In the US: Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC. Starts September 27th In the UK: Not yet acquired
You’ll have seen the scenario before, in films like Crimson Tide: a nuclear submarine receives the order to fire its missiles at the enemy. Will the captain have the guts to nuke the target? Will he chicken out? Or has it really all been a big mistake and war hasn’t actually been declared? It’s usually that last one.
Having not read much of the publicity material around The Last Resort, I assumed that this was going to be Crimson Tride all over again. But lo and behold, here we have something new and interesting. For now.
The Last Resort, featuring the ever-interesting Andre Braugher (last seen being wasted by House, Miami Medical and Men of a Certain Age), comes from the pen of Shawn Ryan, who can usually be relied to turn in something both interesting and manly (cf The Shield, Chicago Code, Terriers). Here, the crew of a nuclear submarine are given a suspicious order to fire nuclear missiles at Pakistan. And when the captain (Braugher) questions the order, he’s first relieved of command and then shot at… by a US ship, which goes on to nuke Pakistan itself in supposed retaliation for shooting the submarine.
So, in another interesting twist, the submarine heads off for the Caribbean and declares itself an independent nation, ready to stop the war between the US and Pakistan. And if anyone comes after them… well, there’s a silo of nuclear missiles waiting for them, too.
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. Not much on, is there?
So here’s a few thoughts on what I have been watching:
Perception: Not bad, but not great.
Royal Pains: Meh.
Hunderby: Julia Davis does Daphne du Maurier but set in Jane Austen’s time. Silly and dark, with some great moments, but ultimately, it feels like one of those obvious parodies you’d write in the sixth form of school in which adding the word ‘bum’ to a classic novel made it somehow inherently more amusing.
Toast of London: A pilot for a show written by Matt Berry and Arthur Mathews that had more than a few funny moments and embodies a lot of Berry-esque idiosyncrancies and Mathews-esque surrealism, but which I still wouldn’t describe as hilarious.
And in movies, it’s been something of an action movie-fest:
The Expendables 2 Basically a lot of shooting and in-jokes, with not much by way of script. Jet Li gets written of it quickly as does one of the other cast members, so we only get a couple of scenes with them. But it seems a shame to assemble the likes of Jean Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren and Chuck Norris and not to actually do much by way of martial arts, which is something the first movie excelled at. But Bruce and Arnie got more to do this time, which is a bonus.
Sudden Death JCVD does Die Hard in an ice rink. Dreadful.
Time Cop JCVD’s one undeniably good movie.
JCVD Jean Claude plays a version of himself who mistakenly gets accused of robbing a post office. Very meta, but not much by way of action. Big revelation is the Jean-Claude can act pretty well in French.
The One A dreadful load of old bobbins by a former X-Files writer in which Jet Li has to fight a parallel universe version of himself. A couple of good fight scenes and it’s amusing to see Jason Statham with some hair, but largely silly and way too much wire work.
Dredd 3D A masterpiece compared the Stallone version, and a really good movie in its own right – essentially The Raid but with guns instead of martial arts as Judges Dredd and Anderson ascend a tower block looking for the source of a new drug. Less futuristic than the comic, it is nevertheless a decent attempt to capture the spirit of 2000 AD, albeit without the satire, and South Africa doubles very nicely for Megacity 1. Hampered by a slightly low budget, it benefits from a good, intelligent script, a good cast (Karl Urban as Dredd, Olivia Thirby as Judge Anderson, here on probation and getting a lot to do, thankfully, and, for once, Lena Headey, embracing the not-pretty look for all it’s worth) and some surprisingly beautiful direction. Definitely worth seeing if you can handle a bit of violence.
Total Recall If you’ve seen both Blade Runner and the first Total Recall, there is literally no point watching this remake. Colin Farrell makes a better protagonist than Arnie and the writers have realised that the best thing about the original was Sharon Stone’s character, who wasn’t actually in it much, so combined her and Michael Ironside’s character together. But it’s ludicrous bobbins, in which there’s a lift through the centre of the Earth that allows everyone to commute from Australia to the UK and back every day (full gravity until the middle, kiddies…), and most of the clever touches have been removed (although to be fair, so have the crap bits). It also downplays the best part of the original, which was that you really didn’t know if the whole movie was a dream or not. Serviceable, Kate Beckinsale is great (although not Sharon Stone great), but that’s about it.
