TV reviews

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

US TV

Preview: Dexter 2.1-2.2

20 July 2007 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Dexter

In the US: Starts September 30th on Showtime

In the UK: Will probably air on FX

Just as FX in the UK is finally getting its act together and showing the first season of Dexter, Showtime is ramping up for season two of the much loved/feared serial killer show. For those not acquainted with the show’s premise, it’s a little implausible, but if you buy into it, rewarding viewing.

Dexter is a serial killer, raised by his cop foster father to channel his unnatural tendencies into only killing (in his own, unique way) bad people. Now he works for the police as a blood-spatter expert, by night hunting down various naughty types so they can no longer kill, murder, rape, abuse, etc.

So far, he’s gotten away with his acts of mass murder. But a lot of people are starting to get very suspicious…

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US TV

Third-episode verdict: Burn Notice

15 July 2007 Rob Buckley 6 Comments
The Carusometer for Burn Notice
2, a partial Caruso

Oh dear. And it started so promisingly. I really had high hopes for this but the deadening hand of the USA Network has struck again.

The first episode showed promise. Burn Notice could have been a very good spy show with a quirky side. Instead, it’s now a quirky show with a slight spy side. The balance is all off. Worse still, Bruce Campbell has almost nothing to do.

True, Gabrielle Anwar dispensed with her rubbish Irish accent in the second episode, but she replaced it with an American accent that was only slightly better. The arcing “who gave Jeffrey Donovan a burn notice?” plot is now restricted to just a couple of minutes at the start and finish of the episode, while the “let’s help a loser using my special spy powers so that I can learn about family” guff is now the predominant theme of the show. Blurgh.

Still, there’s just a hint of dark left to the show, with Donovan and co willing to bump off, blackmail, fire bomb and generally do anything underhand that they like in order to right wrongs, which can”t be all bad. I suspect that as the arcing plot gathers momentum, we’ll be back to the original promise of the first episode, although I’ll probably be proved wrong.

So The Medium is Not Enough has no great pleasure in declaring Burn Notice a two or “Partial Caruso” on The Carusometer quality scale. A Partial Caruso corresponds to “a show with two walk-on cameos by David Caruso as a self-proclaimed master spy. He will try to get his character, Mick McGrady McMurphy, to explain the history of the Irish Republican Army. Unfortunately, his only only reference material is a copy of Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games and a box of Lucky Charms cereal. Before he can ad lib a scene in which he decides to bomb the ‘train between Dublin and London’, the producers send him a swatch book for his trailer decorations and they are able to recast him before he’s chosen ‘ultramarine’”.

US TV

Review: Eureka 2.1

15 July 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Eureka

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, SciFi

In the UK: Sky One at some point, cunningly retitled A Town Called Eureka

Eureka bored me. I saw the first few episodes and there was pretty much nothing remarkable about it. Tuning in for the first episode of this second season, it almost occurred to me that I had been wrong and the writers and producers had started to give this generic sci-fi show about a town of government scientists some depth and edge.

Whoops. My mistake. It’s just the same as it always was.

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US TV

Review: Psych 2.1

15 July 2007 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Psych

In the US: Fridays, 10/9c, USA Network

In the UK: Probably Hallmark, as per season one

Kids? What do they know? If they need to waste an hour, they’ll get out an XBox or poke each other to death on Facebook. Plus they’ve got no cash anyway. So it’s no wonder that Psych has slowly targeted itself at thirtysomethings – people who can remember the 80s fondly rather than hazily and sat through enough hours of Riptide, Simon and Simon and Tucker’s Witch that they can spot a format aimed squarely at them.

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UK TV

Review: Hyperdrive 2.1

15 July 2007 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Hyperdrive

In the UK: Thursdays, 9.30pm, BBC2. Repeated Wednesdays, BBC2.

The makers of Hyperdrive do not like their show compared to Red Dwarf. Tough, because comparisons are informative in this case. Red Dwarf started out as a show that answered a specific question about sci-fi shows. While all these flashy officers mill around saving the universe, who’s cleaning out the chicken soup dispensers for them and making sure the lavatories work? Where’s the working class gone and what are they doing?

Hyperdrive has a pretty similar premise except shifted from blue collar workers to white collar workers. Imagine a starship run by the sort of people who staff the numerous, not very effective small businesses based in industrial estates off the M4. They need jobs too, don’t they?

That’s Hyperdrive‘s joke: a bunch of not very talented but quite nice people running a starship like an office, from the slightly dodgy overweight manager (Nick Frost) who never really applies himself but tries his best with an equally incompetent staff, through to the constantly irritated IT guy who’s a law to himself.

And if that were that, it would be a pretty dismal show. In fact, it’s only an 80% dismal show thanks to the presence of that shining jewel in the crown of British comedy, Kevin Eldon.

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