TV reviews

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

Streaming TV

What have you been watching? Including For Life and Star Trek: Picard

26 February 2020 Rob Buckley 13 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

Previously on TMINE

It’s been a quietish week for new TV this week. I never did manage to find a way to watch Tribal (Canada: APTN) and I never did find the time to watch Gentefied (Netflix), but I did at least give you the Boxset Tuesday treat of Amazon’s Hunters. Meanwhile, for our weekly look at the silver screen, Orange Thursday previewed Greed (2020) and reviewed Gemini Man (2019).

Al Pacino in Amazon's Hunters
Al Pacino in Amazon’s Hunters

Next on TMINE

We’re coming up to a busy fortnight for TMINE, as it’s providing paternity cover for someone for the next two weeks. How modern, hey? I’m hoping to still bring you whatever reviews I can fit in, but take the following schedule with a pinch of salt, particularly since some extra work just came in for me today. Sigh.

In movies, tomorrow’s Orange Thursday will be reviewing 1917 (2019) and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019).

I hope to preview the forthcoming War of the Worlds some time in the next couple of days or Monday – probably Monday as it doesn’t start until March 5 on Fox.

Season two of Altered Carbon is available on Netflix from tomorrow, so I’ll definitely be watching as much of that as I can (unless it turns out to be rubbish). Fingers crossed for Boxset Tuesday there.

I Am Not Okay With This (Netflix) came out today, but it’s probably too teen for me, but Sunday’s Dispatches From Elsewhere (US/UK: AMC) might be worth a whirl, even though its an anthology show. And fingers especially crossed for Stateless (Australia: ABC; UK: Netflix), which also starts on Sunday.

The regulars

The list of regulars is expanding again: joining The Outsider, Star Trek: Picard and Stumptown are Locke & Key and For Life, although I haven’t managed to watch last night’s episode. All of those after the jump.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including For Life and Star Trek: Picard”
Hunters
Streaming TV

Boxset Tuesday: Hunters (season one) (Amazon)

25 February 2020 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the UK: Available on Amazon

On the whole, you don’t get a lot of Jewish TV. You certainly get Jews on TV. Israel, of course, is currently sending us plenty of fine programmes it’s made itself, too. But there’s not really a lot of Jewish TV – TV’s that’s concerned purely with Jewish concerns, that’s packed almost exclusively with Jewish heroes and that’s self-conscious and explicit about that, without apology. That in and of itself makes Amazon’s Hunters almost unique.

You also don’t get a lot of Quentin Tarantino TV. Sure, he has been known to cross the movie/TV divide to work on the occasional episode of CSI, and there is the occasional imitator. However, there’s not much of both categories that really captures Tarantino’s love of pulp fiction, elaborate dialogue and genre-transformation. And again, that in and of itself makes Amazon’s Hunters almost unique.

Because Hunters is probably the closest you’ll ever get – short of Quentin Tarantino himself developing a TV spin-off of Inglourious Basterds – to a Jewish Quentin Tarantino TV series. Set in 1970s New York, it sees Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson) playing a stupidly bright Jewish boy who lives with his grandmother (or ‘safta’ in Hewbrew). Harvard and MIT have offered him places, but he wants to stay with his safta and look after her.

However, one night, in what seems like an ordinary burglary, his safta – who survived the Holocaust no less – is murdered, setting Lerman on the path of vengeance. But it’s not long until no lesser person than Al Pacino turns up and reveals that his safta was actually killed by Nazis. Because they are among us – and they want to start a Fourth Reich.

So why doesn’t Lerman join his top squad of elite Nazi hunters and stop them before they succeed?

Continue reading “Boxset Tuesday: Hunters (season one) (Amazon)”
Streaming TV

What have you been watching? Including High Fidelity and Locke & Key

19 February 2020 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

Narcos – Mexico

Previously on TMINE

TMINE’s plans to dazzle you all with a double boxset this week didn’t quite happen. Sure, I delivered unto you the whole of season 2 of Narcos – Mexico, but there was no second boxset.

