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 reviews of all the TV shows TMINE has ever recommended, but for a complete list of TMINE’s reviews of (good, bad and insipid) TV shows and movies, there’s the definitive TV Reviews A-Z and Film Reviews A-Z.
It’s that time again. No, I’m not talking about WHYBW. For starters, it’s Wednesday. Oh dear.
Hopefully, we’ll be back to the regular Tuesday slot for WHYBW next week, since Sunday and Monday’s schedules seem to be dying down. But I was actually referring to my usual October cull of the schedules, to weed out shows that for me are no-hopers, which should help, too.
For just a little sense of excitement, I won’t reveal which ones those are until after the jump, but at least two regulars are for the chop, in fact – ooh! On top of that, a lot of the new shows didn’t make it passed their second episodes, either.
No, I didn’t get round to Alias Grace (Canada: CBS; UK: Netflix). Sorry. That’s three episodes in. Some day, though. Some day. However, Ghost Wars (US: Syfy; UK: Netflix) and Valor (US: The CW) will be getting their turn tomorrow for sure.
I did also promise a review of Ten Days in the Valley (US: ABC), Kyra Sedgwick’s new show in which she plays a TV producer whose daughter goes missing. However, so terrible, so boring, so unbearably by the numbers was it that I didn’t even get as far as her daughter going missing. Fortunately, the ratings are so low I doubt ABC will air the entire series, so not a huge omission on my part, I feel.
So follow me after the jump where I’ll be discussing the latest episodes of Get Krack!n,Ghosted, The Gifted, Great News, Halt and Catch Fire, Kevin (Probably) Saves The World, Lethal Weapon, Lucifer, Marvel’s Inhumans, The Mayor, Professor T, SEAL Team, Star Trek: Discovery and Will & Grace, as well as the season finale of The Last Ship and the returns of The Flash and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Which do you reckon will be getting the boot?
Normally, CBS’s comedies are something to be endured and its dramas are more concerned with procedure and the bad guys getting killed or arrested than with regular life and emotions. So Me, Myself and I is something of a surprise on all counts. It’s a triple biopic of one man, as we get to see his life as a teenager who’s just moved to LA (Jack Dylan Grazer), as a 40-year divorcee trying to raise his daughter while kickstarting his career as an inventor (Bobby Moynihan), and ultimately as a newly retired, successful industrialist (John Larroquette). We see how he meets people important in his life, how he loses them or keeps them, and how events contribute to making him the man he becomes.
And despite being on CBS, it’s actually rather lovely and well written. The teenage years see Grazer going through the indignities of school life and first love, while dealing with the new family into which his mum has married; the middle years are more geared to showing the troubles of being a dad, surviving a divorce and struggling along without any money; and the retirement years show how everything comes right in the end – although it needn’t be the end, as there are still plenty of adventures to be had.
Usually, there’s also the establishment of a plot that starts in childhood, gets a twist in middle age before the pay-off arrives in old age. This is well handled and clever when it does it. Sometimes, it’ll go non-linear and have the pay-off in the future before you’ve seen what it’s the pay-off to in the past – yes, a CBS comedy that expects you to pay attention. It’s schmaltzy, sure, but beautifully so. And yes, I’m of an age when pretty much anything can make me cry, but I’m happy to admit Me, Myself and I frequently sets the tears rolling.
Surprisingly, given this is heavily touted as a vehicle for Moynihan, he gets the short straw. Most times, his story’s tragic whether it’s having to move into his best friend’s garage or having to sell off cherished possessions so his daughter can go glamping. Meanwhile, Larroquette gets to enjoy the pay-off from all his life’s efforts, sacrifices and good decisions, all in a mildly sci-fi futuristic environment, and Grazer is basically doing a charming 90s Wonder Years.
Where Me, Myself and I had problems was that it’s supposed to be a comedy. And while it was certainly amiable and comedic, it wasn’t actually very funny and rarely had jokes that might make you laugh out loud. Episode three changed that, with the show starting to feel like it had gained some confidence and could also take advantage of its futuristic setting. For example, Larroquette’s character starts to get a cheesy, on-the-nail soundtrack to his conversation in a diner, only for it to be revealed that it has a ‘smart jukebox’ that listens to conversations and finds the most appropriate music to accompany them.
Characteristically, there’s pathos to that joke, too, since Garzer’s step-father is an early adopter of a video camera in the earliest storyline but has difficulty with his iPhone in the middle storyline, which Moynihan then has to sort out, before Larroquette ultimately encounters his difficulties – sooner or later, technology becomes too complicated for us all.
Me, Myself and I is a surprising slice of loveliness on a network not renowned for anything more than guns and ammo. Don’t go in expecting to belly laugh, just a look at life’s potential for happiness if you take the long-term view.
Three episodes into The Brave and it’s a little unclear what The Brave actually is. Ostensibly, it’s about a group of special forces operatives run by analysts at Anne Heche’s Defense Intelligence Agency. The analysts sit in front of monitors, watching drones and having tense phone calls and meetings with other agencies; meanwhile, the plucky team of mostly ex-SEALs go off to Syria, Mexico, the Ukraine et al to do… stuff.
