TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: The Playboy Club 1×1 (US: NBC)

21 September 2011 Rob Buckley 21 Comments

The Playboy Club with Amber Heard and Eddie Cibrian

In the US: Mondays, 10/9c, NBC

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

Playboy. Say the word and there’s going to be an immediate reaction. Some people will be excited at the hint of some flesh, some people will think it anti-female and some people will instantly think ‘porn’ and try to ban whatever you’re talking about.

So it is with NBC’s The Playboy Club – formerly known as just Playboy – which had the Parents Television Council boycotting it before they’d even seen it, which had NBC’s Utah affiliate saying they weren’t going to show it because of its associations with pornography and which had various people saying it should be boycotted because it was demeaning to women.

The producers and stars protested that this was a historical drama/crime story/soap and that everyone was making something out of nothing before they’d even seen it. Okay, the nudity clause in the stars’ contracts didn’t help, but this was NBC so the chances of actual nudity, given the Janet Jackson ‘Superbowl nip slip’ is still being dragged through the courts, was zero, but that didn’t seem to stop anyone.

Anyway, now it’s on our screens so everyone can see what the fuss is about – or at least 5m people can, given the show’s lackluster ratings on Monday.

Set in Chicago, 1961, it stars Amber Heard – best known in the US as “that girl in the new Guess jeans ads” and in the UK as “Top Gear‘s best ever but slowest ‘star in a reasonably priced car'” (and on this ‘ere blog as one of our regular ‘random actors‘) – as Maureen, a new ‘bunny’ in Chicago’s Playboy Club. She gets herself into hot water when she’s attacked by a patron who turns out to be a mob boss. Naturally, she kills him with her stiletto.

Aided by Nick Dalton – played by Eddie Cibrian, best known in the UK as “that guy who took over from Adam Rodriguez for a season in CSI: Miami when he had a hissy fit” and in the US as “that scum who ditched his model wife and baby so that he could have an affair with the equally married Leann Rimes” – Maureen manages to cover up her crime.

For now.

With a scattergun approach that involves firing just about everything possible at the screen, ranging from social issues and soap opera love triangles to singing, dancing and a little bit of ultra-violence, the show has a little something for everyone. Given all those ingredients, it’s a little duller than you might hope, as well as a little stupider, but it at least shows some promise.

Here’s a trailer.

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US TV

Review: 2 Broke Girls 1×1

20 September 2011 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Two Broke Girls

In the US: Mondays, 8.30/7.30c, CBS
In the UK: Acquired by Channel 4

There’s a lot of Whitney Cummings around US TV at the moment. Best known from Chelsea Lately, not only does she have her own show on NBC – the eponymous Whitney – she’s the exec producer and co-creator of 2 Broke Girls, a supposed comedy about two waitresses who decide to run their own cupcake business – once they have enough money to quit their waitressing jobs, mind.

In case the mildly tepid Whitney hasn’t put you off the concept of a sitcom written by Whitney Cummings, here’s a little nugget of extra information that might sway you: it’s co-created and co-written by Michael Patrick King aka “The Man Who Ruined Sex and the City“.

So not funny in the slightest, but it does have two redeeming features: a relatively likeable pair of central characters; and Kat Dennings (Thor). But that’s it.

Here – try to laugh your way through this trailer.

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US TV

What did you watch last week (w/e September 14)?

19 September 2011 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Time for "What did you watch last week?", my chance to tell you what I watched last week 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: still nothing, apart from The Daily Show, since everything regular has finished, although Doctor Who‘s obviously good.

  • Bin Laden: Shoot To Kill: Very gripping documentary on how Osama Bin Laden was found, with plenty of interviews involving the Americans involved, including President Obama. Well worth a watch.
  • Strike Back: Project Dawn: about the same as last week, perhaps a little less humorous. Action good, bad whenever it starts trying to give people characters, but the arrival of Iain Glen and AAA from Lost this week is welcome. Women get treated almost universally badly, a lot of gratuitous female nudity, and the American guy gets shot a lot.

And in this week’s list of movies:

  • Snatch: Surprisingly boring Guy Ritchie film. Not worth watching at all
  • Tales From Earthsea: Bizarre, low-quality anime version of various elements of Ursula Le Guin’s superb Earthsea series of books (if you haven’t read them, read them immediately). Completely misses the point of the books. You’d have thought, given it’s Studio Ghibli, that it would have been a lot better, but it wasn’t. Oh well.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean 4: Surprisingly boring, rather than bad. It’s just people running around doing stuff, really. Looks expensive though.

But what have you been watching?

"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? And keep an eye on The Stage‘s TV Today Square Eyes feature as well for British TV highlights or you’ll be missing out on the good stuff.

UK TV

Review: Doctor Who – 6×11 – The God Complex

19 September 2011 Rob Buckley 12 Comments

 

In the UK: Saturday 17th September, 7.15pm, BBC1/BBC1 HD. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Saturday 17th September, 9pm/8c ET/PT, BBC America

Now that’s more like it. I was worried for a minute that I wasn’t going to love any episodes of Who in this second half of the season. But good old Toby Whithouse (School Reunion, The Vampires of Venice and creator of Being Human) has saved the day. And who’d have thought he’d have done it with a story that referenced the good old Nimon?

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US TV

Review: Whitney 1×1

16 September 2011 Rob Buckley 16 Comments

In the US: Thursday, 9:30/8:30c, NBC

This year, we have something of a "battle of the sexes" going on between NBC and ABC. ABC has no fewer than three sitcoms in which men are officially dicks. More on those offences against humour when they air. NBC, which currently has a mandate of trying to attract as many female viewers as possible, has taken a slightly different route and has gone for "men are not all dicks". 

Yesterday, we dealt with NBC’s Up All Night, which sees happy couple Christina Applegate and Will Arnett dealing with their new baby, Arnett opting to be a house-husband and not being a dick.

Today, we have Whitney, which sees single-girl-but-in-a-relationship-for-three-years Whitney Cummings (Chelsea Lately and her boyfriend, Alex, navigating the perils of modern relationships. Together. In a non-dickish, quite supportive way in Alex’s case.

How refreshing.

While it’s not brilliantly funny and as I remarked during my review of Up All Night, observational comedy is one thing but it’s only funny if someone’s failed to point out the observation 10 or 20 times already, it does at least raise a few laughs and has the occasionally original thing to say. Here’s a trailer.

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