TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: 666 Park Avenue 1×1 (ABC/ITV2)

2 October 2012 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

666 Park Avenue

In the US: Sundays, 10pm/9pm Central, ABC
In the UK: Acquired by ITV2

So when is an adaptation not an adaptation? When you’ve only bought the book for its title because it’s cool and you’re really adapting something else altogether, that’s when.

You might be tempted to think, for example, that 666 Park Avenue might be somewhat like 666 Park Avenue, the book of the same name – on which its credits claim it is based. And yet a brief yet cursory examination of the book’s Amazon listing (or even, like me, if you flicked through it in the book shop) will reveal a few discrepancies:

Welcome to New York City, where the socialites are witches.

Jane Boyle has been living a fairy tale. When her boyfriend Malcolm proposes, Jane can’t believe her luck and decides to leave her Paris-based job as a fledgling architect and make a new start with him in New York. But when Malcolm introduces Jane to the esteemed Doran clan, one of Manhattan’s most feared and revered families, Jane’s fairy tale takes a darker turn.

Now Jane must struggle with newfound magical abilities and the threat of those who will stop at nothing to get them.

Welcome to 666 Park Avenue….

Yes, it’s Gossip Girl meets The Secret Circle. At least, the book is.

But that’s not 666 Park Avenue the TV series. That is something completely different. And by completely different, I mean it’s Rosemary’s Baby meets The Devil’s Advocate with just a hint of The Shining to give us ‘The Devil’s Janitor’. That’s not as sexy a title as 666 Park Avenue, is it?

When Jane Van Veen (Rachael Taylor) and Henry Martin (Dave Annable), an idealistic young couple from the Midwest, arrive in New York City, the glamorous center of industry and media, they are offered the opportunity to manage the historic Drake. Jane, a small town girl with big ambitions, always knew she wanted to be an architect. Henry, a member of the Mayor’s staff, is grounded, intelligent and tenacious. They are lured by the intoxicating lifestyle of New York’s wealthy elite.

Sexy, enticing and captivating, home to an epic struggle of good versus evil, The Drake maintains a dark hold over all of its tenants in this new, chilling drama, tempting them through their ambitions and desires.

Basically, bunch of people in a building. They all get tempted. They sign their souls over to the guy who owns the building – the Devil (probably) – and then bad things happen. Two new people move in. They’re going to be tempted by something, but you can bet they’re going to do some investigating first.

And despite some really quite gruesome scenes, there is almost nothing interesting about this show. Apart from the title. It’s a real place, you know.

Continue reading “Review: 666 Park Avenue 1×1 (ABC/ITV2)”

US TV

Review: Made in Jersey 1×1 (CBS)

2 October 2012 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Made in Jersey

In the US: Fridays, 9/8c, CBS
In the UK: Not yet acquired. I’m assuming Sky Living had a fit of the vapours

Beware the juggernaut, my son!

The juggernaut – aka CBS – is the goliath of TV. It dominates the ratings. It had oodles of cash. It can do pretty much what it likes. And if you don’t like that, it’ll run all over you.

The newest trick CBS appears to have discovered is to take existing programmes, file the serial numbers off, bolt on a procedural and then call them its own. This season, it’s already deployed its own version of Sherlock as Elementary. Vegas – not to be confused with NBC’s Las Vegas, but easily confused with its The Playboy Club as well as A&E’s Longmire – emerged blinking into the moonlight last week and on Friday, we got Made in Jersey.

Now at first sight, you might not spot what Made in Jersey obviously rips off. After all, the lead character in this legal show, in which a street-smart Jersey girl gets her big break in a Manhattan law firm, isn’t blonde (hint, hint).

But by the end of the episode – in which her exciting knowledge of hairstyling products is used to prove that the student accused of murdering her professor is innocent and that despite everyone’s belief that she’s an airhead, she really can be a lawyer – you’ll be going, “Oh, so that’s what CBS couldn’t get the rights to cheaply! Legally Blonde!”

Because that’s what we have here: Legally Blonde with hair dye but without any humour, and with a legal procedural element bolted on. Another triumph for CBS’s assimilation department.

Are there any redeeming features to the show? Well, at a push, since it’s clearly not the dialogue, plotting, plausibility or characterisation of Made in Jersey that is going to save it, I’d have to say it’s got one thing going for it, other than Kyle MacLachlan looking very bewildered by the whole thing: for the first time in a long while, we have a US TV show that’s about class.

Here’s a trailer:

Continue reading “Review: Made in Jersey 1×1 (CBS)”

What did you watch last fortnight? Including Moone Boy, Homeland, Revolution and Mob Doctor