To a certain extent I blame both a lack of background reading on my part and the raw material itself.

ZeroZeroZero turns out to have already been on Sky in the UK already. No point in reviewing that.

Utopia Falls (US: Hulu) might be be science-fiction, but here’s the plot: “Amidst the charred ruins of Earth, a group of teens are chosen to compete in the prestigious Exemplar performing arts competition; when they stumble upon a hidden archive of cultural relics, they question everything they have been taught.”

Yep, it’s a post-apocalyptic, young adult, hip-hop drama. That’s not happening here. Not on my watch.

Similarly, Interrogation (US: CBS All Access) might be a crime procedural but it’s an episodic anthology series, with each episode not merely having a different cast but actually being set in a different year altogether. No point reviewing that.

But I did give High Fidelity (US: Hulu) a try, since it passed both the inclusion and the exclusion criteria of TMINE. However, I only managed to get through two episodes because it wasn’t very good. I’ll talk about what I did see after the jump.

Thankfully, in the film world, Orange Thursday watched A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) and Parasite (2019).

Al Pacino in Amazon's Hunters
Al Pacino in Amazon’s Hunters

Next on TMINE

Apart from all the lovely boxsets I’ve just mentioned but didn’t watch, there have been no new shows for TMINE to watch. Huh. More are on the way – they’re just not here yet. That means I’ve been able to watch a few more episodes of Netflix’s Locke & Key, which I’ll also talk about after the jump.

Hunters is coming to Amazon on Friday, as is Netflix’s Gentefied. I’m more likely to watch Hunters, given Al Pacino’s in it, so I suspect that’ll be Boxset Monday – or Tuesday, if work’s heavy. Tuesday I’m hoping to review Tribal (Canada: APTN). However, my access to APTN isn’t the best, so I might not be able to watch that.

If I can’t, I’ll bring forward my preview (remember them?) of the forthcoming War of the Worlds – not to be confused with the BBC’s recent The War of the Worlds, which is also based on the HG Wells novel. Otherwise, that’ll probably be on Wednesday. Or next Monday. I’ll do at some point, anyway.

Meanwhile in movies, tomorrow’s Orange Thursday will be previewing Greed (2020) and reviewing The Gemini Man (2019). Definitely. Probably during my lunchbreak.

Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist
Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist

The regulars

Experimental error continues since although I dropped a show last week, the regulars list still has three shows: The Outsider, Star Trek: Picard and Stumptown. I did try to add Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist to that, but the show hard-opened on a musical number that even Jane Levy had to take part in – which doesn’t even make sense, given the show’s central concept – so that got switched off inside a minute. I also didn’t have time to watch last night’s For Life today.

So all of those three shows after the jump.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including High Fidelity and Locke & Key”
Scott McNairy in Narcos – Mexico (season two)
Streaming TV

Boxset Monday: Narcos – Mexico (season two) (Netflix)

17 February 2020 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the UK: Available on Netflix

There is a theory that only the even-numbered Star Trek movies are the good ones. I’m proposing a similar theory for Narcos and its spin-off Narcos – Mexico: only the odd-numbered seasons are the good ones.

I won’t recap all the reasons why this is true for Narcos and Narcos – Mexico, since I touched on most of them when I was reviewing the first couple of episodes of Narcos – Mexico. But now we have the second season, which seems to be the clinching evidence that proves the case.

Narcos – Mexico

Mexican stand-off

But not completely. This second season’s biggest failings are that it’s about three episodes too long, it’s a bit self-indulgent and for the first half, at least, it’s actually surprisingly dull and forgets (once again) all the things that made the show’s odd-numbered seasons so good.

To be fair, I can’t imagine there’s a lot of archive footage of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo in the heyday of his drug-dealing years. But all the same, this is a relatively flat, vanilla retelling/imagining of the DEA’s continuing investigations into his activities in the late 80s.

It picks up from where the first season left off: Scoot McNairy’s DEA agent organising the agency’s attempts to bring to justice the man who killed one of their own in the first season – that man, of course, was Gallardo.

