TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: Man Seeking Woman 1×1 (US: FXX)

15 January 2015 Rob Buckley 29 Comments

Man Seeking Woman

In the US: Wednesdays, 10:30pm, FXX

Being newly single after a long-term relationship is wretched. After months or years being with someone, suddenly you’re all by yourself again. Soon, you’re discovering that the world’s moved on without you – everyone decent is now in a relationship and how people date and are expected to act on dates has changed since you were last ‘on the market’. Imagine both the misery… and the potential for comedy.

Indeed, for most TV networks, just that scenario would be sufficient. But FX and new spin-off channel FXX are rapidly shaping up to be the producers of some of the most innovative programming on US TV, even compared to premium cable channels such as HBO and Showtime. While it’s best if we overlook Marriage, You’re The Worst was the uncontested, very edgy winner of last year’s romcom wars and Tyrant, The Strain, The Bridge (US) and The Americans have all at least tried to do something different and equally edgy in their own ways.

Now we have Man Seeking Woman, developed by showrunner Simon Rich from his collection of short stories The Last Girlfriend on Earth. The show has little to do with the book itself, being a continuous storyline about what happens when twentysomething nerd Josh Greenberg (Jay Baruchel of She’s Out of My League fame) splits up from his girlfriend Maggie (Maya Erskine from Amazon’s Betas) and re-enters the dating scene, although at times it does feel like a collection of sketches thrust together rather than a thematically cohesive whole.

What makes Man Seeking Woman different is that rather than being a series of simple encounters between Baruchel and various women, the show instead highlights how wretched each scenario is using the power of fantasy made real. Worried that your blind date is going to turn out to be less than pulchritudinous? Guess what. She’s a troll. Really – she’s come from the forests of Sweden and eats out of dumpsters. Think that your ex’s new boyfriend is likely to be the worst human alive? Turns out he’s Adolf Hitler who’s faked his own death. What’s he going to make of the fact you’re Jewish, I wonder.

Each of these is played entirely seriously, with no one blinking an eyelid at their improbability – and the fact that Baruchel always ends up having to apologise for his bad behaviour (“I’m not the one you have to apologise to.” “I’m sorry, Hitler” “I don’t think he can hear you.”). Much of the joy of the show is the bizarre directions it goes in that quite often precisely sum up a feeling not previously verbalised but universally recognisable.

But in common with You’re The Worst, it’s slightly male gaze – as the title suggests, this is man seeking woman, not woman seeking man, and the idea, for example, that a woman travelling late on a Friday night on the Chicago L by herself would be delighted to have a guy obviously following her and then would give him her business card is very much an extreme male fantasy. But to a certain extent the show knows it – wait till you see how that encounter plays out – and sometimes turns its gaze on Baruchel, pointing out that while his date may be a troll, it’s not like he goes to the gym much, is it?

The show also tries to get by too much purely on the strengths of its fantasy scenarios, with Baruchel’s character not especially likeable and his best friend (Eric André from Don’t Trust The B—-) the kind of guy who calls women ‘gash’. You’re not really invested in the characters, so much as seeing what the next fantasy sketch is.

Man Seeking Woman works best as a sort of longer form, romcom version of Portlandia, rather than as a sitcom per se. But it’s intermittently very funny, incisive and imaginative, so definitely worth a try.

Schitts Creek
Canadian TV

Review: Schitt’s Creek 1×1-1×2 (Canada: CBC; UK: Netflix)

14 January 2015 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

In Canada: Tuesdays, 9pm ET, CBC
In the UK: Available on Netflix 

Every time a new Canadian comedy comes along, like some demented TV-watching dog hopefully expecting the return of its owners, I look up, wag my tail and grin.

“Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the one. Maybe this is the funny one.”

Now, it’s not like these are totally unfounded hopes. After all, Satisfaction was a moderately funny comedy that could have been even better with a cast that knew how to act.

But that was something of a needle in an Insecurity/Seed/Working The Engels/18 To Life/Men With Brooms/Hiccups haystack. Because on the whole, Canadian sitcoms, particularly those on the CBC, suck like Dracula in a dorm room after 10 years on a diet of sparkling water and crackers.

