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 Last Resort (ABC)

12 October 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the US: Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC
In the UK: Not yet acquired
In Canada: Thursdays, 8pm, Global

There is a certain doom-laden atmosphere surrounding The Last Resort. It’s not just because it’s a show about a rogue US nuclear submarine captain and his crew, threatening to nuke the US after the navy tries to destroy it for questioning an order to nuke Pakistan. It’s not because people get violently killed every episode. It’s because despite being possibly the best new drama on US TV this fall, judging by its ratings and the fact it’s on ABC, it’s not long for this world.

After a surprising and auspicious start, episode two gave us an almost literally nail-biting episode, as our heroes, holed up on a semi-friendly Caribbean island, faced off against a team of special forces sent in to capture their submarine. Episode three similarly gave us more military-grade tension as the submarine armed with its cloaking device – the ‘Perseus prototype’ (presumably not the more accurately titled Proteus prototype because of copyright issues with Craig Thomas’ similar invisibility device on the HMS Proteus in Sea Leopard) – has to brave blockades, depth charges and active sonar to escape from the US navy again.

And if, somehow, the show could confine itself purely to military operations, it would be an adrenaline-junkie’s fix second to none, thanks to showrunner Shawn Ryan’s steely attention to detail. True, some of the actors and characters are about as interesting as a paddling pool, but Andre Braugher and Robert Patrick more than make up for that by themselves.

But, unfortunately, the show is slightly lumbered with its island setting and supporting characters, including the strangely wooden Dichen Lachman, who for once gets to sound Australian. The islanders are a strange mix: a combination of black and Hawaiian stereotypes, despite the obvious fact that the show is set in the Caribbean, and some nerdy scientists, who are incomprehensible speaking either English or French. Whenever the US cast interact with the islanders, the show degenerates into poorly executed soap crossed with US imperialism.

There’s also the political goings on in DC, which are more bad spy novel than gripping drama, particularly Autumn Reeser’s desperate attempts to come across as a steely engineering businesswoman who talks like a man but who’s all-woman. And there’s also the clumsy attempts to deal with sexism in the US navy, with Robert Patrick’s constant undermining of officer Daisy Betts (another Australian you might remember from Persons Unknown) getting progressively more tedious with every clumsy attempt to smash it into the dialogue.

Nevertheless, it’s a brave show, prepared to go to places a lot of shows aren’t – a US government that pre-emptively nukes Pakistan and is prepared to fire on its military; heroes prepared to negotiate with terrorists and criminals; military personnel who disobey orders and start to let discipline fall apart; and more. When it sticks with military matters, although ultimately it’s just a load of CGI a lot of the time so doesn’t quite match the punch of a show like Strike Back, it’s still the tensest show on network TV. It’s just a shame that its ability to deal convincingly with non-military matters is so second rate – and that it’s probably not long for this world.

Barrometer rating: 2

US TV

Review: Arrow (The CW/Sky1) 1×1

11 October 2012 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Arrow

In the US: Wednesdays, 8/7c, The CW
In the UK: Acquired by Sky1. Starts 8pm, October 22
In Canada: Wednesdays, 9pm, CTV2
in Australia: Nine Network. Air date to be confirmed

Can you ever truly make a superhero realistic? It’s a tricky proposition. Christopher Nolan just about managed it with Batman, although fundamentally, it was still about a guy trained by ninja to dress up like a giant bat to fight crime. Think about that for too long and it all falls apart.

Nevertheless, while Marvel is enchanting the entire world with escapist fun superheroes, that’s the direction DC Comics is taking with Superman in the forthcoming Man of Steel and now on The CW with Arrow. Green Arrow, for those who don’t know much about the comic hero, is a sort of Batman/Robin Hood rip-off: a billionaire called Oliver Queen who discovers for himself the true costs of crime and vows to put an end to it using… the mighty power of archery that he’s learnt while shipwrecked on an island.

No, I didn’t mean to say a Heckler & Koch G36 5.56x45mm assault rifle. Archery. As in a bow and arrow. Hence Green Arrow.

