TV reviews

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

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Fourth-episode verdict: Undateable (NBC)

12 June 2014 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

In the US: Thursdays, 9/8c, NBC

Not that I’m suggesting NBC’s Undateable is needy or anything, but after two weeks, it’s already shown us four episodes and is asking for validation. Time to back away and break the bad news to it?

Not quite. So what if its sense of humour isn’t that great and it’s made a few mistakes? It’s really trying and has winning personalities so maybe we should just stick with it until it works out what it needs to be doing.

At a time when just about every drama and comedy is telling men (particularly nerds) that they don’t need to try hard, don’t need to look good, don’t need to be sensitive or consider what women want and don’t need to change, Undateable is giving us something different: a show in which the sensitive guy who tries hard and gets to know the girl wins through, while the cool alpha male has to learn that treating women as disposable objects is a distinctly uncool thing to do.

After a couple of episodes that set up the show’s basic premise and lead characters, episodes three and four again did different something unexpected and interesting: rather than string out the central “nerd pines after woman” plotline for a season or more as any other show would have done (eg The Big Bang Theory), essentially sending out the unwholesome message that if you stalk a woman for long enough, she’ll eventually give in and have sex with you, Undateable followed in Ground Floor’s footsteps and (spoiler alert) simply paired up the two central characters, giving the woman in question (Briga Heelan) a good motivation for doing so at the same time. It effectively nullifies the show’s title, but provides a much needed education to certain members of the audience, so no great loss.

Episode four continued this theme and flipped it on its head, giving alpha male (Chris D’Elia) a taste of his own medicine so that he has to learn from the nerd how to be nice to a woman for a change so that he’s at least in with a chance of a second date with a woman who used him the way he uses women. The supporting cast are getting a little more characterisation, with the English gay character (David Fynn) getting a look in in episode four and the overweight Shelly (Ron Funches) being the focus of episode three, which was also the first episode to properly address the show’s notional location of Detroit.

It’s all very worthwhile public information but not quite as funny as it should be. The continued repetition of jokes that weren’t funny in the first place needs to stop. Brent Morin’s nerdy character is a bit of a cock and not especially likable, even if he is sensitive, and while the producers had a good off-screen reason for all the singing in Ground Floor – both Heelan and co-star Skylar Astin have singing training, Astin was, of course, one of the stars of Pitch Perfect and the two characters hang around a karaoke bar a lot – here it feels forced and unnecessary. There’s not a huge amount of chemistry among the cast, either. No one feels especially like a real person and although there are various digs at Fynn’s Britishness (some of which he counters), he feels more like an American with an English accent than someone genuinely English – slightly unsurprising given that his character was originally played in the pilot by American actor Matthew Wilkas.

But it’s trying, there are surprising moments – two male characters, one gay, having a bubble bath together, to prove the straight one isn’t uptight, for example – Heelan’s always worth watching and D’Elia has so far grinned at his own jokes only once, which must have taken iron self-control on his part. Although it’s not quite gelling at the moment, given time and the pedigree of the leads and the producers, it could settle down into a pretty decent ensemble comedy.

Barrometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Will last a season and might even be renewed for a second one

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 4

Third-episode verdict: Old School (ABC1)

10 June 2014 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

In Australia: Fridays, 8.30pm, ABC1

Three episodes into ABC1’s Old School and I’m starting to feel old. Not because I know Sam Neill and Bryan Brown from movies and TV shows popular in the 70s and 80s, but simply because not only does this feel like a show made in the 70s and 80s, it’s also incredibly slow moving. It doesn’t think it is… but it is.

The show sees Neill play a retired cop, investigating the crime that ruined his career; Brown is one of the crims who did that job and who’s been cheated out of his share. Together, they form an uneasy alliance to solve the crime and get their money.

Except they’re taking possibly the longest, dullest path imaginable to do this. While the first episode was relatively fun and action-packed, the second and third episodes have focused on one-off ‘jaunts’ for Neill and Brown to investigate – badly. The second episode’s car theft largely involved the two skulking around and hiding inside and behind things while the third episode had pretty much the same, except with greyhound-doping instead of car-theft and being locked inside cages instead of hiding inside things.

Problematically, Brown and Neill have little chemistry together and the characters don’t even slightly like each other. Brown also appears to be half-asleep the whole time – it’s a show that needs some energy and while Neill has been giving it his all, Brown appears to have confused ‘investigating crime’ with ‘going to the kitchen for some Ovaltine’. True, Brown’s character is incredibly stupid, has no good lines and treats everyone appallingly badly, so it’s a somewhat thankless role to be lumbered with, but Brown – never the world’s best actor – really adds nothing to it, not even any charm or alpha-masculinity.

Attempts by the producers to keep young people watching through Hanna Mangan-Lawrence and Mark Coles Smith have had varying success – together they’re fine and even saved the second episode, but the third episode separated them again, purely so they could be separately pissed off at Brown.

While there’s the occasional explosion or fight to make the show seem like it’s more interesting than it actually is, compared to the 70s and 80s shows Old School is trying to homage, it’s surprisingly low key – Roger Moore and Tony Curtis would have had two or three times as many car chases and crooks to fight per episode as Neill and Brown do. Involving a computer hacking storyline hasn’t helped much, beyond giving Neill’s character and his wife something to argue about, either. That storyline might go somewhere in later episodes, but at the moment, it seems merely like a way to tie into the fears of older members of the audience rather than anything dramatically relevant.

Old School does have potential. It could be a good show, a proper Australian New Tricks. Unfortunately, it feels as old and tired as Brown, and should probably be retired, unless it can prove its worth soon.

