TV reviews

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

US TV

Preview: Jericho 2×1-2×3

21 January 2008 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Jericho 2x1

In the US: Tuesdays, 10pm ET/PT, CBS. Returns February 12th

In the UK: Hallmark, etc, when the time is right

Cast your mind back a while. Jericho was, for a while, one of the big hits of Fall 2006. An odd mix of right-wing lunacy and left-wing lunacy, it asked what would happen if nuclear bombs went off in almost every city in the US. Soap opera for survivalists, it turned out, with our noble survivors planning farming patterns, how to avoid nuclear fallout and how to shoot at anyone from a neighbouring town who moved – while deciding whether to leave their wives for the pregnant mistresses. All this was married with the tale of a cool black undercover CIA guy who knew that wacky people who thought the US should have attacked the USSR in 1962 were behind the bombs.

As I said – you get lunacy from both ends of the political spectrum in Jericho. But it was more entertaining than it sounds. Honest.

Then oops. After running non-stop all Fall, after the Christmas break, ratings fell off because everyone forgot it was on, and the show got cancelled at the end of the first season.

But you know what? If you send truckloads of peanuts to CBS TV executives, it turns out that they’ll revive a show – for seven episodes at least. And in the vacuum left by the writers’ strike, maybe it could get those stellar ratings back again when it airs next month.

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UK TV

Review: Primeval 2×2

21 January 2008 Rob Buckley 13 Comments

Primeval 2x2

In the UK: Saturday 19th January, ITV, 9pm
In the US: Not yet acquired

Warning, warning! Anomalies are being detected. Holes are forming in the space-time continuum that are allowing TV shows from the past to travel into a present-day TV show called Primeval. Extras from Capital City have been spotted milling around and hamming things up in really bad business suits. An old camel jacket from Only Fools and Horses has been spotted on Dougie Henshall.

Even more terrifying, anomalies from even further back than the 80s have allowed Illya Kuryachin’s haircut to materialise on Henshall’s head as though it had been left uncut since 1965, while his on-screen wife, Helen Cutter, has had a costume and cleavage transferred to her from the iron age and Xena: Warrior Princess.

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Review: Torchwood 2×1 – Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang

17 January 2008 Rob Buckley 24 Comments

Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang

In the UK: Wednesday 16th January, BBC2, 9pm
In the US: Saturday 26th January, BBC America, 9pm ET/PT

There is a movement that suggests that Murray Gold, erstwhile rubbish composer of the incidental music for Doctor Who, did his best work with the Torchwood theme: it’s spooky, dynamic and mercifully brief. I’m not going to argue with that.

However, it became abundantly clear during series one of the Doctor Who spin-off that is was massively inappropriate. In fact, to my mind, there is an existing tune that matched up completely with the tone and feel of most of that series: the classic football chant, “You’re sh*t and you know you are”, which also has the good fortune to be sung to the Village People’s “Go West”.

Which was a shame really, since the opening episode of the first series was quite promising, as were some of the later episodes by people who weren’t called Chris Chibnall.

Series two started last night. Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang*, written by show-runner – oh no, surely not – Chris Chibnall, was quite a revelation. It turns out that a man formerly associated with awful plots, terrifyingly bad dialogue and characterisation that makes you wonder if he’s only ever spoken with online chatbots before now is actually capable of writing something halfway decent and that doesn’t make you feel like your eyeballs and eardrums are being sandpapered. Will wonders never cease?

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Review: Primeval 2×1

14 January 2008 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Primeval

In the UK: Saturdays, ITV, 9pm

In the US: Not yet acquired

So here we are at the beginning of the episode-by-episode review of the second season of Primeval. Well, fingers crossed, assuming they prove at all popular that is. Let’s see how it works out, hey?

The great thing about time travel is that you can reboot your whole series if you don’t like it. Don’t like the fact the Chinese guy was dead or the guy off Baywatch is getting too much screen time? Hey presto, use the mighty power of the Witchblade and your entire second season can retread the same territory as the first but with a completely different set-up that you like a whole lot better.

And so goes Primeval. Got a bigger budget but don’t want to explain why you’ve had to change your HQ to a great big sci-fi base? Think your hero’s love interest is a bit wet and pathetic? Think that the young guy is a bit of a twat? Hey presto, through the mighty power of the “anomalies” (which is actually an anagram of “script writers”. In Croatian. Honest), you can change everything in a couple of minutes in between seasons and everyone will just accept it. Or maybe they won’t. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so radical, huh? Let’s keep the young guy as a complete twat.

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Review: Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach

11 January 2008 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Moving Wallpaper

In the UK: Thursdays, 9pm, ITV1 (next episodes are tonight though)
In the US: Not yet acquired

Well, to quote the Absolutely crew, when it comes to radical television, you can’t get more radical than this. Ex-EastEnders supremo Tony Jordan wanted to write a comedy/drama about life behind the scenes of a soap opera. No one liked the idea until he had the brainwave of creating a new soap opera to go with it.

So now we have Moving Wallpaper, a half-hour comedy show about the making of a soap opera called Echo Beach. After Moving Wallpaper finishes, on comes Echo Beach for real. It’s all so post-modern and clever, isn’t it?

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