TV reviews

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

Lauren Lee Smith as Frankie Drake in Frankie Drake Mysteries
Canadian TV

Third-episode verdict: Frankie Drake Mysteries (Canada: CBC; UK: Alibi)

23 November 2017 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In Canada: Mondays, 9pm (9:30 NT), CBC
In the UK: Will air in early 2018 on Alibi

So after three episodes, it seems that Frankie Drake Mysteries wants to be two things. Well, three things if you include “a combination of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and Murdoch Mysteries“.

Set in Toronto in the roaring 20s, this Canadian-British co-production is about the city’s then only female private investigator Frankie Drake (Lauren Lee Smith), a daring independent, liberal before her time redhead who rides motorbikes, was a spy during the War and hobnobs with the likes of Howard Carter. Drake investigates crimes with the help of her three gal pals: PI partner Chantel Riley; quasi-CSI Sharron Matthews; and cop Rebecca Liddiard. All very empowering, no?

Two ambitions

Episode 1 was a jaunty bit of fun in the style of screwball comedies and crime fiction of the time that also gave us a big chunk of Drake’s backstory. And that’s how episode three played out, too, with our heroine investigating the murdered corpse of a rival detective found in the boot of a car belonging to the son of her former spymaster. Lots of pretending to be a photographer, infiltrating country clubs, exchanging flirty quips with lazy local reporter Ernest Hemingway, revealing what she’d done in the war – all good stuff.

Yet at the same time, as well as being a bit of escapist fun for people who think that if they lived 100 years ago, they’d be hanging out with all their black friends, definitely not smoking and riding around on a motorbike in linen flapper outfits, Frankie Drake also wants to teach us a bit of history. As well as fleshing out all of Drake’s friends, episode two gave us a gander at 1920s labour relations, the burgeoning Canadian communist scene and the question of sex equality.

By the end of that episode, Drake had of course ended all sexual discrimination in Canada for all time. I think she might have passed the Female Employees Equal Pay Act through Parliament 30 years earlier than everyone thought, too, as everyone saw the injustice in not paying women the same as men for the same work. Thanks, Frankie!

All the episodes have elements of that educative quality, with Liddiard turning out to be a Morality Officer and as slavery was not too far in the past at that point, two episodes looking at the plight of black Canadians and Americans, including the French-speaking ones.

Two improvements

All of which would be very good, if the show could do two things. The first is to get the tone consistent. It’s a bit hard to go from an episode in which Drake is searching for jewel thieves who leave feathers behind as their calling card to one in which working women gang up Witness-style to prevent murders on the shop floor. It’s also a far better show when it’s being silly than when it’s trying to do hard-hitting political.

The second is to recast Frankie Drake herself. I’d really like Lee Smith to be good. I did like her in CSI, and she was about the only tolerable thing about This Life. Here, though, an entire series is supposed to revolve around her, her red-headed spunkiness and her sass. She’s supposed to be the air of 1920s spirited Suffragette confidence.

But instead, it’s like she’s having a competition to see who can say the most lines without taking a breath first. She’s less Sam Spade, more Tinkerbell – the sort of woman who pushes a motorbike around for show but never actually rides it. There’s a moment in episode 3 where she punches someone with all the force of a cupcake being tossed by a toddler and she grins as if to say, “Look at me! I’m the cleverest pixie in Tinseltown. Please love me!”

I’m really hoping she finds the spunk the script so desperately wishes she had, because although Frankie Drake isn’t a classic of the genre, it’s different enough, interesting enough and fun enough that it could be a decent bit weekly viewing. Until then, though, I’m going to sit the rest of the series out, I think.

Barrometer Rating: 3/5

The Barrometer for Frankie Drake

Mr Robot
US TV

What have you been watching? Including Travelers and Mr Robot

21 November 2017 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you each week what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently and your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching. TMINE recommends has all the TV shows TMINE has ever recommended and TV Reviews A-Z lists every TV show ever reviewed here

It’s Thanksgiving in the US this week, after which it’s basically December and Christmas, so everything’s just about coming to a halt on the broadcast networks, ready for a January restart. That means there aren’t as many regulars to worry about and WHYBW can revert to its normal time of Tuesday – at least for this week.