See? It all starts to fall apart right there, doesn’t it? Yet that’s what The CW, former home of another bit of attempted superhero realism, Smallville, is trying to make realistic. The words ‘The Bourne Identity‘ have even been mentioned in terms of aesthetic and approach.

And you know what? If it weren’t for two things, it might actually have managed to pull it off and be a pretty perfect bit of gritty superhero vigilantism. The first is that it looks like Smallville trying to do gritty on a budget of thruppeny halfpence. The second is the voiceover. Every time the hero tells us what’s going on, all that effort goes out of the window and you want to laugh yourself silly.

But if you can avoid doing that, this is actually one of the most promising new dramas of the season. Here’s a trailer, complete with voiceover:

Continue reading “Review: Arrow (The CW/Sky1) 1×1”

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 2

Third-episode verdict: The Mindy Project (Fox)

10 October 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

In the US: Tuesdays, 9.30/8.30c, Fox
In the UK: Not yet acquired

Three episodes in and I can confirm we at last have the first decent new comedy of the season: Fox’s The Mindy Project. As I mentioned in my review of the first episode, it’s a funny, anti-romcom romcom. Since then, it’s dialled down the romcom name-dropping, but stuck to its romcom guns, while simultaneously adding in a bit more workplace comedy. There’s even a new character, although he’s more amusing when he has less to do.

And really, all I can say is “Watch it”, because although it’s not as consistently paralysingly funny as Archer, say, it still has its moments (the end scene of episode two was deliciously dark and nasty) and it’s a really good half-hour sitcom that’s better than all the other new comedies by miles. Oh, and that it’s got a crappy new title sequence, but don’t let that put you off.

Barrometer rating: 2

US TV

Preview: Emily Owens MD (The CW) 1×1

9 October 2012 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Emily Owens MD

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, The CW. Starts October 19
In the UK: Not yet acquired
In Canada: Acquired by CTV2 for simulcast
In Australia: Acquired by Network Ten

The medical procedural (MP) is something of a blank slate. Any network can stamp its DNA into the MP and make it its own. Fox can take the MP and add a little bit of crime drama to produce The Mob Doctor. NBC can take the MP and turn it into a low-quality bombastic explosion fest that runs out of budget by episode two (Trauma). ABC can make the MP a soap opera within three seconds (Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice).

So how about The CW, a network best characterised by Gossip Girl, America’s Next Top Model and Privileged? What would it do with an MP? Think about… What’s your answer?

If you guessed “young female doctor has to face up to mean, probably black girls, while finding career success and true love, probably with someone from Smallville in it”, you’d be right. Emily Owens MD is indeed a show about a young female doctor – Emily Owens (Marnie Gummer from The Good Wife) – who has just qualified from medical school and wants to become the best doctor ever. She moves to Denver to train with her heroine, Gina Bandari (Necar Zadegan from The Event), which is coincidentally where her best friend and secret crush Will Collins (Justin Hartley from, you guessed it, Smallville) is also going.

But whom should she discover has joined the hospital she’s going to be an intern at? Why the girl who used to bully her at high school, Cassandra Kopelson (Aja Naomi King), of course. And not only has she got to survive the girl who secretly messed up her cards just before the debate and knows her nickname is ‘pits’, she’s got to deal with all the other cliques in the hospital. Because it turns out a hospital is a lot like a high school.

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Preview: Emily Owens MD (The CW) 1×1”

What did you watch last week? Including Red Dwarf X, Ben and Kate, The Mindy Project, Looper and Dexter

8 October 2012 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

It’s “What did you watch last fortnight?”, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I watched in the past two weeks 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 Thick of It, Moone Boy, Red Dwarf X and Homeland.

