TV reviews

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

The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: The Deep End

12 February 2010 Rob Buckley Post a comment

There’s almost no point doing this since the show’s so obviously doomed, but seeing as I’ve watched the first three episodes now, I might as well tell you what I thought about it.

After a pretty dismal first episode, which saw our team of newbie lawyers thrown in at "the deep end" of legal practice in an insane LA law firm run by Clancy Brown and Billy Zane, things actually started to improve. Although the second episode was no great shakes, the third episode was actually quite nice, as we saw the buddy romance between the Australian sex-mad lawyer who used to be on Neighbours and the the blonde female lawyer who actually had some charisma start to take off. It was sweet and amusing, took various turns, and didn’t quite turn out to be as obvious or as stupid as it looked like it was going to be.

The show’s weak point is the law cases themselves, and blonde lawyer’s fight against her dad in episode two alternated between interesting (she threatens to have him disbarred at one point) and cringeworthy (trying to get a witness to testify); ditto the sexual harassment suit in the third episode and the slightly offensive deportation suit, which featured Anna from Chuck pretending to be Chinese.

If it focused more on the relationships and ignored the law cases, this could have been a pretty good, light comedy-drama. There are a few too many dull and ppor leads in it to be truly good, but it has enough glimmers of talent and good writing in the later episodes to distinguish it from the pack.

Unfortunately, it’s pretty much dead, so it doesn’t matter. Hopefully, the decent parts of The Deep End will get jobs elsewhere.

Carusometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Only seven episodes made so far, not great ratings and the Hollywood Reporter giving this a 5% chance of survival. I’m saying it’s not long for this world

Classic TV

Lost Gems: Codename Icarus (1981)

12 February 2010 Rob Buckley 11 Comments

Codename Icarus

It’s been nearly four years since I wrote the original version of this for Off The Telly, but seeing as Off The Telly is busily playing the National Anthem and getting ready to turn the lights off, I thought I’d move it to its natural place – here, on Lost Gems. Besides, I can add video and pictures to it here.

For most of its history, children’s television has been childish. Shows with simplistic plots and large casts of children have long dominated the afternoon schedules, with dreary adaptations of classic novels the only real exceptions.

Yet during the 1970s, commissioners slowly began to experiment with more mature programming, bringing in adult themes in disguise through science-fiction and fantasy shows such as Ace of Wands, The Tomorrow People and Timeslip. Sapphire and Steel even went from being a show for children to a show for adults, through the simple exclusion of juvenile leads and child-friendly characters.

By the late ’70s and early ’80s, this pushing of boundaries meant it was possible to have a programme on children’s television that was firmly embedded in an adult genre, with mainly adult leads and adult dialogue, and for it still to be accepted as a children’s show.

Codename: Icarus, which aired on BBC1 in 1981, was the purest examples of this new breed of programme. It’s only available on DVD in America not in the UK, although you can watch it on YouTube (or below) if you want – it’s a Lost Gem. But I’m also going to be covering a few other shows along the way, including Knights of God, Dark Season, Chocky’s Children, the 90s remake of The Tomorrow People and Press Gang, complete with videos, so stick around.

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US TV

Review: Past Life 1×1

11 February 2010 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Past Life

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, Fox
In the UK: If Living doesn’t pant at it like a dog in a desert, I’ll be surprised

Underneath its logo, Fox should really have etched like a motto below a family crest, “Never knowingly avoiding a formula.” All the other networks have sitcoms – it has to have sitcoms, even though it’s very bad at them. Other networks had cop shows, medical shows, comic book shows: it had to have them, too.

Now, other networks have had for quite some time shows in which people, usually cops, investigate and solve old crimes and bring justice to bereaved families. There’s obviously Cold Case, but ABC moved in with The Forgotten in the fall, so Fox clearly had to get some of that action. Here’s its mid-season stab at the same idea.

Being Fox though, and although there are exceptions to the rule, it’s gone for something supremely rubbish and tasteless. In Past Life, ‘psychologist’ Kate McGinn with the aid of former police officer Price Whatley helps people who find themselves remembering past lives to discover who they used to be, and who murdered them.

Would it be obvious and cliché to say that this one is pretty much “dead on arrival”?

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The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 4
Spartacus: Blood and Sand
US TV

Third-episode verdict: Spartacus – Blood and Sand

10 February 2010 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

It’s hard to know what the makers of Spartacus: Blood and Sand think they’re doing. It could be the show is intended as a way:

  • to exploit the liberal regulatory regime on US cable television to push the boundaries of acceptable taste
  • to show us what a graphic novel, complete with rubbish dialogue and plotting, would be like if it were turned into a TV series
  • to replace traditional dialogue with nothing but swearing
  • to give Lucy Lawless some work
  • to give lots of bad New Zealand and Australian actors work
  • to educate and inform viewers who missed HBO’s Rome about what life was like in Roman times
  • to homage I, Claudius.

No matter, three episodes in, it’s time to decide whether to keep watching or not.

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The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Caprica

9 February 2010 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

So we’ve been hanging around for Caprica to turn up for ages now. I reviewed the pilot episode (an extended version of episode one with extra nudity and fun) back in April of last year, so this has had a lot of gestation time.

Yet, despite all that planning, this prequel to Battlestar Galactica is really quite desperately dull and uninvolving. Now, I do like the fact it’s trying to do some proper sci-fi: this has both ideas and real characters with real emotions.

But the characters are simply dull and uninspiring. I don’t care about them at all. The kids are all gits and terrorists who are going to end up causing an epic war; the adults are insipid and stupid. Despite the fact the apocalypse and destruction of humanity isn’t for more than 40 years, no one can tell a joke, go shopping or have fun – okay, everyone’s bereaved and/or a fundamentalist, but all the same, there should be a few people enjoying themselves during the heyday of the colonies, surely?

Minor niggles

  1. The Taurons have mysteriously become Greek – although they call their gods by their Roman names (despite BSG using the Greek names) and can’t work out whether they’re speaking Ancient Greek or Modern Greek (because Lord knows that’s not how you pronounce Αδελφός μου in Modern Greek yet shop signs are in Modern Greek). How did that happen? It’s no biggie, since it’s not as if Caprica, which is increasingly American in its vision of the home worlds, is depicting the home worlds identically to America. It’s just odd that they’re doing it right now, and messing up the gods’ names when they were so consistent before.
  2. Please stop Peter Wingfield from doing American accents. He’s a great actor with his own accent, so why does he keep trying to be American?
  3. The theme music is awful and reminds me of Friday The 13th: The Series way too much
  4. Why, if the 12 colonies are capable of interstellar flight, hyperspace jumps, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, are they still using wobbly VHS tapes to record things?
  5. After BSG steered so pleasing clear of technojargon, why, on the soap opera family version of it, are we suddenly being treated to reams and reams of the stuff?

I do admire certain aspects of the show: it’s doing some interesting riffs on the nature of soul, how we treat machines, etc. The switch between Zoe and the Cylon to demonstrate her soul is still there is creepily ghosty. It manages to depict a convincingly futuristic world on a small budget. The idea of having the monotheists as religious nuts who want to kill people and the polytheists as nice types who wouldn’t hurt flies is challenging.

But it’s just so boring and worthy. I know how the story ends already, so it’s the journey that counts, but I’d like my fellow travellers to be a little more interesting if I’m going to go on it.

PS Interesting to note a police reunion here, since Wingfield and Brian Markinson, who plays one of the ‘FBI’ types, were partners on Touching Evil.

Carusometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Probably will last a season, but I wouldn’t bet there’d be much more than that. The BSG factor might be enough to keep it going though.