TV reviews

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

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Atlantis (BBC1/BBC America)

18 October 2013 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

In the UK: Saturdays, 8.25pm, BBC1. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Saturdays, BBC America. Starts November 23
In Canada: Saturdays, 8pm/5pm PT, Space

Time to look back at the latest iteration of Merlin and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, known as Atlantis. A hotchpotch of Greek myth, Greek history and Minoan culture combined with whatever else the writers feel like nicking from two thousand years of pre-BC Mediterranean cultures, it’s essentially a boy’s own tale – girls are barely welcome here and those that get a look in are either passive (Ariadne) or evil/soon-to-be-evil (Pasiphaë, Medusa) – in which Jason (maybe of the Argonauts) travels back from the modern day to have have exciting adventures on the not-yet-flooded island of Atlantis with Pythagoras (yes, that one) and Hercules (not the hero he was made out to be).

After a first episode that was as flabby in the middle as Hercules but still reasonably good fun, things have slowly declined. Promises of an ongoing storyline have pretty much disappeared in favour of ‘guest myth of the week’, given the baddies v goodies make-over you’d expect of the creators of Merlin. Episode two saw our heroes facing off against Dionysos’ now-evil witch-like Maenads – and you could write epic essays on the gender politics that particular twist evokes – while episode three took the bull-leaping of Minoan frescoes and then gave it all a somewhat daft twist involving sacrifices and Pasiphaë revealed as being an evil witch, too (again, another, briefer essay in the making there).

Trouble is, none of this is very well handled. With no truth depth or gods and with everything effectively squelched through Merlin‘s medieval Christian view of the world, the stories feel bereft of all the qualities that make Greek literature interesting. Jason’s may be buff and able to fight, but he’s a dull cipher, particularly now no one seems particularly interested in finding out where his dad is any more. Jemima Rooper’s Medusa, reduced from a mythic priestess to a volunteer maid in Atlantis, has little to do but be a friend to the heroes. Hercules and Pythagoras are there for laughs and provide obstacles for Jason to overcome. Potential love interest Ariadne is just that and nothing else.

Atlantis is an action show that’s good at action, filmed in some lovely parts of Morocco that look nothing like anything Greek or Cretan. But it has a largely limp young cast and nothing to make it anything more than Merlin in some pop culture version of Greece. I dare say towards the end of the series they’ll amp up the revelations and tie back into the series arc, but at the moment, it’s a pretty thankless, episodic show that drags and offers no one truly to engage the viewer.

Barrometer rating: 3 (trending downwards)
Rob’s prediction: Will probably run and run but doesn’t deserve to

What did you watch last week? Including Breathless, Once Upon A Time in Wonderland and Witches of East End

14 October 2013 Rob Buckley 4 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.

As usual, a bevy of reviews up last week, including:

I gave up on Ironside, midway through the second episode, on the grounds that it was rubbish and derivative, and spent all its time trying to prove what a man Ironside was. Sean Saves The World was only marginally funny and relied completely on Sean’s boss for those funny moments, so that’s being abandoned, too. Super Fun Night wasn’t even that funny and was actually kind of sad instead, so that’s being consigned to the “not interested” heap, too.

I tried the first episodes of a few other shows, none of which were good enough to continue being watched:

Breathless (ITV)
Jack Davenport is a 1960s surgeon/hottie in an ensemble piece that looks like a bad carbon copy of Call The Midwife, The Hour and Mad Men, without any of the interesting qualities of any of them.

Once Upon A Time In Wonderland (ABC)
Even duller spin-off from Once Upon A Time, this time focused on the grown-up Alice and her efforts to find her genie boyfriend Silas, aided by the Knave of Hearts (Michael Socha from Being Human) and the White Rabbit (John Lithgow). Almost completely impenetrable to anyone who hasn’t watched however many seasons it is of Once Upon A Time, and best described as having ‘scenes of mild peril, romance and humour, but nothing more’.

Witches of East End (Lifetime/Lifetime UK)
Julia Ormond is a witch. She has lots of witch daughters who are all grown up but don’t know they’re witches. There’s a bit of shagging, a bit of voodoo, but this is really one for fans of the book series this is based upon and for people who really loved Charmed when they were teenagers and have been hoping for something less complicated and interesting ever since. The only tolerable and enjoyable part of it was Madchen Amick.

Still in the viewing queue are last night’s Homeland and Serangoon Road. The third episode of Atlantis is about 15 minutes too long, 10 times too unfaithful to myth and about 7 times too dull to be enjoyable, but I’m bearing with it for now.

Shows I’m watching but not necessarily recommending
Strike Back (Cinemax/Sky 1)
Something of a return to form in terms of action scenes, with some hugely impressive shoot-outs. Good ending, too, even if you could probably see it coming a mile off.

Recommended shows
Arrow (The CW/Sky 1)
The usual second season partial reboot we’ve come to expect from US shows, with people changing jobs, doing odd things, changing relationships, redecorating, etc, purely because there’s been a gap of a few months. Nevertheless, a really excellent first episode, the introduction by the looks of it of Black Canary and some decent stunt scenes. The flashbacks to the island are a bit unnecessary, though, now, even if does give us lots of Manu Bennett.

Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
After a decidedly regular and uninspired episode, a genuinely moving ending featuring a guest vocal appearance by Natalie Dormer as Jamie Moriarty which only made me want more.

Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1)
Funny and a determined improvement on the previous few weeks.

“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?

