TV reviews

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

Northern Rescue
Streaming TV

Review: Northern Rescue 1×1-1×2 (Canada: CBC Gem; UK: Netflix)

4 March 2019 Rob Buckley Post a comment

In Canada: Available on CBC Gem
In the UK: Available on Netflix

There’s something about ‘family drama’ that brings out the fantasy in writers. I don’t mean elves and Thorin sitting down and singing about gold, here. I mean implausibility, silliness and cliché.

Of course, a lot of that is true for CBC (Canada)’s shows, too, so maybe it’s the fact that Northern Rescue is a family drama co-produced by CBC and Netflix that makes it so daft.

It stars the scary doppelgänger of Alec Baldwin – his brother William, who has slowly over time converged with Alec to become almost physically and audibly identical to him – as a Boston fire fighter, husband and father of three irritating teenage children. One day, family matriarch Michelle Nolden (Burden of Truth, Saving Hope) keels over at home and is subsequently diagnosed with fourth-stage cancer. A quick flashforward later and they’re at her funeral and unsurprisingly not very happy as a family.

Then Nolden’s sister Kathleen Robertson (Boss), who still lives in the remote small town that Nolden and Baldwin grew up in together, learns that the local Search and Rescue commander is looking to retire and she has a cunning idea. What if Baldwin were to take over and bring the family up north for a new start? They could even come and live with her!

The Fates then conspire to destroy Baldwin’s hopes for career advancement in Boston and with his savings all gone from medical treatment, he decides to grab the lifeline offered to him by Robertson. After taking a secondary kicking from the Fates, who decide it would be a cracking wheeze to burn down Robertson’s home just as Baldwin and co arrive, things soon take a turn for the better. Can the whole family be ‘rescued’ by their northern relocation? And will reality as we know it survive the process?

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ófærð (Trapped)
US TV

What have you been watching? Including Ófærð (Trapped)

28 February 2019 Rob Buckley 11 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week

Ms Fisher and Steed
Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries

This week’s reviews

So I didn’t quite manage to find time to watch and review ABC (Australia)’s The Heights, as promised, but elsewhere I did review the first episodes of:

Orange Wednesday also brought reviews of The Breaker Upperers (2018), Hunter Killer (2018) and Velvet Buzzsaw (2019).

Il Miracolo (The Miracle)
Il Miracolo (The Miracle)

New shows

As usual, I’ve no idea what’s coming up in the schedules, but I’ve just started watching Il Miracolo (The Miracle) (Italy: Sky; UK: Sky Atlantic), so I’ll probably be reviewing the first episode (but maybe not both seasons) before the next WHYBW.

ófærð (Trapped)

The regulars

After the jump, we’ll be talking about: Corporate, Doom Patrol, The Magicians, Magnum P.I., Miracle Workers, Ófærð (Trapped), The Orville, The Passage and Star Trek: Discovery, as well as the season finale of Cavendish. One of these poor souls is going to be purged from the queue – which do you think it’ll be?

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The Enemy Within
US TV

Review: The Enemy Within 1×1 (US: NBC)

27 February 2019 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

In the US: Mondays, 10/9c, NBC
In the UK: Not yet acquired

NBC may now be the number one US network again, but it’s not got there through originality. To be honest, it tried originality 10 years ago with the likes of My Own Worst Enemy and it took the network about five years to climb out from bottom place in the ratings as a result, so maybe that’s a good thing.

All the same, it does mean we get an awful lot of the same stuff reheated, once a show has proven to be popular. Like shows set in Chicago? Then have Chicago PD, Chicago Fire, Chicago Med and Chicago Justice. Like Law & Order? Then have Law & Order: SVU and Law & Order: CI, too.

The Blacklist has proven to be one of the network’s more enduring shows. However, after five years, its twinkle is dimming and a spin-off, The Blacklist: Redemption, didn’t exactly pan out well.

So how about a sex-swapped version that’s a bit duller? Cue The Enemy Within.

The Enemy Within

The Enemy Within

Taking over from James Spader in the role of “evil criminal who helps the authorities to catch other evil criminals for some reason” is the potentially almost as fascinating Jennifer Carpenter. Best known as the titular sister’s foul-mouthed cop sister in Dexter but who was also a whole lot of fun in Limitless, Carpenter’s a firebrand who can set the screen alight – when she’s allowed to.

Here she plays the ‘most notorious traitor in US history’, Erica Shepherd, a brilliant codebreaker and former CIA deputy director of operations, who was convicted of treason for working with terrorist Mikhail Vassily Tal. Three years after she’s arrested by top FBI counterintelligence agent Morris Chestnut (Rosewood, Legends, V, Nurse Jackie), Tal is back and setting off explosives around the US, so Chestnut’s boss suggests he talk to Carpenter, who’s held Spader-style in a box of a prison. Reluctantly – because she was responsible for his fiancée’s death – Chestnut capitulates and Carpenter is soon bringing her valuable insight to bear to try to work out what Tal is up to.