1 October 2012 Rob Buckley 3 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 and Homeland.

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

  • Go On – Still okay. Last week’s episode was dedicated to giving the lesbian character some actual, you know, character, which actually worked quite well – looking at with less tired eyes, Go On actually probably has the most diverse cast on TV. It’s just a little too Perry-focused, a little too Benanti-light still and the rest of the cast need to get more characters, too
  • Homeland – Well, I watched the first 20 minutes last time, and good news! The rest of it’s really good, too. While Carrie’s storyline is more obviously mental than last year’s, Brodie’s is working out well quite tensely, thank you, and the final scene with his daughter was surprisingly touching. So still one to watch.
  • Mob Doctor – Switched off halfway through episode two. Jordana Spiro’s great but this show isn’t the vehicle for her, unfortunately.
  • The New Normal – episode two was such a hate crime, I gave up. I hear episode 4 might have been interesting though, since it’s from Ellen Barkin’s point of view. Not going to try it though.
  • Perception – While the finale was still marginally ludicrous, everything with Daniel worked well. Overall, a pretty good first season, hampered by its format. Jamie Bamber was woefully under-used, while Rachael Leigh Cooke shouldn’t have been used at all. Definitely recommended as a bit of fluff with surprising depth, and I’ll be tuning into season two.
  • Revolution – Episode two was possibly even more boring than episode 1. If it weren’t for the sword-fights, there would be literally nothing to this show at all.
  • The Thick of It – The beast is back! Good to see Malcolm back to his old fieriness and poor old Nicola. A beautifully written piece of political manipulation.
  • Animal Practice – A mild improvement on episode one, but still a fundamentally flawed, stupid NBC comedy.
  • Moone Boy – The IT Crowd‘s Chris O’Dowd writes and stars in this semi-biopic as the imaginary best friend of his 1989 self. Very weird, but charming and amusing.

Still in the pile: Made in Jersey and 666 Park Avenue. I’ll get onto them later today and tomorrow.

And in movies:

  • The Dark Knight Returns: Part 1 – A pretty decent animation of Frank Miller’s acclaimed “Batman when he’s old” graphic novel. This only covers Batman’s return, the new Robin and the pre-Superman half, with a second movie to come dealing with all of that. Peter Weller is a little miscast as the voice of Bruce Wayne, lacking much expressiveness, but he’s not the worst Batman there’s ever been, by any stretch of the imagination. It also shows its age, having originally been written in the 80s, and its vision of the future is indeed very 80s. Ariel Winter from Modern Family is the surprising choice for Robin, but she works quite well, too.

“What did you watch last fortnight?” 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: Doctor Who – 7×5 – The Angels Take Manhattan

1 October 2012 Rob Buckley 33 Comments

Angels Take Manhattan

In the UK: Twas on BBC1 on Saturday. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: It was on BBC America on Saturday, y’all

Vroomfondel: I think our minds must be too highly trained, Majikthise

From the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

So here we are. The end of an era. Exeunt Ponds, stage right, chased by a baby Angel. Stevie Moffat introduced them to us two and a half years ago with the first of his stories, The Eleventh Hour, and here he is, writing them out again.

Should be quite a moving moment, shouldn’t it? Rusty usually managed to make companion departures the big tearjerkers they should be. Maybe not Martha, although who cared about her. But the ‘death’ of Pipes? The ‘death’ of Donna? Pass me a snivel-rag now.

Except, while there was a certain degree of sadness right at the end, this wasn’t quite the tour de force I was hoping for from our Stevie. The trouble? I think that Stevie might be getting too clever for his own good. And working too hard.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 7×5 – The Angels Take Manhattan”

US TV

Review: Vegas 1×1 (CBS/Sky Atlantic)

28 September 2012 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Vegas

In the US: Tuesdays, 10/9c, CBS
In the UK: Acquired by Sky Atlantic HD

As you may recall, last year, everyone when 60s crazy. And by everyone, I mean NBC and ABC, with The Playboy Club and Pan Am. The Playboy Club was hampered essentially by budget and a script that tried so hard to fair to everyone and not be exploitative that not much interesting happened when Amber Heard wasn’t around in a scarlet bunny outfit. Certainly nothing interesting happened when Eddie Cibrian was on-screen.

Pan Am, by contast, had no problems with budget or even its cast. Instead, it was hampered by a script that was tedious bollocks. Trans-atlantic flights are more interesting.

The accusation then was the networks were trying to cash in on the popularity of period cable show Mad Men. Maybe a bit, but given Mad Men first aired in 2007 and the networks had already tried series set in the 70s, 80s and 90s, it’s a stretch to say it had to be because of a mad rush to ape Mad Men. But it was at least an attempt to emulate the tone of the quality period dramas of cable TV. Hell, even Starz is trying to do that with Magic City and it is a cable network.

But all those efforts failed, because fundamentally neither NBC nor ABC can make those kinds of shows. Fox? Don’t even think about it. It’s busily trying to be CBS.

Just as we all were starting to despair that no US broadcast network could actually make decent, quality dramas of any kind any more, let alone period dramas, along comes CBS – our last, best hope for quality – and saves the day with Vegas, written by Nicholas Pileggi of GoodFellas fame. Set in 1960s Las Vegas and based on a real story, it has a stellar movie-star cast that includes Dennis Quaid, Carrie-Anne Moss from The Matrix and Michael Chiklis (The Shield, Fantastic Four, No Ordinary Family), features some seamless attention to detail, a suitably complex bit of plotting and characterisation, and – because it’s CBS – a bit of police procedure.

Oh yes, and it’s got Jason O’Mara from Terra Nova. Can’t have everything right, huh?

Here’s a trailer and behind-the-scenes preview.

Continue reading “Review: Vegas 1×1 (CBS/Sky Atlantic)”