Barrometer rating: 4
Rob’s prediction: I’d be surprised if it gets another series, but you never know

What have you been watching? Including The Night Shift, Godzilla, Penny Dreadful, Enlisted and Silicon Valley

6 June 2014 Rob Buckley 9 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.

After letting things slide a bit last week, I feel a bit chuffed with myself because this week, I’ve managed to watch everything in my viewing pile except for one episode of Prisoners of War and today’s episode of Old School. I’ve even put up some proper reviews of new shows:

Yay me! I even remembered that I’d watched NBC’s Night Shift last week but forgot to review it. Because it’s so bad (as one reviewer put it, it’s for people who couldn’t cope with the intellectual rigour of Chicago Fire)

Night Shift (US: NBC)
A summer medical show, in which all bunch of tedious human beings try to outdo each other at how great they are as doctors, nurses and paramedics. Literally every scene involved a new character arriving, someone flailing at medicine, and then Johnny New Arrival showing some technique he or she had learnt in Iraq, volunteering with underprivileged children in Zimbabwe while recovering from chemotherapy and the like, and then rubbing it in the face of everyone else. Bizarrely, it features Jill Flint who gave up a decent job playing an efficient hospital administrator in the enjoyable Royal Pains to play an efficient hospital administrator in this steaming pile of offal.

Even more excitingly, I’ve watched another movie:

Godzilla (2014)
A frustrating, tantalising piece of work that sees Bryan Cranston trying to work out what destroyed the Japanese nuclear power plant he worked in with his wife (Juliette Binoche), while his body-disposal expert son Aaron Taylor-Johnson tries to get back home to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen). Except it turns out that dinosaurs still roam the Earth and they really don’t care what cities stand in their way.

In many ways, a lovely tribute to original with some of the scenes recreations of scenes from the original Toho series of movies but made to look truly realistic and devastating. Some thought’s gone into making the bad monsters, why Godzilla wants to save us from them and why some giant cockroaches would even need to be able to create electromagnetic pulses (when you spot it, you’ll kick yourself). But despite a full hour of work by director Gareth Edwards (Monsters) to make you care about the humans before the fights properly start, you still don’t give a toss about them and ultimately, you’ll just want to see Godzilla punching some big monsters – except largely Edwards cuts away to a news broadcast whenever anything gets too close to being exciting. And there are whole bits that are absolutely irrelevant. The final fight is great, though, with some truly whoop-worthy moments, and the HALO drop almost atones for the lack of action in other places.

After the jump, yet more, with a round-up of the regulars, with reviews of 24, Enlisted, Penny Dreadful, Prisoners of War and Silicon Valley

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including The Night Shift, Godzilla, Penny Dreadful, Enlisted and Silicon Valley”

US TV

Review: Jennifer Falls 1×1 (TV Land)

6 June 2014 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Jennifer Falls

In the US: Wednesdays, 10.30/9.30c, TV Land

TV seems to have a thing against women executives at the moment. To be slightly more accurate, it has a thing against women executives who in some sense ‘desert their friends’ (i.e. spend less time with them) in order to get ahead.

We recently had USA’s Playing House, in which high-flying executive Lennon Parham discovers that despite working hard for a decade, leaving behind in her home town her bestest pal Jessica St Clair to have a normal life, her career is always on a knife-edge, her male bosses don’t really respect her and actually, returning home to spend more time with her family and her friend and getting a less demanding job is more emotionally satisfying, you know? Perhaps that’s even all she really wants.

And now, over on TV Land, we have that network’s first single-camera comedy, in which high-flying executive Jaime Pressly discovers that despite working hard for a decade, leaving behind in her home town her bestest pal Missi Pyle to have a normal life, her career is always on a knife-edge, her male bosses don’t really respect her and actually, returning home to spend more time with her family and her friend and getting a less demanding job is more satisfying, you know? Perhaps that’s even all she really wants.

Cue Cheryl Sandberg to explain how women only feel they (and others) should be allowed to succeed as long as everyone – not just themselves – benefit and they’re not seen as selfish.

The big difference between the two shows? Jennifer Falls has a better cast and is marginally – just marginally – less irritating. Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Jennifer Falls 1×1 (TV Land)”

Classic TV

Nostalgia corner: Prey (1998)

5 June 2014 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Whenever science fiction deals with “the next step in human evolution”, it always sounds so cool and liberal. The more evolved species gets special powers but because it’s in a minority, those racist humans always try to oppress them. Let’s not be species-ist! All X-Men are created equal! Power to the Tomorrow People!

But what if the liberals were wrong and genetic advancement isn’t a cool metaphor for racism at all? What if that next step in evolution was actually as bad as the humans feared? What if the new species in fact thought of humans as inferior and wanted to wipe them out? What if Homo sapiens suddenly was no longer at the top of the food chain and was instead the prey of a superior species?

Cue the aptly titled 1998 ABC series Prey. It starred Debra Messing (Grace from Will and Grace) as an anthropologist studying genetic variation in humans. She discovers that a number of violent criminals and indeed serial killers share a number of genetic markers that render them as genetically different from humans as humans are from chimpanzees: they’re more intelligent, more aggressive and have certain psychic powers, but have little or no empathy for human beings, regarding us the same way we do animals. Importantly, the new species can interbreed with us – the women even have four uteruses and have already evolved to have children from the age of nine without complications – but the offspring are always of the superior species, resulting in the species getting the classification Homo dominant.

Messing comes together with other scientists and law enforcement officials (including Frankie Faison from The Wire and Larry Drake from LA Law) to learn more about the new species, its origins, how many there are, and to find out if peaceful co-existence is possible. Along the way, they come across a friendly Homo dominant (Adam Storke) who wants to be human and feel normal human emotions.

How do you think that works out?

Here’s the entire series for you to watch on YouTube – well, the entire series except, helpfully, the final episode – but we’ll talk more about Prey after the jump.

Continue reading “Nostalgia corner: Prey (1998)”