TV reviews

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

The Bad Seed
Australian and New Zealand TV

Boxset Tuesday: The Bad Seed (season one) (New Zealand: TVNZ 1; UK: Alibi)

7 May 2019 Rob Buckley Post a comment

In New Zealand: Aired on TVNZ 1 in April
In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, Alibi. Starts May 14

On the whole, New Zealand doesn’t produce a lot of top-tier drama. Mostly, the schedules are filled with US and UK imports, plus some local entertainment shows, but original dramas are rare. Good dramas – and I do mean dramas, rather than comedy dramas such as Fresh Eggs and The Brokenwood Mysteries – are about as rare as unicorn droppings.

It’s unsurprising, therefore, that when an actual bona fide, home-grown decent drama shows up, New Zealand makes something of a song and a dance about it.

Dean O'Gorman and Matt Minto in TVNZ1's The Bad Seed
Dean O’Gorman and Matt Minto in TVNZ1’s The Bad Seed

The Bad Seed

The Bad Seed, based on two books by New Zealand novelist Charlotte Grimshaw, originally aired as an ‘event series’ over five nights on main channel TVNZ 1. Billed as ‘the birth of a new breed of New Zealand drama’, it’s certainly a bit different from its predecessors of the past five to 10 years or so in having an eye on both domestic and international distribution – the international language of TV being the crime drama. So dedicated to drama is it that Madeleine Sami (The Breaker Upperers) fails to make even one joke.

The show sees Matt Minto (The Blue Rose) and Dean O’Gorman (The Hobbit, The Almighty Johnsons, Trumbo, Westside) playing two brothers who are products of a broken home: dad seems to have done such crappy things to them that Minto’s getting sent to borstal was actually a welcome relief to him and who knows about what mum did.

However, Minto got his life together. He went to university and is now a doctor. He’s married to Jodie Hillock and has two teenage daughters. He’s caught the eye of would-be PM Xavier Horan (Westside) and his wife Chelsie Preston Crayford (The Code). He even lets his brother live in the guest house, in return for which he helps out with odd jobs and looks after Hillock and the daughters when necessary.

Unfortunately, Minto also has a bit of a wandering eye and is having an affair with Keporah Torrance for reasons even he finds a bit mystifying. Is he broken inside thanks to the years of abuse he suffered?

It’s a question that others start asking themselves when Minto is implicated in the murder of one of his patients and it’s discovered that he beat up a girl when he was 13. Is Minto a bad seed in the heart of his seemingly perfect family? Is there even a bad seed inside him? It’s something cops Sami and Vinnie Bennett hope to find out.

Full review after the jump, but a word of warning – I will have to reveal who the murderer is to discuss it properly, although the show itself does the same very quickly so I won’t be spoiling too much.

Continue reading “Boxset Tuesday: The Bad Seed (season one) (New Zealand: TVNZ 1; UK: Alibi)”
Cobra Kai - season 2
Streaming TV

Review: Cobra Kai – season two (YouTube)

3 May 2019 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Available on YouTube

The first season of Cobra Kai was far, far better than a modern-day sequel to classic 80s movie The Karate Kid had any right to be.

Set 30 years after Danny Lerusso (Ralph Macchio) defeated former school bully Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) in the All-Valley Karate Championships in California, Cobra Kai sees Zabka down on his luck, divorced, estranged from his son and unemployed. But when he uses karate one night to defend a put-upon kid (Xolo Maridueña), he’s soon finding a new calling in life and reopening the karate school that caused him so much pain as a kid – Cobra Kai. Could he put the mistakes of the past behind him and learn from his failures? And would the man who once defeated him be willing to forgive and forget?

One of TMINE’s Top 14 shows of 2018, the first season of Cobra Kai was a sort of American Flashman for the streaming age. It managed to be faithful to the original and its characters, referring back constantly in flashback to the most famous moments of the first movie and its sequels and embodying their philosophy and attitude to karate.

Yet at the same time, it was clearly a show that knew it would have two audiences. The first is the standard youthful YouTube viewer who only ever saw the movie on reruns, if at all, and would be less interested in Macchio and Zabka than their students and children, their relationships and rivalries, and their experiences as they followed the paths walked by their elders 30 years earlier. The second is a middle-aged audience who saw the movie when it first came out, have had children of their own, and know full well that life’s no simple parable of good and evil. Bullies become bullies for a reason and the oppressed can become oppressors, and heroes villains – and vice versa.

Jacob Bertrand, William Zabka and Xolo Maridueña in Cobra Kai
Jacob Bertrand, William Zabka and Xolo Maridueña in Cobra Kai

Cobra Kai – season two

Cobra Kai and Impulse were the first/only two incontestably good shows produced by YouTube’s premium ‘Red’ service – subsequently renamed YouTube Premium and soon to not be premium at all. It therefore wasn’t a big surprise when both was renewed for a second season. The question was whether a second season could be as good as the first.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m happy to report that Cobra Kai‘s second season is every bit as good as its first. Mild spoilers for both the first and second season after the jump. And in the trailer.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaXoQJx3jYs[/embedyt] Continue reading “Review: Cobra Kai – season two (YouTube)”
The Orville - The Road Not Taken
US TV

What have you been watching? Including Game of Thrones and The Orville

2 May 2019 Rob Buckley 11 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

Yes, it’s Thursday! After a temporary relocation to Tuesday, WHYBW is back on its God-ordained day thanks to last week’s viewing queue cull. Fingers crossed, that’ll allow me to start boxsetting again at the weekends. Fingers even more crossed, we won’t need to reschedule anything for a while.

