TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: The Ex List 1×1

6 October 2008 Rob Buckley 12 Comments

TheExList

In the US: Fridays, 9pm et/pt, CBS

What do women want? It’s a despairing thought asked by male TV executives all the time, in the hope of getting some female viewers for their networks. Sometimes they’ll look at the chick lit section of their local Barnes and Noble and go, “Oh. That’s what women want.” Other times, they’ll look at other female oriented TV programmes and copycommission appropriately.

Sometimes, though, they’ll look overseas, usually to Britain and sometimes to Canada. But for The Ex List, they looked even further afield: Israel.

The Ex-List‘s premise is dumbness in a glass: 33-year-old San Diego flower shop owner, Bella Bloom (seriously), takes her sister’s hen night party to a psychic and gets told she has a year to marry or she’ll die alone. After a series of other predictions come true, she becomes convinced the psychic is telling the truth. Thing is, she’s destined to marry someone she’s already dated, so she puts together a list of all her exes, and decides to try them out again, one at a time, to see which was really Mr Right.

So roll up, roll up for the oddball man vetting service.

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US TV

Review: Numb3rs 5×1

6 October 2008 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Numb3rs

In the US: Fridays, 10pm ET/PT, CBS
In the UK: Five, Five US, ITV1 and ITV3 in some sort of rota system, some time next year

Think CBS and if you know your US networks, you’ll probably think ‘procedural’ immediately afterwards. If it’s not existing stalwarts like the entire CSI stable, NCIS and The Unit filling the airwaves, we’ve The Eleventh Hour and The Mentalist this season as well.

Then there’s Numb3rs, which seems to exist simply to add yet another procedural to the CBS body count – and to win family programming prizes. A sub-exciting series in which the FBI seem incapable of solving even the basic crimes without recourse to a genius mathematician and his nerdy friends, it’s been lurking on Friday nights for years and has now reached season five.

And I’m still watching it. I have no idea why.

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US TV

Review: Dirty Sexy Money 2×1

3 October 2008 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Dirty Sexy Money

In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, ABC
In the UK: Channel 4, probably sometime in January if their acquisitions budget holds up

As we’ve found out already, the US writers’ strike has proved to be a boon creatively (if not ratingsly) for a host of shows. Heroes has come back refreshed, albeit daft as a brush as always; My Name is Earl is back on track, but still not desperately funny; and The Unit is vibrant and exciting again.

Other shows haven’t quite fared as well. Chuck‘s a little better, but is pretty much the same old, same old; while Life‘s intricate storyline is proving hard to get back into without sufficient incentive for the viewer.

Dirty Sexy Money is having similar issues. Last season, it was confused. It thought it was intelligent television and so needed to have a message – something like rich people aren’t to be envied since they’re messed up. But it never really could work out what its message was and got its head all confused, poor thing. The result was an extremely convoluted storyline of extreme silliness, involving bed-hopping, Catholic priests with illegitimate sons living in Brazil, politicians with transgender mistresses and murder.

Over the break, though, the writers have sat down, meditated, and decided they know what’s wrong. Screw intelligent TV, screw messages: let’s just have fun. And even more convoluted silly storylines.

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Canadian TV

Review: The Border 2×1

2 October 2008 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

The Border

In Canada: Mondays, 9pm, CBC

Not so long ago, there was a writers’ strike in the US. Faced with the unthinkable prospect of watching British television, I decided to have a look at some of the programmes available from other countries – in particular, Canada. CBC’s The Border was one such programme and to my incredible surprise, it turned out not just to be a good programme “by Canadian standards”* but a good programme, full stop.

Seemingly intended not just to demonstrate that Canadians easily have what it takes to make good TV but to show that they’re not all the liberals stereotypes would have us believe, The Border is a cross between Spooks and 24, right down to the shaky cam, with Canada’s heroic Immigration and Customs Service (ICS) defending the country against all kinds of threats – all of which seem to be American or Muslim.

Although by no means the best action-thriller series ever made, it was reasonably clever, albeit a touch low budget, and didn’t dumb itself down like Flashpoint did to attract an international audience. The inter-departmental conflict with Canada’s CSIS – the country’s equivalent of MI6 and the CIA – was interesting, even if it was cast in strictly black and white terms, with CSIS boss John Bennett (Forever Knight) almost twirling a moustache during every appearance. And the usual conclusions to stories were a touch, ahem, Canadian, with the villains either misunderstood or American.

But now it’s back after just six month’s absence – it was that popular – and changes are afoot.

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US TV

Review: Chuck 2×1

2 October 2008 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Chuck

In the US: Mondays, 8/7c, NBC
In the UK: Probably Virgin One again

Chuck was a show that had a lot of initial promise that it never quite managed to live up to. Chuck (Zachery Levi), a tech support guy for a consumer goods superstore, accidentally gets all the CIA’s and NSA’s intelligence data dumped into his brain and so gets thrown into the deep end of spy work. Assigned to protect him are the NSA’s John Casey (DanielAdam Baldwin), a Reagan-loving, gun-worshipping hard man; and the CIA’s Sarah Walker (Yvonne Stahovski), an aggressive-passive high-kicker whom Chuck would quite like to date (and vice versa) and not just for their cover story, if only it weren’t for the rules of the job.

Anyway, despite the fun premise of spies working undercover down at the local shops among all the IT slackers and fast food flippers, the show never really grabbed me. It was always close to being very good, but never quite made it. There wasn’t a whole lot of chemistry between Levi and Stahovski, both of whose characters are quite dull, despite all plot indications to the contrary, and I gave up after three episodes – only for my wife to start loving it on Virgin 1 and so I ended up watching the rest anyway.

So with a good few months to think about the show and how to fix it, have the producers managed to tinker enough with the format to make it more appealing?

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