A complete archive of The Medium is Not Enough’s reviews of TV programmes since 2005
Third-episode verdict: Torchwood
So here we are already: episode three. Must be time for a verdict.
TV reviews
Review: Las Vegas 4.1
In the US: NBC, Fridays, 9/8c
In the UK: Sky One. Probably January, but who knows with Sky?
Characters re-cast: 0
Major characters gotten rid of: 0
Major new characters: 0
Format change percentage: 0%
Dramatic chances taken: None
I love Las Vegas. No, not Las Vegas. Las Vegas. It’s a great town. It’ll be whatever you want it to be. You want it tacky? You can have tacky. You want it sophisticated? It can be that, too.
Las Vegas tries to be like Las Vegas. It has all the elements you’d expect: magic (people being shot and having heart attacks, yet coming back to life), sex (everyone shagging everyone else, whether they’re married or not), gambling (having a bunch of characters that are tissue-thin and expecting us to be interested), the stars of yester-year (James Caan, Cheryl Ladd) and Elvis.
Despite all this, Las Vegas really just doesn’t work on any level for me – and it’s really not like Las Vegas at all. It’s completely devoid of anything surprising or clever, and you’re expected to root for the house. Who does that?
Returning viewers, don’t be worried. Everything is sorted out nicely in this first episode, despite its being a two-parter. There are no shocks, nothing to change the format, just the same old same old.
New viewers, it’s slick, it’s glossy, it’ll steal your time. You can join in at almost any point and you’ll be able to keep up with the plot. So watch now or watch later. Or go and watch Robert Urich in Vega$ on DVD instead.
PS Message to former CIA operatives heading to Morocco: it’s a lot easier to get a stolen gun in Morocco than it is to stash one in a safety deposit box in London and try to get it through airport security. Just a hint.
Review: Wild Thing I Love You
In the UK: Sundays, Channel 4, 4.50pm
I ask you, what’s the point of blogging if no one tells you that Channel 4 is showing a programme that features
- Bill Bailey and
- Fluffy animals?
Wild Thing I Love You has been on Sundays for a couple of weeks now and not one person has mentioned it to me. How could you? Actually, you’re forgiven. There were no fluffy animals this week, just adders and lizards by some A-road, but it’s Pine Martens next week. Phew. Glad I caught that one in time.
The programme’s an odd combination of Time Team and nature documentary, with Bailey and a team of experts hurtling around the country trying to save endangered animals according to some arbitrary time limit.
Unfortunately, it’s not quite as fun as Time Team. Bailey is a slightly wooden host in comparison to Tony Robinson and surprisingly seems bored by his hosting duties. There’s also no real element of discovery or tension: you know they’re not going to show a bunch of adders/pine martens being squashed by JCBs so the animals will get saved. At least in Time Team, you don’t know what they’re going to discover or how quickly, but here, the only element of mystery was whether the adders they’d already located were going to like their new pit.
It’s more entertaining and educational than the new series of Horizon (shudder…), but a poor second to Time Team. Best watched for the occasional hint of furry beast, rather than because you need to know how to translocate a lizard safely.
Third-episode verdict: 20 Good Years
Third-episode verdict on 20 Good Years as well. After a pretty poor first episode and an absolutely awful second episode, the third episode of this tale of two pensioners picked up a little. There were a couple of good moments, but it was mostly drek from start to finish. Best described as “Gentle Comedy” at best. Avoid.
Third-episode verdict: 30 Rock
Third-episode verdict time for 30 Rock. A big thumbs up from me now, after having had a few reservations about its first episode. Tina Fey and co have looked at the pilot, asked themselves what their weaknesses were (drama) and what their strengths are (comedy, Alec Baldwin) and rejigged everything accordingly.
So there’s a far higher density of cracking comedy per minute than drama and Alec Baldwin is getting the well deserved spotlight. His character is an inadvertently evil executive who has developed demographics to such a fine art that he can sum up anyone by their demographic group with just a glance, a talent that reaches a climax in a dead-on Hannibal Lecter-esque analysis of one character in the third episode.
Despite its low-ratings, I’m hoping this will continue (and get picked up by a network in the UK). It doesn’t quite have that must-see quality that will keep you coming back, but if you do, you’ll be glad you did.