So here’s a few thoughts on what I have been watching:

  • Ben and Kate – Not much to say that I didn’t cover in my review of the first episode. I tried watching it. Everything about it bar Lucy Punch was dreadful. I couldn’t stand any more of it, so I switched off. Don’t bother with this one.
  • Dexter – Well, I was going to give it one last chance, and after a shaky “oh surely not” first few minutes of the first episode where they milked things out as much as they could, they finally settled down and gave us something that felt like Dexter again. Episode two managed to be as nasty and as high quality as episode one, so I’m sticking with it for a while at least.
  • Doctor Who – I finally got round to watching A Town Called Mercy. It was all right, I guess. Ben Browder was good for the 10 minutes he was in it. But it felt like a very tedious bit of old-school Who, in which the moral dilemma of the week is spelt out in excruciating detail, the liberal ideal is espoused and the liberal ideal is proved right at the end, no matter how unlikely that is, given the scenario we’ve been painted. Clunky, but with moments.
  • Elementary – More of a mystery story than the first episode and a bit more of the Holmes of the books got added in. A little blander perhaps, but a bit smarter and a bit better than the first episode, so I’m not writing it off yet.
  • The Last Resort – An almost literally nail-biting episode, but the whole thing falls apart as soon as any female characters appear. This isn’t because women shouldn’t be in such a manly show but because the writers appear to have no idea how to write women except as problems or as men. Plus an actress other than Autumn Reeser could probably pull off the “I may be a woman but I talk like a man” dialogue that she gets, but that’s not the actress in the role, unfortunately, so it just looks silly.
  • Made in Jersey – You have to admire a bunch of producers who admit to themselves that their pilot episode was a colossal cock-up and basically reboot the entire thing from the second episode, which is what the producers of Made in Jersey have done. Apart from shunting aside most of the cast, in favour of an all new cast that includes Ringer‘s Kristoffer Polaha, they’ve got rid of the Legally Blonde aspect, got Kyle MacLachlan to team up with our heroine and toned down the New Jersey stereotypes. There was also an interesting bit about how people in your own class can bring you down when you try to aspire. A definite improvement on episode one, even if it’s still not that much different from any other legal procedural.
  • The Mindy Project – Not quite as funny as the first episode but if you added up the comedy value of every other comedy on TV this week, combined, they still wouldn’t be as funny as The Mindy Project. The end scene was just nasty.
  • Moone Boy – Like an amiable stroll through 80s TV. Now promoted to recommended
  • Partners – While not quite as offensive as the first episode and the writers were clearly tailored the roles to their cast, by downgrading David Krumholtz to more of a nerd than an alpha male, it was still both unfunny and at least a little offensive, so I turned off. Avoid this one, too.
  • Person of Interest – I obviously abandoned this after episode three but since the mother in law has carried on watching, I thought I’d try leaping back in to see if has got any better. And largely, although the plot clearly has moved on and I found myself a bit lost at times, it hasn’t got any better. It’s the same. While Amy Acker being evil was moderately entertaining, the show still has the same flaws – the star, decent action taking place off-screen rather than on-screen and so on – makes this feel just like a lazy action star who’s feeling a bit tired and so sends the stunt double in rather than do the stunt himself.
  • Red Dwarf X – surprisingly good. Basically, it’s as though we never left series one or two and everything since has been ignored. I even laughed several times. Colour me surprised.
  • Vegas – More procedure-bound than the first episode, this was still a decent hour of drama. Good to see they’re adding another woman to the mix, this time on the side of evil, too.

Still in the pile: last night’s Homeland and 666 Park Avenue. Also, Strike Back: Vengeance, which we’re saving up to watch in one go at the end of the series.

And in movies:

  • Looper – A film that’s been getting a lot of hype, it’s actually a relatively low key, low budget sci-fi movie with some fairly imaginative ideas, a decent twist or two and the benefit of some CGI to make Joseph Gordon-Levitt look more like Bruce Willis. But other than that, you’re going to get more action on TV from Hunted and more complex plots from Doctor Who. So don’t believe the hype, don’t expect an action extravaganza, don’t expect to have your brain stimulated à la Inception. But do expect to enjoy about an half and a hour of the movie’s 2h20 run-time, and do be surprised by cameos from the likes of Piper Perabo and Garret Dillahunt.

“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?