In the US: Saturday, 8pm/7c, 27th April 2013, BBC America
Ever since the TARDIS showed up and proved itself to be bigger on the inside than on the outside, there have been several burning questions in the minds of viewers: how much bigger? What’s in there? And will the BBC budget ever stretch to allowing us to find out?
Over the years, we’ve had references to the many rooms within the TARDIS, as well as stories that have given us brief glimpses of the infinite interior, including Edge of Destruction…
But these glimpses have been very few and far between, usually quite brief, and either subordinate to the rest of the plot or mind-numbingly dull (Castrovalva). What we’ve been waiting for is a proper adventure set in the TARDIS that combines everything we’ve learnt about it but goes on to show off as much as possible of the interior, while giving us new and exciting additions, all while avoiding the Castrovalva “Maths is Fun!” syndrome.
Did Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS give us that? Well, let’s discuss it all after this lovely trailer and the jump.
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:
The Americans (FX/ITV)
Arrow (The CW/Sky 1)
Being Human (US) (SyFy)
Continuum (Showcase/SyFy)
The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
Doctor Who (BBC1/BBC America)
Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
Endeavour (ITV1)
Go On (NBC)
Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)
Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1)
Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic)
These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can’t be sure which.
Still in the viewing queue: Netflix’s Hemlock Grove, which still doesn’t look appealing; BBC2’s The Politician’s Husband; and Sundance’s ‘difficult’ Rectify.
Now, some thoughts on some of the regulars and some of the shows I’m still trying
The Americans (FX/ITV): The first good episode not written by Joe Weisberg, although the parallels between ‘the oaths’ were crude. But the end twist shows how quickly things can turn round in this spying game.
Arrow (The CW/Sky 1): Feels like it’s going round in circles, covering old storylines it’s already covered. The stunts are still good though.
Bates Motel (A&E/Universal): I’m not actually watching this, merely reading updates on episode guides. Turns out that there are some interesting twists to it, but those twists are more interesting to read about than to watch.
Continuum (Showcase/SyFy): A pleasing series of double-bluffs. Just as you think you can see where the episode us going, it goes in a completely different direction. Not quite the slam dunk of the first episode – you’d have thought with it being the most popular drama in Canada, Shaw might sink some cash into the show – but full of good moments.
Defiance (SyFy): Precisely as conventional as you’d have expected the second episode to be, focusing more on the cultures of the aliens than on giving the aliens interesting personalities. Also horrifically patriarchal as before, with even the ‘strong’ women and female aliens deferring to the men or needing the support of men for their decisions.
Elementary (CBS/Sky Living): Notable mainly for the arrival of master blackmailer Charles Augustus Milverton from the Holmes stories, rather than any aspects of the plot itself.
Endeavour (ITV1): Much better than the previous episode, although I had for a moment hoped it was going to be a prequel to my favourite Inspector Morse episode, Masonic Mysteries. However, it was pretty obvious what was going on and the denouement was glacially slow and silly.
Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living): Despite episode four having been dropped and then cut down into US-only webisodes, episode five carries on pretty well from previous episodes, but feels like a cross between Millennium and Touching Evil. Actually quite moving in the scenes between Jack Crawford and his wife, it’s an excellent show that’s definitively worth watching.
Plebs (ITV2): A good way to end the series. Here’s hoping for more!
Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic): Quite liking the additional of Mia’s mother to the story and Carrie-Anne Moss is finally getting some good things to do. But the rest of the plot feels like it’s treading water, and Dennis Quaid has stopped putting the effort in. On the other hand, it did treat the domestic abuse storyline with tact and sensitivity, despite the era in which the show is set.
“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?
“Try this for a deep, dark secret. The great detective Remington Steele, he doesn’t exist… I invented him. Follow: I always loved excitement so I studied and apprenticed and put my name on an office but absolutely nobody knocked down my door. A female private investigator seemed so… feminine, so I invented a superior, a decidedly masculine superior. Suddenly there were cases around the block. It was working like a charm until the day he walked in with his blue eyes and mysterious past and before I knew it he assumed Remington Steele’s identity. Now I do the work and he takes the bows. It’s a dangerous way to live but as long as people buy it I can get the job done. We never mix business with pleasure, well, almost never. I don’t even know his real name.”
