TV reviews

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

US TV

What did you watch last week (w/e November 4)?

7 November 2011 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Time for "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.

My recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure this week: Dexter, Modern Family, Happy Endings, Homeland, Suburgatory and Community.

Things you might enjoy but that I’m not necessarily recommending: Being Erica, House, Chuck and Ringer.

In the backlog: Friday’s Boss, last night’s Walking Dead, Braquo, Homeland, Once Upon A Time and Dexter, as well as new series Hell on Wheels.

A few thoughts on what I’ve seen though:

  • Boss: Episode 2, while powerful, was also dull – strange huh? It’s definitely acquiring that "worthy but dull" veneer, but episode 3 – directed by Mario van Peebles – is proving a whole lot better.
  • Suburgatory: written by a man, so not very good. My theory continues to hold up.
  • The Walking Dead: good ending and it feels like the show is actually going places now.
  • The Ash Tree: An old MR James Ghost Story for Christmas. Mostly embellishment from the original tale, it’s more scary by mood for about the first 20 minutes until it kicks into James’s story properly and then gets very nightmarish.

And in the movies section: nothing new, but I re-watched Shooter, which is okay as a b-movie action film. Could be better if Mark Wahlberg hadn’t mumbled his way through the entire script, but not that much better.

"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?

French TV

Review: Braquo 1×1

4 November 2011 Natalia Romanova 12 Comments

Braquo

In the UK: Sundays, 10pm, FX UK
In France: Canal+. First broadcast 2009

Once upon a time – i.e. five or six years ago – FX was the place to go to if you wanted to watch the best, most niche US TV shows. The Wire was on FX years before DVD and BBC2 showings made it nearly a household name, while Dexter and numerous other top-quality shows aired only on FX or aired on it first.

Then along came Sky Atlantic and screwed all that up. Have a look at the roster now and yes, there’s The Walking Dead, True Blood and American Horror Story, but that’s three horror shows, only one of which is any good and everything else is just re-runs. And let’s not start on the fact The Defenders is on there. That’s just embarrassing.

So FX came up with a cunning idea: let’s see what countries other than the US have to offer. So it started with Canadian TV. Along came The Border, which wasn’t half bad, The Listener, which was, and ReGenesis and The Booth At The End, which I admit I’ve never seen but which I also admit I don’t feel inspired to watch, either.

But hunting for good quality Canadian TV can be tricky. For every, The Border, jPod, Being Erica or Endgame, there’s a The Line, Men With Brooms, InSecurity, Good Dog or XIII waiting to make you regret your TV-watching decision. FX can’t exactly pack its schedules to the rafters with Canadian TV, particularly since E4’s started nicking Canadian shows as well.

So FX has cunningly decided, just as BBC4 is cutting back on its acquisition budgets and focusing on Scandinavian shows, to capitalise on one of that channel’s other innovations and look close to home for its shows. To France, in fact.

So not only has it been showing the two-part movie Mesrine, starring Vincent Cassel as the eponymous gangster, it’s also acquired Spiral/Engrenages‘s sibling show at Canal+ Braquo, a dark policier about a cop with broad definitions of legality and what he’s allowed to do.

The question is – has FX found the new The Killing or is it about to discover what those of us who have watched French TV for some time now have found: that French TV drama, by and large, sucks?

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Braquo 1×1”

US TV

Review: Grimm 1×1

3 November 2011 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Grimm on NBC

In the US: Fridays, 9/8c, NBC
In the UK: Not yet acquired

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Fairy tales are really real. They’re part of our world. Now a non-fairy tale character has found out and is having to deal with this strange circumstance.

Yep, it’s Once Upon A Time, over on ABC. But it’s also Grimm on NBC.

Now, stop me if you’ve heard this one before, too. “Into each generation a Slayer is born. One in all the world, a Chosen One. One born with the strength and skill to fight the vampires, to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their numbers.”

Yes, that’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Except if you cross out ‘Slayer’ and replace it with ‘Grimm’ and cross out vampires and replace it with ‘fairy tale monsters’, you’ve got Grimm on NBC.

So already, Grimm is not looking too hot on the old originality front. Add in the fact that the cop gets all his arcane knowledge from books given to him by a librarian, that he has help from a reformed creature of the night and that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and you’d wonder when the first of the copyright suits would arrive – if it weren’t for the fact that Jim Kouf (Angel) and David Greenwalt (Buffy and Angel) are the exec producers.

Yet, despite all these inauspicious omens, Grimm isn’t half bad – and it’s certainly better than Once Upon A Time. Here’s an incredibly spoilery trailer – with the wrong music. The Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’ was used in the actual episode.

Continue reading “Review: Grimm 1×1”

US TV

What did you watch last week (w/e October 28)?

1 November 2011 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Batman Year One

Time for “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.

My recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure this week: Dexter, Modern Family, Happy Endings, Homeland, Suburgatory and Community.

Things you might enjoy but that I’m not necessarily recommending: Being Erica, House, Chuck and Ringer.

In the backlog: Friday’s Boss, Sunday’s Walking Dead, Braquo and Dexter, and last night’s House. I’ll be reviewing Grimm later today.

