A complete archive of The Medium is Not Enough’s reviews of TV programmes since 2005
Last night, the NFT was running an evening dedicated to Roger Moore’s TV career. Starting with a double bill of TV shows that Moore directed and starred in, it was followed by an interview with the man himself, complete with eyebrow-raising and celebrity audience members.
Do you know, I really can’t think of an introduction to this story that won’t be a spoiler in some way to Americans and people who haven’t seen this episode? So instead of wobbling on for a bit out on the front page, I’m heading off for the protective enclosure of the jump.
Join me if you will.
In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, ABC
In the UK: I’m guessing the Beeb will buy it. What do you think?
This is the one we in Britain have all been waiting for. Despite running for only two series, time travel cop drama Life on Mars became something akin to the crown jewels – a national treasure to be revered by everyone. Even the awfulness of spin-off Ashes to Ashes couldn’t dull our love for it.
So when we heard that the US was going to adapt it, we all feared the worst and assumed terrible things were going to happen to our precious*. “Take your hands off our crown jewels, Yanks,” was the general reaction.
To be fair, once we saw the trailer and the pilot, we actually had a good reason to be dismayed. The trailer was truly awful and the pilot was bland. Relocated from Manchester to LA, the show ditched most of the characters, took away a lot of the fun bits without adding anything, and didn’t really have any style of its own.
And ABC agreed. It took one look and said, “Guys, do you want to try again? Because this is sh*t.” So the producers did try again. They changed production team, relocated the show to New York, brought back all the old characters and rewrote the script. Then they brought in heavyweight acting talent Harvey Keitel, Gretchen Mol and Michael Imperioli – and reshot the entire thing.
Wow. They say pilots can be unrepresentative of the series that follow, but that’s all pretty unprecedented – although unsurprising given just how few new dramas ABC is running with this Fall.
Has that been enough though?
In the US: Thursdays, 9pm ET/PT, CBS
In the UK: Five, Five US, Living, etc, ad infinitum
It seems that just about every time I review an episode of CSI, I make the following points:
And this time’s no different. We open, as we have in most previous years, with a big character-related episode. And my, isn’t it a tear-jerker?
In the US: Thursdays, 10pm ET/PT, CBS
Cast your minds back a bit. The Eleventh Hour was a really very bad ITV drama starring Patrick Stewart and Ashley Jensen, in which physicist Stewart worked for ‘The Government’ solving science-related crimes while bodyguard Jensen did her level worst to protect him. Derivative of just about everything from Doomwatch and Doctor Who to almost every US TV show ever made, it only lasted four episodes before being pulled.
So it was something of a mystery to me why Jerry Bruckheimer no less took a look at it and said to himself, “Yes, I’ll be having myself some of that.”
But, it can’t help be noticed that over the years, when the UK has done its level best to produce TV shows that look a lot like US shows but are simply awful, when the US remake them they’re a whole lot better. Look at Touching Evil. Mind-blowingly bad stuff in the UK, absolutely triffic in the US.
And thus it is with Eleventh Hour.
© 2022 The Medium is Not Enough