It’s hard for women to get to the top in business. Don’t believe me? Just check how many women are CEOs or members of the boards of directors for Fortune 500 companies.
The reasons for this are long and complicated, involving history, discrimination and a whole lot more. In particular, there’s perception. Some people, both men and women, don’t think women are going to be as good as men are at certain jobs.
Particularly private detectives. Or at least people didn’t in 1982, before VI Warshawski, Anna Lee and co. Certainly, Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalst) found it hard to get any work when she started out. She may have come top of her class at pretty much everything, but with her name on the door, for some strange reason, no one was interested in hiring her.
So crafty Laura Holt decided to invented a boss with a very masculine name: Remington Steele (Remington as in gun, rather than Fuzzaway). Suddenly, for some equally strange reason, people were queuing up to hire her – well, they wanted Remington Steele, but he was always out of town on business but somehow he always managed to solve his cases with the help of his ‘assistant’.
All was going well with this set-up until a movie-loving, very handsome con man (Pierce Brosnan) turned up and assumed Steele’s identity. Together, he and Holt end up working together, solving crimes. But would their relationship ever become more, when it was all founded in lies – hell, she didn’t even know his real name? Well… that would be saying.
Here’s the intro from the very first episode – the observant will notice the wording is different. After that, the full, rather catchy, Henry Mancini-scored theme tune, and then every episode title from the show, all of which were puns.
In the US: Saturday, 8pm/7c, 20th April 2013, BBC America
Nigel Kneale is something of a god on this blog. A revolutionary writer of some of the best scripts in British TV history, his effect can still be felt today. One of his most powerful and influential works was The Stone Tape, a genuinely scary scientific ghost story that has leant its name to a parapsychology concept: the idea that ghosts may be ‘memories’ of events somehow imprinted on buildings or the landscape. When you have a mo, watch it below…
The latest piece of British TV to owe a debt to The Stone Tape was Saturday’s episode of Doctor Who – Hide, which not only had a scientist investigating a haunted house with the help of scientific apparatus and a woman with psychic abilities, it was even set in the 70s.
Now, I have to admit I wasn’t sure what to expect of this. On the one hand, it was written by Neil Cross, who also wrote the rather dreadful Rings of Akhaten. On the other, Cross only got the job of writing Rings, because he’d apparently impressed Steven Moffat and co with the quality of this script. Cross also has ghost-story form, having written the recent BBC2 adaptation of MR James’s Whistle and I’ll Come To You.
So which Cross were we going to get, I was wondering: super-scary ghost-writing Cross or sucky singing child Cross?
Thankfully, it turned out to be the former. Here’s a trailer.
It’s “What did you watch this weekfortnight?”, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I’ve watched this weekfortnight 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:
The Americans (FX/ITV)
Arrow (The CW/Sky 1)
Being Human (US) (SyFy)
The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
Doctor Who (BBC1/BBC America)
Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
Endeavour (ITV1)
Go On (NBC)
Hannibal (NBC/Sky Living)
Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1)
Plebs (ITV2)
Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic).
These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can’t be sure which. Continuum returns in Canada tonight, so I’d suggest tuning in for that, too.
Still in the viewing queue: Friday night’s Las Vegas and last night’s Doctor Who (review tomorrow when I’ve seen it), as well as Netflix’s new release, Hemlock Grove. But I’ve tried a few new shows in the past couple of weeks:
Arne Dahl (BBC4)
Basically – as Stu_N put it – The Professionals with pilchards. Dreadful.
Rogue (DirecTV)
Thandie Newton is a very implausible, undercover cop whose son gets killed and she blames herself. Despite the decent cast, which includes Martin Csokas from Falcón and Ian Hart, an incredibly forgettable, derivative show.
