TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: Happy Endings 1×1

15 April 2011 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Happy Endings

In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, ABC

Remember Friends, kind of around the later seasons? You know when everyone was 30-something, Ross and Rachel had already got together and broken up, Chandler and Monica were married, and Joey and Phoebe just sort of hung around a lot?

Now imagine the exact same set-up, just a bit more diverse, a bit more cutting edge, with one-liners that didn’t entirely rely on insulting one another and with a bit of actual pathos and real characterisation rather than everything going by the numbers.

Because finally, after attempts at funny, mid-season rom-sitcoms from Fox, CBS and NBC, ABC has weighed in with a bittersweet affair that actually does make you laugh.

Plus it’s got Elisha Cuthbert in it as a woman who dumps her friend/boyfriend of 20 years at the altar, their mutual friends then having to decide whose side they’re on in the break-up. Here’s a trailer, which pretty much covers every single thing of importance in the first episode:

Continue reading “Review: Happy Endings 1×1”

What have you been watching this week (w/e April 15)?

15 April 2011 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

My usual recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure this week: Archer, Community, The Daily Show, House, Modern Family, Stargate Universe and 30 Rock. 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.

Separate reviews of this week’s episodes of Spiral/Engrenages are over here, but this is what else I’ve been watching this week:

  • Being Human (US) – an interesting way to end a series that actually became a lot more interesting over the course of the season than its first couple of episodes would have suggested. Once it found its feet, starting picking and choosing from the UK original and then twisting it to its own ends while sticking to the same template, it actually became better than the original in a lot (but not all) ways. It was actually able to take things that had been squished into a single episode and let them breath over a couple of episodes. To avoid Internet spoilers, the finale really wasn’t what you might have expected if you’d seen the original – and actually used expectations of what happened in the original to mislead you. So looking forward to the next season now!
  • Breaking In: Cleverer than the first episode and Alyssa Milano was rather a good guest star. But not really very funny at all and I don’t really care about any of the characters.
  • Chaos: after an acceptable start, episode two was actually rather dull, despite some quite nice spy stuff. James Murray’s toned down his Scottish accent a lot – and now is starting to sound English a lot more. Not awful, but not worth tuning in for. Disappointing.
  • Chuck was quite fun, but Chuck’s just a dull character now, Sarah still really hasn’t got a character and what’s happened to Linda Hamilton? The family Volkoff are the only things to look forward to on this show now.
  • Endgame was really quite excellent, bar a slightly disappointing ending, so it’s going to be promoted to the “you should watch” bit at the bottom
  • Happy Endings: Coming to a separate review near you, soon!

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 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?

Friday’s gleeful poaching news

15 April 2011 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film

Radio

British TV

US TV

French TV

Review: Engrenages (Spiral) 3×3-3×4

11 April 2011 Natalia Romanova 9 Comments

In France: Some time last Summer
In the UK: Saturday 9th April, 9pm, BBC4. iPlayer: Episode 3, Episode 4

Well, the people have spoken and as many as three of you want me to do episodic reviews of Spiral aka Engrenages aka “the good French TV programme… that BBC4 keeps showing but no one watches”.

So let’s give it a go. No doubt my reward will come in Elysium rather than in this life.

Anyway, season three of Spiral looks like it’s going to be a little bit different from previous years. As I mentioned last week, usually each episode of Spiral has an A-plot and a B-plot that randomly taps into some random injustice of the French legal system. This year, however, both a-plot and b-plots seem to be focused on just a couple of questions.

The first: will the current reforms planned to the French justice system produce a better system?

The second: it’s all very well wanting police to be “over-zealous” in a Life on Mars stylee, but what happens if our ‘heroes’, rather than being the good guys who know the truth but are impended by a system that values the rights of criminals over their victims, are in fact over-zealous because they’re incompetent, in-fighting screw-ups? What happens if they start bribing prostitutes with coke, threatening other car drivers with pistols because they’re having nervous breakdowns – or they end up torturing and framing the wrong guy because they think they’re right?

Here’s a poor-quality trailer in French for episodes three and four.

Continue reading “Review: Engrenages (Spiral) 3×3-3×4”

UK TV

What have you been watching this week (w/e April 8)?

8 April 2011 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Channel 4's Campus

My usual recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure are: Archer, Being Human (US), The Daily Show and Stargate Universe. 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.

I’ve done quite a lot of reviewing of first-run shows this week – here’s a list, so you have my in-depth feelings on those:

Endgame was quite fun this week, although massively, massively implausible (spoiler: the girl died of an allergic reaction to the bee pollen in her honey ice cream), and if it carries on at this rate, I’ll be adding it to my list of regular recommendations very soon.

I tried Channel 4’s Campus – if you’re a student and therefore too young to have seen actual comedy before, you might have thought this was good; for everyone else, it would have been less enjoyable than self-vivisection. A couple of amusing moments, but largely it seemed impressed by its ability to SAY THE UNTHINKABLE. Unthinkable, that is, if you’re the kind of person who regards swearing and shirking at work as being crimes that should carry the death penalty. Otherwise, very tame.

However, I’ve still to get through BBC1’s Candy Cabs, Comedy Central’s Workaholics and BBC2’s The Crimson Petal and the White – I’ll get through them in due course, but does anyone have good or bad things to say about any of them in the interim?

"What have you been watching this week?" is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV 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?