TV reviews

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

US TV

Preview: Elementary 1×1 (CBS/Sky Living)

20 September 2012 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Elementary

In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, CBS. Starts September 27
In the UK: Acquired by Sky Living for October broadcast

You will recall that not so long ago, Steven Moffat was extremely dischuffed. “Pourquoi?” you might ask if you were French. Well, my francophone friend, because as well as being the showrunner for Doctor Who, Stevie is also the showrunner and indeed co-creator of a little known show called Sherlock, an updating of Conan Doyle’s famous consulting detective. After pitching an updated version to the American TV network CBS, he became seriously dischuffed when he heard that CBS was going to do their own version without the benefit of his wisdom.

And here it comes: Elementary, starring Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes, a former consultant to Scotland Yard, who moves to New York to get away from his father and to help US cop Captain Gregson (Aidan Quinn) with his enquiries. Of course, since he doesn’t get paid for his work, he needs his father’s money to keep him in little things like food and lodgings, and since our Sherlock also had a bit of a drug habit, as a condition of continued support, daddy dearest gives him a live-in ‘sober companion’, a therapist who stays with Sherlock night and day to make sure he doesn’t revert to old habits. That would be one Dr Joan Watson (Lucy Liu).

Sound much like Sherlock? No.

Stevie need not have worried.

In fact, Elementary, even putting aside the change in location of the stories, gender of Dr Watson and promotion of Inspector Gregson, is possibly the loosest adaptation of Conan Doyle’s classics there’s ever been. Well, apart from that manga one and that one set in space. And while it’s a perfectly functional procedural, efficiently told and competently made, with an intriguingly quirky performance from Miller, it’s also the blandest adaptation of Conan Doyle’s classics there’s even been. Yes, even including Young Sherlock – The Mystery of the Manor House.

Here’s a trailer. It’s basically a four-minute precis of the pilot.

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The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Go On (NBC)

20 September 2012 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

In the US: Tuesdays, 9pm Eastern/8pm Central, NBC. Starts September 11
In the UK: Not yet acquired

So far, if there’s one new comedy acquitting itself on NBC, it’s Go On. Although the idea of a support group for the traumatised – in particular, Matthew Perry channelling Joel McHale in Community as a talk radio sports commentator who lose his wife in a car accident – sounds like a sad idea for a sitcom (and you’d be right), the show is just about managing to find some laughs.

Just about.

Trouble is, we’re still talking about a guy who has lost his wife. And as the first episode demonstrated, that’s not that funny. Even if you can somehow turn adjustment to bereavement into something wacky – Perry not wanting to return home at night so he keeps making his assistant work late and gatecrashing her social occasions, as per episode two, or his gardener erecting a tribute fountain to his dead wife in episode three – we’re still talking about a show that makes you want to cry more than laugh.

And partly, that’s because the writers aren’t writing many jokes, partly because the supporting characters are woefully underdeveloped and partly because 90% of the cast are rubbish. Of the good portion of the cast, John Cho now has something to do but isn’t being given great material, Laura Benanti now has less to do and is getting less material, leaving Perry to get most of the good material and resultingly having to shoulder virtually the entire burden of the show, something that’s seeping into his performance.

Nevertheless, the show is just about treading the right side of the funny-unfunny/watchable-unwatchable line. I’m not recommending it, but I’m going to stick with it for a while, since there is some promise in it, and Perry, Cho and Benanti all deserve a successful TV show after all their previous flops. And given NBC’s ratings, I think it’s likely to get picked up for a full season very soon so it might actually have a chance to find its feet.

And lo and behold, look! Here’s The Carusometer’s replacement The Barrometer to pass verdict on it!

Barrometer rating: 3
Rob predicts: Will get a full season, maybe even 2

 

US TV

Preview: The Mob Doctor (Fox) 1×1

17 September 2012 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

The Mob Doctor

In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, Fox. Starts tonight
In the UK: Not yet acquired.

Watching this, I could have sworn I’d mysteriously tuned into CBS by accident. No way could this be a Fox show. It has CBS fingerprints all over it.

But, no. It’s on Fox. It’s a procedural. It’s efficiently made, efficiently acted and has high production values, just like a CBS show. It has no need to be a procedural – as with CBS’s A Gifted Man which was originally a show about a haunted doctor, this has medical procedural grafted onto it. But a procedural it is, with My Boys‘ Jordana Spiro as a doctor who – in between being brilliant and saving lives – has to do some medical work for the mob, it being Chicago n’all, because her brother was in trouble and she now owes them a debt that she has to pay off.

