TV reviews

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

UK TV

Review: Massive 1×1-1×2

16 September 2008 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the UK: Sundays, 9pm, BBC3

Everyone working class in sitcoms has a dream. If you’re Del Boy and Rodney, it’s that this time next year, you’ll be millionaires. If you’re Steptoe Jr, it’s that you’ll escape the junk yard and your dad; if you’re Steptoe Sr, it’s that your son will never escape the junk yard. If you’re in the Royle family, it’s that your view of the tele won’t get blocked. And so on.

Massive is another sitcom in which its heroes have dreams, but here, the dream is a very Mancunian one: Danny and Shay want their own record label. When Danny’s nan dies, leaving them £10,000, it looks like they might be able to achieve it. But the course of true business never did run smooth.

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UK TV

Review: Tess of the D’Urbervilles 1×1

15 September 2008 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

In the UK: Sundays, 9pm, BBC1

Good old BBC. Always going off and finding some classic to lavishly adapt for a Sunday evening’s viewing. Here we have Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy’s slightly weird but eternally relevant look at the double standards relating to sexuality that British society has had almost since the dawn of time.

Now the Beeb normally goes in one of two ways with its period stuff. Either it goes all silly, gets an all-star cast and turns everything into an unrelenting series of cameos and over-the-top performances. Or it puts on its serious hat and decides to go full tilt for ‘quality mode’, hoping that it’ll get a backpack full of BAFTAs to take home from the next awards ceremony.

Fortunately, the Beeb has gone for option two with Tess, producing something that’s not 100% true to the book and that’s got more than a few idiosyncrasies of its own, but which is ultimately worth watching – so far, anyway.

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US TV

Review: Privileged 1×1

12 September 2008 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Privileged

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

Payback, as they say, is a bitch. Or a geek girl.

Last year’s “as near as The CW can get to a hit” drama was the rather lovely Gossip Girl, which followed the trials and tribulations of very rich girls (and boys) in an Upper East Side New York private school. With nothing much else doing well in the ratings other than the usual suspects (America’s Next Top Model, Smallville, Supernatural), The CW’s bosses cast their nets wide for something in the same mould.

90210 was the first obvious, easy-to-build clone and had built-in nostalgia value to lift its viewing figures into the (relative) stratosphere. But given the exciting world of literature was the source of Gossip Girl, The CW also turned its attentions towards the book How To Teach Filthy Rich Girls to make sure it wasn’t putting all its money on one horse.

Adapted as Privileged, it’s a somewhat different show than either Gossip Girl or 90210. While those two shows look at the hardship of life as a rich teenager, Privileged is for those who never were in the popular cliques. It’s for geek girls who love their books but wished they could be in those cliques.

Revenge will be theirs – complete with Spiderman quotes.

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US TV

Review: Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2×1

11 September 2008 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

The Sarah Connor Chronicles

In the US: Mondays, 8/7c, Fox

In the UK: Virgin1 at some point

It’s back. Woo hoo? Not exactly. I’m almost getting tired of repeating myself* but by the looks of it, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, apart from having the most needlessly long, pretentious title of all TV shows, is pretty much the same as it was last season so that’s what I’m going to have to do.

All the same, there are enough new wrinkles in the set-up that it’s worth having a brief chat about the second season and whether it’s worth joining if you’ve not seen it before.

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US TV

Preview: Dexter 3×1

11 September 2008 Rob Buckley Post a comment

In the US: Showtime, Sundays, 9pm. Starts September 28
In the UK: Probably FX again, some time next summer

It can’t have escaped many people’s notice that the story-telling structure of intelligent – and unintelligent – American television has changed substantially over the last few years. As well as the impact of 24, which has made serialised television possible again, The Wire‘s use of Shakespearean rather than Aristotelian storytelling techniques has spread to other dramas, while premium cable channels and DVD box sets have made “slow burn” TV shows viable.

All of which makes reviewing just the first episode of a new series a pain in the arse – or ass – particularly with something like Dexter. One of the first shows to demonstrate there was life on cable outside of HBO, it’s now on its third season and continues to demonstrate that some TV shows can’t simply be judged on their first episodes, since all the goodies are in the evolving plot still to come.

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