It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching this week
I keep forgetting I end up having a social life in December for a change. You may have noticed there was no Boxset Monday this week. Sorry about that. I’ve not even managed to get through an episode of Netflix’s Dark – perhaps because I kept having to switch it from “English (Dubbed)” to “German (Subtitled)”. Fingers crossed, I’ll have got to the end of by next Monday, but seeing as I’m away in Germany (how ironic) this weekend, I’m not sure I’ll manage it. Still, let’s see how it goes.
Elsewhere this week, I passed a fourth-episode verdict on Marvel’s Runaways (US: Hulu), but while there are some new shows on their way this week, including Happy! (US: Syfy), that was about all I could review since everything else new was boxsets. Hopefully, I’ll get round to them at some point, hey?
In the US: Tuesdays, Hulu
In the UK: Acquired by Syfy. Starts Wednesday, April 18, 9pm
Top-tier reviewers like me adore making analogies and ‘meets’ to help readers quickly understand what a show is like: “It’s Fawlty Towers meets I, Claudius“, “It’s Friends meets Black Hawk Down“, “It’s The Full Monty meets Top Gear“. You can probably imagine shows like that already, even though I’ve not named them and as far as I know, they don’t exist. But you can still imagine them.
Sometimes, that’s not helpful though. If I said Marvel’s Runaways is “Gossip Girl meets The Breakfast Club meets the second season of DC Legend’s of Tomorrow“, that’s pretty accurate but I’m not sure you’d be any wiser for the analogy. In fact, you’d probably be baffled. My bad.
So, let’s take this slowly. There are six kids, now in High School, who 10 years ago were great friends through their parents, who are among the country’s great and the good. However, following some tragic ‘incidents’ that occurred back then, the friends no longer speak to one another and have all been affected in different ways. Now one of them, Rhenzy Feliz, wants to get the gang back together and Magnificent Seven-like, he goes to them each in turn. There’s goth Lyrica Okano; social justice warrior Ariela Barer; lacrosse player Gregg Sulkin; the younger, more positive Allegra Acosta; and pretty church zealot Virginia Gardner.
With a bit of emotional blackmail, he succeeds. Unfortunately, the newly reunited group soon discover that they have far greater concerns: their parents, who seem to be getting up to all manner of weird things in each other basements. So weird and even illegal, one would have to surmise that they’re actually… super villains. But it turns out that each of the kids might have super-skills of their own that they’re just growing into. If they unite together they might be able to stop their parents from doing some truly awful things – if only they knew what those were…
It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching this week
With Thanksgiving largely knocking the US schedules for six last week, I’ve had the chance to play a bit of catch up. Okay, so Netflix played sneaky and released both Godless and Spike Lee’s update of She’s Gotta Have It, but fingers crossed, I’ll be able to have watched one (or even both) of those this week in time for next week’s Boxset Monday.
Elsewhere, I passed third-episode verdicts on Frankie Drake Mysteries(Canada: CBC; UK: Alias) and No Activity (US: CBS All Access) and reviewed the first episode of The Indian Detective (Canada: CTV; UK: Netflix). Tomorrow, I’m going to either review the first episode of or pass a fourth-episode verdict on Marvel’s Runaways (US: Hulu), depending upon how tolerable it is (“Six diverse teenagers who can barely stand one another must unite against a common foe… their parents” – this could be unbearable, but word-of-mouth seems good so far).
But it’s mainly the regulars I’ve had time for. After the jump, I’ll be casting my eye over the rest of the first seasons of Babylon Berlin and There’s… Johnny!. I’ll also be looking at the latest episodes of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Mr Robot, SEAL Team and Travelers. We also steeled ourselves and finally got round to watching the series finale of Marvel’s Inhumans. Was it worth it? You’ll find out soon enough.
All that, after the jump, as well as a gander at one new(ish) show: Les témoins (Witnesses). See you in a mo, where you can tell us all what you watched, too. Go on – you know you want to.
I think Patrick Brammall has a plan for world domination. I really do. He was certainly doing his best to take over Australia, with The Moodys and then Upper Middle Bogan. Then there was Glitch, in which he was the lead, but that didn’t stop him from cameoing in The Letdown.
But that wasn’t enough for him, oh no. Then he tried his luck in the US with appearances in Life In Pieces and New Girl, as well two pilots: Furst Born and a remake of Upper Middle Bogan (what would they have called that, I wonder?).
Apparently, that still wasn’t enough for Brammall, because he also decided that as well as acting in TV shows, he’d start writing them, too. His first effort was No Activity, an award-winning comedy cop show that’s so far run for two seasons on Australian streaming service Stan and is going to start its third season this week. He co-created it and starred in it, too.
Enough? Never. Not for the Bond villain-esque Brammall. He naturally took the show to America and is now starring in and co-writing an adaptation that is now airing on US streaming service CBS All Access.
In Canada: Thursdays, 9/8 pm MT, CTV
in the UK: Available on Netflix from December 19
Call me crazy, but there’s something about casting a comedian as the star of a TV show that leads you to expect it to be funny – more so, if he starts trying to tell jokes. But that’s not the case with The Indian Detective, which stars comedian Russell Peters. Peters is apparently the world’s third highest paid comedian according to Forbes, so again, you might think The Indian Detective is funny.
And look at Cracker. Robbie Coltrane starred in it. Was it funny? Nope. Well, maybe sometimes.
The Indian Detective
Comedically, that’s about the size of The Indian Detective. It see Peters playing an inept Canadian beat cop. He’s so inept he’s just been demoted to a fourth-grade Constable after the drugs shipment his informant told him about turned out to be a van load of bikes.
But while he’s on suspension for a month, he gets a call from his dad, who’s moved back to Mumbai. Dad wants him to come visit and with nothing else to do, Peters takes up the opportunity. But before you know it, the lawyer who lives upstairs from dad (Mishqah Parthiephal) is asking him to help investigate the case of a client, who’s admitted to murdering a local swami but who she thinks is innocent.
And guess what – Peters turns out to be quite good at ‘detecting’. Maybe not ‘The Order of Canada’ good as his dad’s been telling everyone, but enough to solve the crime. Except it turns out there’s something deeper going involving Canadian billionaire property developer William Shatner (Star Trek, TJ Hooker – yes, I went there) that will get played out over the subsequent episodes.
Not Cracker
The Indian Detective is not Cracker by a long chalk. Think of it more as a bit of Indian tourism that shows off both the poor and rich parts of Mumbai, sometimes stereotypically, sometimes not, all married with criminal investigations that wouldn’t even tax a fourth grade Canadian police constable. There’s the occasional joke thanks to ‘flash forward’ interrogation scenes from when Peters returns to Canada that look like they’ve been lifted from Peters’ stand-up, but out of context, they feel more like character quips rather than anything expected to make you laugh hard.
Despite this being his first starring role, Peters isn’t half-bad. It’s a little surprising that he has two potential love interests, but hey ho, it’s a funny old world, innit? Parthiephal doesn’t have to do much beyond translate and offer native guidance to Mumbai, but there’s decent support from Anupam Kher (Bend It Like Beckham) as Peters’ toupee-clad dad. The Great One himself (Shatner) only appears in one scene in this episode and I wouldn’t expect that to change much until the end, as is the way of these things.
The show looks good and an Indian-set programme makes a nice change, but the first episode was a real drag and every failed attempt at a joke only made it harder to watch. Stay with it for Shatner if you must, but don’t be expecting an hilarious comedy, a top drama or the next Cracker.
