’s a middle ground that could be reached by everyone that’s unachievable thanks to the extremes and rules society lays down.

Following a first episode that was perhaps a little self-conscious of its own importance and that occasionally escaped from its combination of artful direction and verisimilitude to give us aspects that were a tad ‘writerly’ in their unlikeliness, the following two episodes have barely put a foot wrong in showing us the insides of the American justice system and how it can trap those who have barely done anything wrong or who would benefit from either treatment of human kindness. It’s tried to put in the shoes of junkies, drug dealers, legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, Latinos, black Americans, white Americans, fathers, mothers and everyone else as their lives overlap and they fail to understand one another, only knowing their own lives and what society tells them to be.

The show’s a hard watch. It is literally the last thing I watch out of every week’s viewing, not because it’s a bad show, but because it’s such a dishearteningly true picture of reality, without any glimmer of hope and goodness to relieve the misery, beyond the fact it’s on broadcast TV so can’t quite tread into the darkest realms. That’s why I’ll only doing my third-episode verdict on a Wednesday, when the show airs a new episode on a Thursday. That’s why the ratings keep dropping.

But as I’ve said before, if this were on HBO, there’d be no doubt that everyone would be calling it the most important, most realistic, most astutely observed crime drama since Southland or perhaps even The Wire. If you have any interest in quality TV, this is the one American show you should be watching right now.

Barrometer rating: 0
Rob’s prediction: With these ratings, it’s unlikely to survive, so catch it while you can.