TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: Mom 1×1 (CBS)

24 September 2013 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Mom on CBS

In the US: Mondays, 9.30/8.30c, CBS

There comes a point in virtually every modern Chuck Lorre sitcom – usually pretty soon on – where you start to despair at the show’s cynicism. People are bad. They’re mean. They’re cruel to each other. The audience laughs.

Then there’s the show’s misogyny. Women are held up for ridicule, told they’re bad for having sex, drinking alcohol or going to parties.

The audience laughs.

Mom doesn’t so much change this as take it to its logical conclusion. Here, Anna Faris is a waitress who once wanted to be a psychiatrist but never quite made it, in part because she had two kids to raise by herself, in part because she drank too much, took other substances and generally enjoyed herselfdid Bad Things.

To be fair, though, she’s a better mother than her mother (Allison Janney) was. Indeed, once Janney shows up you realise that this has stopped being a sitcom and turned into something actually quite upsetting and devoid of laughs. Because it’s surprisingly hard to laugh at characters you genuinely feel sorry for.

Here’s a trailer:

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TV reviews

Review: The Blacklist 1×1 (NBC/Sky Living)

24 September 2013 Rob Buckley 28 Comments


In the US: Mondays, 10/9c, NBC
In the UK: Acquired by Sky Living. Starts 4 October

Ah, James Spader. Star of the original Stargate movie and Sex, Lies and Videotape, he was the thinking heterosexual woman’s crush of the early 90s, the sensitive, hot intellectual actor it was okay to collect a sticker album for.

But time marched on and thanks to a process called ‘Shatnerisation’, he stopped being the subtle, sophisticated actor he once was, preferring instead to ham it up something chronic on The Practice and Boston Legal. It’s therefore somewhat appropriate that for his return to mainstream TV, he’s picked one of the least subtle roles available to him this season: ‘the concierge of crime’ Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington on NBC’s The Blacklist.

Reddington is a Moriarty, a man other criminals come to to organise their plots, put them in touch with other criminals and get them what they need. But one day, he mysteriously turns up at the FBI’s headquarters, voluntarily surrendering himself to the authorities. He then offers up the name of a criminal and agrees to help the FBI catch him on one condition: that he only speak to FBI rookie Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone). Why her and what he’s doing are even bigger mysteries, but before the end of the first episode Reddington is offering his continuing help to catch everyone on his ‘blacklist’ of big bads, providing he gets to stick with Keen.

And while that’s all as ridiculous as it sounds, it’s actually a surprisingly enjoyable hour and Spader, despite being the headline act with the spotlight firmly on him, curiously decides to diet his performance and reduce the ham. The hat doesn’t help though.

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What did you watch last week? Including Dads, Welcome To The Family, We Are Men, Sleepy Hollow and Brooklyn Nine-Nine

23 September 2013 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

It’s “What did you watch this week?, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I’ve watched this 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. Reviewed this week elsewhere: Back In The Game.

Normally, of course, this would be the time of year when the blog would be billowing with great big reviews and previews of all the new US shows heading your/our way. However, unfortunately (well, fortunately from my point of view, being self-employed), epic quantities of work have been keeping me busy this past week and will do for the rest of this week. Which is why this post is coming out today rather than last Friday.

However, I have watched a lot of the new shows so here are some previews and reviews of some of the new US shows, in potted, easily digestible format.

Dads
In the US: Tuesdays, 8/7c, Fox. Starts 24th September
In the UK: Not yet acquired

Seth Green (Buffy, Robot Chicken) and Giovanni Ribisi play two guys, one a care-free single womaniser, one an up-tight married man, both have to learn to deal with their dads. You’d think with the talent involved (Seth McFarlane is behind it) it would be hysterical. Instead, it’s cliched, predictable and, thanks predominantly to an asian female character being the butt of a whole end of dodgy jokes and stereotypes, incredibly racist. Avoid at all costs.

Dads TV Schedule

Welcome To The Family
In the US: Thursdays, 8.30/7.30c, NBC. Starts 3rd October

Junior, the son of a Latino family, and Molly, the daughter of a Caucasian family, discover that Molly is pregnant. The pair decide to get married and the two families have to come together. Now while this is scrupulously careful to avoid too many Latino stereotypes – these are hard-working people and Junior is a mathlete – to get comedy, that means there has to be a stereotype somewhere else so Molly is a blonde, party-girl bimbo. What an advance.

While not horribly offensive like Dads though, it’s also not funny either. Avoid, unless you’re old enough to have teenage kids about to leave home, in which case you might be able to stomach an episode.

Welcome to the Family TV Schedule

We Are Men
In the US: Mondays, 8.30/7.30c, CBS. Starts 30th September
In the UK: Acquired by Comedy Central

There’s an unwritten rule of ‘comedy’ that while divorced women go off, find strength in themselves and with female friends as they face up to living alone and looking after their children without their partners, divorced men go off and become extraordinary, bitter losers who go off to find the company of other loser men and moan about what bitches their exes.

No surprises here then, despite a cast that includes Kal Penn (House, Harold and Kumar), Tony Shalhoub (Monk) and series-killer Jerry O’Connell (Sliders, The Defenders, Carpoolers), this is essentially a sad, depressing show about a bunch of guys who wind up living in short-term rental complex together, hating women yet desperate to find a ‘good one’. If you’re a woman, you’ll end up hating men; if you’re a man, your faith in other men will plummet.

We Are Men TV Schedule

Brooklyn Nine-Nine
In the US: Tuesdays, 8.30/7.30c, Fox
In the UK: Acquired by E4

Cops that are a bit rubbish and muck around a lot (especially Andy Samberg from Saturday Night Live) find their new, no-nonsense boss (Andre Braugher) isn’t so keen on hijinks. Hilarity ensues when Braugher tries to bend Samberg to his will.

