TV reviews

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

US TV

Season finale: New Amsterdam

15 April 2008 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Some shows know when it’s their time to die and head off to the other side gracefully. New Amsterdam, which ironically told the story of an immortal Dutchman who was waiting for the one woman who could kill him, not only knew it was going to die, it knew it was doomed even before it aired, with only eight episodes ever shot.

Again, ironically for a show whose main message was that the candle that burns the dullest lasts the longest and that death has its place, it never really hit levels of greatness. Bar its intriguing central character, played by equally intriguing Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, none of the other characters were that interesting. The plots, while a cut above the standard crime fare, never really inspired and were usually solved by some bizarre skill (grifting, knot-tying) that our hero picked up during his 400 years.

All the same, it had a certain something. It was never quite what you expected – as the season finale showed.

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US TV

Review: Battlestar Galactica 4×1-4×2

14 April 2008 Rob Buckley Post a comment



In the US: Fridays, 10/9c, Sci-Fi
In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, Sky One. Starts 15th April

It’s easy to have a love-hate relationship with Battlestar Galactica. On the one hand, if you ever need to cite an example of well executed adult science-fiction, all you have to do is say "Battlestar Galactica" and you’re sorted. Space-faring humanity lives on 12 colony planets, fearing only the return of their own robotic creations, the cylons, who’ve been quiet for the 40 years since their war of independence. The robots come back – looking like humans and convinced they’re God’s new favourites, endowed with souls – and nuke the hell out of the colonies, leaving just a few tens of thousands of survivors who manage to escape, protected by the one surviving military vessel of note, Galactica. 

So far, so bleak. And indeed, much of the first season is unrelentingly bleak, as humanity tries to work out how to get food, water and other necessary supplies, all the while chased by the unresting, unrelenting legions of cylons trying to exterminate them once and for all as they try to find the missing 13th colony – Earth.

But if there’s one watchword that defines the series, it’s change. Everything changes. Relationships between people change. Characters die. New characters appear. The whole format changes, with another Battlestar appearing, the humans finding a new world to live on. and characters suddenly finding out that they are in fact cylons themselves.

And not all of these changes have been for the good. In particular, BSG began to suffer from "up its own arse" syndrome. Weighed down by its own mythos and intricacies, it stopped being an accessible metaphor for war and terrorism and became more than a little daft at times. When it was good, it was very, very good, but when it was bad, it was horrid.

So what’s season four – the final season, even though it’s been cut in half – going to be like?

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UK TV

Review: Doctor Who – 4×1 – Partners in Crime

5 April 2008 Rob Buckley 20 Comments

Three firsts for Doctor Who this year:

  1. I’m reviewing the first episode sober. No, you haven’t entered the Twilight Zone. It’s true, it’s real, and it’s happening right now.
  2. It was actually cute of all things. Sure, Big Finish has done cute but this is the first time I can think of that the TV series has done cute.
  3. Russell T Davies wrote the opening episode and I liked it.

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