What have you been watching? Including Reckless, The Last Ship and Crossbones

It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.

The usual “TMINE recommends” page features links to reviews of all the shows I’ve ever recommended, and there’s also the Reviews A-Z, for when you want to check more or less anything I’ve reviewed ever. And if you want to know when any of these shows are on in your area, there’s Locate TV – they’ll even email you a weekly schedule.

Despite the fact that a few shows have finished and I’ve decided to drop a few others from my regular viewing, I have a wee backlog of NBC’s new comedy-action show Taxi Brooklyn to get through. Fingers crossed, a review of the first two episodes of that later. I’ve already reviewed some new shows elsewhere, though:

I’ve also given another new show a try:

Reckless (US: CBS)
Absolute bobbins. As soon as you say the word ‘southern’ to an American from one of the northern states, apparently, through some form of word association, ‘sexy fun times’ is the first thing they think of, because what we have here is a desperate attempt to get in predominantly female viewers with a cop show set in the south that sees lots of cops and lawyers having sex and flirting with each other. Being CBS, though, it’s so tame and old hat that when people start sexting pictures of themselves, they still use email and no naughty bits are exposed, yet despite that, the female cop in question (Georgina Haig) gets fired. She decides to sue and hires lawyer Anna Wood to prosecute the police department; the PD hire her flirt partner Cam Gigandet (The OC, Never Back Down, Twilight), prompting muchos sparks. Except it turns out that another cop might have been raped by a bunch of other cops and things take a serious left turn.

There’s a good cast, including Adam Rodriguez (CSI: Miami), Shawn Hatosy (Southland) and Gregory Harrison (Logan’s Run). But the script is dreadful, perhaps even knowingly so at times – legal eagle Gigandet sails a motor boat to work in the morning, wearing his suit under his waders the whole time – and the gang rape of a woman by police officers after they’ve drugged her doesn’t exactly equal the sexy fun times the producers are after.

After the jump, a round-up of the regulars, with reviews of 24, Crossbones, Halt and Catch Fire, The Last Ship, Murder In The First, Old School, Penny Dreadful and Undateable.

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The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play: The Cherry Orchard (1962/1981)

Chekov’s last play was The Cherry Orchard, a typically cheery little number in which an aristocratic Russian woman (Madame Lyubov Andreievna Ranevskaya) and her family return to their family estate – which includes a large cherry orchard – just before it is auctioned to pay the mortgage. The family is given several options to save the estate, but essentially does nothing, resulting in it sale to a serf and the demise of the orchard, in an allegory for the futility of the Russian aristocracy’s early 20th century attempts to preserve its status.

The great thing about plays, of course, is not only can they be re-staged time after time, the same actors can come back to them at later stages of their lives, offering different interpretations, perhaps even of different characters. For example, in a televised version of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1962 production, Dame Judi Dench played Anya, Madame Ranevskaya’s daughter, alongside John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft and Dorothy Tutin. And in 1981 BBC production, she played Madame Ranevskaya herself, alongside Bill Paterson and Timothy Spall. And you can watch them both below to compare and contrast. As always, if you like them, buy them on DVD.

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