TV reviews

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

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 2

Third-episode verdict: The Doctor Blake Mysteries (ABC1/ITV)

18 February 2013 Rob Buckley 15 Comments

In Australia: Fridays, 8.30pm, ABC1

In the UK: Will air on ITV. No air date yet

In the rest of the world: Not yet acquired

Time to pass a judgemental eye over the first three episodes of ABC1’s Doctor Blake Mysteries, in which former Neighbours stalwart Craig McClachlan proves that’s he’s actually now a pretty good actor, while healing the sick and solving murders in a small town in Victoria, Australia, c1959. 

The first episode was pretty good, giving us all the elements of the show, including an intriguing and strong lead character, a decent supporting cast, a proper mystery that needed to be solved and some fine period details. Dr Blake was perhaps implausibly liberal, always on the right side of impending historic arguments, and the show really hammered that point home, but that was a minor niggle really.

Episode two was even an improvement, building up all the characters, giving us police beatings in a Life On Mars “things were different back then” style. The background to Blake and his days in military intelligence and Singapore was well handled (a call-out to McClachlan’s Heroes II?), and the final scenes with the Anzacs were actually very moving. We also got a little on the history of Luminol, which was a clever CSI touch that CSI has never brought up.

Which takes up nicely to episode three, which while otherwise excellent, was slightly undermined by a snigger-worthy murder weapon – an Asian pit viper – that our doctor was able to handle perhaps a little too easily and with perhaps a little too silly a directorial choice to indicate he was thinking about snakes.

Nevertheless, we once again had some good period details, ranging from the use of Australian pounds and the ubiquity of the vacuum salesman (the vacuum being an expensive household purchase) to attitudes towards homosexuality at the time. Again, Blake turns out to be on the right liberal side of the argument, but at least the show comes up with an explanation this time. We also again had a moving ending to the piece, this time between Blake and his housekeeper, which is becoming a touching love story of sorts.

As a piece, the show is a mix of the conventional murder mystery and historical commentary. As a murder mystery, it’s surprisingly good, being complex without being complicated, the eventual solution potentially guessable and Blake coming to his own conclusions without mysterious hunches at the last moment. It certainly beats the BBC’s Father Brown. 

Not being Australian, I can’t really say just how attentive to period detail the show is, and unlike Mad Men, say, it certainly has that knowing hindsight that enables everyone to come out likable and with modern day-compatible prejudices. But it still feels like the 1950s, from the cars and people’s attitudes to the stories themselves.

All in all, if you do like a historic murder mystery, then this is up there with the top of the current worldwide crop, including The Murdoch Mysteries, Whitechapel and Endeavour. One to seek out.

What did you watch this week? Including Community, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Monday Mornings, Seed and Southland

15 February 2013 Rob Buckley 5 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:

  • The Americans (FX/ITV).
  • Archer (FX, 5USA)
  • Arrow (The CW/Sky 1)
  • Banshee (Cinemax/Sky Atlantic)
  • Being Human (US) (SyFy)
  • The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
  • Cougar Town (TBS/Sky Living)
  • Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
  • Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1)
  • Mr Selfridge (ITV/PBS)
  • Shameless (US) (Showtime/More4)
  • Southland (TNT/Channel 4)
  • Spartacus (Starz/Sky 1)
  • Spiral/Engrenages (BBC4/Netflix)
  • Suits (USA/Dave)
  • Top Gear (BBC2/BBC America)
  • 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. If I got the channels wrong, let me know and I’ll fix them

Added to that list as of Wednesday is The Americans (FX/ITV). Southland (TNT/Channel 4) is back so that’s going straight on the list again. We tried to watch the first episode of the new series of Community (NBC/Sony Entertainment Television), which would normally have been a cert to go on the list, too, but it was just so bad, the show has lost its privileges. Given that last night’s episode had the lowest ratings ever, I’m thinking I might be abandoning the show altogether soon. Netflix’s House of Cards is also going on the list.