Nevertheless, my tail started awaggling away when I heard that Schitt’s Creek was coming. Look at the risky title! Even before it aired, Canadians were umming and ahhing about that: “When grown adults think the height of witticism is some sort of wordplay on crudity I tend to yawn.” This was going to be daring, by Canadian standards.

But more so, look at the cast: Eugene Levy from American Pie, Catherine O’Hara from SCTV and Home Alone as a rich couple who buy a small, dead-end rural town joke, but end up having to move there when all their assets are seized by the tax inspectors. It’ll be the new Arrested Development, won’t it?

And the reviews! Look at the reviews: “CBC may end up getting the last laugh by having the strongest homegrown sitcom this country has had since, well, that show about not much going on that just recently made a movie.”

That’s right! Schitt’s Creek might be the strongest home grown sitcom since… that other thing he’s talking about that’s probably Corner Gas!

Look out. Here it comes. Here it comes!

Oh crap. It’s rubbish. That’s me fooled again, then.

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Schitt’s Creek 1×1-1×2 (Canada: CBC; UK: Netflix)”

What have you been watching? Including Empire, Togetherness, Taken 3, Engrenages (Spiral) and Banshee

12 January 2015 Rob Buckley 11 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.

Slowly, broadcasters have been emerging from the Christmas holidays and into the New Year, like so many blinking cave dwellers faced with the removal of their entrance-blocking rocks. That means not only do we have some exciting (and not so exciting) new shows to deal with, we also have the return of some old favourites.

In the past week, I’ve reviewed VH1’s Hindsight and ABC’s Marvel’s Agent Carter, but I’ve managed to give a couple of other shows a glance over as well.

Empire (US: Wednesdays, 9/8c, Fox)
Compared to the last mainstream black show about hip hop moguls – Starz’s depressingly exploitative and unpleasant Power – Fox’s Empire should be a masterpiece. It could well be, in fact. It’s created by Lee Daniels (Monsters Ball, Precious, The Butler) and Danny Strong (best known as Jonathan from Buffy The Vampire Slayer but he’s also the Emmy and Golden Blobe award-winning writer of Recount, Game Change, The Butler and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay [parts one and two]). It’s based on King Lear and The Lion In Winter. And it stars Terrence Howard (Iron Man, Hustle & Flow) and Taraji P Henson (Person of Interest). Howard is a former drug dealer who’s diagnosed with ALS and has to work out how to portion out his kingdom to his three sons.

Sounds quite good, doesn’t it, apart from the drug dealer bit, and it was certainly a whole lot better than Power. Unfortunately, within about five minutes, I began to realise there was going to be a whole load of R&B and hip hop assaulting my eardrums so I bowed out. I said no to Nashville, I’m saying no to Empire. Tough on music, tough on the causes of music, me.

Togetherness (US: Sundays, 9.30pm, HBO; UK: Mondays, 10.35pm, Sky Atlantic, starting tonight)
Most HBO comedies barely warrant the title, and for about the first 15 minutes of this ‘comedy’ from Steve Zissis and Jay and Mark Duplass, you get pretty much the same old, same old HBO. Brett (Mark Duplass) and Michelle (Melanie Lynskey) are married but their relationship is struggling, with Lynskey preferring diddling herself with 50 Shades of Grey to having sex with Brett. Meanwhile, Brett’s friend from High School, Alex (Zissis) is being evicted and being fat and balding, his acting career isn’t really going anywhere, so he moves in with Brett and Michelle. At the same time, Michelle’s sister, Tina (Amanda Peet), is breaking up with her boyfriend and ends up moving in with them all, too.

For half the episode’s run, this feels like a standard #WhitePeoplesProblems affair, a somewhat introspective look at actors struggling in LA, marriages failing and the difficulties of dating when you’re older that we’ve seen innumerable times elsewhere. The idea that schlubby Zissis will eventually hit it off Peet, once named by People magazine as being one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world, prompts an almost Pavlovian eye rolling, too. However, once Peet and Zissis meet, everything becomes a lot more fun and it actually starts to become a comedy at last. It’s still a bittersweet piece about people disappointed by life and not getting what they want, even when they think they have, so doing what they can to enjoy themselves, but it’s a lot more likeable than it seemed to be at first.

