TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: Crossing Lines 1×1 (NBC/TF1)

28 June 2013 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Crossing Lines

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

Crime, these days, is global. In Europe, which doesn’t have an equivalent to the FBI specifically tasked with investigating ‘federal’ crimes, if you’re a computer hacker in Poland, you can steal money from a French bank as easily as if you were in Paris and the policiers will have a devil of a time bringing you to book. If you’ve killed someone in London and are looking to avoid the police, a quick trip on the Eurostar over to Brussels and even if the Met know you committed the crime, getting the Federale Politie/Police Fédérale/Föderale Polizei to not only talk to each other but find you and arrest you will be far more challenging for them than getting the South Tyneside police to do the same.

My, if only there were some kind of pan-European bunch of cops tasked with investigating crimes that cross EU state boundaries, able to skirt these kind of jurisdictional issues so they can bring to heel criminals who have escaped justice because of lack of co-operation between forces.

Well, there isn’t, but Crossing Lines, a US-French-German co-production, imagines such an elite group of cops, albeit one that needs an American lead for in-story reasons that are a little opaque and for real-world reasons that are far more explicable.

It stars William Fichtner (Prison Break, Invasion, MDs) as a crippled New York cop who’s moved to the Netherlands and become a garbage collector for reasons that are initially inexplicable but become clearer by the end of the pilot. He’s recruited for his deductive powers (and American-ness) by a French detective (singer and occasional actor Marc Lavoine) who heads up an elite team of cops at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The team also includes a British interrogation specialist (Genevieve O’Reilly), a Northern Irish weapons specialist and former traveller (Richard Flood), a German technology expert (Tom Wlaschiha from HBO’s Game of Thrones), an Italian undercover specialist (Gabriella Pession) and a French crime analyst with an eidetic memory (Moon Dailly from France 3’s Commissaire Magellan). Together with the help of an ICC inspector (Donald Sutherland – do I really have to tell you who he is?), the team can investigate crimes other groups can’t touch.

Their first case? Well, given the series was created by one of the show runners of Criminal Minds, despite the shiny international cast, the numerous glossy European locations, relatively high budget and a surprising nose for local cultural differences, would it surprise you if I told you it was a relatively dull, tedious, cliched affair involving an American serial killer? Probably not.

Here’s a trailer:

Continue reading “Review: Crossing Lines 1×1 (NBC/TF1)”

Canadian TV

Review: Satisfaction 1×1 (CTV)

25 June 2013 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Satisfaction

In Canada: Mondays, 8pm, CTV

Usually, there’s a situation in a sitcom. That’s where the word comes from.

Satisfaction laughs at that perfunctory requirement. It doesn’t even bother to explain what its situation is, although you can probably guess by the end of the first episode: hot, young, upwardly mobile couple find their style slightly cramped by the slobby friend/lodger who’s always getting in the way of their couple-y fun.

Yet for all the focus placed on this situation in the pilot episode, it might as well be about the difficulties of keeping meat fresh in the summer, that’s how little interest the premise is to the writers. But stop right there. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in Canadian sitcoms: place too much emphasis on the sit instead of the com and you end up with high-concept shows, such as InSecurity and Seed, with well developed situations that don’t actually make you laugh.

Satisfaction, however, which foregoes not just situation but also much similarity to reality, despite being based on “real life experiences”, does at least pass the critical “five laughs per episode” threshold for a sitcom.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, break open the champagne: we actually have a moderately funny Canadian sitcom on our hands. Here’s a trailer:

Continue reading “Review: Satisfaction 1×1 (CTV)”

US TV

Preview: Ray Donovan 1×1 (Showtime/Sky Atlantic)

25 June 2013 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Ray Donovan

In the US: Sundays, 10pm, Showtime. Starts June 30
In the UK: Tuesdays, 10pm, Sky Atlantic. Starts July 16th

There’s presumably rather a lot of sh*t going down in LA, thanks to a combination of huge amounts of money and the number of famous people with personality issues, addictions and secrets they’d rather people didn’t know about them. So equally presumably there’s a group of people whose life it is to help cover up the inevitable colossal cock-ups that result from the collision of these things.

Ray Donovan, created by Southland‘s Ann Biderman, looks at one such man, the eponymous Ray Donovan (Live Schreiber, last seen doing TV work on CSI) – the Mr Wolf of the entertainment business…

…for whom no clean-up job, whether it be a stalker, a dead woman or a ‘straight’ actor who likes to pick up gay, transvestite hookers, is too hard and who’ll stop at nothing, even murder, if he has, too. The only thing he can’t fix? His relationships, particularly when his father (Jon Voight) comes out of prison and starts to put his nose into his family’s affairs. Here’s a trailer, and if you’re in the US, the entire first episode for you to enjoy.

Continue reading “Preview: Ray Donovan 1×1 (Showtime/Sky Atlantic)”

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Graceland (USA)

24 June 2013 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, USA Network

Three episodes into Graceland and things are looking up. A bit, anyway. Based on a true story, Graceland is about a bunch of undercover agents from the FBI, DEA et al, who all live together in a seized beach house in LA.

