TV reviews

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

UK TV

Review: Sirens 1×1

4 July 2011 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Sirens on Channel 4

In the UK: Mondays, 10pm, Channel 4. Available on 4oD

Oh joy. A British comedy drama. On Channel 4. I can name all the good ones of those made in the last five years on one… remind what they were again?

Fair dos, though. This is different. Sirens, based on the true-life accounts of actual paramedics, is actually quite enjoyable, to the extent that I’m going to watch tonight’s second episode and I think you should, too.

Does it help that the US already wanted to remake it before the first episode even aired? Here’s a couple of trailers.

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UK TV

What have you been watching this week (w/e July 1)?

1 July 2011 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Time for “What have you been watching this week?”, my chance to tell you what I’ve been watching this week and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case we’ve missed them.

My usual recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure this week: The Apprentice, The Apprentice: You’ve Been Fired, Burn Notice, Come Dine With Me, The Daily Show and Top Gear. Watch them (and keep an eye on The Stage‘s TV Today Square Eyes feature as well) or you’ll be missing out on the good stuff. Still in the viewing pile: the first episode of Necessary Roughness (just in case lovely wife wants to watch it for Marc Blucas from Buffy), the return of Royal Pains, the second episode of Suits, the first episode of State of Georgia (although that’s ABC Family so I’ll probably skip it),

Now to the irregulars and new things, as well as a few thoughts on some of those regulars:

  • Arrested Development: Everyone raves about it, so I thought I’d give it a try and watch the pilot. Does it, erm, get any better and/or funny?
  • Burn Notice: My gods, they have actually changed the formula. Okay, still a little bit like the old show, but it’s different. It’s actually different – and I like it. Well done exec producers!
  • Combat Hospital: A slightly inept, international co-production medical drama whose two distinguishing features are that they’ve got Canadians, Americans and Brits all actually being Canadians, Americans and Brits; and it’s set in a war zone. Despite having Elias Koteas and Deborah Kara Unger in the cast, it’s instantly snooze-worthy, without a hard edge even in its set of surgical tools.
  • Top Gear: Better than the last series, but definitely lacking the pizzazz of previous series.
  • True Blood: I haven’t watched this since episode 7 of the first series and although things have clearly moved on, my, what a silly show it is. Good cast, good effects, interesting characters, but what silly, silly plots. Good to see Southland‘s Kevin Alejandro doing well for himself and Alex Breckenridge being all librariany, but this would ordinarily be too ridiculous, even for me.

And in this week’s list of movies:

  • 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer: Dreadful. Jessica Alba doesn’t even look human in it.
  • Blades of Glory: A severely overlooked Will Ferrell comedy about two male figure skaters who end up as pairs. Very silly and Will Arnett and Amy Poehler make great villains. Definitely up there with the likes of Dodgeball.
  • Bridesmaids: About 50% funny, 50% laughter-free. Some very funny moments, and good to see Melissa McCarthy of Mike & Molly getting a decent role for a change, but could have been a lot better. And some very weird casting going on – Chris O’Dowd of The IT Crowd as a love interest and Matt Lucas as Kristen Wiig’s flatmate? Weird. But Jon Hamm was great. Strange how he only plays non-Don Draper roles when he’s not doing Mad Men, rather than sticking to the “handsome manly man” roles.
  • Where The Wild Things Are: Absolutely not what I was expecting. A quite harrowing tale of childhood in which the sub-text is virtually text, but all done through giant beasts. Typical Spike Jonze, but it’ll leave you drained by the end.

But what have you been watching?

“What have you been watching 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 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?

US TV

Review: Wilfred 1×1-1×2

1 July 2011 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Wilfred on FX

In the US: Thursdays, 10pm, FX
In the UK: Acquired by BBC3

Odds on, when you see a dog and it barks at you, you see something like this:

So spare a thought for poor Elijah Wood’s character in FX’s new show, Wilfred. When he sees his next door neighbour’s dog, Wilfred, he sees this:

Yes, a slightly menacing, crude, dope-smoking, Australian man in an unconvincing dog suit. Is it because he’s mad, because he tried to overdose on drugs or because he has an over-active imagination? Who knows, but Wilfred is about to become his new best friend – and help him to get to know his neighbour a whole lot better. At least, that’s what he thinks.

Here’s a trailer, followed by the original Australian short movie (and subsequent TV show) this is based on.

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Third-episode verdict: Falling Skies

1 July 2011 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

In the US: Sundays, 10/9c, TNT
In Canada: Wednesdays, 10pm, Superchannel. Starts July 6
In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, FX. Starts July 5

Well, we’re three episodes into Falling Skies and… it’s as dull as it always. It’s like Stargate Universe and Battlestar Galactica never happened. I’m getting a déjà vu to early Stargate SG-1 in fact, in which our plucky band of four heroes faced off against entire armies that seemed unaware of even basic military tactics and never did anything too mean, so got hopelessly slaughtered.

Here we have the intrepid Noah Wylie constantly going to find his kidnapped son whom those nasty aliens who’ve taken over the world have abducted. Off he goes against their heavily armed robots with a couple of his mates and despite his weapons never being any good, he constantly manages to kill them all. How sweet.

Meanwhile, back at base camp, a notorious criminal and rapist is being allowed to cook food for everyone, including one of his victims, because he knows about paprika and has read a book so has therefore redeemed himself. And everyone’s wondering what the hell the aliens are actually up to. Prepare to wait at least 10 episodes to find out, because there are no signs of any actual information emerging any time soon and the mystery itself is so uninteresting, so untantalising, that there’s no reason you’d want to hang around to find the answer anyway.

So don’t bother watching this last hurrah for the noble white male middle class action hero, where women are there to get captured and be doctors, but not do anything too exciting or heroic. There’s not much point unless you miss The Tripods.

Carusometer rating: 4
Rob’s prediction: With ratings dropping by a third from the initial episode, I’m thinking it’ll last a season at most.

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Weird old title sequences: The Wild Wild West (1965-69), The Man From UNCLE (1964-68), I, Spy (1965-68), Get Smart (1965-69)

30 June 2011 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Normally for “Weird old title sequences” I like to confine myself to one show at a time. Had I remembered the show I was going to do this week, I’d be doing that right now. But I can’t and I forgot to write it down, even though I’m always forgetting things, so instead, I’m going to do a brief whistlestop tour through a whole host of title sequences for 60s spy shows which are gone, but thankfully not forgotten.

Here’s a tribute video for the shows I’m going to feature – The Wild Wild West, The Man From UNCLE, I, Spy, and Get Smart – but there are tributes to shows I’ve already covered, including The Avengers, The Champions, Honey West and Mission: Impossible as well, which should show you just how popular spy shows were in the 60s (and that’s barely scratching the surface).

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