That does mean I’ve also not quite had time to watch the latest episodes of Babylon Berlin, though, but I hope to have caught up by next week. Lovely wife is poorly and since I’m worried that Marvel’s Inhumans might actually kill her, we’ve held off watching the series finale, too.

However, even if the broadcast networks are taking a break, the cable and streaming services are carrying on apace, as is the rest of the world. Elsewhere, I’ve reviewed the first episodes of Future Man (US: Hulu) and There’s… Johnny! (US: Hulu), while Boxset Monday took in Marvel’s The Punisher (Netflix). I’ll be passing a third-episode verdict on Frankie Drake Mysteries (Canada: CBC; UK: Alibi) on Thursday, and reviewing the first episodes of Marvel’s Runaways (US: Hulu) and The Indian Detective (Canada: CTV; UK: Netflix) next Monday. Sisters (Australia: Ten) will have to be consigned to the “never going to happen” pile, though, I’m afraid.

After the jump, I’ll be looking at the latest episodes of the current regulars: The Brave, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Mr Robot, SEAL Team and Travelers. See you in a mo!

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Travelers and Mr Robot”

Marvel's The Punisher
Streaming TV

Boxset Monday: Marvel’s The Punisher (season 1) (Netflix)

20 November 2017 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

The Punisher in all his incarnations has always been something of an accidental success. A former marine, Frank Castle turns lethal vigilante following the murder of his family by criminals, becoming judge, jury and executioner to those who would break the law. He had no powers, just his military training, a heap of weapons and a skull on his chest, and he was originally a bad guy – one of Spider-Man’s many badly becostumed adversaries in the early 70s.

Spider-Man and the Punisher

But it was that almost unique willingness to kill in comics that made him such a success that he eventually got his own comic and no fewer than three (pretty bad) film appearances, where he was played first by Dolph Lundgren, then Thomas Jane and finally Ray Stevenson.

However, his success ended for a while when a 2011 attempt by Fox to produce a TV series starring the character fell through.

But let’s now flash-forward to the era of Netflix and its Marvel superhero shows. The plan from the outset was very clear: there would be four one-season superhero shows – Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist – which would then lead into a team-up show The Defenders.

The first sign everything was going off-plan was when Daredevil got a second season. It’s hard to tell whether that had been planned from the outset; however, it seems likely given

  1. Netflix awarded Daredevil another season only a week after its first season aired
  2. The whole plot of that second season is vital to the plot of The Defenders

Nevertheless, what definitely wasn’t part of the plan was the success of guest anti-hero/baddie The Punisher in that second season. That can be put down to the ‘lightning in a bottle’ casting of Jon Bernthal. Bernthal’s always been part of the supporting cast, never the lead.

He’s Andrew Lincoln’s best bud in The Walking Dead, not Andrew Lincoln.

He’s Ben Affleck’s brother in The Accountant, not Ben Affleck.

He’s the guy Andrea Anders rejects in The Class to go back to her husband (although he ends up with Lizzy Caplan so it’s not all bad).

But as Castle, Bernthal was the undoubted star of the second season of Daredevil, a brutal match for Charlie Cox’s gymnastic lead – a blue-collar grunt to Matt Murdock’s white-collar, morally-torn lawyer.

Bernthal so occupied the role that it’s hard to think of anyone else being able to play the character and it wasn’t long before Netflix and Marvel realised what they’d got and decided to break with the plan and commission Marvel’s The Punisher, with Bernthal as its lead.

Punishing?

The question was what form the show would take. Would it follow on, for example, from the comics’, the movies’ and season 2’s general theme of a man giving ‘the punishment they deserve’ to mobsters, rapists, paedophiles et al who seem to be above the law and escaping justice? Yet, how would a white man with a lethal arsenal shooting up cities go down in an age of the alt-right, MRAs and mass-shootings by white men who feel aggrieved by society? And how would it go down against the liberal backdrop of Netflix’s other shows: Daredevil stuck up for the poor and oppressed; Jessica Jones deconstructed superheroes, male power and sexual violence; Luke Cage asked what a black man can do for his community and others against both oppression and police shootings; and Iron Fist looked at the responsibilities of the rich towards the poor and the rest of the world.