The show was created by White Collar‘s Jeff Eastin, who actually wrote the pilot script before White Collar but figured it was too dark for USA and went with White Collar instead.And the first episode looked like it was written by someone a long time ago. A carbon copy of Point Break, with more homoerotic bro-bonding tension than Patrick Swayze could have shaken his shaggy blond mane of hair at, it offered nothing that you couldn’t have seen done better elsewhere and excluded the few female characters from the action as much as was humanly possible.

Things didn’t look much better in episode two, also written by Eastin, which once again saw more masculine posturing, with women there to be ogled at or to merely stand on the sidelines. As I mentioned during my first episode review, if you’ve ever lied about anything, you’ll not have found anything revelatory about the episode’s insights into life as an undercover agent and how to maintain a cover; quite why anyone believes that these guys are anything except law-enforcement officers is unfathomable – even Sonny Burnett was more likely as a criminal in Miami Vice than newbie Mike, who tries to pull off being a marine in this episode and fails abysmally.

The episode also saw the introduction of Serinda Swan as an additional ‘house mate’, although she’s not had much to do beyond wear a bikini top and sing karaoke. Indeed, while there was a promising point where there as many as three female agents in the house to four men, albeit female agents who spend all their time nurturing the men or their informants, episode three (no spoilers, given the series cast list and publicity shots) saw one of the female agents ejected from the house for incompetence and letting her emotions get the better of her, giving us a 2:1 sausage-fest ratio (a potential girlfriend for the clean-cut hero doesn’t really count. Not yet anyway).

Nevertheless, the third episode was a marked improvement over the previous two. Written by co-producer Stephen Godchaux, who also worked on Spin City and Dead Like Me, and directed by Renny Harlin no less, that saw some welcome darkness and twisty-turniness, with everyone lying and double-crossing one another. The difficulty of maintaining a relationship when undercover was also emphasised, and for once, there were some clever tricks and bits of sneakiness.

As a whole, it’s clear at least that Jeff Eastin probably isn’t the best writer of the scenario he’s created but there are possibilities to it. It’s all a bit ‘dark’ rather than actually dark, escapist rather than insightful; despite being based on a real story, it’s not desperately plausible, although Daniel Sunjata does his hardest and achieves it when the scripts let him; it’s also a major bro-fest, which is a pretty tedious thing to witness.

Yet, when out of Eastin’s lightweight hands, Graceland has the potential to be a decent cop show, albeit a summer cop show. With a bit of tinkering here and there, it could even be pretty good. I’ll keep watching to see if they manage it.

Barrometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Will probably get at least one more season, maybe more

What did you watch this week? Including The White Queen, The Returned, Man of Steel, Continuum, Hannibal and Graceland

21 June 2013 Rob Buckley 11 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.

First, the usual recommendations:

  • Continuum (Showcase/SyFy)
  • The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
  • Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)

And here’s what I thought of them and others:

  • Continuum (Showcase/SyFy): The action is definitely amping up now, even if the amount of sense the show is making isn’t. Some surprises to be had, some revelations that weren’t, and some weird twists that were probably just there for weirdness’s sake. Nevertheless, it’s definitely getting back on track as a show.
  • Graceland (USA): I’m still watching episode three, which is a marked improvement on its predecessors (full third-episode verdict on Monday). But episode 2 was soporific, derivative rubbish.
  • Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living): An exquisite end to a fabulous season. Always surprising, always keeping you guessing, with some astonishing moments along the way from writing staff, directors and cast alike. The final scene was just perfect, too. Why do we have to wait for a year for it to come back? Sigh.
  • The Returned (Canal+/Channel 4): A bunch of French people in a small town who have all been bereaved – for better or for worse – wake up one day to find their dead loved ones are back. Then they have to adjust – and find out what’s happening, and potentially kill off some of the dead people. So far, a bit lightweight but a couple of interesting episodes establishing the main characters, and there’s a very creepy kid called Victor. I’ll probably stick with it, just for the music which oddly enough is by Mogwai.
  • The White Queen (BBC1/Starz): To me, a very dull historical potboiler, with surprising additional witchcraft. To my lovely wife, a brilliant, faithful adaption of a great book. Therefore, YMMV. Will air on Starz in the US in August with more sex. Quelle surprise.

And in movies:

Man of Steel
A reboot of the Superman franchise, with an origin story that sees Russell Crowe as Superman’s real dad, Kevin Costner and Superman’s adoptive dad, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Michael Shannon as General “Kneel Before” Zod, Laurence Fishburne as Perry White and some bloke called Henry Cavill as Superman. On many levels awesome in its more literal sense, with some astonishing action set pieces and effects that finally do justice to the entire range of Superman’s super-powers. On the other hand, a very bitty, very nerdy story that only really works when it’s all about hitting people very hard, bar a few isolated moments, most of them involving Kevin Costner, only one or two of them involving Lois Lane. A little bit too po-faced, too. But a lot better than you might have thought of Zack Snyder, not as good as you’d have thought of Christopher Nolan and about right for David Goyer. The cast are all great, and there’s a good kick-ass female baddie, too, which makes a nice change.

Lovely wife found it astonishingly boring, though, although she hates anything by Christopher Nolan.

“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?