TV reviews

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

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 4

Third-episode verdict: Crossing Lines (NBC/TF1)

8 July 2013 Rob Buckley Post a comment

In the US: Sundays, 10/9c, NBC
In France: TF1. No air date yet

Crossing Lines TV Schedule

Time to appraise the first three episodes of Crossing Lines, NBC and TF1’s bold attempt to make a eurocop thriller that doesn’t totally suck. Created by one of the showrunners of Criminal Minds, Crossing Lines sees William Fichtner’s physically challenged, burned out former New York cop for no good reason other than international co-production funding join forces with a group of European cops at the ICC in investigating cross-border crimes that manage to evade national police forces in Europe.

As we saw from the first episode, some of these cops can act, some of these cops can’t; Donald Sutherland is in the show as well, for no very good reason; and largely the show is a mass of dramatic clichés, but strangely capable of at least some local sensibilities and occasional surprises. 

Episode two saw a retreat from cliché in favour of extreme boredom, with a very chatty episode involving a bit of art theft, some dodgy science and a lot of moping. The show shifted from everyone speaking their native languages where necessary to everyone, even incidental characters, speaking English without prior bidding and in the most improbable of situations. We did, also, get the first hints at a continuing story arc involving a shady Russian – who’s not yet been seen, only intimated at.

Episode three, which judging from some of the story set-up might well have been episode two once upon a time, was a markedly improved affair that gave the German character some much needed characterisation that was remarkably stereotype-free. Fichtner wasn’t the be-all and end-all of investigation, and everyone managed to have something to do, even if some of them weren’t up to the job (cough, cough, the Italian cop, cough, cough). But it did also continue the show’s reality gap issues, with a cross-border, trucker fight club that would almost certainly have made any viewer roll their eyes in disbelief. 

The show is silly. That aspect can’t be avoided. But it does present a largely stereotype-free view of Europeans that is refreshing compared to the usual US TV depictions. I really want to like it, as a result, but the plots are the usual insult to rational thought that you’d expect from Criminal Minds et al. I’m hoping, given time, it can mine the numerous genuine cross-border problems Europe has for some stories that don’t insult the viewer. But I don’t have a huge amount of hope.

Barrometer rating: 4
Rob’s prediction: Will be lucky to last a season

What did you watch this week? Including Crossing Lines, Perception, Satisfaction, Under The Dome and Much Ado About Nothing

5 July 2013 Rob Buckley 7 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.

Normally, at this point, I’d list my usual recommendations. But what with international viewing schedules, etc, that’s started to get awkward. Instead, as I revealed on Tuesday, I’ve put together a “TMINE recommends” page, featuring links to reviews of all the shows I’ve ever recommended. I’ll improve it in all sorts of ways over time, since it’s a bit rough and ready at the moment, but it should mean that you’ll be able to find some good TV viewing if you need to.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been watching this week. Still in my viewing queue, though, is Being Mary Jane, BET’s new comedy-drama with Gabrielle Union, about “one black woman who is not representative of all black women” and her struggles with life and love. I’m not in a big rush to review this since the series itself doesn’t start until January 2014. But after a slightly shaky, very ordinary first five minutes, it started to improve post titles, so I’ll probably have a review up on (checks work schedule) Thursday next week.

The Almighty Johnsons (TV3/SyFy UK/Space)
Yes, it’s the return of New Zealand’s best drama show, with Norse gods (weakly) reincarnated in the bodies of ordinary mortals, all hoping that they’ll return to full strength once Odin and Frigg get married. It feels like the show’s trying to right itself after a somewhat erratic second season, with more of a focus on relationships. Some great individual dramatic and comedic moments, but no sign yet of a strong season-long narrative drive to push the plot. UK viewers will be relieved to hear season three has been acquired by SyFy UK, for broadcast soon.