And if she can escape from custody using her big brain at the same time, that would be a bonus…

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Whiskey Cavalier
US TV

Preview: Whiskey Cavalier 1×1 (US: ABC)

26 February 2019 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, ABC
In the UK: Not yet acquired

Ever since James Bond spotted Ursula Andress rising out shimmering Caribbean waters – and left her shaken as well as stirred – the spy genre has been associated with ‘sexy fun times’, as it is officially described. Lots of jetting around to foreign locations and lots of shagging, interspersed with the occasional murder. Sexy fun times.

Of course, once people cottoned on to the idea that women weren’t mere disposable objects, even the Bond movies had to change and try to make their female characters closer to equals.

One of the perennial solutions to this dilemma has been to make the female lead a spy as well. Think The Spy Who Loved Me‘s KGB agent Barbara Bach who knew how to drive Bond’s submersible Lotus Esprit because she’d already stolen the plans and was as liable to kill him as be seduced by him.

The question is how to do all this without removing the chemistry and without duplicating skills, making one of the leads a second-fiddle in the storyline. Here, Whiskey Cavalier actually has a good idea about how to do it – make them work for somewhat morally different services with different remits.

Whiskey Cavalier

Whiskey Cavalier

Despite being on ABC – the home of almost no good action dramas ever – and being a mid-season replacement (usually a sign a show’s not good enough to duke it out with other shows in the fall schedule) and having an eminently stupid name, Whiskey Cavalier is a surprisingly decent comedy spy drama from the sexy fun times sub-genre.

It sees Scott Foley playing a crack FBI agent with a “high emotional quotient”. Well, former crack FBI agent, since his French fiancée dumped him a year ago and he’s still blubbing his eyes out to tearful tunes of an evening.

Soon, this ‘Captain America of the FBI’ is sent on a mission to Moscow to recover former NSA analyst Tyler James Williams (Everyone Hates Chris) who’s stolen a list of CIA agents. There he bumps into tough, morally ambiguous CIA spy Lauren Cohan, who wants to render Williams to a black site for interrogation and is prepared to sabotage Foley’s efforts to do it, even though they’re working for the same side. The two are soon sparring to get control of Williams using their own highly different methods.

And maybe heading towards sexy fun times.

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Ms Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries
Australian and New Zealand TV

Review: Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries 1×1 (Australia: Seven)

25 February 2019 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In Australia: Thursdays, Seven
In the UK: Not yet acquired, but’ll probably end up on Alibi, Netflix or both

Susan Faludi’s Backlash postulated a ‘sort of two steps forward, one step back’ feminist advancement in society. Feminists would achieve successes and push the envelope of what was acceptable in society – and society would then push back in some way. Everything would move a bit further along in the end, but not through slow and steady advancement.

Oddly, as we learned way back in the depths of the time when TMINE contemplated coming up with an actual list of its best ever TV characters, the 1960s TV show The Avengers provided a nice little example with the slow descent from Cathy Gale to Tara King. Originally, The Avengers had been about two men – surgeon and compassionate amateur sleuth David Keel (Ian Hendry) and ruthless professional spy John Steed (Patrick Macnee).

But when Hendry left to seek his fortune in the movies, the writers had to find a replacement. They trialled three characters, including another doctor Martin King (Jon Rollason) and nightclub singer Venus Smith (Julie Stevens), but it was anthropologist Dr Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman), her ‘kinky boots’ and her very real judo, who proved to be the standout hit that turned The Avengers from a successful show into a phenomenon.

Of course, eventually it was Blackman’s turn to leave and become Pussy Galore on the Bond movie Goldfinger, so the writers looked for a new replacement. One that could still do all that fighting, albeit faux kung fu rather than judo. But one who was a bit less strident. A bit less abrasive and confrontational. One with a bit more fashion sense. One with – dare one say it? – ‘man appeal’. Hmm. M Appeal. That sounds handy.

And thus Mrs ‘Emma Peel’ (Diana Rigg) was born. Ultimately, Bond movies beckoned for Rigg, too, with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and she in turn was replaced by Tara King (Linda Thorson), a young secret agent trainee besotted with Steed and thus even less confrontational and whose fighting style was a little less scary, a bit more feminine, a little bit more hair-pully. The descent was complete.

And so was the show’s. Because ultimately, what had made it popular was female strength and King didn’t really have it, thanks to the male writers’ own backlash against what they had created. Thorson? Never got a Bond movie.

Ms Fisher and Steed
Ms Fisher and Steed

Ms Fisher’s Backlash

Why do I mention all this in a review of Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries, a spin-off from massively popular Australia crime drama Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, in which a sophisticated, smart woman solved crimes using her brain and skills.

No reason. Not all. Apart from the fact it’s set in the 1960s and has its heroine paired with someone with the name ‘J Steed’. Why? Did you think I was maybe suggesting something? Actually, you might be right…

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