Actually, deeply rubbish until Braugher shows up, after which it’s a bit more promising. I’ll hold out until episode two to see if it’ll continue to get better.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine TV Schedule

Sleepy Hollow
In the US: Monday, 9/8c, Fox
In the UK: Acquired by the Universal Channel

Ichabod Crane wakes up modern day Sleepy Hollow, where he must face the Headless Horseman again, in order to prevent the end of the world.

Absolute nonsense that doesn’t make a lick of sense, yet the show doesn’t care about that and it is surprisingly enjoyable. Definitely one to stick with.

Sleepy Hollow TV Schedule

Shows I’m watching but not necessarily recommending
Under The Dome
Well, that was absolute nonsense but not in a good way. The finale didn’t answer anything and it was fundamentally ridiculous. What’s more, there’s another season of it coming your way next year. Overstretched? Not at all. Oh wait. Yes, totally.

Under the Dome TV Schedule

The Bridge (US)
A slightly modified version of the original ending that was faithful yet tinkered with it ever so slightly. But there’s another two episodes still to go. Huh.

The Bridge TV Schedule

Strike Back (Cinemax/Sky 1)
Eye-rollling, soft-core lesbo rubbish last week. This week, eye-rolling silliness of a different kind, but some excellent shootouts as always. Robson Green’s simulated 80s haircut was daft as a brush, though.

Recommended shows
The Almighty Johnsons
Gosh. Did they really just do that? Brave if they have. A fun dig at Burn Gorman’s Hobbit role, too. I’m hoping that we’re not going to have a retread of the season one finale, though.

The Almighty Johnsons TV Schedule

The Newsroom
Here’s a show that really has no idea what it is. For its finale, it wasn’t sure if it was a comedy or a romance, perhaps even a drama. Very Aaron Sorkin, in other words, and in some ways quite lovely. On the whole, a better plotted, less ridiculous season, but one that lost out on the human side, with relationships downplayed as much as possible. And the less said about Maggie’s hair plot line, the better.

The Newsroom TV Schedule

Suits
And thus we have a cliffhanger plucked from thin air that’s pretty much the same as the cliffhanger to the first season. Probably the first season that’s felt like a mis-step, with way too much attention paid to the Hessington Oil storyline and Louis now too ridiculous to take seriously. Still a good quality show, though.

Suits TV Schedule

“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?

Classic TV

Nostalgia corner: John Doe (2002-3)

19 September 2013 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Imagine you knew everything. I mean literally everything. Okay, maybe not the answer to questions about things that haven’t happened yet – although with all that knowledge about everything, you’d certainly do well on the stock market and horse racing, for example – but whatever question anyone ever asked you, you could answer it, provided it was part of the sum of all human knowledge, whether it was a question about an obscure 19th century French law, how to make an explosive or how many dimples there are on a golfball.

Everything, that is, except your own name or indeed anything else about yourself. Are you a god in human form? An alien? A scientific experiment?

That was the set up and central mystery of Fox’s John Doe, a 2002 series that saw Prison Break‘s Dominic Purcell wake up naked on a deserted island off the coast of Seattle, with no memory of who he was, brain chock full of answers, a mysteriously shaped scar on his chest and even more mysteriously only able to see in black and white – apart from a few, very important things that show up in red.

It’s a fascinating idea, and one that requires a fascinating answer. Unfortunately, the show was also a salutary example to serial shows based around a central mystery – whatever you do, you better have some good answers at the end of it all. Here’s the series-explaining title sequence:

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US TV

Mini-preview: Back In The Game 1×1 (ABC)

17 September 2013 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Back in the Game

In the US: Wednesdays, 8.30/7.30c, ABC. Starts 24th September

After the past couple of years’ disastrous attempts by ABC to try to get men to watch its shows – bizarrely, through terrible programmes like Work It and Zero Hour – ABC is this year once more reverting to its two core strengths: female viewers and luke-warm comedies.

This year, apparently, women who appreciate luke-warm comedies are into domesticity. We’ve already had a look at The Trophy Wife, in which a former party girl settles down to a life of comparative drudgery, tending to the needs of three step-children; now we’re going to have a look at Back In The Game, starring Psych‘s Maggie Lawson as a woman who gets divorced from her cheating husband and together with her son Donny, move back in with her father (James Caan from Elf. Yes, that’s the credit I’m going to list him with). Caan is a former pro baseball player who ruined Lawson’s life with perpetual baseball practice and indoctrination after her mother died, so Lawson has decided never to bother teaching Donny baseball.

But now Donny wants to impress girls, so it’s time for Lawson to bite the bullet and teach him – and since the current little league coach Dick (Ben Koldyke from… shudders… Work It) thinks Donny sucks, Lawson decides to run her own team full of no-hopers (fat kids, weird kids, gay kids, etc) rejected from the main team.

And like The Trophy Wife, it’s okay. Caan’s not really trying but is fine nevertheless, funniest when he’s proposing some ridiculous piece of over-the-top violence to wrongdoers; Lawson is trying for all she’s worth and doing a good job of it. The writing plays with gender and other stereotypes and subverts them, it has a good line in putdowns and is occasionally smart. Mandatory Brit Lenora Crichlow (Being Human) hams along nicely as Lawson’s rich new best friend; Koldyke hams along more entertainingly than he did in Work It.

It’s still not exactly a laugh a minute, but it’s a lot more promising than last year’s pilots (The Neighbors, Malibu Country, Family Tools). I’ll stick with it for a while, at least.