TV reviews

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

What did you watch this month? Including The Killing 3, Arrow, The Wedding Band and The Hunger Games

21 December 2012 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

It’s “What did you watch this month?”, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I watched in the past month that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.

As you can probably tell from the temporary retitling of this feature, it’s been a busy old time for me of late, which is why I haven’t been updating you on shows and why I haven’t been watching as many. Oh, and the Sky+ box as been doing lots of “PART-REC” and “RECORDING FAILED” and even deleting things I have recorded, including Young Doctor’s Notebook. That’s helpful, huh?

But since a load of shows have had their finales, now seems a good time to give my thoughts on those, at least.

First, the usual recommendations: 30 Rock, Arrow, Don’t Trust The B—– in Apartment 23, Go On, Last Resort, Modern Family and Peep Show. I’m adding Elementary and The Wedding Band to the list as well – more on that in a moment.

And here’s a few thoughts.

  • Arrow: Slowly been declining in strength and becoming more and more comic book in its implausibility. Geoff Johns’ introduction of Huntress to the show was just dreadful, too, with bad dialogue, bad acting and a script that was actually pretty detrimental to one of DC’s best-loved female superheroines. Still, Kelly Hu got to come back for a bit at least. And then we have John Barrowman as a ‘heavy’. HA HA HA! Still, the last episode was a bit of an up-tick in quality again, so all is not lost yet.
  • Dexter – So, hang on, Dexter literally thought he had a ‘dark passenger’? It wasn’t just a metaphor? Well, that’s just bobbins. Anyway, a distinctly uninspiring finale that at least wasn’t as ridiculous as last season’s and with a big surprise (or two) to boot. And at least the first half of the season was good because of Ray Stevenson and it was good to see Dokes back, even in flashback.
  • Don’t Trust The B—-: A variable three episodes with a real clunker and a couple of very funny ones. Glad to see them remembering that Chloe is supposed to be an evil b—–, too, not just kooky and a bit of a party girl. And a head nod to The Great Gatsby – you don’t get many of those these days. As always, too, full kudos to James Van Der Beek, who is really relishing playing… himself. And Dean Cain, too.
  • Elementary: So this is more of a guilty pleasure than because it’s a great show, but I do actually look forward to it now each week. It’s still working out what exactly a Sherlock Holmes mystery should be and no matter how hard they try, Joan Watson is still incredibly dull, but it’s good fun.
  • Go On: Unlike Community, the show still hasn’t worked out how to make its individual characters gel as a group, but it’s doing some nice work with at least some of the characters by themselves.
  • Homeland: So the season finally ended with two decent episodes in a row. While it was still a little daft, the finale had the right combination of thrills, twists and developments, none of which you probably saw/will see coming. Just about redeemed itself after a season of vastly variable quality.
  • The Killing 3: So the iPlayer deleted last weeks’ episodes before I had a chance to watch them (not letting me download them didn’t help). Again, this is just one of the reasons why I’ve had a hard time watching the three seasons of The Killing. Anyway, I watched the last two and was surprised by almost nothing. Seriously, I don’t get why people love this show so much. Okay, it’s well acted, but apart from its vibe and Sarah Lund, it’s daft, stupider than an episode of season two of Homeland and is just 1001 crime drama cliches. Or at least this season has been. It would have been more of a surprise if Sarah Lund had been able to ride off into the sunset happily. In particular, the criminal’s plan four episodes ago kind of relied on the police not being able to hit him even once with 30 rounds of ammunition… as he slowly sails under a bridge they’re standing on. Just silly. Bring back The Bridge.
  • Last Resort: Talking of daft and silly, that’s Last Resort. While having a few thrilling moments each episode, it’s also had some ridiculous matte work to help some of our heroes go to ‘the Philippines’ and we have had a daft series of abduction cycles for one character that’s worse than the Perils of Penelope Pitstop. Plus the stuff with the COB has been dreadful. Shame really, but at least it looks like they’re heading towards a decent ending.
  • The Mindy Project: Interesting to see some sign of work competency from Mindy, but the Zoolander-ish attack on midwifery was just bizarre. The Christmas episode was a bit dull, but had a good final 10 minutes.
  • Peep Show: While never quite hitting the delightful depravities of previous series and while feeling a little bit like we’ve been here before, it’s still a guaranteed source of laughter each week.
  • Vegas: I’m wondering what they promised Carrie Anne Moss when they asked her to star in this, because if it was ‘a lot of screen time and a decent role’, they were lying. Ditto Jason Mara. Over the last couple of episodes, we’ve had a very clunky ‘girl power’ episode and quite a dull Christmas episode. Such a shame after the initial promise of the pilot, but it’s still a relatively absorbing weekly watch.
  • The Wedding Band: While still a bit sexist and a bit ‘male gaze’, The Wedding Band is still proving to be an interesting subversion of the ‘bro comedy’ that plays with the sexist conventions and messes around with them. It’s not outstanding, but it’s enjoyable.

