TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: Do No Harm 1×1 (NBC)

4 February 2013 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Do No Harm

In the US: Thursdays, 9/8c, NBC
In Canada: Thursdays, 10pm ET, CTV
In the UK: Not yet acquired

Seeing as the first episode of NBC’s new show has the lowest ever ratings for a mid-season show, I’m not sure I needed to have bothered with a full review for this boy – it’s not long for this world. But I will and I’m going to take the opportunity to wonder exactly how short-term broadcast networks’ memories are.

See, on the one hand, I’m impressed by their commitment to trying to make an idea work. ABC has just greenlit a pilot based on The Syndicate, a UK show about Lottery winners with secrets and how they’re affected by their win. Thing is, NBC did that not so long ago as Windfall.

Maybe that’s okay, given the show was on another network: one US network is rarely bothered if they make an almost identical show to another’s within a year of it airing – indeed, that’s often the point.

But how about when it’s remaking its own shows, shows that flopped. Do No Harm is a take on the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in which a brilliant neurosurgeon (aren’t they always? Aren’t there ever really rubbish neurosurgeons? Under-achieving neurosurgeons? After all, it’s not exactly rocket science is it?) has multiple personality disorder. Every night at 8.25pm, his other, sociopathic personality takes over and tries to screw up his life and possibly mutilate and rape anyone he comes across. Then the nice surgeon wakes up again at 8.25am, trying to work out what the bad guy did.

Thing is, we’ve already had Awake just a year ago, which had the two different lives, one inside dreams, one outside (or maybe they’re both dreams). That at least had the virtue of being pretty good.

But before that, also on NBC, we had My Own Worst Enemy, in which mild-mannered Christian Slater discovered that he was really an implanted personality and that his real, nasty, more interesting secret agent self came out at night when he was asleep. In that show as well, the nice guy decides enough is enough and decides to take revenge against himself – as does the bad guy – while they try to come to some kind of working arrangement in the interim.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? No, wait. It’s the opposite of that. This was not an idea that needed exploring again.

And the ratings have shown it. Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Do No Harm 1×1 (NBC)”

The Americans
US TV

Review: The Americans 1×1 (FX/FX Canada/ITV)

4 February 2013 Rob Buckley 12 Comments

In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, FX
In the UK: Acquired by ITV

There’s a lot of nostalgia for the 80s at the moment. Okay, so the 60s and 70s have largely been done to death on TV now thanks to Mad Men, That 70s Show et al and the population is ageing, but right now, it’s the 80s that have all the buzz. Maybe it’s those conservatives and their love of Ronald Reagan. Maybe it’s the fashionistas. Certainly, The Carrie Diaries is giving teenagers who weren’t even alive back then a chance to indulge in the decade of crazy fashions, MTV and Ferris Bueller.

What The Carrie Diaries doesn’t give anyone is a good old nostalgic feeling for the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the possible imminent death of everyone on the planet in a nuclear war. It won’t even include the Twin Towers in the Manhattan skyline in case it bums anyone out.

But The Americans, FX’s latest wander down the path of darkness, dares to love the Cold War, when times were simpler and you largely knew where the enemy was: either the Soviet Union or the Soviet embassy down the block – certainly not in a cave somewhere. Well, except for those sleeper agents, of course…

But it goes one step further still and dares to love the Soviets. Because The Americans, set in 1981, follows Keri Russell (last seen on Running Wilde) and Wales’ own Matthew Rhys (a Brothers and Sisters alum, so well versed in the art of faking an American accent) as a pair of Soviet sleeper agents who have spent 15 years in the US pretending to be an everyday couple next door. Trained to blend in with suburbia, they even have two kids, although whether those kids were conceived out of love or a desire to convert the American populace to socialism is a thorny subject.

Yes, after 15 years of living like Americans, our undercover couple – who are still spying, seducing and killing for the Soviets – are starting to wonder if the Yanks are really as bad as all that. Have they been changed? Is their will breaking? Or are they still good comrades? At the very least, they’re hoping that the FBI agent who’s moved in next door doesn’t discover who they are before they’ve decided for themselves…

Here’s a trailer:

Continue reading “Review: The Americans 1×1 (FX/FX Canada/ITV)”

What did you watch this week? Including The Following, Spartacus, Mr Selfridge, Being Human (US) and Arrow

1 February 2013 Rob Buckley 9 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: 30 Rock, Archer, Arrow, Being Human (US), The Daily Show, Don’t Trust The B—– in Apartment 23, Cougar Town, Elementary, Go On, Last Resort, Modern Family, Mr Selfridge, Shameless, Spartacus and Suits. These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can’t be sure which.

Being added to the list this week after rather a long time hovering close to the qualifying bar is Vegas – it’s not an absolute must-recommend but it’s about as good as network TV is probably ever going to be able to do with a period gangster show set in Las Vegas and it did have a cracker of an episode this week that managed to mix comedy with the nasty to great effect.