The various trailers Netflix produced in the lead up to the show’s released seemed to suggest business as usual for Frank Castle – lots of gunfire against a rock soundtrack. And yet, oddly, that’s not what Marvel’s The Punisher is. For the most part, the show is instead the white, working class male’s equivalent of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. It’s a look at family, responsibility, friendship, parenting, class, class loyalty, what it is to be in the military and to have brothers-in-arms, the consequences of violence, and the role of government in helping the working class. And oddly, there’s very little punishment meted out.

Here are those moderately misleading and spoilerish trailers. Slightly less spoilerish review of all 13 episodes after the jump.

Continue reading “Boxset Monday: Marvel’s The Punisher (season 1) (Netflix)”

There's… Johnny!
US TV

Review: There’s… Johnny! 1×1 (US: Hulu)

17 November 2017 Rob Buckley Post a comment

In the US: Available on Hulu

Anemoia isn’t a real word. It’s a made-up word, albeit one made up to serve a purpose: to describe that universal feeling of nostalgia for a time and place you didn’t live in. Someone laminate it and send it to Jacob Rees-Mogg.

I wasn’t alive in 1972. I certainly wasn’t alive in the US, watching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. A show that ran for 30 years, making its Nebraskan host Johnny Carson one of the most famous men in the country, it was also NBC’s most profitable TV show of the time.

Yet watching There’s… Johnny!, I felt anemoia for LA in 1972. Originally planned for NBC’s just-shuttered Seeso service but now available on Hulu, the show stars Ian Nelson as Andy, a Nebraskan boy whose family worships Johnny Carson and his show. One day, Andy writes a letter to Johnny to ask for both an autograph for his parents… and a job. Soon, he receives the autograph and a letter telling him his wish has come true, and before you know it, he’s on a bus to LA to live his dreams.

Dreams hit reality when he arrives, of course, and it turns out there is no job for him after all. But his sweet, naïve nature means that soon he’s being taken under the wing of Johnny’s assistant T’Keyah Crystal Keymáh (Cosby, In Living Color), as well as show co-ordinator Jane Levy (Suburgatory), and ultimately his dreams come true. But what will sex, drugs, rock & roll and 1972 all do this small town boy?

The West Wing

The show has apparently been 17 years in the making, with producer-creators David Steven Simon and Paul Reiser (yes, that one) working with the Carson estate to produce something that’s a comedy, a drama and a homage, Reiser having appeared multiple times on the show during its run so earning the estate’s trust. An almost unrecognisable Tony Danza is the only actor to be playing a real person (famous exec producer Fred de Cordova), leaving everyone else to play people who could well have existed but didn’t.

Nevertheless, those liberties and the fairy-tale qualities of the show to one side, the show feels like an authentic, behind-the-scenes look at how the Tonight Show could have been made. Taking a hint from Aaron Sorkin’s original plans for The West Wing, neither Johnny Carson nor his long-time sidekick Ed McMahon ever appear on There’s… Johnny!. Instead, they either appear blurry in the distance or through footage from the actual Tonight Show, a technique also used for the show’s guests, who in this first episode include a young George Carlin. It’s a technique that works well and also avoids the audience having to accept other actors playing two of the most famous people in TV history.

Romance

Most of the first episode is about Levy and Nelson’s burgeoning relationship, with Levy having to deal with a violent ex-boyfriend and her parents failing marriage, Nelson providing a sensitive shoulder to cry. Both do admirably well, Levy both as fierce and as funny as she was in Suburgatory and getting some decent lines from Reiser and Simon’s amusing script. There’s also the daily struggles of the writers’ room to come up with genuine gold for Carson’s famous monologues that will reward them with a wink or even a look, with moments that ring true such as a struggle to work out which is a funnier sounding petrol station: Texaco or Mobil. And, of course, we get to see Carson deliver the end result and the audience’s reaction (no, no spoilers).