Still in the queue: I’m whittling down the House of Cards queue; The Spa started on Sky last night but I didn’t have a chance to watch both episodes (a common theme); Zero Hour started on ABC and is apparently ludicrous, but I’ve yet to watch it. I’ve also got to watch The Blue Rose, a New Zealand show from Rachel Lang and James Griffin (the team that brought us Outrageous Fortune and The Almighty Johnsons), and the third of The Doctor Blake Mysteries was on in Australia a few hours ago – hopefully, I’ll have a third-episode verdict for you by Monday.

Now, some thoughts on the regulars.

  • Arrow (The CW/Sky 1): Nice to see Felicity the IT girl promoted to regular and it was a good move to make essentially the whole episode a flashback. Manu Bennett needs to be promoted to regular as well, although it seems a shame to make the Chinese guy less of a mentor as a result. But a cracking ep and a nice comics callout with Billy Wintergreen.
  • Banshee (Cinemax/Sky Atlantic): Less ludicrous, more of a thriller this week. Could I just mention how much I like the music by Methodical Doubt, by the way?
  • Batman: The Brave and the Bold (Channel 5): A Batman cartoon for kids, but I thought I’d watch it anyway. Quite a good ep, based on the Book of Job. A nice touch to have long-time Batman voice Kevin Conroy as Phantom Stranger and to have Adam West and Julie Newmar (Batman and Catwoman in the 60s show) playing Bruce Wayne’s parents.
  • The Doctor Blake Mysteries (ABC1/ITV): Even better than the first episode, building up all the characters, giving us police beatings in a Life On Mars “things were different back then” style. The background to Blake and his days in military intelligence and Singapore was well handled (a call-out to McClachlan’s Heroes II?), and the final scenes with the Anzacs were actually very moving. Looking forward to the third episode.
  • Elementary (CBS/Sky Living): Another duff episode that tried to give some character and decent attributes to black hanger-on detective, but did so without any real crime-solving by Holmes. Entirely obvious who the baddie was, too.
  • House of Cards (Netflix): I’m up to episode four now. It’s all beautifully made but there’s a hell of a lot of plot filler suddenly arriving out of nowhere, and Robin Wright’s charity is still ridiculous.
  • Modern Family (ABC/Sky 1): Unlike Community, this really made us laugh. Why are its ratings dropping?
  • Monday Mornings (TNT/Fox): No better than the first terrible episode, to be honest. Good to see one of the surgeons standing up for herself against Doc Oc, but it was another piece of unsurprising predictability that made me feel sick with its mawkishness. It also has the worst dialogue on TV since… the last David E Kelley drama.
  • Mr Selfridge (ITV/PBS): A mix of the sublime and the ridiculous. A Selfridge-lite episode, with Piven in bed for most of the story, we got the world’s most ridiculous ‘hair bra’ and a laughable dream sequence to roll our eyes at. But we also had a lovely reveal at the end when the Suffragettes come to the store. Next episode: John Sessions as Arthur Conan Doyle – this should be fun.
  • Seed (City TV): Funnier, nicer and cleverer than the first episode with fewer stereotypes. I’ll keep my eyes on this one since it might actually get good.
  • Shameless (US) (Showtime/More4): Another soul-destroying look into being poor in the US, mixed with marvellously politically incorrect comedy. This week, we got the discovery that sometimes, even in the worst jobs with the worst bosses, it’s better not to rock the boat and keep the guy who forces you to give him a BJ. Jody’s revelation was… fascinating, too. And good to see Harry Hamlin finding work again, too.
  • Southland (TNT/Channel 4): A more personal season than the last one, by the looks of it, which is probably a good thing since Southland is at its best when it’s dealing with smaller issue, rather than trying to deal with shootouts and arcs. Sherman’s developing in big ways, too.
  • Spartacus (Starz/Sky 1): Another slightly bland episode, more geared up to showing the squabbles among the slaves than anything else. Interesting that they’ve finally got round to giving us a gay soft porn sex scene.
  • Suits (USA/Dave): A little bit less plot than normal, with more character moments instead, so not quite the razor-sharp writing we’ve come to expect. But the Louis characterisation was well handled, making him less of a twat, and it’s good to have a US show that has a character who isn’t ‘the best of the best’, can’t have everything they want and has to admit that that to him or herself.