Still in the viewing queue because it’s a mini-series is the first episode of the Canadian Book of Negroes. But after the jump, I’ll look at the latest episodes of Banshee, Cougar Town, Elementary, Forever, Gotham, Ground Floor, The Librarians, Scorpion, Spiral (Engrenages) and State of Affairs, as well as, for no well explored reason, Person of Interest. One or perhaps even more than one is getting dropped this week – can you guess which one?

But first, movies!

Warrior (2011) – Netflix
Tom Hardy is an ex-marine; Joel Edgerton is a high school physics teacher. They’re brothers and former wrestling champions trained by their abusive alcoholic father (Nick Nolte). However, for different reasons, they end up fighting in the same MMA competition. Will they end up facing off in the final, maybe? Hmm. Despite the somewhat inauspicious plotting, Warrior is nevertheless actually a very good sports movie, shot Friday Night Lights style and managing to resist the obvious revelations or even a pat ending. The MMA’s a little basic, but still genuinely exciting. Frank Grillo (Captain America 2, Kingdom) pops up as a trainer, but does surprisingly little fighting.

Taken 3 (2014) – down ‘t cinema
Surprisingly, given the horror story that was Taken 2 and the fact Olivier “Taxi Brooklyn” Megaton is back directing, actually a much better affair than the second entry in the series was. Liam Neeson’s back but he’s in the US and no one’s been taken in this time, with Neeson framed for a murder and he having to escape from the law while protecting his family and finding out who really did the crime. The script by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen touches on all the better aspects of Taken, with Neeson using some of his special set of CIA skills that don’t involve punching. Maggie Grace gets a lot to do for a change, too, albeit forced to play someone who’s about 10 years younger than herself. That’s the good side and everyone seems to enjoy that, even Neeson, although he seems a little tired and in need of a nice sit down and a Bovril at times.

True, the casting could be better, with most of the cast composed of people you’ll recognise from minor roles on TV shows, including Banshee and The Last Ship. Forest Whitaker heads up the cops, but he spends the entire time playing with a rubber band. None of this would be insurmountable, though.

But where it all goes to epic pants – literally at one point – is the action scenes. Even if Megaton, who’s an otherwise perfectly good director, could actually shoot an action scene in a way that was engrossing rather than soporific, it’s as though neither he nor the rest of the cast could be bothered. Every action scene might as well have been replaced with <<INSERT CONTRACTUALLY AND GENRE-OBLIGATED SCENE HERE>>. Ridiculous things happen and no one can even be bothered to explain how Neeson escaped them, lots of the best bits of Taken are reused and whenever something even slightly exciting is about to happen, the camera either looks away or some very bad CGI kicks in. Decent script – shame about the direction.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Empire, Togetherness, Taken 3, Engrenages (Spiral) and Banshee”

US TV

Review: Marvel’s Agent Carter 1×1-1×2 (US: ABC)

9 January 2015 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, ABC

One of the biggest, medium-changing successes of the past half-decade has been the Marvel Avengers movies. Combining both the individual and ensemble adventures of superheroes Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and the Incredible Hulk, the Avengers series has taken billions of dollars around the world and launched whole new movie franchises with other superheroes in a roadmap laid out until 2020 or so.

There are superhero movies everywhere and movie producers are looking for even more superheroes to film, even as we speak.

The effect hasn’t been restricted to just films and comics, either. Series featuring Marvel superheroes are set to fill up Netflix and on TV, for example. However, those feature the likes of Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, rather than anyone in the Avengers movies themselves.

Which is a problem. If any of the audience wanted an Avengers spin-off TV series at all, it was featuring characters they’d grown to know and love.

On ABC, of course, we have Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD featuring Agent Coulson from the movie series, but when audiences around the world were watching (The) Avengers (Assemble), they weren’t thinking, “We’d really like a TV show featuring a bunch of whole new people and that guy who’s in three movies for about five minutes and then gets killed in this one.”

