TV reviews

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

US TV

Preview: Revenge

9 September 2011 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, ABC. Starts September 21

Revenge is a funny old thing, isn’t it? A dish best served cold, apparently, it’s been the subject of fiction throughout the ages. One of the most famous novels of revenge is the Count of Monte Cristo and some bright spark at ABC – a network always on a perpetually failing quest to come up with some new, decent dramas – has hit on the idea of updating the novel by moving it to the Hamptons and making it a soap opera.

Pretty young ‘Emily Thorne’ is getting married to Daniel Grayson, but just as her engagement is announced, his dead body is (apparently?) found on the beach. Flash back five months and it turns out Emily isn’t really Emily, but is in fact the daughter of one of the Grayson family’s old enemies, a man who died shamed after being accused of crimes he didn’t commit.

Emily has a plan. After years in juvi, she’s gotten out to discover she’s rich thanks to her father’s investments and that her dad is really innocent. So she decides to revenge herself on those who set him up.

And to do that, she’s going to destroy all their lives – in as ridiculous way as possible and by becoming really, really pretty. 

Here’s a trailer.

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Classic TV

Lost Gems: Cover Up (1984-1985)

8 September 2011 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Cover Up

For years, women in TV action shows were, shall we say, ‘ornamental’. Not often given much by way of character and what they had often revolving around the hero of the show, they were there to be pretty and give the largely male audience something to look at – or to just be secretaries. The heroes? Some were rugged, admittedly, but others could be old and tired, obsese or even one-armed.

Come the 60s, women began to get something to do, thanks to the likes of Cathy Gale and Emma Peel in The Avengers and Honey West in the eponymously named Honey West. What didn’t happen for a long while was for men to become the eye candy for female viewers, the add-on to the heroine.

That took the 80s and with CBS’s Cover Up, women who had been holding out for a hero finally got what they wanted.

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US TV

Preview: New Girl

7 September 2011 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, Fox. Starts 20th September
In the UK: Acquired by E4

There is a law, apparently, than whenever one refers to Zooey Deschanel and in particular her performance in her new Fox sitcom, New Girl, one must describe her as adorable. Am I a law-breaker?

No.

So New Girl sees adorable hipster Zooey Deschanel come home from work early to surprise her boyfriend, only to discover he’s cheating on her. She moves out and finds an apartment on Craigslist that’s shared by three guys. When they discover most of her friends are models, she’s given a quick invite to move in, and before you know it, the adorable, clueless-about-men Zooey is being taught how to pull and date by her new friends as they help her get on her feet again. And in return, they learn a little something about women from her, too.

Is there a big problem with the show? Well, one maybe.

There’s way too much singing. Cue the trailer.

Continue reading “Preview: New Girl”

What did you watch last month (w/e September 2)?

5 September 2011 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Time for newly retitled (for one week only) "What did you watch last month?", my chance to tell you what I’ve been watching 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: Burn Notice, Royal Pains, and Suits, although I get the feeling that we’ve hit the summer season finale of Burn Notice, at least.

Suits has been brilliant, the thing I look forward to most each week, so if you’re not watching it in the US you should be and if you’re in the UK, tune in when it comes to Alibi later in the year.

Royal Pains – has been drifting a lot. It’s become so summer TV, you can barely tell it’s got a pulse at times. The bad spoken German – which changes each week for some reason – is getting on my nerves and Evan is a complete tit. Toying with not watching it any more.

Burn Notice, incidentally, despite its much improved formula is now so ridiculous, my patience is being worn very thin. Anything involving Gabrielle Anwar, in particular, irks me, because for a former IRA terrorist, she seems to know an awful lot about being a spy. Also toying with not watching it any more, except my adrenalin addiction probably won’t let me.

 

I’ve given up on Wilfred, because it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and a bit too dark and manly (misogynistic) for me, although it’s still good.

True Blood has also been crossed off the viewing list, on the general grounds it’s rubbish. 

I’ve got Cinemax’s Chemistry cued up in the pile to watch, but it looks suspiciously like porn rather than an actual drama, so I’m putting it off at the moment. I’ve also got Page Eight to watch from a while back – any good?

And in this week’s list of movies:

  • Super 8: Much better when it was called ET. Or The Thing. Reeked of Steven Spielberg.
  • Blade: Trinity: Dreadful, but Ryan Reynolds shows promise and the fight scenes were good whenever Wesley Snipes was in them, merely acceptable at all other times. 

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 this week. 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 – 6×9 – Night Terrors

5 September 2011 Rob Buckley 17 Comments

In the UK: Saturday 3rd September, 7.10pm, BBC1/BBC1 HD. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Saturday 3rd September, 9pm/8c ET/PT, BBC America

I would review this, but basically I’ve already reviewed it when it was called Fear Her. Okay, it was a lot better. The direction was better. The writing was better. There were some great lines of dialogue, including Rory’s "We’re dead – again." And Matt Smith was very, very good.

But it was still Fear Her in plot, Macguffin and more or less everything else (Doctor investigates alien cuckoo child in suburban estate who can shape reality with its mind, gets trapped by alien and relies on outside help to get saved). And it still wasn’t that good, although I imagine very young kids might have wet themselves.

Essentially, a big set of things that seem scary on paper (and in the case of the life-size dolls, scary on TV) or that were scary when they were last seen in Sapphire and Steel when they were done well, it failed to connect emotionally or hang together properly. With most adults, at least, it failed to scare or engage. The trite ending – "dad must rescue son by telling him he loves him unconditionally" – was as poor as the attempts to add social realism, which were largely thrown away. And above all, It failed to make sense – kid fears getting rejected by parents so distorts reality, causing his parents to think about rejecting him.

It was a lot better than Gatiss’s last effort, Victory of the Daleks, but still a bit of a wasted chance for the plot of Fear Her to redeem itself. Not awful, not bad in places, but still an also-ran episode.