Then, one day, a mob informer comes into her hospital for an operation and the mob want her to kill him while he’s on the operating table or else they’ll hurt her and her family. What’s a surgeon to do?

And actually, that’s not the show’s biggest ethical dilemma, because somehow – I know not how, particularly on Fox of all networks – one of the patients who comes to her is a teenage girl. Who’s had sex with her boyfriend. She’s now pregnant. It’s going to ruin her life.

And to its credit, despite every other unremarkable, uninvolving aspect of the show, The Mob Doctor not only countenances the idea of letting this girl have an abortion, the doctor goes ahead and performs ‘the operation’.

Here’s a trailer.

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What did you watch last week? Including Robot Chicken, Lilyhammer and Homeland

17 September 2012 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

It’s “What did you watch last week?”, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I watched last 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: Perception and Doctor Who. I’m adding The Thick Of It to the list, which I negligently forgot to mention last week, despite its being brilliantly funny and making Veep look like luke warm cup-a-soup in comparison. The new coalition characters are excellent as well.

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

  • Perception: Fabulous episode that took the precepts of the show to their logical conclusion. You’ll spot exactly where the episode is going about 10 minutes in, but knowing actually makes it more painful and heart-breaking to watch. Worth watching a few episodes before, if you haven’t already watched any, so that it’ll have the maximum impact.
  • Hunderby: Not quite funny enough to make me watch the whole of episode 2.
  • Screenwriters – The BAFTA and BFI lectures: showing on Sky Arts, a series of half-hour interviews/lectures by famous screenwriters. A bit variable, but with some great names (William Nicholson, Moira Buffini, Charlie Kaufman), with John Logan (Gladiator, Coriolanus, et al) being a great way to finish the series.
  • Go On – episode two was actually okay, a bit more Community-ish, although less ensemble than that show. Still an odd combination of the tragic and comedic, but it’s now starting to pick up, I’d say.
  • Robot Chicken – The DC Comics special, this was actually really funny. Not as funny as it could have been, but if you know your DC Comics, it had a lot going for it, particularly the relentless kicking of Aquaman.
  • Lilyhammer – a BBC4/Netflix piece about a New York gangster relocating to Lilyhammer in Norway as part of a witness relocation scheme. Baffling, rather than funny, it essentially has every joke in Norwegian, followed by a character saying “Oh, you don’t speak much Norwegian, do you?” then repeating the joke in English. It’s therefore at least 50% less funny than it needs to be, and I suspect most of the jokes work better in Norwegian. And Norway. I switched off after about half an hour. Fargo‘s a better bet, I reckon. Some people seemed to love it though – maybe they watched the second half.

  • Homeland – the first 20 minutes of season two only, mind. After watching the original Israeli show Prisoners of War, it’s a little harder to watch the more escapist Homeland than it used to be, but this preview does a good job of re-establishing everything, showing how Carrie and Brodie’s lives have changed, and we even get to go to Beirut. If you’re worried that season two won’t be as good as season 1, your fears should be assuaged.

“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?

US TV

Review: Guys With Kids (NBC) 1×1

17 September 2012 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Guys With Kids

In the US: Wednesdays, 8.30/7.30c, NBC. Begins September 26
in the UK: Not yet acquired (thankfully)

By now, after Go On, The New Normal and Animal Practice, you should know the form.

NBC. Comedy. Don’t watch.

It’s that simple. You may think I’m exaggerating – and given the second episode of Go On was actually okay, maybe I am – but as a rule, “NBC. Comedy. Don’t watch” is pretty accurate and a good way to guide your viewing.

I should also add that anything that’s “war of the sexes” is guaranteed to be dismal and if you needed any proof, here’s Guys With Kids. See that title? Does it make you think, “My, that’s going to be a top, grade A comedy”? Of course it doesn’t. And you’d be right.

Here, NBC has latched onto the fact that one of its few new comedies not to massively fall on its face last year – the single-camera comedy Up All Night – was about modern parents, parenting and kids. It also noticed that a whole load of shows on other, better networks were about men dealing with changes in society – although it failed to notice that almost none of them were any good (e.g. Last Man Standing, Man Up!). So it’s decided to make a comedy about men having to look after kids. And it’s gone multi-camera: there’s even someone at the beginning who claims it was filmed in front of a live studio audience. Presumably a studio filled with nitrous oxide.

You can imagine the laughs, right? No? Surprising that.

Here’s a trailer for the pilot. You might need to sit down for this one.

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