Elizabeth Laidlaw and Noel Fisher in The Red Line
Elizabeth Laidlaw and Noel Fisher in The Red Line. Photo: Elizabeth Morris/CBS ©2018 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This week’s reviews

There’s been a trickle of new shows over the past week, although I’ve skipped the likes of Netflix’s Chambers, on the general grounds it sounded rubbish. But elsewhere, I’ve reviewed:

And this week’s Orange Wednesday took in Avengers: Endgame (2019) and Godzilla (1954)

Cobra Kai - season 2
William Zabka, Martin Kove and Ralph Macchio in season 2 of YouTube’s Cobra Kai

What’s coming this week

The observant will have noticed that I’ve been watching the second season of YouTube’s Cobra Kai. I’ll be reviewing all of that tomorrow.

I’ve also started watching TVNZ’s The Bad Seed and as that ain’t bad, I’ll hopefully be doing that as a boxset on Tuesday (it’s another Bank Holiday in the UK on Monday).

That makes Netflix’s Dead to Me unlikely to fit into the schedule when it starts on Friday, but I might do that later next week. The Spanish Princess starts on Starz (US) on Sunday, but I’ll be working to Lovely Wife’s schedule on that one, her being the Tudor/Philippa Gregory expert.

There’ll be other stuff, too, I’m sure, maybe even in countries other than the US. But I’m not sure what.

HBO (US)'s Game of Thrones
Apparently, there was a big fight this week in HBO (US)’s Game of Thrones

The regulars

After last week’s cull, we have a much more stable stable of regulars to talk about this week. However, as WHYBW has been pushed back a couple of days, some of them are on double-episode duty.

After the jump then, Doom Patrol, Game of Thrones, The Twilight Zone, Warrior, and What We Do In the Shadows – one of them is getting promoted to the recommended list. Can you guess which one? It was also the season (and possibly series) finale of The Orville, so I’ll be talking about that, too.

See you in a mo.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Game of Thrones and The Orville”
Noah Wyle and Aliyah Royale in The Red Line
US TV

Review: The Red Line 1×1 (US: CBS)

30 April 2019 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the US: Sundays, 8/7c, CBS
In the UK: Not yet acquired

Every so often, one of the major US networks decides to do something Important. I don’t know why – the shows always tank in the ratings, no matter how good they are, as has already happened with The Red Line – but they do. Maybe it’s to make a statement about the kind of network they are or want to be. Maybe it’s to suggest to viewers that they don’t need to take out a cable subscription to watch TV that has meaning beyond simple entertainment.

Whatever the reason, they do.

Following on from ABC’s remarkable American Crime, Fox was the last network to try to do something Important, with Shots Fired, in which a black cop shoots an unarmed white guy. Nearly a year later, we now have CBS’s The Red Line, which flips the scenario to something more familiar.

Elizabeth Laidlaw and Noel Fisher in The Red Line
Elizabeth Laidlaw and Noel Fisher in The Red Line. Photo: Elizabeth Morris/CBS ©2018 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Red Line

Created by playwright Caitlin Parrish and frequent collaborator Erica Weiss and produced by Wunderkinder Greg Berlanti and Ava DuVernay, The Red Line follows three separate groups of people following a fatal shooting by a white Chicago cop of an unarmed black man (Corey Reynolds).

The first group are Reynolds’ husband, Noah Wyle (ER, The Librarian, Falling Skies), and their adopted daughter Aliyah Royale; the second is the cop who shot Reynolds (Shameless US‘s Noel Fisher) and his co-workers; and the third is Royale’s real mother (Emayatzy Corinealdi) – a rising politician who gave Royale away when she was just a teenager – and her husband (The Musketeers‘ Howard Charles).

Six months after the shooting, Wyle and Royale are still trying to adjust to life without Reynolds and want justice from the system. Fisher, meanwhile, is devastated by the tragedy but thinks he did everything right. Corinedaldi, meanwhile, wants to change the system, particularly the training of police officers, and thinks she’s the person to do it.

Continue reading “Review: The Red Line 1×1 (US: CBS)”
Ramy
US TV

Review: Ramy 1×1 (US: Hulu)

25 April 2019 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the US: Available on Hulu
In the UK: Not yet acquired

When was the last time you saw a US TV programme with a Muslim lead in a show that explored what it was like to be a Muslim in modern America? Off the top of my head – and discounting shows with supporting characters who happened to be a bit Muslim but never really ever brought it up except to point out that they weren’t all terrorists, you know? – I’d say the last one was the much missed Aliens in America.

A mere 11 years later, we now have Ramy, written by and starring Egyptian-American Muslim stand-up Ramy Youssef. It, too, is a comedy, which suggests that there are certain things in the US that can still only be broached through comedy.

In it, Ramy plays a thinly veiled version of himself, Ramy Hassan, who still lives at home with parents and still hasn’t found the right woman – right for either them or him. He’s initially dating a Jewish woman, but since he’s moderately religious, he’s been covering up most of his less party-friendly restrictions to himself – something that doesn’t please her when she finds out (“You said the other day that you couldn’t drink any more because you were up to your limit!” “Well, I was. It’s just my limit is zero.”)

Suffice it to say, he’s soon spurred on by his friends, family and people he meets at the mosque into dating a Muslim girl for the first time. Except he soon discovers that comes with its own set of issues (“Do you want her to be covered or uncovered?” his mother asks, when he suggests she set him up with a date).

Continue reading “Review: Ramy 1×1 (US: Hulu)”