TV reviews

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

US TV

Mini-review: Dracula 1×1 (NBC/Sky Living)

29 October 2013 Rob Buckley 6 Comments


In the US: Fridays, 10/9c, NBC
In the UK: Thursdays, Sky Living. Starts October 31st

There are many TV reviewers whose style it’s possible to want to emulate. Sam Wollaston of The Guardian is generally not one of those, largely because his reviews can be summarised as “I didn’t understand that and I had to ask my girlfriend what it was all about.”

But for once, I’m going to have to follow in his less than illustrious footsteps by saying “What? What did I just watch?” Dracula follows on from Hannibal by being an NBC/Sky Living co-production in which a European cast appear in a colourful horror story. Here, the story is a take on Bram Stoker’s Victorian classic Dracula, in which lawyer Jonathan Harker comes across a certain Count Dracula, who has a thing for his wife Mina,  discovers that Dracula is a vampire, and then with the help of one Abraham Van Helsing, kills the blood-sucker.

I say ‘a take’ because despite the Victorian setting, as far as I can work out, the plot of this Dracula sees journalist Jonathan Harker and girlfriend Mina Murray come across an American industralist (Jonathan Rhys Meyers from The Tudors), who is actually the vampire Dracula with a dodgy US accent. Dracula has been resurrected by Abraham Van Helsing to help fight the shadowy organisation of English people (including Robert Bathhurst), the Order of the Dragon, who want to run the world using the money from their petroleum and who killed Dracula’s wife, who bares an uncanny resemblance to Mina. Dracula has a nifty wireless electricity invention based on geomagnetism that will stop that ambition, he reckons.

And while that covers the bare bones of the plot, I have literally no idea what else is really happening. There’s another couple (Ben Miles from Coupling and Victoria Smurfit) who might be vampire hunters and who carry around heads in bags. They also faked the whole Jack the Ripper thing to cover up vampire activity, and Smurfit spends days doing martial arts training next to a vampire in a steel cage. Katie McGrath from Merlin – half the cast are Irish doing bad English accents, by the way – is a posh girl whose motivation for anything is equally unclear.

It’s all set in Victorian times, but there’s wireless electricity and I’ve no idea how the Middle Ages Transylvanian warlord Vlad the Impaler would know how to create it. Almost all the women wear clothes that would have shocked decent society back then. There’s flashbacks to shagging and I’ve no idea why Mina is the apparent reincarnation of Dracula’s wife. And why does journalist Jonathan Harker (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) just sit there writing ‘visionary’ and ‘egotistical’ on his unlined notepad when he’s supposed to be interviewing someone?

Together with Da Vinci’s Demons and Atlantis, it’s as if TV has now decided to start throwing aside any sense of plot coherence or historical authenticity in favour of just throwing things at our screens and hoping that something, anything will be cool and work. 

It all looks quite pretty thanks to being filmed in Hungary and there are some good fight scenes and vampire special effects. But between the bad accents, absolute incoherence of the plot, poorly defined or bizarre motivations for everyone involved, this is largely a show aimed at people who like wizzy gothic things happening at night with a hint of sex and blood, irrespective of whether it makes any sense.

What did you watch last week? Including Ambassadors, You, Me and Them, and The Tunnel

28 October 2013 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

It’s “What did you watch last week?, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I watched last week 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.

Elsewhere, you can find my third-episode verdict on The Tomorrow People. Still in the viewing queue are last night’s Serangoon Road and Homeland and Saturday’s Atlantis, which given I haven’t watched last week’s episode either is probably telling me something. NBC’s Dracula I hope to be reviewing either today or tomorrow – certainly before Thursday when it airs on Sky Living.

But I’ve tried some new shows:

Ambassadors (BBC2)
David Mitchell and Robert Webb of Peep Show et al are a UK ambassador and a member of his staff, working together to further UK interests by covering up Mitchell’s cock-ups and framing the French as best they can. Unfortunately, if it weren’t for the fact that Mitchell and Webb were in it, you wouldn’t know it was a comedy, it’s that unfunny. Okay, to be fair a couple of laughs were emitted while watching it, but they may have been reflex actions.

You, Me and Them (Gold)
Seemingly a contradiction in terms, UK Gold – the home of old tele – is making its first new sitcom. From the makers of (terminally unfunny show) Outnumbered, it sees Anthony Head (Buffy et al) in a relationship with the 26-years-younger and impressively English now Eve Myles (Torchwood). They’re happy together, but everyone from Myles’ extended family to Head’s ex-wife and friends has an opinion on their somewhat icky relationship. Will the relationship weather this family-based storm?