The show deftly manages to walk between all these different issues, while lightly touching on the history of the period, including McGovern v Nixon and The Joy of Sex. It manages to do this without wallowing in temporal tourism, yet the beautiful recreation of the The Tonight Show studio of the time will still bring a tear to your eye, whether you were alive then or not.

There’s Johnny

The show isn’t a slam-dunk, must-watch that will have you rolling around in the aisles. But it’s a smart, loving, only slightly nostalgic slice of TV comedy about TV comedy, as well as a loving tribute to one of the US’s most hallowed TV shows, that’s certainly worth at least half an hour of your time. I’ll be back for more.

Future Man
US TV

Review: Future Man 1×1 (US: Hulu)

16 November 2017 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the US: Available on Hulu

Howard Overman has something of an affinity for aimless youth who end up on very important missions to save the world. He is, after all, the creator of Misfits, Atlantis and Crazyhead. The rather more famous Seth Rogen, meanwhile, has something of an affinity for feckless losers who spend all their time smoking weed, playing video games or both.

A match made in heaven surely? Well, now we have Future Man to find out, as Rogen exec-produces and co-directs this show based on an Overman idea (although not script). It sees Hunger Games‘ lesser star Josh Hutcherson playing ‘Josh Futturman’, an aimless 20-something still living with his parents (Ed Begly Jr and Glenne Headly) and who ‘works’ as a janitor at a STD research laboratory. There he’s bullied by Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense) but comes under the protective wing of the laboratory’s boss, Keith David, who’s trying to find a cure for herpes.

However, at night, he’s a top game player, dedicated to beating impossible first-person shooter ‘Future Man’, in which the world has been taken over by ‘biotics’ and he and comrades ‘Wolf’ and ‘Tiger’ are the head of the resistance.

When Hutcherson becomes the first person to ever beat the game, the real Wolf (Preacher‘s Derek Wilson) and Tiger (Eliza Coupe of Scrubs, Happy Endings, Wrecked, Benched) come back from the future to reveal that the game was a recruitment tool to discover the one person with the skills that could help prevent the biotics from really taking over. Together, Josh, Wolf and Tiger must go back in time to prevent the future from occurring. But is Josh out of his depth or does he have secret skills that just need developing?

Current man

As you might expect given its pedigree, the show is both smarter than it sounds and also reasonably bro-ish. But it’s not great. Most of the jokes are about masturbation, usually to female video game characters, but occasionally just about sex in general and they’re not exactly the subtlest (Coupe: “We’re going to [go back to] ’69 now” Josh: “What? Erm, okay… What’s he [Wilson] going to do? Watch?”). There are debates about the nature of video games themselves, with long discussions about the realism of Super Mario, gamers’ real-life psychological profiles and what would happen if you introduced video-game violence into the real world, with all its many consequences.

The show is also self-critiquing, with Josh’s initial suspicion that Coupe and Wilson are playing a joke on him growing from “Okay, so that’s The Last Starfighter” to “Okay, so that’s The Last Starfighter meets Quantum Leap“; the show uses The Terminator‘s typeface every time there’s time travel; and when Josh arrives back in his family home back in 1969, a Back To The Future sting plays. There’ll be more movie parodies to come in later episodes, too, judging by the trailer.

However, while there are certainly quite a few laughs to be had, normally from Hutcherson’s reations and Coupe and Wilson’s lack of cultural understanding rather than the cringe-worthy jokes, this doesn’t have either the production values or direction (Rogen co-directs the first episode) to really pull off what it’s trying to do, with many of the obviously stunt doubles’ faces visible during fights, for example. The cast is good, with Britt Lower (Man Seeking Woman), Paul Scheer (The League, Veep) and Ron Funches (Undateable) also showing up in so-far minor roles, but squandered by a script that has few of Overman’s cleverer or dirtier traits.

If you like Rogen’s brand of loser gross-out, embarrassment comedy and you like sci-fi movies, you might find Future Man appealing. If not, you’ll probably simply feel like me that this is a show that’s about five or ten years late to a party that’s just about over.