TV reviews

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

Lost Gems: Laugh??? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee (1984)

15 March 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

TV sketch shows come and go with disturbing regularity. Often, they’ll disappear without anyone realising they were there at all. But quite often, they’ll be training grounds for later comedy talent. Look at The Kevin Bishop Show, which gave Karen Gillan from Doctor Who her big break.

Now let’s look at Laugh??? I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee, a sort of sequel to A Kick Up The Eighties which essentially launched the careers of two Scottish talents: Robbie Coltrane and John Sessions.

A BBC2 show, LINPMLF emphasised two things in its publicity: the fact it had a female lead (Louise Gold – not a well known name, but the only regular British puppeteer on The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, and one of the voices from the first three seasons of Spitting Image) and that it was Scottish. Yet the show itself was a more eclectic affair and largely revolved around Robbie Coltrane and John Sessions.

A success it was not. Today, if it’s remembered at all it’s for Coltrane’s Russian TV sketch, its diverse number of literary spoofs, ranging from Treasure Island through Edgar Lustgarten all the way through to the escapades of Dr Johnson (played by Coltrane) and Boswell (Sessions) – and for one character in particular, again played by Coltrane: Mason Boyne, a Scottish presbyterian orangeman, and his wife Morag (Gold).

But unfortunately, as with a lot of sketch shows, it was both hit and miss and didn’t get the ratings to support a second series. Did that stop Robbie Coltrane or John Sessions? Not a bit of it.

US TV

What did you watch last week? Including Archer, Kung Fu and Colossus: The Forbin Project

12 March 2012 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

David Carradine in Kung Fu

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

First, the usual recommendations: Archer, Being Human (US), BeTipul, Cougar Town, The Daily Show, Happy Endings, House, Modern Family, Portlandia, Ringer, Shameless (US), Southland, Spartacus, Suburgatory, 30 Rock and Top Gear.

Still in the backlog: the second episodes of Awake and GCB. But largely, the regulars are chugging along, doing their regular thing, and I’ve not much to say about them, except to say keep watching them, particularly Archer which had a very odd homage to Midnight Cowboy last week.

But I have also been watching:

  • Kung Fu: Slowly watching the first season again on CBS Action. Because everything is very slow on Kung Fu in a way that’s surprising for US TV. Fights, despite the title, are a bit dreadful, and you can tell the stunt guy actually only knows judo; Carradine’s take on being half-Chinese is also borderline racist. But it’s a lovely lyrical show, almost fairytale in its way, that makes it virtually unique in the annals of US TV. Go watch it on CBS Action or investigate the pilot movie over here.

And in movies:

  • Colossus: The Forbin Project – One of the first of the decent sci-fi movies of the 70s, nevertheless, it has dated quite a bit. But it’s still really good, and you have to love a downbeat ending and a German lead.

How about you?

“What did you watch this 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?

Israeli TV

Mini-review: BeTipul (In Treatment) (Sky Arts 1)

9 March 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

BeTipul

In the UK: Monday-Friday, 9.30pm, Sky Arts 1/Sky Arts 1 HD. Repeated Saturdays & Sundays
In Israel: First aired 2005

In Treatment was a show I really loved. Clever, engrossing, theatrical, it was fantastic TV. Terribly scheduled, mind. Half an hour, five nights a week? That’s not happening for me or for most people – as the ratings bore out.

For those who missed it (why? It was brilliant… Oh yes, now I remember…), it saw therapist Gabriel Byrne see a different patient each day, Monday to Thursday, before seeing his own therapist on Friday, where he’d discuss his feelings about his patients. Then the next week, you’d see the next session with each patient. Over the weeks, you saw his own family, occasionally the patients interacting and more.

But it was based on an award-winning Israeli show, BeTipul, that first aired in 2005. Now Sky Arts 1 is cleverly showing the original five nights a week. And it’s very weird to watch.

As with the the US remake of The Killing, it feels almost frame-by-frame identical, just in a different language. It’s not quite identical, for obvious reasons, but the dialogue is almost identical, as is the theme tune (which is slightly more upbeat in the Israeli version), and Assi Dayan (Re’uven) looks an awful lot like Gabriel Byrne.