But the show’s a little unclear what the exact nature of that stuff is. The first episode was a somewhat typical NBC stab at action, with our team performing a hostage rescue. Basically, the kind of thing that Delta normally does. Clunky and desperate to put all its pseudo-conservative but essentially liberal cards on the table, it spent most of its time justifying the presence of a Muslim and a woman on the team, while getting one of the other characters to have theological debates – all while team leader Mike Vogel gets to be all-American and heroic. Indeed, so fixated was the show on character over identity that it was actually quite possible to miss that there was another member of the team (Noah Mills) – I barely noticed he was there until the second episode.
That first episode ended on a pretty spectacular cliffhanger… that episode two promptly ignored. Well, not quite ignored but a quick mention at the top of the episode in which everyone explained how upset they were by what happened was as much as the show seemed to care about it. Whether that was a pure gonzo attempt to get commissioned (“Please pick up this pilot to series, Mr/Ms Commissioner, so you know what happens next… Thanks!… Ha! Ha! Fooled you!”) or to reboot the show in a different direction without wasting any time on the rest, I can’t say, but episode two then gave us an attempt to do a straight spy piece, with our heroes skulking around the Ukraine trying to find a missing CIA agent, while Russian spy hunters try to get to her first.
A far better episode than the first had led us to believe the series would be, it was actually joy exciting, smart and tense. Again, a bit more Delta than SEAL work and while the dialogue thankfully avoided reducing everyone to their ‘identity’, it was all a bit clunky and implausible. Nevertheless, a good, escapist bit of fun.
Which then takes us to episode three in which they head off to Mexico to bug an arms dealer. So are they Delta or SEAL in this? Turns out they’re Impossible Mission Force, since despite looking like SOFs and not including any Latinos (or even Spanish speakers) in their numbers, the whole episode hinges on their ability to go undercover and do some pickpocketing. Where’s the CIA when you need them, hey? Also given that their idea of surveillance consists of standing up on top of buildings in fatigues with their optics in full view, you’d hope they’d at least have some implausibly good latex masks to help disguise themselves later, but apparently not.
Braver?
I ended my review of the first episode by suggesting that whatever rival show CBS produced, it would be better than The Brave. And SEAL Team is. Technically. It has colossally better production values and far more imaginative direction. It’s also far more realistic and it confines its SEAL team to doing things that SEAL teams actually do.
Yet it’s also monotonous and its characters are pretty flat. In comparison, The Brave may look cheap and nasty and not have even the vaguest notion of reality, but it’s more varied, more exciting and more engaging than its CBS rival. The characters are still so thinly drawn that I couldn’t tell you one thing about them and if it saved up its budget for a year, it might be able to afford to rent the Black Hawk that SEAL Team conjured up for its first episode. But I actually do want to watch the next episode of this, which isn’t something I’ve yet felt with SEAL Team‘s almost algorithmically derived plotting and characterisation.
The Brave‘s biggest problem is that it’s about the special forces. If had been about a team of spies, it could have shirked off most of its problems from the outset. But that’s what trying to appeal to Trump voters will do, if you don’t really understand what you’re doing*. If it can dial down the military angle, amp up the intelligence angel, it could be a halfway decent action show. It’s certainly better than Taken. Here’s hoping.
Barrometer rating: 3
* This could be because it’s from NBC. Or it could be because the production company is Keshet International and most of the exec producers are Israeli, so are basing the series to some extent on the IDF’s Duvdevan (cf פאודה (Fauda))
AXN is probably the most popular TV channel you’ve never heard of. Owned by Sony, it’s available all over Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. Just not the US or the UK.
In part, its anonymity stems from largely airing re-runs of English-language TV shows made in the US and Canada, rather than making anything of its own. However, that’s changing and one of the first scripted dramas to hit AXN in a staggered schedule around the world is Absentia. Designed to appeal just a little bit to each of AXN’s various regions, it also proves that the dominant worldwide paradigm for television is American. Or at least the rest of the world’s idea of what American television is.
It stars Stana Katic (Heroes, Castle) as a US FBI agent who’s abducted by a serial killer who does nasty things like cut off his victim’s eyelids. No one can find her or her body, but in her absence, banker Richard Brake (Batman Begins) is convicted of her murder and sent to jail. Her husband, fellow FBI agent Patrick Heusinger (Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce) keeps looking but never finds her until eventually he’s forced to give up.
Six years later, Heusinger’s moved on and has married Cara Theobold (Crazyhead). Together, they raise his and Katic’s son. Then one night he gets a call, apparently from Brake, telling him where to find Katic. And she is where he says she is – and alive.