I’m also sticking Banshee on, even if it’s going to be a bit too ultraviolent for a lot of people and doesn’t exactly aim for verisimilitude a lot of the time. Spartacus is back and so is Top Gear: strange how the three presenters are great when they’re together, merely bearable when there’s two of them, and unbearable when it’s just one of them.

Some new shows started this week, none of which I had a chance to watch: The Americans, which has started on FX and has been acquired by ITV, which looks good but at two hours, was just a little bit too much for me to have caught in time; last night’s Do No Harm, which is a modern Jeckyll and Hyde story on NBC; BBC2’s Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe and Channel 4’s Derek with Ricky Gervais. I’ll review them all (or the first two at least) when I’ve had a chance to watch them, probably on Tuesday. Oh yes, and Netflix has the whole of the new House of Cards for us to watch, too.

Also in the viewing queue: this week’s episodes of Suits, 30 Rock and Yes Prime Minister. But that’s it.

Now, some thoughts on the regulars.

  • Archer: Timothy Olyphant from Justified is gay for Archer. As fun as always, with a great ending that used silence to maximum effect.
  • Arrow: I appreciate that the producers would probably rather be making ‘Batman: The Early Years’, but did they have to take an existing Green Arrow villain (Count Vertigo) and basically turn him into the Joker, even getting the actor to do an impression of Heath Ledger? Good ep though. The flashbacks could do with advancing the story a bit faster, now, and when are they going to make the IT/general purpose science girl a regular?
  • Being Human (US): Curious how they’re shifting the show’s power dynamics to make it more female-centric. Where once it was all about Aidan and Josh with Sally a bit of an after-thought (a bit like the original then), it’s now all about Aidan, Nora and Sally instead. Everything’s in flux though, so let’s see if they can stabilise with the new dynamic.
  • Bob Servant Independent: Tried watching it, but despite Brian Cox’s best efforts it’s the usual “small man in a small town trying to be big” stick that huge chunks of bad British comedy are based on. So I gave up.
  • The Carrie Diaries: Got about 10 minutes into episode two before we completely lost the ability to concentrate. We’ll try again but I suspect this is a definite dud.
  • The Following: Well, what an amazing turnround. After a deeply nasty first ep that was empty and full of misogyny, it’s like the producers have sat down, asked “What’s wrong with this show?” and done as much as they could to fix it. So they’ve amped up the characterisation, dropped a lot of the sadism, dropped the rubbish female character and added a couple of good and interesting female characters, added in some Scream meta-ness, and focused a lot more on character relationships. Don’t watch episode one, if I were you, but start watching from episode two instead. Assuming you fancy watching a show about Edgar Allen Poe-inspired serial killers, that is.
  • Go On: A good Lauren episode and a good expansion of the set up with some more incidental characters. But it really needs to get funnier if it’s too avoid cancellation, as well as drop a few of the more rubbish characters that are hogging up the screen time.
  • Mr Selfridge: The first downright poor episode of the show, more soap opera than drama, and with some terrible acting in some quarters. But still enjoyable and had a few interesting historical notes about ‘the rational dressing’ movement.
  • Spartacus: Usually, it takes the show two or three episodes before it settles down and stops being all about the swearing, sex and violence, and gets on with the plot. This season, they’ve leapt straight in with plot and characterisation. Yes, it’s still a blood-bath and there was an orgy or two – it is still Spartacus – but some clever plotting and writing and actually not much by way of ornate swearing for a change. Also featured Ty from The Almighty Johnsons in a bit part, which was odd.
  • Suits: A decent Louis episode but not as clever as in previous weeks.
  • Yes, Prime Minister: Episode two was a marked improvement on episode one, but watching re-runs of the original, it’s clear just how inferior the new version is, both in terms of writing and performance, and it’s actually a little offensive at times. All the same, it does have some insight and good qualities, so if you’ve nothing better to watch, try it.

“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?

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 2

Third-episode verdict: Banshee (Cinemax)

28 January 2013 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

In the US: Fridays, 10/9c, Cinemax

Already time for a third-episode verdict on Banshee? Well, that’s what happens when you have a backlog, isn’t it?

So, to recap, I was quite impressed by the first two episodes, in which a master criminal accidentally ends up the sheriff of a small Pennsylvania town while he’s looking for his former partner and lover and his share of a diamond robbery. Yes, it had a marked tendency towards the ludicrous, the bombastic and the downright sadistic, but it had some decent characters, dialogue a cut above the usual Cinemax migraine-inducers, and interesting things to say about the line between criminality and law enforcement.

The third episode was, in a sense, a make-or-break episode for the main character – is he just pretending to be a sheriff or is he actually a sheriff? Here the choice was to ignore a woman’s rape in order to bring money to the town and avoid antagonising the head criminal, or to bring the accused to justice. Notable for one of the longest, protracted fights you’ll have seen on television, it was clearly put together by a stunt team that knows the difference between a sport like MMA and a genuine martial art and wanted to illustrate the difference in graphic detail.