And in movies:

  • The Hunger Games: Despite being loved by the same demographic as Twilight, this is a very different, far more satisfying beast – a future dystopia heavily based on ancient Rome that sees kids take the place of gladiators in a high-tech country arena where they have to fight to the death. The always excellent Jennifer Lawrence is about 1,000,000 times better – and a better role model – than Kristen Stewart’s Bella, too. Give it a watch.

“What did you watch this month?” 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?

US TV

Preview: Deception (NBC) 1×1

21 December 2012 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Deception on NBC

In the US: Mondays, 10/9c, NBC. Starts January 7 2013

With NBC doing so well in the ratings right now, it’s tempting to forget that it essentially churns out derivative rubbish. It even rips itself off with Go On, which is an imitation – albeit a not bad one – of Community.

As if to prove a point, here comes Deception, a show that practically screams, “We wish we’d thought of that, ABC!” Combining two of ABC’s stand-out shows of last year – Scandal and Revenge – Deception is a relentlessly monotonous show of ridiculous proportions. Marrying Revenge‘s “crime, East Coast rich people and the poor outsider woman” soap opera with Scandal‘s mystery/thriller and black female lead (when only one network show has a black female lead, you know something’s wrong with the entire industry), Deception sees an FBI officer go undercover to solve the mystery of her former rich girl best friend’s apparent drug overdose. Except it’s really murder – as if you couldn’t see that coming.

Okay, might be good, you might think, except being NBC, it’s the blandest, dullest possible combination of those two shows, offering neither excitement nor vicarious thrills to get you through the fact that despite a decent cast that includes Victor Garber and Tate Donovan, there is absolutely nothing remarkable about the plot, the dialogue, the characters or their relationships. Even the tag line “To find the truth, she’ll become a lie” is boring.

Here’s a trailer. Stay awake if you can.

Continue reading “Preview: Deception (NBC) 1×1”

US TV

Preview: 1600 Penn 1×1 (NBC)

18 December 2012 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

1600 Penn

In the US: Thursdays, 9.30/8.30c, NBC. Starts January 10

In US TV, there’s the thing called ‘development’. It’s when someone comes to a TV network with an idea for a show, except it doesn’t quite work. So the idea goes into development so that the problems can be solved, ideally before it goes into production.

Of course, even then, it’s not too late for the show to change. Take The West Wing. Originally, the president wasn’t going to show up at all – he would only ever be talked about, but would never appear. But come the pilot episode, the President needed to appear, the producers cast Martin Sheen and the rest is history.

But sometimes, despite all these safety valves, one big, looming, giant black hole of a problem can’t be removed, usually as a result of politics, sometimes because it’s one of the executive producers or it’s even the person who came up with the idea for the TV show in the first place.

To preserve some air of mystery and suspense, I’ll let you guess what the problem is with 1600 Penn – a sort of West Wing meets Modern Family set in the White House – that couldn’t be removed before it aired. I’ll give you a clue: have a look at the cast photo.

Here’s a trailer if you need any more clues:

Continue reading “Preview: 1600 Penn 1×1 (NBC)”

What did you watch last week? Including The Amazing Spider-Man, Arrow, The Killing 3 and Homeland

3 December 2012 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

It’s “What did you watch last week?”, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I watched in the past 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, Arrow, Don’t Trust The B—– in Apartment 23, Falcón, Go On, Grand Hotel, Last Resort, and Modern Family.

Still in the pile to watch from the weekend: Dexter, Wedding Band and The Killing. But here’s a few thoughts on what I have been watching.

  • Arrow: I’m not sure what’s more implausible: that John Barrowman could have a grown-up son or that Tahmoh Penikett could be beaten in a fight so easily. Still, this was the first effort by DC’s very own Geoff Johns, and noticeably the first clunker of the season, despite the arrival of Helena Bertinelli – Huntress, herself. FIlled with dreadfully bad dialogue and poor characterisation, it felt like a bad Geoff Johns comic rather than a TV script. Stick to what you know, Geoff. And just to reiterate, Tahmoh Penikett!

