TV reviews

I thought, at first, that I’d spoken too soon. After a dismal first episode that mined every previous vampire story going for any clichés it could find, Moonlight started to show signs of promise. There was some originality in its second and third episodes. The story developed, with the season-long arc you might have expected suddenly coming to fruition straight away. If you’ve been raised on a diet of Angel and Forever Knight, you’d have thought you’d have known what was coming – and you’d have been wrong.

But things started to drop off in the fourth and fifth episodes. While the fourth episode was still no slouch, it had more than trace amounts of stupidity flowing through its veins, as well as a rock video director to mess things up. And the fifth episode was just ridiculous. Not truly abysmal, but certainly full of blatant absurdities that make no sense to anyone who hasn’t been up all night listening to Marilyn Manson records.

The cast are pretty good, although Jason Dohring lacks presence and Shannyn Sossamon is thankfully not present most of the time. It has some niceish moments from time to time, and Mick St John is thankfully not as whiney a git as Angel and Nick Knight were. But it’s still a bit dull, a bit stupid and taking a hell of a lot of time getting to the point.

The Medium is Not Enough hereby declares Moonlight is a 4 or “Major Caruso” on The Carusometer quality scale. A Major Caruso corresponds to “a show that David Caruso might exec produce or star in after reading an Anne Rice novel in an airport waiting lounge. After declaring it the ‘best story ever writen by a woman’, he goes on to cast himself as an immortal Irish vampire with a comb-over. After discovering that he can no longer move fast enough to convince people he has ‘human speed’, let alone ‘vampire speed’, he tries to get into character by biting his own thumb. Discovering it hurts too much, he decides that his character will feed on blood through chocolate straws instead, ‘a major new innovation in vampire mythology’.”

After much delay, the Carusometer and I are ready to deliver our verdict on Bionic Woman. To say the show has been variable would be an understatement. The pilot episode was a full five on The Carusometer. NBC obviously took note and revamped it, resulting in a new first episode that was marginally better. A “dull as ditchwater” (sorry, Annie and Clarabel) second episode was no better, despite the arrival of Isaiah Washington in a somewhat pointless recurring role.

However, episode three seemed to be from another show altogether, with real humour and characterisation, as well as a weird drugs metaphor creeping through. Since then, the show has failed to recapture that third-episode magic, although it’s now hit some sort of stride.

Michelle Ryan is no longer second fiddle to Katee Sackoff and managed to show some charisma in episode five, albeit only when she was allowed to use an English accent. The show’s supposedly feminist subtext, which had the subtlety of the Three Stooges at first, is now quietly chugging away in the background and displaying some kind of nuance, which is nice. And episode five also showed us what the series might look like if super Jamie weren’t to spend all her time whinging and the show managed to find some plots that didn’t revolve around bionics.

All the same, it’s still not brilliant. Where there should be some sort of excitement, there’s just a gaping void. It’s not cringingly bad, it’s just not great.

So The Medium is Not Enough declares that Bionic Woman scores a three or “Minor Caruso” on The Carusometer. A Minor Caruso corresponds to “a show in which David Caurso might guest star as a bionic man. The show receives many plaudits at first, after Caruso’s somewhat robotic style of acting is deemed to be a perfect fit with the show. However, after being granted a five-episode arc, he is quickly written out after he demands his character be given a ‘bionic sense of right of wrong’.”

In retrospect, it was must have been pure masochism that led me to hold out for a fifth episode verdict on Back To You. Maybe it was Kelsey Grammer’s presence. Maybe the third episode caught me in a good mood. Whatever it was, it was a mistake, and now I’ve wasted 50 minutes more of my life.

This is awful. It is unoriginal, unfunny, over-acted, unlikeable rubbish. Do not watch it unless you like the idea of being placed in the village stocks and having rotten tomatoes thrown in your face – because that’s how enjoyable it is. Even the retro “filmed in front of a live studio audience” voiceover at the beginning à la Cheers cannot redeem it. If there’s any justice in the world, it would be cancelled right now, all surviving copies placed in a bin and then incinerated.

So The Medium Is Not Enough has great pleasure in declaring Back To You has scored a five or ‘Full Caruso’ on The Carusometer quality scale. A Full Caruso corresponds to “a show in which David Caruso might be responsible for every aspect of production, including starring, directing, producing and writing it. After casting himself as a veteran newscaster who snarls every story and can’t read the prompter because he’s wearing sunglasses, he’s forced first to bribe the audience to laugh at his frequent blonde jokes then to threaten to have them put in jail for ‘all the crimes they’ve no doubt committed’ if they don’t so much as giggle. However, when the show is aired in Eastern Europe and its frequent jokes about Albanians are translated, the country declares war on Caruso, forcing him to to change his identity and pretend to be an Alpaca breeder in Patagonia. The show is cancelled in his absence, and peace and goodwill once again return to the Earth.”