A few thoughts on the regulars:

  • Dexter: most seasons of Dexter don’t really get interesting until episode seven, which is probably why I’m feeling very bored watching it at the moment, despite the presence of Edward James Olmos in a show set in Miami. I’m hoping it’ll kick off soon.
  • Chuck: boring. Sorry, I’m still not sure why this show is still limping on. It’s vaguely amusing, has a couple of fun pop culture references each episodes, but I’m struggling to work out why I’m still watching it, beyond “because it’s on its final season and you’ve been watching it for four years”. Except there’s talk of possibly another season after this, so messed up are NBC’s ratings at the moment.
  • Happy Endings: has entered the “season 2 of Friends” paradigm in which the characters get a little broader and a little more stereotypical, while the plots get sillier. But it was good to have an episode in which Alex got to shine – imagine that: a show in which Elisha Cuthbert is actually good.
  • Homeland: after nothing but brilliance since the first episode, this week’s was the first episode that felt a little disappointing, just because it didn’t feel like anything had actually been achieved by the narrative that wasn’t obvious and predictable. It’s still the best drama on TV though.
  • American Horror Story: a simple formula – no Alex Breckenridge, no watch. She wasn’t in it this week so I didn’t feel compelled to watch it, which should tell you something about the show.
  • Community: loved Abed’s Halloween story – you can tell Dan Harmon is almost as Asperger’s as Abed is – and it’s great to see the show on form again.
  • Suburgatory: still great, so clearly I’m going to have to revise my rule from “only great when Emily Kapnek writes it” to “only great when women write it”
  • The Walking Dead: more engrossing and scary than previous episodes, but has a treading water feel to it.
  • Strike Back: Project Dawn: the final episode managed to ditch its trademark female nudity in favour of ludicrous plot revelations. If you were expecting an explosive conclusion, you’d have been surprised, since there were few set pieces. On the whole, a largely ridiculous season in terms of plot and very misogynistic, but absolutely far and away the best action show on British TV: no other show, not even Spooks, comes close to being able to shootouts, car chases, et al as well Strike Back.
  • Once Upon A Time: Largely the same as the first episode except more boring. A few nuggets of interesting ideas in there, but the show still has the big problem that the baddies are the only interesting characters in the whole thing and most of the show is dedicated to them and explaining their motivations. Also, when your idea of an action sequence is chopping down a tree, you really need to up the ante on the excitement levels.

And in the movies section was Batman: Year One (available on DVD/Blu-Ray from Amazon as well as from the iTunes Store), which was based on Frank Miller’s legendary graphic novel (parts of which were used for Batman Begins), this was a surprisingly faithful adaptation, not just in terms of plot and text, but also in terms of art. Some of the darker edges were removed – the insanity of “Yes, father, I will become a bat” got expunged – as well as some of Miller’s more misogynistic tendencies – the Bruce Wayne/Selina Kyle fight is a draw in this rather than an easy knockout for Bruce. The animation was also a little cheap at times, at least with things like moving cars, which looked very CGI. But really good, if a little inconclusive (for obvious reasons) and a surprising but effective choice of vocal cast (Ben McKenzie from Southland as Bruce Wayne, Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad as Jim Gordon, Katee Sackhoff from BSG as Sarah Essen and Eliza Dushku from Dollhouse as Selina Kyle).

It came with a Catwoman short movie that’s not only exploitative but boring and with Dushkua clearly as bored as we are, so best ignore that. Makes you wonder, though, given the quality of the main feature, why the cocked up so badly with the Wonder Woman animated movie they did a few years ago, which managed to mangle not just the characters and WW’s origin, but also managed to make WW a largely unpowered, unlikeable misandrist. If they can be this faithful to essentially a non-canon 20-year old graphic novel, why not do a better job with Perez’s WW origin series?

“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?

Classic TV

Lost Gems: Max Headroom (1985-1988)

28 October 2011 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Never, in the history of music videos, has so much effort been devoted to giving one VJ a back-story as with Max Headroom.

Picture this: it’s 1985. Music videos are big, especially thanks to the relatively shiny and new channel MTV (music television). Computers and computer graphics are also big, thanks to the Apple Mac, arcade games and movies like Tron and The Last Starfighter. So what more natural blend of coolness could there be than a computer-generated VJ?

Unfortunately, computer graphics weren’t quite up to the job back then, so Canadian actor Matt Frewer got slathered in prosthetics and make-up to become the world’s computer-generated VJ, ‘Max Headroom’, a stuttering, witty, seemingly plastic American ‘shockjock’. And he was very popular. You can still see his influence in Back To The Future 2.

But the arrival of Max Headroom for some reason required an answer to the question, "Who is Max Headroom and where does he come from?"

Bizarrely, the answer was supplied by Channel 4, who decided to cash in on a literary and movie phenomenon, ‘cyberpunk’, to create an origin movie for Max Headroom that was set ’20 minutes into the future’. Surprisingly, it was bloody good, and even more surprisingly, despite its inauspicious British origins, it launched two seasons of one of the most innovative and satirical TV sci-fi shows British and US TV has ever seen.

Here’s the start of the British movie:

Continue reading “Lost Gems: Max Headroom (1985-1988)”