TV reviews

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

Dick Heads

Review: Chris Ryan’s Strike Back 1×1-1×2

7 May 2010 Rob Buckley 17 Comments

Chris Ryan's Strike Back

In the UK: Wednesdays, 9pm, Sky 1/Sky 1 HD

It’s easy to forget that while Armando Iannucci and co urge the BBC to set up its own subscription-only version of HBO in the UK, one company is already in the fledgling steps of doing just that: BSkyB. Sky have one mission in life and that’s to sell subscriptions and Sky boxes – in particular HD Sky boxes and HD subscriptions (an extra £10 a month). After years of assuming that buying lots of US TV was the way to attract subscribers – to diminishing returns – the last few years has seen a change of strategy: a concerted effort to create home-grown, quality drama, usually based on Terry Pratchett books, in an attempt to get the viewing public to hand over the cash.

Chris Ryan’s Strike Back is the latest part of this strategy. Starring everyone’s favourite Dick Head, Richard Armitage – the actor on everyone’s speed dial when they need to cast an SAS soldier – Strike Back sees Armitage’s down-and-out MI6 security guard (and former SAS soldier) go back to Iraq to recover a kidnapped reporter, who might be in the hands of the Iraqis he fought in his last mission. His MI6 handler: the army intelligence officer who accompanied him back then (Andrew Lincoln).

And you know what? Despite being on Sky 1, it’s actually very good.

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Classic TV

Weird old title sequences: Children of the Stones (1977)

7 May 2010 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Children of the Stones

Back in the 70s, kids TV was full of the weird and wonderful. Whether it was on ITV or BBC1/BBC2 (youngsters: we only had three channels back then), you could come home from school, turn on the TV and pretty much be guaranteed some mentalist of a commissioner had ordered up 25 minutes of LSD-fuelled lunacy that seven PhD students couldn’t decipher the plot of but which was sure-fire certain to scar you for the rest of your life.

We could go through the list without too much trouble for quite some time and still not be complete: The Tomorrow People, Ace of Wands, King of the Castle, Timeslip, Sky, Catweazle, The Feathered Serpent, Escape into Night, The Jensen Code, Raven, Into the Labyrinth, Michael Bentine’s Potty Time, Pipkins, Robert’s Robots, The Owl Service.

See what I mean? And I haven’t even started, really.

One of the most complicated, clever, “scare the sh*t out the kids”, yet hard-to-fathom shows was the seven-part serial Children of the Stones. This followed the adventures of astrophysicist Adam Brake (Gareth Thomas of Blakes 7) and his son Matthew after they arrive in the small village of Milbury, which is built in the middle of a megalithic stone circle. There they meet village squire and noted astronomer Hendrick (Iain Cuthbertson) and possibly the most well behaved bunch of kids in the world, almost all of whom are doing quite well in quantum mechanics at the village school.

As you do.

Yes, there is something rotten in the heart of this village Eden, and it’s not just the quantum mechanics. There are mysterious deaths, Matthew seems to have a psychic link with a mysterious painting, there’s the mysterious stone circle that somehow seems to prevent them leaving the village, there’s the mysterious housekeeper, there’s the mysterious personality changes of anyone who goes to dinner with Hendrick. You get the idea. It’s all very mysterious.

Cue the mysterious, weird and soul-chilling title sequence, followed by the first ten minutes of the first episode.

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UK TV

Review: Luther 1×1

6 May 2010 Rob Buckley 11 Comments

Luther

In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, BBC1/BBC HD

I know, I know. Reviewing a British TV programme that isn’t Doctor Who related. That’s odd for me, isn’t it?

But this one’s got Idris Elba in it! Woo hoo! He was in The Wire and Ultraviolet. Hopes, as they say, were raised, and I watched a British TV show.

All the same, my hopes weren’t that high as – and stop this if you’ve heard this one before – he plays a maverick policeman who doesn’t stick to the rules, has an unhappy personal life and whose bosses want him brought to book.

Suddenly, not quite so promising is it? Hell, let’s just call him Monkfish instead of Luther.

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US TV

Review: Gravity 1×1

29 April 2010 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Gravity on Starz

In the US : Thursdays/Fridays, 10pm/10.30pm/11.30pm, Starz/Starz Cinema/Starz Edge

And so Starz’s relentless quest to become the new “edgy but low-budget” channel continues. In the wake of Party Down, Crash, Spartacus: Blood and Sand comes Gravity, featuring the likes of Ving Rhames and Rachel Hunter.

Now, I have to admit, I had no idea what this was about before I decided to watch it, so for a good five to ten minutes, I was sitting there puzzled. Was this a supernatural show, in which a bunch of people die and come back as ghosts? A comedy? Some kind of hate crime against gay men?

If only I’d known the working title for the show was Suicide for Dummies.

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