TV reviews

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

The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 2

Third-episode verdict: Trust Me

12 February 2009 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Time, I think, for a third-episode verdict on TNT’s advertising dramedy, Trust Me, what with there having been three episodes of it now. Coincidence? I think not.

You have to give it something – it’s been consistent. However, it’s consistently been a mess. Not a bad mess, just a mess. 

It has two basic problems: it’s playing it for the very long haul and it doesn’t have quite the right focus. As I mentioned when I reviewed the first episode, we have three central characters: Eric McCormack as the stressed group director/art editor; Tom Cavanagh as his writing parter; and Monica Potter as the award-winning writer the company hire to add to the team. 

Now, the trouble is, for the last three episodes, McCormack’s been a rubbish, not desperately charismatic boss and Cavanagh has been a far more entertaining (although not very entertaining) sidekick. If they’d switched jobs, the show could have been quite interesting – indeed, when Cavanagh briefly takes charge of a dinner event in the third episode, the show instantly becomes more involving. But as it stands, it all feels quite tame, like the school monitor’s turned up and no one’s allowed to run in the corridors any more.

Even worse, Monica Potter’s character has been treated awfully. In fact, the bulk of her storyline has been about how badly she – the only woman on the team – has been treated by McCormack’s inept leadership. No office, forced to work on the one account she said she didn’t want to work on, no partner to work with, ostracised: sorry, but a not very wacky boys club with not much apparent talent dumping over the obviously talented woman is only excusable when depicted 50 years ago in Mad Men.

As it is, I have zero interest and sympathy for the supposed two main characters and something edging towards loathing for them. Again, if it had been Cavanagh and Potter or even McCormack and Potter as the embedded team, with one of the others turning up as the new hire, that might have been more interesting than what we’ve got right now.

But, as I said, the show is playing it for the long haul and there are signs that by episode 254 or something, the boys will have learned the error of their ways, Monica will treated nicely and might be partnered with one of the old hands, and all will be good. Whether the (small) audience for the show will wait that long remains to be seen.

There are some nice touches to the show, and it feels authentic to the ad industry in at least a few ways. But I can’t help but feel that real life is actually more interesting than TV for once and the show really needs to get its groove on quickly, despite long-range plot planning, if it’s to be worth watching – or if it plans on surviving.

Carusometer rating: 2
Predictions: Will get better before the end of the season if it’s allowed to, but will probably be cancelled before then

US TV

Review: Heroes 3×15 – Trust and Blood

11 February 2009 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Not a proper review as such, more like a question and a brief look-over: anyone actually want episode by episode reviews of Heroes, given it’s finally getting good again?

Given I don’t normally do e-by-e reviews of US shows, only the occasional Brit show (there’s only so much time in the week and let’s not commit to anything we can’t sustain), I thought there was an atypical lack of symmetry there that might need fixing. Besides, it’s about the only US show I’d want to review e-by-e, apart from 24, but my 24 reviews would just be me giggling insanely because each episode has more well executed action scenes in it than any other US show has per season (with the honourable exceptions of The Unit and Battlestar Galactica, of course).

Of course, if Heroes goes pants again, I might regret the offer, but I thought I’d put it out there – over to you.

As for this week’s episode, for a mini-review, join me after the jump.

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The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Lie To Me

5 February 2009 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Time for a third-episode verdict on Lie To Me, in which Tim Roth stares intently at people and acts like House Jr in his Bones office with his Bones team to find out if they’re lying.

After an extremely generic first episode, the series settled down a bit and almost found some character for the second episode, in which a soldier is accused of rape and Dr Roth decides to chat him up.

Unfortunately, it lost it again for the third episode, which not only had a dumb plot and dumber sub-plot that made it spectacularly easy to guess whodunnit, it had some of the worst acting yet seen on US TV – as lovely wife put it, "Is Tim Roth really expensive? Because they don’t appear to have any budget left and so they dragged some people in off the street for the rest of the cast."

Tim Roth remains as fantastic as always and his character does almost touch on being interesting at times. And the show does have some interesting ideas – what would it be like if you knew for sure whenever anyone, even your family, lied to you? And what if you had someone like that for a partner, a father or a boss?

But it’s been saddled with a truly atrocious format, designed purely to cash in on the familiarity of existing Fox shows. The vague hints at bad deeds in Roth’s past are so much tease and little pay off.

In fact, the only noteworthy bits are the science and the use of photographs of famous people demonstrating particular aspects of body language explained by Roth or his plot-explaining assistant.

Worth watching only for Roth – otherwise, steer clear of it.

Carusometer rating: 3
Predictions: Should die within a season, but then Bones should have done, too, so it’ll probably last forever

US TV

Preview: Eastbound & Down 1×1

3 February 2009 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Eastbound and Down

In the US: Sundays, 10.30pm, HBO. Starts February 15th

Forgive me if this review is a bit hazy, since I actually saw this last July and haven’t watched it since. Anyway, there’s this guy… erm.

Okay, start again.

If you caught Tropic Thunder in cinemas last year, you’ll have noticed two good things: Tom Cruise and Danny McBride. McBride played the explosives expert on the film, and now, since the Frat Pack does like to stick together, here he is starring in his own TV show produced by Will Ferrell.

Here he plays Kenny Powers, a former big league baseball pitcher who has returned to his home town to teach at High School after his career collapsed – mainly because he’s the most obnoxious, racist, sexist, homophobic, anything-phobic jock imaginable and got thrown out of every team he joined.

Whether you’ll enjoy Eastbound & Down is really down to whether you like two things: cringe comedy and abuse – albeit clever, well-observed abuse.

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US TV

Review: Heroes 3×14 (aka Volume 4×1)

3 February 2009 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

The Hunter in Heroes

In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, NBC
In the UK: “Simulcast”, which apparently means some time within the next month or so

So Heroes is back.

Woo.

Do I hear a hoo anyone?

No? Why’s that then? Ah, you got hacked off with it. Too many odd character flips and complicated storylines that made no sense? Sounds about right.

But wait. Sit up and pay attention at the back. This is an all new Heroes. A refreshed Heroes. A Heroes that’s going back to basics.

Promising a clean break with the overly complicated past storylines that estranged its audience (this being the third such clean break promised), Heroes is trying to recapture the glory days of season one with this, its fourth “volume”.

With Nathan gone bad after the last volume, his new plan as junior senator for New York is to cosy up to the US President (Michael Dorn – Worf off Star Trek) and make him go Guantánamo on his fellow super-powered friends, who are all just trying to live normal lives now.

And that means – in case you missed all the advertising – if the heroes are to survive, they’ve all got to work together. The question is does this all add up to new and improved Heroes or is it well and truly time to call it a day?

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