  • Elementary: A bit more procedural than the previous week’s episode, but funnier, which the show could certainly do with. Definitely starting to feel like Sherlock Holmes, too. The one caveat: kind of demeaning to suggest that (spoiler alert)a woman in need of seed funding would become a prostitute. There’s a joke in there somewhere, possibly deliberate by the writers.
  • Falcón: Just noticed it’s got that nice Santiago Cabrera from Heroes in it. It’s also getting harder not to notice that no one – apart from Cabrera – knows how to pronounce Spanish words, and even he pronounces them in a Latin American way, rather than a Castilian way. We even had Falcón himself pronouncing General Pinochet’s name in a French style to rhyme with ‘croquet’ rather than ‘jet’, which is a little silly. Those niggles aside, it’s a compelling series, albeit quite a gruesome one, although frankly Falcón is a little self-obsessed and needs to man up. Sad to see Maurice Roëves get killed off within about two minutes, mind.
  • Go On: Oh yes. There’s an old blind guy in it. They seemed to have forgotten him for a while, but now he’s back for an episode with a reasonable amount of pathos. It also had Hayes MacArthur back and Laura Benanti had something to do for a change, which was nice.
  • Homeland: 15 minutes of probably the stupidest TV since season four of 24, followed by a decent half hour and ending. Why is it fundamentally so hard for Homeland to be consistent this season?
  • The Killing 3: So I’ll confess that I gave up after episode eight of the original – not because I didn’t like it but because two hours a week was a bit of a push for me. I didn’t bother with series 2 either. But I thought I’d give it a try for series 3. And… it’s okay. The acting’s good, the production values are good. But the plot, with the cunning kidnapper, feels very The Bridge (lite) – so much so that I started watching that again immediately afterwards – and the familial problems of Sarah Lund felt very implausible and cliched: it’s the standard trope that any woman who works hard in a police show will always lose her partner and end up with estranged kids as punishment for her transgressive ways. And of course she has to bump into her son at the station and get distracted. And of course the kidnapper has to call while she’s talking to her son and she can’t just say “It’s the kidnapper! I must take this! Lives depend on it!” But I am enjoying it and I’m going to try my best to keep up with it. BTW, is Danish politics really so low budget and amateurish that it seems more like Torquay council elections? And I’m assuming the name of the ship is a red herring, too (possible spoiler): that it’s not the mother who had her daughter abducted as punishment for the husband’s failings, as with Euripides’ Medea?
  • Last Resort: Apart from my complaint about the producers seemingly not knowing there’s a difference between the Caribbean and Hawaii, a decent enough episode that highlighted the problems of rape in the US military. Daisy Betts failed to rise to the acting challenge, however. A decent enough fight scene on the action side, but the show’s just kind of chugging along at the moment.
  • The Mindy Project: Not the funniest thing ever, but the “Iron Man novelisation” moment made me laugh out loud.
  • Vegas: The procedural was slightly duller this week, although the historical background to it was interesting. The episode did have some nice insights into Dennis Quad’s military background, with his sparring with the USAF investigator working well. Carrie Anne Moss also had a little more to do, now that the separate “Women Only” storyline is up and running, plus we have an extra female character to add to the mix, too. Needs to find some more verve if it’s to survive for a second season, though.

And in movies:

  • The Amazing Spider-man: The best Spider-man movie so far – far more Nolan-esque than the previous outings – with proper acting, some deeper moments than the first three, Emma Stone (redhead going blonde)’s Gwen Stacey being far less of a cipher than Kirsten Dunst (blonde going redhead)’s Mary-Jane, and Rhys Ifans doing a wonderful job as Dr Curt Connors aka The Lizard. Some great stunt scenes and the CGI felt solid, too, like it was actually a man doing the stunts, but the film still couldn’t avoid some cheese towards the end. Could have done with being more fun and shorter, though.

“What did you watch last 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?

UK TV

Review: Overseas Press Club – Exclusive! (1957)

30 November 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Overseas Press Club

Overseas Press Club BoxStarring: Phyllis Calvert, Richard O’Sullivan, Peter Wyngarde, Robert Raglan, Peter Arne et al
Price: £19.99 (Amazon price: £13.99; Network price: £12.24)
Released: October 22nd 2012

So here’s the sales spiel:

A woman comes forward as one of several claimants to the Romanov fortune. Is she really the Grand Duchess Tatiana, daughter of the last Czar of Russia?

A pint-sized parachutist proves too tough for the USAF; he is a ten-year-old Polish orphan, wearing a sergeant’s uniform and found as a stowaway on a British cargo ship.

In post-war Naples, a young priest, Father Maggiore Borrelli, lives and works among the scugnizzi – wild street gangs of abandoned children and teenagers.

April, 1945: a war correspondent arrives in Munich in search of a world scoop. Instead, in Hitler’s home, he finds and reveals one of the war’s strangest exploits…

Just a few of the accounts brought to life in this anthology of thirteen individual dramas based on the adventures of famous foreign correspondents – witnesses to some of the most extraordinary stories of the twentieth century. First screened in 1957 and unseen for over fifty years, Overseas Press Club – Exclusive! features performances by, among many others, Phyllis Calvert, Richard O’Sullivan, Peter Wyngarde, Robert Raglan and Peter Arne.

Sounds desperately exciting, doesn’t it? Certainly, it did to me – tales of journalists doing derring do things. Yey!

Wrong. Unfortunately, that’s not what Overseas Press Club – Exclusive! is about at all.

Continue reading “Review: Overseas Press Club – Exclusive! (1957)”