TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: Suits 1×1

27 June 2011 Rob Buckley 33 Comments

Suits on USA

In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, USA Network

“Characters welcome.” That’s the USA Network’s ostensible motto. But it has a secret one, too – its true motto: “Fluffy characters welcome.”

White Collar? Fluffy. Psych? Fluffy. In Plain Sight, Fairly Legal, Covert Affairs, Royal Pains. Fluffy. Everyone’s essentially nice. Even Burn Notice has Michael’s mum and a lost innocent in need of help every week.

So it’s something of a relief and surprise to find that USA’s new lawyer drama, Suits – I know, I know, like we need another drama about lawyers – is only a little bit fluffy. Because pretty much everyone in Suits is a bastard. Or a thief.

In it, Mike Ross, a college drop-out finds himself in a drug-deal gone wrong. He runs into a job interview for a law firm that only hires Harvard graduates, but because the guy running it, Harvey Specter, is a total dick – and because Ross has a photographic memory that has already allowed him to pass the bar without going to law school – Specter hires him. All they have to do now is teach Ross the difference between the law you find in books and evil, amoral practical law, while keeping the fact that Ross isn’t a Harvard graduate from everyone else in the firm. Oh, and work out what to do with Ross’s briefcase full of drugs.

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Suits 1×1”

US TV

What have you been watching this week (w/e June 24)?

24 June 2011 Rob Buckley 11 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 and Come Dine With Me. 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.

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

  • Burn Notice: Oh my God. There’s actually a possibility the Burn Notice formula is going to change. Rather a good first episode, with the format for the series left up in the air at the end. But there are enough clues laid down by the end of the episode that, yes, it’s going to become exactly the same show again next episode.
  • Lead Balloon: Nope. Still not funny.
  • The Protector: Much as I love Ally Walker – Profiler, Universal Soldier, Southland – this is a very tedious bit of typical Lifetime drama: female-oriented therefore (apparently) rather than actually have a coherent crime story for police detective Walker to investigate, we spend most of the episode with Walker helping neighbours with their garden gnome thefts, her boss with his Thai bride, etc. Dire. And I actually think her black female partner qualifies as a race crime.
  • The Shadow Line: was of course completely ludicrous, right to the end. But we were expecting that. Beautifully made, acted, etc – just a shame that the story and the dialogue were so silly. But I’ll never look at Stephen Rea the same way again.

And in this week’s list of movies:

  • Green Lantern: a pretty rubbish first half-hour or so, but it finally kicks into gear after that and isn’t half bad (although ultimately, it’s still very silly, but that’s the source material for you). Blake Lively is woefully under-used (all character set-up for the sequel I suspect). Probably a little more fun but not as good as X-Men: First Class and not as fun or as good as Thor 3D.
  • Speed: Rewatched this for the first time in 27 or so years, which was kind of a coming home for me since it was the first film I ever reviewed professionally (Cambridge Film Festival Daily if you want to know). Still as ludicrous as it was the first time, when I described as the first film made specifically with stupid people in mind, but I have to say Keanu Reeves has actually got better as an actor since…
  • The Lake House: which is the film that reunited him and Sandra Bullock in 2006. Two people living in the same house but separated two years in time find they can send letters to one another using the postbox. Really rather lovely in a lot of ways although you have to disregard the obvious flaw: why don’t they use this miracle to win the lottery?
  • Watchmen: incredible to watch, but ultimately empty and I have to say that I think the new ending is better than the original’s. Some fun in-jokes and some surprising ultra-violence, too.

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?

Classic TV

Lost Gems: Pulaski (The TV Detective) (1987)/The World of Eddie Weary (1990)

23 June 2011 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Pulaski

Cast your mind back to the 80s if you will. In the realm of crime fiction, ITV had largely been known for its police series: The Gentle Touch, The Professionals, The Sweeney et al. You know, great big action-packed, gritty affairs. Over on the Beeb, crime fiction had largely been confined to more sedate detective shows, such as Shoestring, The Chinese Detective, Bergerac and the like.

Now over on ITV on Saturdays, between 1984 and 1986, is ratings juggernaut Dempsey & Makepeace, in which upper class, blonde English police detective Harriet Makepeace is assigned a new partner, the streetwise New York police lieutenant James Dempsey and together they fight all manner of criminals in an implausible, slightly silly series of adventures, while flirting a lot in way that veers dangerously close to sexual harassment in Dempsey’s case.