Trouble is, despite the show’s promises in the first season, he’s just not very good at it. Minor spoilers after the trailer and the jump.

Continue reading “Boxset Monday: Narcos – Mexico (season two) (Netflix)”
For Life
Streaming TV

What have you been watching? Including Indebted, Briarpatch, Katy Keene, Tommy and For Life

12 February 2020 Rob Buckley 20 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

Mythic Quest

Previously on TMINE

TMINE was clearly on speed or something this week, since it served up reviews of not one but two streaming Boxsets: the first seasons of Apple TV+’s Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet and Netflix’s Ragnarok.

Meanwhile, in the film world, Orange Thursday… didn’t happen. Sorry, I forgot I was actually supposed to be having a day off on Thursday. Still that does mean I definitely have a double-bill lined up for tomorrow…

Parasite
Parasite

Next on TMINE

It’s Part II of Spring 2020 in the US and after the jump, I’ll be reviewing literally all the new shows that aired on broadcast TV this week: Briarpatch, Indebted, Interrogation, Katy Keene, For Life, and Tommy.

However, don’t be surprised, given I’ve watched all of that as well as two entire boxsets (plus half of another, which I’ll tell you about in a mo), that I didn’t quite have time to watch all of Netflix’s Locke & Key. But I am two episodes in and I’m hoping to get through the rest of it within the next week – who knows, maybe next week will be another Boxset doubler because…

…also coming up in the next week are new shows High Fidelity, ZeroZeroZero and Utopia Falls, while Narcos: Mexico is back for a second season. That’s four shows from which to pick a second boxset, so expect at least one of them, maybe two, to get a review, too.

Meanwhile in movies, tomorrow’s Orange Thursday will be reviewing A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2020) and Parasite (2019), as I don’t have a day off this week. Definitely.

Iron Fist
Iron Fist

The regulars

The regulars list is now small enough that I’m pretty sure I’m only watching some as a result of experimental error: Avenue 5, The Outsider and Star Trek: Picard. And one of those is for the chop this week, too – you can see which one after the jump, but it probably won’t take much guesswork.

As you might expect, even with two boxsets, a third on the go, movies being watched and a whole bunch of new shows to watch, I found myself with time on my hands and ironing to do. Naturally, I started watching Marvel’s Iron Fist again – I’m now midway through my fifth viewing of season one, and yes, I’m still seeing new things in it and no, I’m not certifiable, thanks for asking, imaginary voice in my head.

But after a few eps of Iron Fist, with an ironing pile that wasn’t diminishing, I suddenly remembered that the second season of Netflix’s Altered Carbon is due to hit the Internet in a couple of weeks, so I decided to give season one a re-watch.

Altered Carbon
Altered Carbon

Altered Carbon: the rewatch

Unlike my rewatch of season one of Marvel’s Daredevil, my rewatch of Altered Carbon hasn’t made me reconsider my original view of the show: it’s still a beautifully made bit of sci-fi with a colossal problem with women (that may or may not be inherent to it or a critique of the patriarchy) that has six or so fabulous episodes that collide with the brick wall of the seventh as soon as we reach the big part of the narrative that wasn’t in the book. I’m on that episode at the moment, so I’m not going any further – or I’ll skip it and head straight into episode eight.

But on the plus side, my rewatch has reminded me of how good those first few episodes were, as well as some of the plot. It’s also interesting to rewatch more or less remembering not just whodunnit but why they dunnit, to see what clues the show leaves and how well the whole ‘universe’ holds together (pretty well).

All the same, watching the trailer for season two today, it’s noticeable that all the plot highlights seem to suggest that rather than going with one of the other books in the series, the show’s producers are doubling down on their own created mythos. So while Anthony Mackie looks like a good replacement for Joel Kinnaman in the lead role, I can’t say I’m 100% looking forward to the next season.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Indebted, Briarpatch, Katy Keene, Tommy and For Life”