Despite the impressive cast (Lindsay Duncan, Jeff Rawle and Susie Blake are in there, too, as Head’s ex-wife and Myles’ parents respectively), this suffers the same problem as Ambassadors in not being funny, although here, everyone is doing their hardest to convince you that actually it is. A few good lines here and there, but you do have to be the kind of person who thinks even the mention of sex or simple bad parenting is comedy gold to find this remotely entertaining. And isn’t it weird when Anthony Head uses his real accent?

Shows I’m watching but not necessarily recommending
Agents of Shield (ABC/Channel 4)
Ooh, secrets are revealed! But they’re not that secret or incriminating! And no one cares! And are we going to get anything except lots of Extremis this season?

The Blacklist (NBC/Sky Living)
After last week’s stonking Manhunter tribute, this week we got a tiny Prison Break tribute, with Robert Knepper playing a man who’s good at escaping from prison, although what a shame about his limp arm. I think the plan now is to have every actor who’s ever played a famous villain face off against Spader in a series of tribute episodes, while Spader archly hams away. It’ll be fun to watch if that’s what they do. And maybe next week we’ll get some answers about what’s up with Megan Boone’s hubby?

The Tunnel (Sky Atlantic/Canal+)
The story progresses, with prostitution the apparent political motive for the villain in this version of The Bridge. Things on the English side of the story are once again far more interesting than on the French side, with the Brtis served well by Ben Richards’ ear for blokey English dialogue (“If he messes with my bitches…”, “Hey Tupac, this is South Kent not LA.”) and Stephen Dillane giving an outstanding performance as the English plod. If only the same could be said for new arrival Keeley Hawes… First episode review.

Recommended shows
Arrow (The CW/Sky 1)
A veritable DC comics fest, with Tony Daniel’s Dollmaker arriving on the scene (you may have noticed a head nod in the name of the Dollmaker’s attorney), Black Canary getting her own non-super-powered scream and – oh my gods – the mention of none other than Ra’s Al Ghul himself. We may even have the beginnings of a Deathstroke origin story. But oh dear, everyone on the island’s been captured and locked up again! Tsk, tsk.

Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
The A-story was more interesting as a notion – Holmes isn’t getting cases so looks for them and one seemingly minor incident becomes a full blown, major investigation – than as a crime. The B-story, however, was more interesting from the point of view of character development. The show’s really starting to need a new Moriarty, although I really liked the old one…

Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1)
Ooh, a new character, as well as the return of Nathan Lane. Finally, something to change the formula. One question: are the women and girls who aren’t Gloria going to get some storylines soon?

Serangoon Road (ABC1/HBO Asia)
A really exciting episode, pitting our hero (and heroine) against the black market, MI6 and others. Now officially on the recommended list.

“What did you watch last week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?

Australian and New Zealand TV

Review: Anno 1790 (season 1)

25 October 2013 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Anno 1790 DVD coverStarring: Peter Eggers, Joel Spira and Linda Zilliacus
Amazon price: £16.92
Released: October 28th 2013
Original network: SVT

‘Nordic noir’ is a fairly flexible concept, but largely, most people think of it as dark crimes being solved by the police in Scandinavian countries: think of The Killing, The Bridge, Those Who Kill et al. That’s certainly what you’ll be able to see on BBC4.

But as with any genre, there’s more to nordic noir than the acquisitions staff at TV networks decide to spend their money on. Anno 1790, a 2011 Swedish show, demonstrates this pretty clearly. As the name suggests, it’s set in Sweden in AD1790. It’s just after the French Revolution and anti-monarchy sentiment is catching like wildfire across in Europe. In Sweden, the king is making himself even less popular with a war against the Russians that’s killing many for little purpose but is thankfully coming to an end.

A doctor in the Swedish army, Johan Gustav Dåådh (Peter Eggers), finds his life changed forever when his compatriot Simon Freund (Joel Spira) is nearly killed in the war and asks Dåådh to take him home. Freund is the tutor of the children of Carl Fredrik Wahlstedt, the commissioner of Stockholm’s constabulary, and it’s not long before Dåådh is using his keen deductive skills, scientific knowledge and sense of justice to investigate crimes at Wahlstedt’s behest.

The only trouble? Not only is Dåådh a republican, a friend to some really quite violent anti-monarchists, and Wahlstedt nobility employed directly by the king, but Dåådh is falling in love with Wahlstedt’s wife, Magdalena (Linda Zilliacus) – and she with him.

It’s like CSI crossed with Whitechapel and Barry Lyndon, but all in Swedish. Here’s a trailer and an exclusive video to give you a taster. I’ll talk more about the show after the jump.