The show’s still a little ludicrous, a little “heightened reality”, particularly the scenes involving Ivana Miličević and/or her father Ben Cross. But if you like a decent action show that’s also got some thought and character behind it, Banshee is a definite recommendation.

Rob’s rating: 2
Rob’s prediction: Should last at least a season, maybe even two or three.

What did you watch this week? Including Django Unchained, Last Resort, The Wedding Band and Mr Selfridge

25 January 2013 Rob Buckley 6 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: 30 Rock, Archer, Arrow, Being Human (US), The Daily Show, Don’t Trust The B—– in Apartment 23, Cougar Town, Elementary, Go On, Last Resort, Modern Family, Mr Selfridge, Shameless, Suits and The Wedding Band. These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can’t be sure which

More temporal casualties, with Hard, A Young Doctor’s Notebook, Utopia and Spies of Warsaw all being purged from the Sky+ box, thanks in part to Guy’s time-saving recommendations (see? There is a point to this feature). I’ve also still got to watch this week’s Carrie Diaries, Archer, Suits, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Yes Prime Minister, the penultimate episode of 30 Rock, and Bob Servant Independent, which started on Wednesday. But I think I’m getting back down to manageable levels now.

Now, some thoughts on the regulars.

  • Archer: I neglected to mention the return of this last week – foolish me. As always, thoroughly recommended as the funniest thing on TV at the moment.
  • Arrow: Another decent episode. Nothing spectacular or unpredictable in the A-plot, but the flashback B-plot continues to impress.
  • Being Human (US): A slight return to the humour of early episodes as the series continues in its unpredictable new direction. The arrival of Xander Berkeley heralds good things, I suspect, too.
  • Go On: I can watch a show with Piper Perabo in that isn’t the tedious Covert Affairs – woo hoo! Pulling a Southland, the show is also now having swearing but bleeped out and pixellated nudity, which is somewhat surprising. Not the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, though.
  • Last Resort: Both a surprising ending and an unsurprising ending for the show. Some things were a little rushed, some things didn’t make a whole load of sense but virtually all the plot strands got wrapped up, some of them unpredictably. The action scenes were there, but not as tense as in previous weeks, and the drama didn’t quite work in the ways they intended. But generally, a good way to end the show and reassuring that they didn’t try to hold out for a pick-up by another network by leaving everything open-ended. At 13 eps, too, it feels like they mined the idea probably as much as they could have sustained it, anyway.
  • Mr Selfridge: Parallel universe time. A flagship ITV show that has a French character (played by Spiral‘s Grégory Fitoussi no less) who’s becoming practically as important as the lead, he gets to meet other French characters, also played by French actors and they get to speak in French. With subtitles. How very, very weird. So much to love, but the plot is slowing down a little now, with evolution rather than revolution being the name of the game. Some characters are getting less interesting, some more. Still worth watching.
  • Shameless: A thrilling antidote to the typical US drama (cf Arrow), this week focusing on how fathers can suck completely and ruin your life, and giving the moral that if you’re poor, the only way to stop being poor isn’t following the American dream, it’s stealing or scamming. Indeed, Fiona’s storyline this week was all about the poverty trap and how when someone tries to escape their life, they can end up worse off than if they’d stayed where they were
  • The Wedding Band: And so it ends. Oh well. But the penultimate episode did feature not only James Marsters using his Spike from Buffy accent to play an aging English rock star but an actual English actor playing an English character who instantly identifies him as coming from Merseyside. When the band question how he knows, Marsters replies: “Any Englishman can instantly spot from another Englishman’s accent where he’s from to within 10 miles.” I’m assuming they were taking the piss out of Marsters there, either with or without his cooperation. The show ended with a minor emotional cliffhanger that will now never be resolved, unfortunately. Shame, it was a pretty good show that could have developed over time, but now TBS is going to focus on half-hour comedies and Big Bang Theory re-runs instead.

  • Yes, Prime Minister: Not a patch on the original, either in terms of the writing or the cast, but not without funny moments. Sir Humphrey is the biggest problem, since he comes across less as part of the establishment, more an odious selfish scheme; Bernard is now just an idiot; and Hacker is a blowhard, rather than a politician out of his depth. But I’ll be watching episode two at least – when I have the time.

And, in movies:

Django Unchained
Way too long and not quite up to the standards of previous Tarantino movies in terms of dialogue, but still a really good and very surprising movie. Surprising in terms of how unflinching it is in dealing with the incredibly insane nature of 19th century American slavery, but also in having a humorous German character as a hero (the always incredible Christoph Waltz) and having segments of the movie in German. Samuel L Jackson gives one of his best ever performances and is practically unrecognisable, while Leonardo DiCaprio gives one of his best performances in years as an evil plantation owner. Definitely worth watching, perhaps more at home than in the cinema, though.

“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?