I also watched the Easter Jonathan Creek special, which despite a whole lot of merits (the cast, the changes in format), was absolute ridiculous and bore no resemblance to reality. Plus how do you cast both Rik Mayall and Nigel Planer in a show and not have them meet?
Now, some thoughts on some of the regulars and some of the shows I’m still trying:
The Americans (FX/ITV): The usual problem that when show runner Joe Weisberg isn’t involved in the scripting, the episode just isn’t as authentic-feeling as the other episodes. The developments between the two Russians feel a little padded out, and I’m not sure they would have been quite so merciful this week, given their need to preserve their identities.
Bates Motel (A&E/Universal): Quite tedious now, and in no sense really related to Psycho, beyond names and presumably the eventual conclusion. Despite those blips of interest in the first three episodes, the show’s settled on a very dull formula now, with only Vera Farmiga’s character offering any real reason to watch.
Being Human (US) (SyFy): Another show that finished, leaving a lot of hanging storyline threads. The revelations haven’t been as impressive or as interesting as you might have hoped, and as I said last night, it does feel like the whole of this season could have been covered in just an episode or two.
Cougar Town (TBS/Sky Living): A somewhat uninteresting way to end the season, but also slightly deeper than normal. The writers didn’t take the show anywhere especially new, but having Tippi Hedren show up for the finale was worth watching it for anyway.
Endeavour (ITV1): Inspector Morse, back in its natural period – the 1950s. Nowhere near as impressive as its pilot episode, boiling down to an ability to solve crossword puzzles rather than make deductions, but Anton Lessing was perfect as the new superintendent.
Plebs (ITV2): More ahistorical than normal, with the arrival of bananas and a Thracian with a Russian accent (Anna Skellern from Big Finish’s Sapphire and Steel range), but still good fun, surprisingly historical in other ways and Bryan Murphy (George from George and Mildred) showed up as an old soldier.
Shameless (US) (Showtime/More4): A good and surprisingly optimistic finale that felt almost like a series finale. Where does the show go next?
Southland (TNT/Channel 4): Two episodes to finish off the season and perhaps the series. The first was a very hard and traumatic episode that unfortunately crossed the Southland line – despite being based on a real-life incident, didn’t feel like a Southland episode because it stopped being able the everyday life of cops. Thankfully, the final episode was more of a return to normal. It finished off a number of plot threads and left several hanging, in a way both satisfying a season-finale and a series-finale. And, of course, for one character, a shocking but entirely plausible end (?). If it is the series finale, that would be a shame for probably the best and most realistic cop show since The Wire.
Spartacus (Starz/Sky 1): And so it ends. Probably the most surprising bit of quality TV, given its graphic novel violence, sex and swearing (and Starz network home), Spartacus has continued to make Roman history interesting and Machiavellian fun. The finale was just about as good as it ever could be, given Spartacus has to disappear or die, the revolution has to fail, and Caesar and Crassus have to go on to rule Rome. Perhaps a little too anti-Roman, but it was still as intriguing as ever.
Vegas (CBS/Sky Atlantic): Michael Chiklis’s direction somehow made the usual sets look cheap and like a backlot, but the show is clearly struggling now to expand its format. I’m hoping that Carrie-Anne Moss gets a promotion now, since she’s had so precious little to do. Nevertheless, the show does look like it’s limping towards cancellation.
And in movies:
Trance
Danny Boyle directing, Joe Ahearne writing, Rosario Dawson, James McAvoy and Vince Cassel starring in a semi-Inception-like story about an art dealer who steals a painting with the help of a gang, but when he gets hit on the head, forgets where he hid the painting. So Cassel takes McAvoy to see hypnotherapist Dawson in an effort to recover its location, and she takes McAvoy (and the audience) through several levels of reality. While it does interesting things in terms of flipping notions of who is the protagonist and who is the antagonist in the narrative, has some shocking full-frontal nudity and violence, and says some interesting things about gender in thriller narrative, if you pay attention, you’ll have guessed most of the story’s secrets and revelations ages before the end.
“What did you watch this weekfortnight?” 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?