Crossing Lines (NBC/TF1)
The first episode, of course, was a tiresome mixture of dramatic cliché and serial killer topes from cop shows, all set against a European backdrop. Episode two was a vastly chattier affair, less cliched but incredibly boring to watch. There doesn’t appear to be a good reason at all for Donald Sutherland to be in this, but they keep trying to find things for him to do, and the poor old German character may be the best of the actors not performing in their native languages, but he’s got almost nothing to do in terms of character development, sadly. It’s also becoming readily apparent that the writers have no real understanding of the difference between Northern Ireland and Eire, with yet another Irish character popping but having a Northern Irish accent. Some vague hints at a season arc involving a shady Russian, though, so maybe it’ll get better in the next few episodes.

Graceland (USA)
Too boring and not unique enough for me to keep watching, so it’s been dropped from my viewing schedule.

Perception (TNT/Watch)
A slightly stronger episode this week than last week’s, with our hero and heroine investigating a woman who thinks her husband has been abducted by aliens – it’s all because of a rare brain syndrome of course. The season arc stuff was quite well handled, alternately funny and moving, but the procedural side of things once again easily the worst aspect of the show, which would be great as a simple “weird condition of the week” psychological House.

Satisfaction (CTV)
A funny second episode that went a little way towards rectifying the problems that the first episode had with Leah Renee’s character. It could do with steering away from the supporting characters, though, since they’re bordering on the offensive (particularly the one with a cleft palate). Fake TV show The Horse Doctor was inspired though.

Under the Dome (CBS/Channel 5)
Exactly the same as any other Stephen King story set in a small town in Maine, and this week, of course, the casualties began to mount up. Absolutely unremarkable but reasonably diverting.

And in movies:

Much Ado About Nothing
Leagues better than the self-congratulatory Kenneth Branagh version, this sees virtually everyone who’s been in a Joss Whedon-directed TV show or film all together in one place for the first time outside of the convention circuit to do a modern-day but linguistically intact retelling of Shakespeare’s classic comedy – all shot in black and white in what’s probably Whedon’s house during his lunch breaks. Fine performances from everyone, particularly Nathan Fillion and Amy Acker, and excellent direction from Whedon, too, who manages to make a Shakespeare comedy genuinely funny. Still, it always weird to hear Alexis Denisof with an American accent.

“What did you watch this 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: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981)

4 July 2013 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

When Doctor Who was at its peak, few shows could beat it in the ratings. Weirdly, Man from Atlantis was one such show – never underestimate the appeal of sensitive, semi-naked, wet, buff men – but more famously, it was another time-travelling, science-fiction superhero who’d been around for even longer than the Doctor who trounced him on Saturday nights at the end of the 70s.

Yes, the all-American Buck Rogers could defeat the best Britain had to offer. Happy Independence Day, everyone, and let’s head off to the 25th century after the first of its title sequences and the jump.

Continue reading “Nostalgia Corner: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981)”

The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play: Blue Remembered Hills (1979)

3 July 2013 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Blue Remembered Hills

Anyone who’s ever watched US TV that features teenagers and young people will have noted that fairly frequently, adult actors have been cast in roles that they’re clearly too old for. Think of Buffy The Vampire Slayer: set in a High School for its first three seasons, it featured Charisma Carpenter as one of its pupils – at the time of the first season, Carpenter was 27 years old, despite playing a 16-year-old. Smallville – which got the subtitle of Superman: The Early Years over here – featured Tom Welling as the 16-year-old Clark Kent, when at the time he was 24. Add to that list shows like Gossip Girl, Modern Family and Pretty Little Liars, and you can see a pretty concerted strategy to not employ young people to play young people.

The general aim, of course, has been to get people with acting talent and the emotional maturity required for roles, as well as to make them allowably fanciable (in certain cases). Plus there’s those tricky child labour laws, education and so on to deal with.

But famed playwright Dennis Potter (The Singing Detective, Brimstone and Treacle) went to a different extreme, using the technique in an entirely different way in a number of plays for entirely different reasons. Both Stand Up Nigel Barton and his final work, Cold Lazarus, saw Potter casting very much grown adults in the roles of children to emphasise aspects of childishness in adults, to highlight the differences, and to achieve emotional resonances and performances that might not be achieved with child actors.