“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: Only When I Laugh (1979-1982)

14 February 2013 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Only When I Laugh

Being severely ill usually isn’t a laughing matter so you’ve got to hand it to Eric Chappell, creator of Rising Damp, for somehow managing to get 29 episodes of laughter out of a bunch of patients on an NHS ward. Admittedly it helped that the working class Roy Figgis (James Bolam from The Likely Lads and New Tricks), the middle class Norman Binns (Christopher Strauli from Raffles) and the upper class Archie Glover (Peter Bowles from To The Manor Born) are hypochondriacs, and spent more of their time misbehaving and fighting a cold class war than they did actually being ill, but it’s still a pretty impressive feat.

Running for four series on ITV, Only When I Laugh sees Figgis check into the same ward as Archie and Norman, where they almost instantly start a love-hate bickering relationship with one another, initially over who gets the bed by the window but usually about more or less anything, ranging from attractive nurses to jealous Greeks. The only thing uniting them over the show’s four series? Their mutual nemeses, the ward doctor (Richard Wilson of One Foot In The Grave) and the somewhat stereotypical Gupte the orderly (Derrick Branche from just about any show that needed an Indian-, Asian- or Middle Eastern-looking character).

While occasionally depressing, particularly thanks to the baleful theme tune (‘I’m H.A.P.P.Y.’), the show managed to find laughs in the three’s hypochondria and just about every aspect of hospital life, including hospital radio, and life itself. The final episode sees the three patients dismissed from hospital, and forced to discover whether not only are they friends but can they be friends when they no longer have their situation in common.

Here are both the first episode and the last episode for you to enjoy, but it’s pretty much all on YouTube. If you like it, don’t forget to buy it!

French TV

Review: Engrenages (Spiral) 4×1-4×2 (France: Canal+; UK: BBC Four)

12 February 2013 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

In France: Last autumn, Canal+
In the UK: Saturday 9 February, 9pm, BBC Four

Screw The Shield, The Killing and all the others. In the last decade, there have been, as all right-thinking people know, precisely two cop shows in the world that have been truly excellent and have mattered in any real sense. The first, of course, is The Wire. The second, far lesser known show, is France’s Engrenages aka Spiral. The two are similar, comparable even, in that they both try to show their own country’s native justice system, warts and all, while shining a spotlight into the recesses of society, all with as little narrative artifice as is possible in a watchable TV show.

Thankfully, even though The Wire has ceased to be, Canal+ in France – together with some lovely co-funding money from BBC4 – have kept Engrenages going, and judging by the first two episodes of the new season, one could even say “from strength to strength” because for my money, this is at least as good as the show’s finest season opener in terms of narrative and perception, yet with a confidence that only comes with age… and the knowledge that because you are the best, you can do what you like at the pace that you like it.

When last we left our heroes and heroines – perhaps one should say ‘heroes’ and ‘heroines’, because no one in Engrenages is truly good, although there’s a fair few evil doers along the way – things were going semi-pear shaped for everyone. Over-committed police captain Laure (Caroline Proust) was off murdering serial killers, amoral lawyer Josephine Karlsson (Audrey Fleurot) was signing a deal with the devil so she could save her business partner and secret love, Pierre (the UK’s favourite French actor, Grégory Fitoussi, currently in ITV’s Mr Selfridge), and ambiguous yet moral Judge Roban (Philippe Duclos) was monologuing his way into enforced retirement, thanks to Sarkozy’s attempts to reform the French legal system.

In series four, as is tradition, we return not long after those events and yet everything’s changed in quite surprising ways. While it’s not all 100% tickedy boo, some things appear to be changing for the better for once. Karlsson may have to deal with some dodgy Russian mob types, but Pierre’s got her back for a change and they’re flirting at each other like crazy; Laure may be under investigation but she’s finally getting her love life sorted and her new boss seems quite nice. Okay, so Judge Roban is off contemplating his navel somewhere and Gilou (Thierry Godard) is still self-destructing like crazy, but plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, as they say.

