It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching this week
Sigh. Failed again. So I haven’t watched any of the three episodes of Starz’s Vida that have aired so far; I’m only four episodes through Netflix’s Safe; I’ve not got any further with Walter Presents’ Tabula Rasa; and I’d just about forgotten All Night exists. Oh dear.
But I did watch Carter (Canada: Bravo; UK: Alibi), so that’s something at least, hey?
Given that it’s YA Bank Holiday Weekend in the UK this weekend, I think I could end up either:
Watching none of them
Watching all of them.
My suspicion is that it’ll be something in between, with Safe getting a review and maybe Vida and All Night getting a whistlestop tour next WHYBW. But let’s see what the weather gods bring us.
After the jump, let’s talk about all the lovely reliable regular shows: The Americans, Bron/Broen (The Bridge), The Good Fight, Krypton, Legion, and Westworld, as well as the season finale of SEAL Team and two episodes of Killing Eve, now I’ve played catch-up. If only I were as reliable as TV, hey?
In Canada: Tuesdays, 8pm ET, Bravo
In the UK: Acquired by Alibi. Will start Wednesday, June 13, 9pm
Is there a difference between the police investigations you see on TV and the ones in real-life? The obvious answer is “Yes, significantly,” and over the years, many TV shows have been meta enough to address this thorny problem. Usually, it’s a line like “This isn’t a TV show – it takes five weeks to get the results back from the lab in real-life!” but other shows have gone deeper.
Castleis the most recent popular recent example, giving us a crime novelist ostensibly shadowing a police detective for research, so he can learn how crimes are investigated in real-life. However, YouTube Red’s Ryan Hansen Solves Crimes on Television* did similarly, with the eponymous Hansen playing a version of himself who teams up with a cop to solve crimes, while TV cameras follow him around for his own TV show. Meanwhile, both Pulaski and The World of Eddie Wearywent one step further, adding to the meta to instead give us a TV show within a TV show, showing us both the actor playing a cop and then applying his skills to real life.
In all these shows, even if the civilian has been able to help out the cop, it’s been despite their fictional knowledge, rather than because of it, as they learn that the real-world doesn’t work by the same rules. However, Carter wants you to think that reality is just a TV script waiting to be filmed.
It stars renowned showkiller Jerry O’Connell (Sliders, Carpoolers, The Defenders) as an actor famous for his portrayal of a TV cop in Call Carter. However, after getting into a fight with the man who slept with his wife, he bows out from his world-famous role and returns to his home town in disgrace. There he hooks up with his childhood friends (Kristian Bruun and Sydney Poitier) when a friend of his is charged with murder and he tries to help cop Poitier to solve the crime.
The Carter administration
Given this is coming to Alibi in the UK, you won’t be shocked to hear that this is all genteel, formulaic stuff. Carter moves around from traditional crime-solving scene to crime-solving scene asking the sorts of questions you expect from TV crime shows, prefacing them with lengthy spiels about how these are the sorts of questions you expect in TV crime shows and how his vast knowledge of the genre means he’ll be able to solve the crime. And hey presto! He’s right. Every time.
Will the medical examiner – after a bit of protestation about rules, regulations and how if there had been anything unusual she’d have put it in the report – mention a useful clue if O’Connell presses her a bit because ‘this is the point where I ask, “Was there anything unusual?” and they say, “Well, there was one thing…”‘? Of course she will. Will there be a last-minute, final-act twist that O’Connell flags up as a ‘last-minute, final-act twist’? Of course there will.
This isn’t really satire – it’s ‘have your cake and eat it’ television that sticks rigorously to a nearly exhausted formula and hopes that if you point out the formula at every turn, you can somehow breathe new life into it and get away with it, rather than expose its flaws. O’Connell’s character is the only one with any real depth or even personality traits, with Kristian Bruun and Sydney Poitier there because O’Connell needs someone to talk to, rather than because they offer anything themselves. Carter‘s not even especially insightful in spelling out how police reality should differ from fiction before eating its cake; it simply knows how scripts are plotted.
Not an unstoppable sex machine
That said, Carter isn’t without a few surprises up its sleeve. O’Connell’s Carter isn’t the low-brained actor you might expect – he’s got a photographic memory and is actually quite smart, remembering medical concepts about stress-induced amnesia from a script and applying that to solve the crime. He and his pals also grew up together investigating crimes and they actually became famous for catching a serial killer, so it’s not as though he’s coming to this fresh.
There’s also the occasional flash of amusing dialogue, such as when Poitier talks about reality not having a ‘third act revelation’ and O’Connell points out that one-hour crime dramas are based around a five-act structure.
But honestly, beyond the amazing discovery that O’Connell can still sometimes be an enjoyable and even likeable screen presence – what happened after Sliders? – there’s so little to Carter than no one but the most avid crime drama fan will get much from this. Don’t get Carter if you can avoid it.
It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching this week
So that didn’t quite go as planned. Mais, plus ça change, hey? As well as upfronts week throwing a bit of a spanner in the works in terms of having the time to review and watch things, I spent a bit more of the weekend talking to Microsoft Support than I was planning, so I had even less time than that.
No review of Vida, then, but I’ll try to get one done by next WHYBW, by which point it might be a third-episode verdict anyway. I also hope to review AXN’s new show, Carter, and I might even be able to get through All Night, even though it’s a teen comedy. But we’ll see about that.
In terms of Boxset Monday, my plans were a bit more convoluted. I did make a start on Tabula Rasa on Walter Presents, except I managed about 10 minutes of that before feeling like it was a bit of a struggle. Interesting, but a bit of struggle. I’m going to try to bear with it, since Fans of European and World TV Dramas reckons the second half is ‘amazing’.