Now for some reason, the BBC thought it would be a cracking idea to take the piss out of ITV, while simultaneously launching a new private detective show. And to do this, they decided to hire Roy Clarke, best known as the writer of Last of the Summer Wine but also of the comedy police show Rosie. His cracking wheeze – and it was cracking – was “let’s go meta”.

So he dreamed up the idea of Pulaski (which in the US was known as Pulaski: The TV Detective). This saw the eponymous hero, ‘Pulaski’, an upright, brave former New York Catholic priest turned private detecitve, fighting crime in a series of ridiculous adventures with the help of his beautiful blonde, upper class English wife, ‘Briggsy’. And their adventures were ridiculous… because they were just a TV show inside this particular TV show. Once the director shouted cut, they were just actors again – a married couple now no longer really on speaking terms. And Larry Summers (David Andrews), the actor who plays Pulaski? A pampered, selfish movie star, forced to slum it in the UK – a complete dick and a drunk.

But this complete dick of a guy lets the role mess with his head. While he’s filming this show, he decides that he’s also going to help solve real crimes, just like the Pulaski he plays – his motto at all times effectively being ‘What Would Pulaski Do?’. And he’s going to drag his wife, Kate Smith (Caroline Langrishe), along for the ride.

Here’s the first few minutes of the first episode to give you an idea of what the show was like. There’ll be more later:

Continue reading “Lost Gems: Pulaski (The TV Detective) (1987)/The World of Eddie Weary (1990)”

Review: Falling Skies 1×1-1×2

21 June 2011 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

falling skies, steven spielberg, tnt, noah wyle, tnt, skitters, moon bloodgood, scifi shows, sci-fi shows, sci fi shows, aliens

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

There’s something about knowing that Steven Spielberg is the exec producer of a TV show that means you know pretty much exactly what you’re going to get. It started with Earth 2, in which a lot of very dull people, all by themselves, have to survive against the odds and face slightly scary aliens while looking after their wee little moppets, who are just ever so endearing. That was pretty much the template.

Now we have Falling Skies, in which 90% of the world’s population is killed by aliens, leaving a group of very dull people, including Noah Wylie in The Librarian mode, stuck in Boston, having to survive against the odds and face slightly scary aliens while looking after their wee little moppets, who are just so endearing.

Are there any differences, you might ask? Well, with the likes of Greg Beeman and Mark Verheiden on board, you’d suspect a hint of Heroes to the whole thing and you’d be right – out of a cast of about one hundred men, there are roughly three women, two of them blonde.

Here’s a trailer for Falling Skies, aka War of the Worlds meets Earth 2.

Continue reading “Review: Falling Skies 1×1-1×2”

US TV

What have you been watching this week (w/e June 10)?

10 June 2011 Rob Buckley 20 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: All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, The Apprentice, The Apprentice: You’ve Been Fired, Come Dine With Me, Endgame, The Shadow Line and Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. 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.

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

  • All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace: A bit of a damp squib of an ending. Essentially 55 minutes of interesting facts, beautifully constructed, finished with “And that’s why no one tries to change anything.” Feels like some working out was left off.
  • Lead Balloon: Still not loving it – by which I mean finding it even slightly funny – but Sophie Winkleman is in it now, so I might keep watching.
  • The Shadow Line: More ludicrous fight scenes. Are they doing it deliberately now? And MRI-ing the head of someone who has a bullet lodged in his brain? That’s not a good idea… And for a full 10 minutes it looked like we were going to have a strong, interesting female character. Oh well.
  • Undercover Boss: Bit dull really, and it wasn’t even the boss this week

Didn’t managed to get through Single Ladies, which should tell you something about that. Haven’t watched Teen Wolf or Switched At Birth either, although that’s more because I’m probably too old for them. In With The Flynns I’m going to give a go some time this weekend, though.

But queued up in my pile are Case Histories – two episodes aired this week, two more next week – and Injustice – five episodes aired this week. Guess where they’re probably going to stay and get deleted, because I haven’t got the time to watch that much TV in one go. Stupid scheduling. I miss “one episode a week” scheduling on British TV so much.

And in this week’s list of movies:

  • The Hangover 2: While The Hangover was actually very funny, seeing the exact same story played out again and with fewer jokes isn’t actually funny at all. Who knew?
  • In the Loop: weird to see the entire cast of The Thick of It playing almost exactly the same characters in exactly the same situations but with different names. Very funny and the American perspective was a refreshing addition. And Peter Capaldi was as sublime as always.

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?