US TV

Review: The Tomorrow People 1×1 (US: The CW; UK: E4)

11 October 2013 Rob Buckley 7 Comments


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

As we all know, US TV is prone to remaking other countries’ TV shows, but if you’d asked me a year what the most likely remake of a UK TV show would be this season, never in my wildest dreams would I have suggested 1970s sci-fi gay metaphor and excuse for borderline S&M paedophilia The Tomorrow People. Yet here it is. Do they have no shame?

Amazingly, although I tend to prefer remakes that are faithful to the original, in this case, the lack of fidelity is an improvement. The original show was dreadful. Just dreadful. Although possessed of one of the best and most disturbing title sequences in TV history, it had numerous faults, most of which I’ve spelt out over here. Or you could watch this brief clip, which should show you what you’ve been missing all these years.

Yet here, although we don’t have something that’s much above “not bad”, we don’t have something outrageously terrible. What we do have is, however, is also a bit more mundane. Following on from the original, the story posits that all over the world, a new race of human beings called Homo Superior or The Tomorrow People is ‘comingbreaking out’. Able to teleport, read minds and move objects with their thoughts, unlike the nasty new humans of Prey, these genetic mutations can’t kill and just want to be left alone to lead normal lives like anyone else.

Unlike the 1970s Tomorrow People, there are some complete TP spanners ruining for it everyone by breaking into bank vaults and the like, so a government scientist called Jedekiah who definitely isn’t a fierce, shapechanging, alien robot is out to stop these new Tomorrow People and give them genetic therapy to make them normal ‘saps’ (Home Sapiens) – assuming he can’t get them to join his team of black-suited TPs.

With new and super-powerful mutation Stephen (Robbie Amell – cousin of Arrow‘s Stephen Amell) just breaking out and teleporting into people’s bedrooms while he’s asleep, both sides in the war are looking to recruit. Which side will he join? Well, that would be telling, so maybe you’ll just have to read my mind to find out. Or watch it.

Here’s a trailer. Spoilers after the jump.

Continue reading “Review: The Tomorrow People 1×1 (US: The CW; UK: E4)”

UK TV

Preview: The Tunnel (Tunnel) (UK: Sky Atlantic; France: Canal+)

11 October 2013 Rob Buckley 14 Comments


In the UK: Wednesdays, 9pm, Sky Atlantic. Starts 16th October
In France: Canal+. Starts in November

Well, here we are again, on a border, two dead women’s bodies cut in half and stuck together, two different police forces from two different countries having to investigate the crimes, and resolve their personal and cultural differences. 

The Swedish-Danish co-production Bron/Broen – known in the UK as The Bridge – was a big success in both countries, one of BBC4’s biggest successes of 2012 and has taken the rest of the world by storm, too. Given the story involved co-operation between two countries’ police forces, it was always a natural for remakes, too.

We’ve already seen one example of such a remake in the US: The Bridge, which sees a US and a Mexican investigator pairing come together to solve a crime on the exact border of the US and Mexico. In some ways an almost exact duplicate, in others an improvement, but overall a blander dilution of the original, it’s been renewed for a second season.

Chances are, we probably won’t see it in the UK for a while, though, because the rights have already been acquired by the makers of a new Sky Atlantic/Canal+ co-production, The Tunnel. Yes, this time there’s been a murder but because there’s no bridge to France, it’s all happening underground in the Channel Tunnel.

Starring Stephen Dillane (Game of Thrones, Hunted, The One Game) and Clemence Poésy (Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire), The Tunnel is once against an almost exact replica of that original show, but surprisingly enough, there are still a few things the format can offer that we haven’t seen before. Here are some trailers.

Continue reading “Preview: The Tunnel (Tunnel) (UK: Sky Atlantic; France: Canal+)”

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Agents of SHIELD (ABC/Channel 4)

10 October 2013 Rob Buckley 12 Comments

In the US: Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC
In the UK: Fridays, 8pm, Channel 4

Three episodes into Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD and it looks like the show is finally finding its feet as a show separate from The Avengers/Avengers Assemble and the rest of the ‘Marvel Universe’. Episode one was a derivative affair, no different from Knight Rider and NCIS in set-up but with even prettier casts and Whedongags and constant references to the movies to differentiate it from other ensemble action shows that deal with the hunting down of ‘terrorists’. 

With Joss Whedon apparently absent behind the scenes of episode two, taking his jokes with him (although rumours are they he did do some re-writes on it), the show made an unfortunate shift sideways in the direction of Torchwood, giving us a rubbish, bickering team, trying to save the world from alien artefacts, while making yet more references to the movies. And we just don’t need another Torchwood – one was enough.

Episode three was considerably more pleasing, though, giving us some juicy flips of a standard plot, some actual personalities for the prettier members of the cast and a guest appearance by an accent-laden Ian Hart. While still not quite up to Whedon-standard, there were better gags than before and the laying down of some new mythology for the show so it doesn’t have to keep drawing on the Marvel movie universe. It did have some weird ideas about Malta, though, and some pretty poor fight scenes, so let’s not get too carried away.

Agents of SHIELD is clearly a show finding its way. It’s not trying to be as clever or off the wall as previous Whedon efforts, and while its playing with the tropes of mainstream action and comic-book shows gives a certain edge on the po-faced likes of Criminal Minds and NCIS, it doesn’t yet have good enough writing or a good enough cast for it to quite get by without the goodwill brought about by the movies.

But it’s got enough good things about it and enough strengths that given time, it will be a decent enough show and could possibly grow into something innovative. We can at least keep our fingers crossed.

Barrometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Will last at least one season, but needs to find its own place in the Marvel and TV-viewing universes for it to go beyond that.