Continue reading “Review: Anno 1790 (season 1)”

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: The Tomorrow People (The CW/E4)

25 October 2013 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

In the US: Wednesdays, 9pm/8c, The CW
In the UK: Acquired by E4 to air in 2014

Three episodes into The CW’s The Tomorrow People – a blander but still mightily improved version of ITV’s 1970s sci-fi kids show – and we’ve just had our first genuinely decent episode.

Now, all things are relative, of course. The first episode, which saw the teleporting, telekinetic, telepathic next step in human evolution get given the American ‘family’ treatment, was a decent cross between the original show, Smallville and Arrow, with thankfully no aliens, robots or anything that would ping Operation Yewtree’s radar. It suffered the usual flaws of such shows, with minimal attempts to give anyone except the two central white male characters much to do and a reliance on CGI and efficient but hollow martial arts scenes, but it was decently done for what it was.

Episode two was… episode one again. Same plot, pretty much the same conclusion, just with a smaller budget. 

But episode three was a much improved affair, developing the show in new directions, giving the female TP a combination of the interesting (pre-break out deafness) and the boringly typical (someone tried to rape her) for a backstory. We also got some of the show’s almost unique traits: a willingness to discuss human evolution and how it works, with signs that the TP’s powers are variable in quality, not entirely perfect and vulnerable to other factors. It’s a near-original touch for a show that could simply have been Mutant X all over again. 

Yet, it’s still not a strong sell. John, Stephen and Jedikiah are just not that interesting as characters, none of the cast apart from Mark Pellegrino has an ounce of charisma, the action is only above average, and there’s nothing truly compelling about the story that sets it out from any other shows in which a group of goodies have to escape baddies in black suits.

And, it has to be said, compared to the original’s title sequence, the new title sequence is just a bit limp (despite the head nod here and there):

Barrometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Unless it does something to lift itself out of ordinary – please not aliens though – it’s going to be dead by the end of its first season

What did you watch last week? Including The Tomorrow People, The Blacklist, Isabel, Arrow and Elementary

21 October 2013 Rob Buckley 13 Comments

It’s “What did you watch last week?, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I watched last week 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.

Things are calming down a bit in terms of new launches so the only dedicated review I put up last week was a third-episode verdict on the dreary Atlantis. Still in the viewing queue are last night’s Serangoon Road and Friday’s Strike Back.

I did start watching The CW’s Reign with my lovely wife, who loves all things Tudor. It’s the story of the return of the teenage Mary Queen of Scots to the French court, which confusingly has everyone French or Scottish speaking in English with an English accent. However, we had to stop 15 minutes into the show because after an exciting start, we were subjected to such a plot and character dump that even my wife couldn’t cope. So we’ll probably watch it tonight or later in the week when our brains can catch up. 

Also still in the viewing queue are last night’s Serangoon Road, Saturday’s Atlantis and Friday’s Strike Back.

Shows I’m watching but not necessarily recommending
Agents of Shield (ABC/Channel 4)
The dullest ep so far – although it was far from being a washout – yet also the first that’s really established the show as a series in its own right, rather than merely a spin-off from the movie series.

The Blacklist (NBC/Sky Living)
Tom Noonan guest stars as a list member – cue one of the biggest Manhunter tributes in living memories, right down to making him a dentist who collects teeth. Megan Boone is now pretty superfluous to requirements, beyond being a damsel in distress. All the same, probably the best episode so far.

Isabel (Sky Arts)
Still good fun, even if I am a couple of episodes behind now. Can’t help but notice but for a prestige production, there are only about five sets being used.

The Tomorrow People (The CW/E4)
Basically the same episode as the pilot episode, just with less excitement.

Recommended shows
Arrow (The CW/Sky 1)
The return of China White, a new recruit, making sense of why we’re still getting flashbacks to the Island and more. A pretty good second episode in fact, with a killer of a cliffhanger.

Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
Is it my imagination or is Watson now making more and better deductions than Holmes? Quite a fun episode hugely off-canon but with a nice guest turn by Laura Benanti (The Playboy Club, Go On) as an important figure from Holmes’ past. Quite touching in its own way.

Homeland (Showtime/Channel 4)
Erm, what? Actually, the surprise twist to proceedings didn’t seem that surprising, even though it didn’t make much sense. Brody’s fun in Venezuela last week made even less sense. And the Dana interlude is incredibly dull and pointless. But I’m enjoying this far less explosive season more than than the second 24-lite season. It doesn’t half feel like there are a bunch of characters still hanging around for no good reason, though.

Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1)
A lot funnier than some recent episodes, but with the usual fixed gender conclusions and stereotypes.

“What did you watch last week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?