But that might not be for a while now, since this weekend, I’m going to try to get through the rest of Netflix’s Safe. See, I had been thinking of having that as a back-up in case I didn’t manage to make it through Tabula Rasa, but given the trailer, I figured I’d be able to just watch the first episode and call it a day, since Michael C Hall’s accent sounded very annoying. Except I ended up watching the first two and quite liking it, and then someone I work with told me she’d boxset the entire series in a day and that the last episode was great.
That’s the plan for next Monday, then. Let’s see how it withstands an encounter with reality.
This weekend saw a lot of changes to the schedules, mind, with new shows coming and old shows going, and TMINE’s viewing schedule has gone through quite a bit. We’ve decided to stop watching The Handmaid’s Tale, at least for now, since it’s just a bit too bleak and miserable. That may change at some point, though. Meanwhile, in the UK, Bron/Broen (The Bridge) is back. Timeless, of course, had a double-episode finale, which meant I didn’t quite have the time to watch the latest Killing Eve, so I’ll do a doubler next week. Mean-meanwhile, Harrow and Silicon Valley both had regular finales, more about which will come after the jump.
That just leaves the other usual regulars: The Americans, The Good Fight, Krypton, Legion, SEAL Team and Westworld. All of that after the jump, too.
It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching this week
We’re starting to get a few new shows on tap now. This week, I’ve reviewed Cobra Kai (YouTube Red) and Sweetbitter (US: Starz), and I’ll be having a look at Vida (US: Starz) on Friday, too. Netflix also unveiled its first Danish TV show, The Rain, which would have been this week’s Boxset Monday had it not been:
A Bank Holiday
Clear within minutes that it was YAYA (yet another young adult) dystopian drama in which all the adults are wiped out by a plague, leaving the kids to fend for themselves.
On the latter point, Netflix alone already had Between and that’s before we even get started on the likes of Containmentand The 100.I don’t think we need another one, even with subtitles – they’re all just so miserable.
Fingers crossed, though, I’ll be doing Tabula Rasa (Belgium: VRT; UK: Channel 4/Walter Presents) in Boxset Monday next week. Unless it’s rubbish. Or Netflix has something better.
After the jump today, though, it’s the regulars: The Americans, The Good Fight, The Handmaid’s Tale, Harrow, Killing Eve, Krypton, Legion, SEAL Team, Silicon Valley, Timeless, and Westworld.
Coming of age stories about a young person’s love for a particular profession – and their discovery that the path to achieving their dream might be rocky – normally have two facets:
The young person actually wants to be a member of that profession
The obstacles on their path are partly a cautionary tale to put people off from their dream.
Starz, the network behind the latest ‘dream job’ drama Sweetbitter, has form for this itself with the ballet-and-sex drama Flesh and Bone. Watch that and you’d be surprised that anyone would want to be a ballet dancer at all.
But Sweetbitter largely throws both of the two main genre tenets away – at least in the first episode. Based on the novel of the same name by showrunner Stephanie Danler, it sees Ella Purnell (Ordeal by Innocence) playing a midwesterner who decides to quit her small town backwater before she blinks and 10 years of her life disappears through doing nothing. Seizing the day (and, given it’s 2006, a print-out from Mapquest), she heads to New York with little more than a car to her name. When she starts looking for a job, however, she ends up trying the only thing she’s got any experience of at all – waitressing.
Unfortunately, in the swanky world of New York restaurants, having served in a diner doesn’t normally get you through an interview where you’re asked, “What are the five noble grapes of Bordeaux?” Nevertheless, Paul Sparks (Boardwalk Empire, House of Cards) is willing to give her a trial period. Training at first seems minimal and a baptism by fire, with Purnell expected – yet also not expected – to hold the hands of dementing diners who only come once a week for a bit of company, as well as anything else that comes her away. Everything’s a little too much for her at first, but soon ice queen Caitlin FitzGerald (Masters of Sex) is taking her under wing and showing her where the mops are.
And very quickly, Purnell begins to love her new job – and the people around her.
Chefless
In contrast to most dramas set in restaurants, Sweetbitter is all about the waiting staff, rather than the chefs, who barely get a namecheck. There are hierarchies, in-fighting and more, but largely the show gives us a sense of growing camaraderie, rather than back-biting, professionals who have no time for amateurs but who respect someone willing to learn. It’s also a paean to fine dining and bottles of wine that cost $200 a throw. And while it’s not glamorous, it’s an appealing atmosphere for those who can cope with the workload.
So far. But problematically (for me at least), future episodes are billed as depicting “a world of drugs, drinking, love, lust, dive bars and fine dining”, which is where we start to return to the genre clichés I mentioned at the beginning.
But at the same time, the show highlights its own problems even within the first episode, when FitzGerald tells Purnell that she’s always been able to get away with being charming, so has never had to develop character. In other words, Purnell is boring. She may have run away from home in search of adventure, but she doesn’t know what to do with her life and spends most of the first episode being pretty reactive and unassertive. FitzGerald is right – she may have charm, but she lacks any real spark.
Which leaves everyone else to be more interesting. Not hugely interesting yet, since Purnell is the focus of the first episode, but there are sparks there, particularly with Sparks, that could be kindled in later episodes. Just not in Purnell.
All of which – together with the synopsis for later episodes – makes me wonder if I’ll watch later episodes. It seems fine and life working in the ‘front of house’ of a restaurant isn’t usually the focus of a drama, making it novel viewing at the least. But it could do with being more interesting, and not by adding sex, drugs and rock and roll.
