TV reviews

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

US TV

Review: Babylon 5 – The Lost Tales: Voices in the Dark

30 July 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Babylon 5 - The Lost Tales

Available from Amazon.com

Once a time, Babylon 5 was the bee’s knees of sci-fi television. With a five-year arc full of surprises and effects entirely created using CGI for the first time, it was geared towards an adult audience from the outset. Even when Deep Space Nine upped its game, Babylon 5 still got the geek love.

Then things went wrong. Its five-year arc got compressed down to four years when it looked like the show wasn’t going to be renewed. Then the show got renewed and a fifth year had to be grafted on. That season wasn’t at all good and the love began to ebb away. The sequel show, Babylon 5: Crusade, got cancelled before the end of the first season and the follow-up pilot didn’t even get commissioned for a series.

Ten years on, it’s back as a straight-to-DVD movie, Voices in the Dark, which could be the first of many stories featuring the surviving members of the original cast. Can it recapture what it once had or has it finally had its day?

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US TV

Review: The Kill Point

30 July 2007 Rob Buckley Post a comment

The Kill Point

In the US: Spike TV, Sundays, 9pm

In the UK: Not yet acquired

Spike TV is very much the FHM of TV stations. Babes and violence are much its calling, with adolescent boys its audience. It’s tried to go up-market already, with the abysmal Blade: The Series. That didn’t work out at all well.

Now it’s trying again with a mini-series starring John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg. Leguizamo is an ex-soldier, who together with some of his former comrades in arms, decides to rob a bank. Wahlberg is the cop who has to deal with him when it goes wrong.

It’s pretty much a by-the-book police action-thriller, with plenty of shooting, although it has a reasonably taut script thanks to James DeMonaco, writer of The Negotiator. And Leguizamo is very much a character in the same vein as Robert de Niro’s Heat crim – all military efficiency and planning.

It’s Wahlberg’s character who’s the odd, convention-defying one. He’s a sub-editor gone mad. He’s a kick-ass kind of guy, fed up with people’s bad grammar and punctuation, and he isn’t going to take it any more.

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US TV

Review: Saving Grace 1×1

30 July 2007 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Saving Grace

In the US: Mondays, TNT, 10/9c

In the UK: Not yet acquired

I watch a lot of old tatt for you guys. I really do. Normally, I manage to sit through it all. Sometimes I can make it as far as five episodes into a piece of old rubbish before decreeing its awfulness, just to save you all from having to do the same.

The last time I couldn’t make it through an entire episode of something was Angela’s Eyes, almost exactly a year ago. I lasted less than a minute with that one.

I lasted 16 minutes of Saving Grace before I decided enough was enough and I couldn’t take any more. What was wrong with it?

It was offensive. It was really, really offensive.

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US TV

Preview: Cavemen

30 July 2007 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Cavemen

In the US: Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC. Starts 2nd October

In the UK: Not yet acquired

I’m in something of a quandary. Normally, I deploy The Carusometer after the third or fifth episode of a show has aired. But this pilot has now been shifted to fifth in the running order, with an all-new first episode being shot right now. So do I hand it over to The Carusometer now?

That probably wouldn’t be fair. Let’s wait.

Anyway, there is a supposed truism that comedy allows society to examine taboo issues in a safer environment. Cavemen, based on an advert of all things, is supposed to be a more comfortable look at racism and stereotypes by featuring white people pretending to be cavemen, in the stead of ethnic minorities.

Yes, a show about racism that – unless I blinked or something – didn’t feature a single ethnic minority actor. How’s that for irony?

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US TV

Preview: The Big Bang Theory

27 July 2007 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

The Big Bang Theory

In the US: Mondays, CBS. Starts September 24th

In the UK: Channel 4/E4. No air date yet

Newsflash! Guys who understand science are all nerds! They have no social skills and they have pathetic hobbies! They can’t talk to girls, either!

And blonde, cute women: they’re dumb! Dumb as posts! They’re into astrology and go for men with really big muscles and no personalities! They certainly don’t know anything about science or computers and look down on anyone that does! But they’re always warm and empathetic and never frightened by odd, stalker-like behaviour!

Welcome to the world of Chuck Lorre, creator of Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, CBS’s latest foray into the world of obvious comedy and relentless stereotypes.

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