A complete archive of The Medium is Not Enough’s reviews of TV programmes since 2005
In the US: Fridays, 10/9c, SciFi
In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, Sky One. Starts 19th January
It’s back! At last. Quibbles over whether this is the beginning of the fifth season or the continuation of the fourth season aside, it’s back and it’s bleaker and even more impressive than ever.
God bless Battlestar Galactica.
In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, ABC Family
In the UK: Trouble, BBC2, Living in that order, at some point this year and next
Since Kyle XY first started, it’s gone through something of a mutation. At first a sci-fi mystery series – Who is Kyle and why doesn’t he have a belly button? – along the lines of John Doe crossed with Dawson’s Creek, it slowly became something of a Roswell – teen angst set against a backdrop of weird sci-fi-ness. Revealed as a cloning experiment designed to unleash the full potential of the human mind and body, Kyle has slowly accumulated more – and occasionally better – superpowers than Peter Petrelli. However, much of the mystery has disappeared, replaced by the thrills of conspiracies and shadowy organisations.
When we left Kyle at the end of last season, his girlfriend had been abducted by one of the aforementioned shadowy organisations; Jessi XX, his slightly demented, equally super-powered friend, was just about to run out of town with clone mum Ali Sheedy; and everyone else was worrying about whether to shag their partners after the prom or not. So far, so complicated.
With the return of the show for its third season, it looks like Heroes is going to have a run for its money this year.
In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, Fox
In the UK: Mondays, 9pm, Sky One
Sometimes a year off can be a boon. Like a gap year or backpacking round Europe, it can give you new perspectives and distance on things you used to take for granted.
24‘s been stuck on the TGV of TV for over a year now, its last season cancelled by the writers’ strike, with only an anaemic and turgid TV movie to keep us going since then. But as this four-episode, two-night intro to the new season shows, it’s come back a whole lot more vigorous than when it left and it’s brought a bunch of old friends with it.
In the UK: Saturdays, 12.45pm, BBC2
Once the Beeb gets an idea into its head, it’s very hard to shift it. Case in point: ever since Canterbury Tales, it’s been impossible for the Beeb to dramatise any pre-17th Century piece of literature as anything other than a modernisation, with characters in equivalent 21st century roles rather than in the roles as written.
We’ve seen it have a go at Shakespeare, the Brothers Grim’s fairy tales* and now Ridley Scott’s production company is trying to introduce modern youth to classic Greek myths in handy five-minute nuggets. Suffice it to say, although Myths is fun, a little is lost in the translation…
In the US: Wednesdays, 9/8c, Fox. Starts January 21st 2009
It’s rare to come away from a show with almost no opinion about it. Normally, you might come away loving it or hating it. You might even just like it a little or just decide it’s not very good.
But to come away with almost no feelings about it whatsoever? That’s not a good sign is it?
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