Perhaps his best use of the device was in Blue Remembered Hills, a Play For Today that aired in 1979. The play gets its name from poem XL of AE Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, ‘The Land of Lost Content’, which is read by Potter himself during the play:

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

It stars Michael Elphick (Boon, Private Schulz), Robin Ellis (Poldark), Helen Mirren (do I have to remind you? Prime Suspect, at the very least), Colin Welland (Z-Cars), Janine Duvitski (Diane), Colin Jeavons (Inspector Lestrade in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) and John Bird (Bremner, Bird and Fortune) as the seven-year-olds in question. Probably the closest point of comparison is Lord of the Flies, with a group of normal children playing in the Forest of Dean one summer afternoon in 1943 but victimisation, stereotyping and brutality setting in over time, with tragic results.

Since airing on TV, the screenplay has been adapted for the theatre and is now a standard text at GCSE Drama. Enjoy, and remember if you like it, buy it on DVD to support those nice people who made it in the first place.

What did you watch this week? Including Perception, Under The Dome, World War Z and A Good Day To Die Hard

28 June 2013 Rob Buckley 24 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.

Perception (TNT/Watch)
Last summer’s slightly surprising combination of dull old procedural and interesting examination of psychology and mental health returns with a new character, the probable loss of at least one character, the surprising return of another character and the same old dull procedural. However, as well as the usual mind-bending issue with the show that you’re never sure what’s real and what’s hallucination, we have a possible slight departure from format – this first episode was less concerned with investigation and more concerned with the philosophical question of whether someone who’s had a brain injury and resulting personality change is still the same person they were before the injury. It’s a question that other shows probably wouldn’t touch with a barge pole but the show was all the better for it. Rachael Leigh Cook is still the least plausible FBI agent in TV history, though.

Under the Dome (CBS/Channel 5)
Based on a Stephen King novel, this mini-series sees a small town full of Diverse People With Issues And Secrets suddenly enveloped by a forcefield dome that blocks everything from sound and cars through to radio signals and electricity. Why’s it happening, who’s behind it, what’s going to happen next and will everyone sort out their issues before their secrets are discovered? Probably.

Full of people who’ve never been the stars of things but you’ll have seen being really good in loads of other shows – Rachelle Lefevre (Life on Mars, The Deep End, Twilight), Dean Norris (Breaking Bad) and Mike Vogel (Bates Motel, Pan Am) – as well as Britt Robertson (The Secret Circle, Life Unexpected), this is very odd flashback to the 80s, when Stephen King mini-series were all the rage. As back then, you’ll spend all your time working out who’s going to end up dead next and what precisely is going on. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d think if you’ve seen any such mini-series before, with dodgy dialogue, stock characters but an intriguing central idea. It’s also surprisingly gruesome at times.

With ratings of 12m, hopefully it’ll boost the careers of at least Lefevre, who’s needed a breakout role for ages and was unceremoniously dumped from the third Twilight movie in favour of the somewhat inferior Bryce Dallas Howard, and Norris, now that Breaking Bad is leaving us. I could do without the dodgy stalker bloke, though.

And in movies:

World War Z
Brad Pitt travels the world looking for a way to fight the zombie plague that’s broken out. Taking in Korea and Israel, he eventually finds his solution is… Torchwood. Well, maybe. You’ll get that joke if you ever watch the movie.

Not great, doesn’t make huge sense, Mireille Enos (The Killing US) is largely wasted and as in movies such as Contagion, a plethora of stars turns up for five minutes only to disappear almost as quickly. But it’s tense all the way through and has a few funny moments. Better than the average zombie movie, anyway.

A Good Way To Die Hard
Bruce Willis goes off to Russia when his wayward son shoots someone in a nightclub and is put on trial. However, all is not what it seems and soon Willis and Willis Jr are double-acting their way through numerous shoot-outs and car chases around Russia.

The best that can probably be said about this is that it’s probably the second-best of the Die Hard movies, with at least some intelligence on display in places throughout the movie. But it shows nowhere near the level of human involvement and innovation of the original, and the constant CGI effects mean that nothing feels real enough to care about.

“What did you watch this 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?