And then up pop some leftie students, ready to party like it’s 1968, ready to save hapless souls from France’s oppressive immigration system and capitalism in general. Welcome back, Engrenages. How we missed you. Here’s a trailer (with the usual suspiciously mistranslated English subtitles), plus the first few minutes in French:

Veuillez installer Flash Player pour lire la vidéo

Continue reading “Review: Engrenages (Spiral) 4×1-4×2 (France: Canal+; UK: BBC Four)”

What did you watch this week? Including Arrow, 30 Rock, Banshee, Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe and Elementary

8 February 2013 Rob Buckley 18 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: Archer, Arrow, Banshee, Being Human (US), The Daily Show, Cougar Town, Elementary, Go On, Modern Family, Mr Selfridge, Shameless, Spartacus, Suits, Top Gear and Vegas. These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can’t be sure which.

Don’t forget, UK readers – season 4 of Spiral aka Engrenages will start tomorrow on BBC4 at 9pm. Two episodes, of course. Anyone want episode-by-episode reviews?

I tried to watch Derek, Ricky Gervais’s new ‘comedy’, but after five minutes of offensive, unwatchable, poorly acted cobblers, we switched off. New Yes Prime Minister got given its notice after two episodes, because despite attempts to update it for modern politics, it still feels like an 80s show with 80s characters, yet at the same time isn’t faithful enough to them to work.

Still in the viewing queue: this week’s episode of The Doctor Blake Mysteries as well as most of House of Cards and The Carrie Diaries, which I suspect might never get watched. But that’s about it. Except for Community, which finally returned last night. Normally I’d just recommend it straight off, but without Dan Harmon as show runner, I’m going to watch the ep then decide, since the signs have not been good.

Now, some thoughts on the regulars.

  • 30 Rock: A pretty poor finale, redeemed by about 15 minutes of quality material. But then, that’s pretty much what the first episode was like, so that’s probably appropriate, and it did have some fun things to say about women, work and childcare at the same time. Goodbye Liz Lemon – you were great while you were here.
  • The Americans: A really good second episode that had all the good qualities of the first, but with added spy evilness on the part of the KGB/our heroes, as well as guest impersonations of Casper Weinberger and British defence secretary John Nott. The end part really makes you sympathise with the Soviets. Plus we finally have some actual Russians, speaking Russians, which contrasts well with ‘the Americans’ themselves.  
  • Arrow: On the plus side of Arrow, something I haven’t mentioned is that the producers have absolutely no reverence for the comics: they’ll use what they want and change what doesn’t fit. Case in point: the arrival of (spoiler)Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke, this week. Now they’ve cast Spartacus‘s Manu Bennett in the role, simply because he’s so cool, and they’ve simply made his character Australian and a member of the Australian SIS as a result. Marvellous.
  • Banshee: Unlike Arrow, Banshee wants everyone to be American. So even though they’ve got a New Zealander in the lead role (he was one of the Wests in Outrageous Fortune) and a Dane as the villain, they’re still making them pretend to be Americans. Last week’s episode was a characteristic mix of the ludicrous and the great, so I encourage you all to give it a try.
  • Being Human (US): They’re starting to hint at an Aidan and Sally relationship, as per the original, I notice, which is intriguing. I’m also curious about what’s happened to Josh’s family, given he has no reason not to see them any more.
  • Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe: Basically, just like all his other Wipes but with less to say, a weird attempt at a collaborative movie review feature and a more inspired “reading out of comments from the Internet”. Not his best, but still watchable.
  • Cougar Town: Ooh! The writers remembered that everyone is supposed to have a job.
  • Elementary: An odd choice for the post-Superbowl episode, with very little to commend it, but last night’s featuring not just John Hannah in full Scottish mode but also an ex member of The Unit was a big improvement. It was also one of the first episodes that felt like a proper Holmes story, too, with a few references here and there to the originals. It also raised the intriguing suggestion that the reason that Holmes doesn’t feel like Holmes is because he needs drugs and now he’s sober, he’s not the man he used to be as a result. Could be a good narrative direction they’re going to go in there.
  • Spartacus: Julius Caesar has arrived! Otherwise, a largely unremarkable episode.
  • Suits: Two fabulous episodes made even more fabulous by Wendell Pierce (Bunk from The Wire) and the return of (spoiler alert)Daniel Hardman. Gives House of Cards a run for its money in terms of manipulations.
  • Vegas: A bit more for Carrie Anne Moss to do this week, but her character is so lifeless, that’s still not much. But a good episode and I wasn’t expecting many of the twists the show turned up this week, either.

“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?