Traumatised, she can’t remember much from her time in captivity beyond her abuse, so tries to build a new life for herself and recover what she can of her old life, despite her husband having moved on and her son now regarding Theobold as his mum. At the same time, her return to the world means that Brake is released from jail and the hunt for the real killer – or maybe Brake’s partner in crime – begins again. Trouble is that evidence begins to mount up that maybe Katic had something to do with some recent crimes and she wasn’t as much of a prisoner as she claims.
European America
As you may have gathered, the whole thing is set in Boston. Except it’s actually filmed in Sofia, in Bulgaria, by people who seem to think that Boston looks like Georgetown in Washington DC during the 70s. I’m not 100% sure if the aim is to make everything look like The Exorcist, but it works if it does and there is some lovely quiet and often tense direction. It’s just not Boston.
Given the location, AXN’s audience and the need for a cast who can speak English with an American accent, you won’t be too surprised to hear that the cast is mostly British, including Theobold, Brake, Katic’s alcoholic ex-surgeon brother Neil Jackson (Sleepy Hollow), her dad Paul Freeman (Belloq in Raiders of the Last Ark) and most disconcertingly for British viewers, Katic’s FBI boss and potential serial killer Ralph Inerson – Ricky Gervais’ mate Finchy on The Office.
Add on to that, though, we have two Israelis – Katic and Angel Bonanni, best known for playing ‘Sean’ in כפולים (False Flag), who plays the ex-undercover Boston PD cop who’s trying to see whether Katic really is a killer or whether she’s being framed by a mole. There’s also Mexican actor Bruno Bichir playing the FBI psychologist helping Katic to deal with her trauma and profiling the killer. Dotted around the cast, there are a few Central Europeans, largely playing Russians and Central Europeans, particularly strippers.
Absent
You can’t really fault the cast for Absentia. They’re all pretty good, particularly Katic. Some of the Brits wobble back into English accents occasionally, but no one, not even the Americans, has decided doing a Boston accent is a worthwhile endeavour. It’s trans-Atlantic to mid-West all the way down the line.
But a strangely disconcerting lack of place in a show so fixated on place is the least of Absentia‘s worries. It’s just so ordinary. And slow. I’ve watched the three episodes that have aired so far and they don’t exactly skip by.
While it has good production values, up against a regular US TV show, it just looks derivative and uninspired. The “devious serial killers working in pairs” is hardly the most innovative storyline and neither is “there’s a mole in the bureau!” The idea that everyone would be focused on Katic as a potential killer is nonsense and the fact she’s basically been doing Room for six years would surely have landed her far more emotional support than she gets. They certainly wouldn’t let her out into the big wide world that quickly, with her former abductor still on the loose, for sure.
So the police/FBI/serial killer storyline is mostly just nonsense. Where the show does work quite well is when it focuses on Katic’s attempts to recover her life, where it manages to avoid cliché. Theobold is kind and sympathetic towards her husband’s potential true love, and is temporarily willing to let her into her life at least. She’s also similarly generous in sharing her adopted son with Katic so he can reacquaint himself with his mother.
Katic does a good job as a traumatised mother who’s lost everything. And while the torn Heusinger looks like he’s constantly constipated and comes across as weak most of the time, at least he’s not a dick about the situation (although Patrick Brammall’s similar tortured cop in Glitch is a significantly better performance).
But really, Absentia is designed mainly to look and be as American as possible, to appeal to an audience that mainly watches American TV, wherever they happen to be in the world, whether they’ve ever been to the US or not. At that level, it succeeds, even if to the average American, I imagine it would neither feel authentic or especially good, as it retreads what countless other movies and shows have already done.
But the X-Men keep it going. Sure, that’s without actually including any X-Men, but X-Men-free X-Men shows seem to be working for it. This year, we’ve already had the truly magnificent Legion, one of 2017’s best new TV shows and so auteured by Noah Hawley you’d really have to work hard to spot it’s an X-Men show.
The Gifted
Now we have The Gifted, which comes from the pen of Matt Nix (Burn Notice, The Good Guys) and which doesn’t feature even one X-Man. Although it does mention them and include their ringtone.
It sees Stephen Moyer (Ultraviolet, True Blood, The Bastard Executioner) and Amy Acker (Angel, Person of Interest) playing a happily married couple in a post-X-Men universe – that is, the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants appear to have disappeared somewhere after a 9/11-style event that saw lots and lots of people killed. Not all the world’s mutants have disappeared, though, and the government’s so hacked off, it’s set up all kinds of laws and agencies to police mutants, keep them under control and make sure they don’t go around killing people. Moyer is also a district attorney charged with dealing with rebel mutants, although he tries not to think too hard about what happens to them once they go through the system.
Acker and Moyer have two teenage kids: the popular Natalie Alyn Lind and the bullied loner Percy Hynes White. Wouldn’t you know it, they’re mutants! Oh noes. And when White accidentally comes into his new powers quite publicly, it’s not long before Coby Bell (Burn Notice) from Sentinel Services is at Acker and Moyer’s door, looking to bring them both in.
What’s a futuristic police state family to do, hey?
Here’s the first six minutes, followed by a trailer