And here’s the original trailer. Watch that instead.
“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?
I’m lying on the canvas now, the referee counting me out. But stand up before the fateful 10 I do.
And now I’ve been floored again by one of the most obvious of jabs. Animal Practice.
If I’d had more energy I could have taken it. I’d have seen it coming and known what to expect. An NBC comedy, set in a vets, with Tyber Labine (Reaper) and a comedy Asian (Bobby Lee) as sidekicks to the misanthropic vet (Justin Kirk) who hates people, loves animals and uses his practice as a pick-up joint. Then along comes Kirk’s ex-girlfriend, JoAnna Garcia (Privileged, Better With You), to take over the vets when she inherits it from her grandmother and turn it into a smooth-running business.
But largely, family television is a miserable land of compromised, unchallenging, lowest common denominator plotting, conservative values occasionally masquerading as liberalism and attempts to be all things to all people. Plots are never too threatening or ever change the status quo significantly. There are magical MacGuffins that only children could believe in. Characters never move outside of traditional, largely patriarchal family relationships and stereotypical gender relationships. And everyone learns a (traditional) lesson about life, family and love by the end of it all.
These programmes are too unchallenging for both adults (who need something more) and children (who need something more, too) pollute the airways and fill up primetime in an effort to get as many people watching at the same time, leaving less time for decent programming.
And it’s not just primetime, now. For some reason, family programming can stray into the 10pm slot in the US. This is not when family dramas should be on, America. This is when kids should be in bed.
With Revolution, we have a prime example of family programming: the turgid, lifeless, recycling of limp ideas, stale characters and by-the-book writing that characterises the genre. Surprisingly, it’s from Eric Kripke (Supernatural), Jon Favreau (Iron Man) and JJ Abrams (Alias, Lost, Alcatraz, Star Trek et al), who are all capable of much, much better but because it’s family programming they’ve dumbed down.
So, here’s the story: 20 seconds into the future from now, mysteriously the laws of physics are going to change. Suddenly, electricity is going to stop working. No batteries, no mains current. Nothing.
Well – and they don’t make this explicit for some reason – all electricity apart from, say, anything in your body that requires the movement of electrons to work such as your nerves, muscles or, in fact, every single cell you have, of course. Apparently, that’s some other set of laws of electromagnetism that makes them work. The jury’s still out on ions, and covalent and hydrogen bonds, mind, but I’m sure Revolution will get there eventually once everyone’s perms start to fall out, salt crystals fall apart and no one gets static electricity from carpets any more. No more oxidisation, no more reduction. Chemistry is going to be so much easier, but we’ll miss that thing with balloons sticking to people’s jumpers, I’m sure.
However, one man knows this very selective change in the law of physics is about to happen and he’s preparing his family for the oncoming apocalypse. He’s also got some top-secret computer files in a special USB necklace that explain EVERYTHING.
Cut to 15 years later and the world has fallen apart. America is now a set of different, feudal republics. Everyone’s become an agrarian subsistence farmer and there are local lords to appease. But The Secret People Behind It All want that man and his files, which might explain how to reverse The Changes. They also want his brother, who also might know something.
So watch The Changes meets Jericho meets feudalistic collective farming techniques as a daughter and a son struggle to survive in an inhospitable – but not exactly even Z for Zachariah harsh – world and learn a little about family along the way. There’ll be sword fights! Really implausible sword fights! There’ll be baddies! Who won’t really do anything bad! There’ll be bad boys! Who quite like nice girls who aren’t too threatening, who wear nice clothes, look very clean and have nice teeth, despite the end of washing machines, Persil and American dentistry as we know it!
Starring the dad from Twilight! Featuring lots of bows and arrows like in that movie The Hunger Games that you like! It’s empty, vapid and it’s coming to NBC soon! It’s Revolution!
Here’s a trailer featuring Andrea Roth before she was replaced by Elizabeth Mitchell. It gives away just about everything from the first episode but don’t worry about that.
