TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: Cupid 1×1

6 April 2009 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Sarah Paulson and Bobby Canavale in Cupid

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

I’m getting an eerie sense of déjà vu here. ABC’s newest ‘romantic dramedy’ (yes, that is a genre, apparently), Cupid, is about a man who claims to be the Roman god of love, Cupid, sent to Earth by the other gods to give 100 couples true love before he can return. Sounds kind of original, doesn’t it?

I’ll tell you why I’m getting déjà vu. For one thing, not more than half a year ago, The CW was running Valentine in which Eros/Cupid along with Aphrodite and a bunch of the other Greek gods were out and about trying to bring people together in true love to avoid their own extinction. Okay, that died a death on the grounds of scheduling, not being very good, Jaime Murray, etc, but Cupid really isn’t that different.

But the other big déjà vu score comes from the fact this is a remake. There’s already been a Cupid – a mere 10 years ago – on the same network, with the same writer and the same scripts, just a different cast.

You’ve got to love it, haven’t you?

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US TV

Season finale: Life on Mars (US)

3 April 2009 Rob Buckley 11 Comments

Life On Mars US finale

First there was the shock and outrage. How dare the Yanks remake the beloved British crime show Life on Mars? How could it ever be as good?

Then there was the trailer for the US pilot, which provided the answer: “It couldn’t.”

Then there was the pilot, which provided another answer: “It really, really couldn’t.”

Then there was the near complete recasting, shift in location to New York and new plots, which provided yet another pilot and a new answer: “Oh, it’s not too bad, actually.”

Anywat, after jessying it about in the schedules, doing minimal marketing and forgetting to let newcomers know what had been going on in previous episodes, ABC cancelled it, but gave the new producers the chance to wrap it all up.

Given they didn’t want to use the BBC version’s ending, so fans wouldn’t be able to look it up in advance on the Internet, they decided to give us a brand new one instead. So during the final episode, which aired on Wednesday, we found out just why US Sam Tyler had travelled back in time – and this time, it wasn’t because he was in a coma.

I’ll give them something – I wasn’t expecting what they came up with. Big spoilers ahoy.

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Today's Joanna Page

Today’s Joanna Page: Ready When You Are Mr McGill

26 March 2009 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Today’s Joanna Page is Ready When You Are Mr McGill, a 2003 remake of Jack Rosenthal’s famous 1976 play.

Rosenthal is best known for creating London’s Burning and for writing the first ever episode of Coronation Street as well as famous plays such as Play For Today‘s Bar Mitzvah Boy and P’Tang, Yang, Kipperbang. In Ready When You Are Mr McGill, he turned his attention to television.

The original play, made for Granada, focused on the filming of a single scene of a TV show, in which just about everything can go wrong, does go wrong, and Mr McGill, one of the extras, does everything he can to help out and deliver his all-important line before the end of the day.

ITV, back in 2002/3 when it had a little bit of cash and was using big names to draw in the crowds, decided to remake the play as a one and a half hour movie. Starring Tom Courtenay as Joe McGill, Bill Nighy as the egotistical director, Amanda Holden as herself and Phil Davis as the cameraman, it also featured comedy luminaries including Tamsin Greig, Sally Phillips, Sam Kelly, Stephen Moore and Stephen Mangan.

It more or less followed the original play’s plot, but was updated to cope with modern television politics and production – and changing it to the filming of a cop show instead of a spy show. But to pad it out for an extra half hour runtime, there’s an additional sub-plot about Babs Carter, an actress who’s a bit worried about her nude scene and who does everything she can to get out of it. Playing Babs Carter: Joanna Page.

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