No, they were thinking, “We want a Black Widow movie.”

That’s not happening, though. Stupid producers.

Perhaps the most obvious candidate to star in a TV series who wasn’t Scarlett Johansson and commanding a double-digit million dollar salary was Hayley Atwell’s Agent Carter from Captain America: The First Avenger. A wartime spy and soldier who loved – and was loved by – Captain America, she was feisty, fun, well acted and had a tragic ending to her story – after all, Captain America ends up frozen underwater until he wakes up in modern times, never able to make that date he’d arranged with her.

Marvel puts the feelers out for a potential Agent Carter series on the Iron Man 3 DVD, giving us one of their Marvel One Shots, with Carter working post-war for a spy outfit run by Bradley Whitford, the only problem being she’s a woman and no one takes her seriously. At the end, Carter joins her wartime compatriot, Iron Man’s dad Howard Stark, in setting up the future SHIELD.

Since then, she’s popped up in Captain America 2 as well as Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, but if you thought a full series of Agent Carter adventures was on the cards, you’d have been mistaken – the order for that is probably sitting under the long-lost script for that Black Widow movie – because coming to our screens is ABC’s now-traditional filler approach to mid-season replacements: a limited series of just eight episodes.

And if you thought it would be all about what Carter got up to running SHIELD, think again. Again.

Because despite the fact it includes footage from that DVD One-Shot, Marvel’s Agent Carter is set before it in 1946, detailing just one of her cases while working post-War for the Strategic Science Reserve. Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) has disappeared, apparently selling weapons to US enemies, but he emerges to reveal to Carter that the truth is that some of his secret inventions have been stolen. He asks her to recover the weapons and clear his name, with the help of his butler, Jarvis (James D’Arcy) – and decidedly not with the help of all those sexists back at the SSR who just want Peggy to make the tea.

Given the period setting, Atwell, guest appearances by fan favourites, references to other Marvel properties and all the opportunities a prequel can present, you’d think that Marvel’s Agent Carter would be a slam dunk. But while it’s certainly a whole lot more entertaining and exciting than Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD was when it started, it’s still not the must-see you’d have expected. Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Marvel’s Agent Carter 1×1-1×2 (US: ABC)”

US TV

Review: Hindsight 1×1 (US: VH1)

8 January 2015 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Hindsight

In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, VH1

There is a stereotype that Canadians are basically the same as Americans – except smarter. Unfair? Untrue? Maybe. Yet, if we were to judge how Americans and Canadians approached almost exactly the same idea, it would be hard not to think that perhaps there’s truth to the stereotype.

A few years ago, Canada’s CBC gave us the mind-bending Being Erica, in which over-achieving Erica Strange MA is stuck in a dead end job, her personal life a mess, when a mysterious proverb-quoting stranger gives her the opportunity to do over key moments in her life with the benefit of hindsight, so she can fix her problems and grow as a person.

It was a lovely, jaunty, smart little show with a lot to say for itself and quite rightly, countries all over the world acquired it. Even the US. Many countries even tried to make their own versions of it, few actually getting anywhere with it. Even the US.

But now we have VH1 – yes, the TV music channel for oldies – entirely by coincidence and in no way doing anything that would require it to pay a licence fee to anyone, giving us what is essentially a remake of Being Erica called Hindsight. Except it’s a lot stupider.

Becca (Laura Ramsey) is a 40-something secretary about to embark on her second marriage to Andy (Nick Clifford), a nice but definitely dull guy she doesn’t really love, when she bumps into a Buddhist-proverb quoting stranger. Wouldn’t you know it, she’s waking up the next day back in 1995, on the eve of her first wedding to the hot but bad Australian Sean (Craig Horner from Legend of the Seeker). How did she get there? Who was the proverb-quoting stranger? Should she tell best friend Lolly what’s happened and why they’re no longer talking in the future? Should she still marry Sean or should she go off with Andy? Will the benefit of hindsight help?

These are the questions that Hindsight poses. You’ll notice that questions about the existential nature of reality, the self and one’s career do not feature in that list.

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Hindsight 1×1 (US: VH1)”