TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: Heroes 3×1-3×2

23 September 2008 Rob Buckley 15 Comments

Heroes 3x1

In the US: Mondays, 9pm, NBC
In the UK: Mondays, 9pm, BBC2. Starts October 1st

Heroes was the show everyone loved during its first season. The one real breakout hit of that year’s new entries, it was an ensemble Unbreakable for the small screen: ordinary people suddenly find they have superpowers and have to work out what to do with them.

Then came its second season and then it wasn’t quite as loved as it was before. Apart from its crimes against Ireland and the disappointingly unsuper finale to the first season, the second season just plodded along like it was Lost or something. Bah. Where were the superfights and the superpowers? Why did we have to deal with all these rubbish new heroes when the old ones didn’t have enough screen time as it was?

Fortunately, along came the writers’ strike in the US and curtailed the second season, forcing it to speed up and giving the writers more time to think of a decent third season.

So now, it’s back, finally, after a hell of a wait. The writers have regrouped. Have they managed to fix their mistakes and return Heroes to the glory of the first season?

And more importantly, since it’s the only really important question in the whole of this introduction and perhaps even the world, is there any point to life any more or is Ali Larter definitely still in the cast list?

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US TV

Review: CSI: Miami 7×1

23 September 2008 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

CSI: Miami 7x1

In the US: Mondays, 10pm ET/PT, CBS
In the UK: Five, Five US, Living, Living+1, blah, blah, blah… Soon and then forever

Yes, it’s back again, even though it never seemed to have gone away. It’s CSI: Miami, the world’s favourite source of mind-blowingly stupid storylines, science-fiction masquerading as police procedures, and acting that needs a whole new thesaurus full of synonyms for ‘atrocious’ for it to be adequately described – and it’s back on our screens, ready to make us all go ‘WTF?’ again.

Aren’t you glad? It’s just so much fun, isn’t it?

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The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 2

Third-episode verdict: True Blood

23 September 2008 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Time for a third-episode verdict on HBO’s True Blood, which has already been picked up for a second series. Three episodes in and, thankfully, we’ve transcended the teen girl fantasy supernatural source material that characterised the first episode and moved on to more interesting, darker pastures. 

The show is now an interesting take on prejudice. Rather than a simple slating of intolerance, the show questions how tolerant the tolerant really are. Would you be so quick to defend vampires from stereotyping and violence if you knew they fed on babies, for instance?

The show still suffers from its virginal heroine’s tedious innocence – right down to dressing in white for every occasion – and the way Southeners are almost universally portrayed as stupid, intolerant and sex-crazed. Stephen Noyer’s brooding vampire Bill is so repressed he’s downright dull.

But it’s actually pretty creepy, can be quite humorous, is surprisingly sexually explicit and deals with some quite dark subject matter.

So The Medium is Not Enough has great pleasure in declaring True Blood a two or ‘Partial Caruso’ on The Carusometer quality scale.

PS If you want a longer, more in-depth review of True Blood, I’ll be looking at it in the October issue of Action Network magazine

US TV

Review: Supernatural 4×1

22 September 2008 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Supernatural

In the US: Thursdays, 9/8c, The CW

In the general wash of teenage oestrogen that is The CW, only Supernatural dares to up the testosterone levels with its mix of road movie, hard rock soundtrack, martial arts, grizzly murders, scantily clad hot women and casual misogyny. A tale of two brothers raised by their father to kill demons, werewolves and anything else that goes bump in the night, it’s survived three seasons so far and seems only to be getting stronger.

Last season ended with Dean, the less sensitive brother, finally put out of his earthly misery and cast into even more misery in Hell, assumed (by everyone except the audience) never to return. But now he’s back and the questions are how, why and what’s going to happen next?

And surprisingly for a show that’s often dwelt on gore as a substitute for genuine horror, the answers are actually pretty scary and cerebral.

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UK TV

Review: Merlin 1×1

22 September 2008 Rob Buckley 14 Comments



 

In the UK: Saturdays, BBC1, 7.30pm
In the US: NBC, some time in the 2008-9 season. Probably

Ever since the return of Doctor Who made Saturday evenings viable viewing slots again, the onus has been on broadcasters not to fill their schedules with rubbish. ITV1 has tried to compete using shows like Primeval as well as a 1,001 singing and dancing shows; the Beeb, since you can’t have Doctor Who all year round, has done likewise but also rolled an updating of Robin Hood into the mix, to not great success. 

Now here comes its latest effort: Merlin. You remember Merlin, don’t you? Son of a demon/dragon, lives his life backwards? Welsh wizard pal of King Arthur?

Ah. Apparently, most of that was wrong. Because we’re in for a good dose of ‘Welsh washing’ here for a slightly less whimsical version of Harry Potter.

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