But there are instructive differences. Unlike the very theatrical In Treatment which was largely shot in a studio, BeTipul is naturalistic and shot in a real apartment. Casting also affects things. The Laura-equivalent, Na’ama (Ayelet Zurer), is older than Melissa George, is less vulnerable and (sorry) less attractive. Their relationship, as a result, is different and speaks more to the therapist’s difficulties with his wife than Laura/Paul’s relationship did in In Treatment, which is correspondingly more about opportunity and desire than emotions.

There are also interesting cultural differences in terms of therapy:

All the same, despite the differences, it feels somewhat futile watching BeTipul having watched In Treatment. BeTipul is different rather than superior, but the differences aren’t big enough that having watched In Treatment, you don’t feel like you’re watching an odd re-run as you do so. It’s a case of watch one or the other – but not both.

Here’s a trailer with a crappy voiceover or you can watch some of the first episode on the Sky Arts web site:

Australian and New Zealand TV

Mini-review: Danger 5 (SBS1) 1×1

9 March 2012 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Danger 5

In Australia: Mondays, 9.30pm, SBS1. Available on the SBS web site (Australians only)

So imagine a world where the Second World War is happening in the 1960s, Hitler is still alive and five secret agents from around the world have ganged up to try to stop the Nazis.

What do you mean, “Why?” Because I tell you to, that’s why.

Actually, that’s a very good question that maybe we should ask the creators of Australian show Danger 5, who seem to have taken some peyote while watching Thunderbirds, The Prisoner, The Champions, Inglourious Basterds, the Godzilla movies and huge amounts of those bizarre 1960s eurospy movies that Tanner writes about. They’ve come up with a very precise pastiche/homage that tries to walk the line between affectionate and mental, except the peyote is so strong the line actually looks like a blancmange being ridden by Anne of Cleves.

So we have Hitler sending out zeppelins to steal the Eiffel Tower in scenes that remind you of Derek Meddings’ efforts on a bad day; someone with an eagle’s head dressed like Patrick MacGoohan in The Prisoner; deliberately bad dubbing; seductive, smoking, talking robot dogs; bad accents; Champions-like telepathy; exploitation cinema bondage scenes; and more – but for no apparent reason other than it looks cool and people who love the 60s will go “Oh yes, that’s from X”. There’s no plot coherence and no real jokes.

It looks fantastic. A lot of work has obviously gone into it. But it’ll leaving you wondering what the whole thing is supposed to accomplish and why you should be watching it. Even more than Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, in fact.

Here’s a trailer in case you missed it the first time I showed you and the Internet-only pilot episode so you can see for yourself.

UK TV

Mini-review: Dirk Gently 1×1

9 March 2012 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Dirk Gently

In the UK: Mondays, 9pm, BBC4. Available on the iPlayer

I’m not sure this is worth a full-on review, so innovation time! It’s a mini-review. Staggering hey? That’s how imaginative I am.

Now there was obviously a pilot to this, based on the Dirk Gently books by Douglas Adams, and when I micro-reviewed it c. Christmas 2010, this is what I said:

Very disappointing, given it was based on a Douglas Adams character and written by the creator of Misfits. A pilot for a series, rather than a straight adaptation of any of the books, it changed all the characters and made them less interesting, and strip-mined the books for anything that could be achieved on a budget of 50p and wasn’t too fantasy/sci-fi. Only the last 10 minutes was in any way interesting.

And we’re pretty much there for the series proper. Even moving on from the fact that this isn’t Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently but a different Dirk in his own right, so that we can judge the show on its own terms, this still isn’t a particularly funny or entertaining programme. There are a few good ideas struggling to get out, mostly inherited from the books (and it turns out that there were still a few things that could be strip-mined from those, such as the strangely accurate horoscopes); there were some original, mildly entertaining concepts, too, that actually fit right in with Adams’ thinking.

But it’s still not as good as it could or should be, especially given Howard Overton’s presence on the scripts and Stephen Mangan and Darren Boyd in front of the camera. There wasn’t much laughter, action or anything. It was just sort of ‘there’. This first episode was also missing Helen Baxendale, which didn’t help, but at least she’s in next week’s. And Darren Boyd was effectively reduced to Doctor Who assistant level – and I’m talking Nyssa or Harry here, not Rose.

So I’ll forgive you if you watch it – I might watch next week’s episode, too – but don’t be expecting to do much other than see Mangan and Boyd do their level best to make something funny that just isn’t.