It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week
Okay, so maybe Thursdays still isn’t a good idea for WHYBW, given that What We Do In The Shadows and The Twilight Zone air on Wednesday night in the US. That’s an hour and a half of TV to watch on the same day as I have to write TMINE’s most intensive weekly feature. Hard. I’ve basically spent half a day doing this.
So, what say we to moving WHYBW to Wednesday next week and moving Orange Wednesdays to Thursdays? At the very least, it’ll stop EE from suing me from trademark infringement.
Yes? Good. Glad we could all agree on that.
LA’s Finest
This week’s reviews
Despite TMINE having covered the US upfronts season for 11 years now, they always seem to come up as a surprise to me. I don’t why that should be, given they’re at more or less the same time every year, but they do.
Anyway, their arrival means that despite wild promises last week to review lots of the new TV shows that have appeared on TV screens around the world since then, I’ve been doing upfronts coverage instead, giving hot takes on all the new shows NBC, ABC, Freeform, Fox and CBS are planning to give us over the next year; the last of the bunch, The CW, will see its newbies will getting the TMINE treatment tomorrow, so stay tuned for that.
All I’ve managed to review, as a result, is Australia’s Mr Black. Sigh.
Don’t worry, though, because I have done the background reading at least, so after the jump, I’ll be looking at the most TV – I surely will – with:
The Spanish Princess (US: Starz; UK: StarzPlay)
The Society (Netflix)
Sliced (UK: Dave)
LA’s Finest (US: Spectrum)
Meanwhile, Orange Wednesday was similarly deficient, only giving us The Death of Stalin (2017) this week. It’ll be the normal movie count for Orange Thursday next week, though: Snowpiercer (2013) and Glass (2019). Now you know what they are, you can watch them, too, and we can discuss them like we’re in a book club or something.
The 410 (Canada: CBC Gem) will probably get a look over tomorrow, given it’s only 3x30m episodes, but I think Educators (New Zealand: TVNZ OnDemand) might miss out, unless What/If (Netflix) turns out to be spectacularly dreadful.
I’m also going to be watching State of the Union (US: SundanceTV; UK: BBC Two), which is only 10×10-minute episodes, so normally too short-form for TMINE to consider. But given it’s by Nick Hornby, stars Chris O’Dowd and Rosamund Pike, and has been picked up by BBC Two already, that basically puts it on my radar. Also, there seems to be an increasing amount of TV made for US networks by British people in Britain (cf Killing Eve, the forthcoming The Rook), which is an interesting trend that TMINE should investigate, don’t you think?
On top of that, we’ve got Hulu (US)’s adaptation of Catch-22 coming up, as well as Netflix’s What/If. CBS (US)’s Blood and Treasure starts next Tuesday, too, but it probably won’t be until Thursday or Friday that I’ll review it.
And lest we forget the rest of the world, Five Bedrooms (Australia: Ten) started yesterday so I’ll be reviewing that as well.
Lauren German, Tom Ellis and Inbar Lavi in Netflix’s Lucifer
The regulars
As usual, I’ll be talking about the latest episodes of Doom Patrol, Game of Thrones, The Twilight Zone, Warrior, and What We Do In the Shadows after the jump. But Harrow (Australia: ABC; UK: Alibi) has returned for its second season, so I’ll be catching up with that. Mr Black (Australia: Ten)’s second episode has also aired, so I’ll be watching that closely. And since Lucifer is now a Netflix production, I thought I’d see if its fourth season was in any way different from those that preceded it on Fox (US) – judging from its first episode, at least.
Okay, so no one in the UK has yet acquired US streaming service DC Universe’s Doom Patrol, so you may never get to see it in the UK, which is a shame.
Equally, a UK network might still acquire it or Warner Bros might well be holding back from selling the rights, so they can feature in on their own streaming service when they launch it in the UK, just as Disney is doing with Disney+. You might, therefore, not want to watch this video, since it’s from episode 12 so a little bit spoilery (but not much, so I don’t think you’ll lose anything from watching it now).
But if you do watch it, it will show you why US streaming service DC Universe’s Doom Patrol can occasionally be a work of actual genius and the nearest that DC has to its own version of Deadpool.
What is Doom Patrol?
Just for a bit of background, the Doom Patrol are a bunch of not especially good, occasionally quite sweary superheroes played by the likes of April Bowlby, Matt Boemer and Brendan Fraser. However, their leader – Niles Caulder aka The Chief (played by Timothy Dalton) – has been abducted by the bad guy, Mr Nobody (Alan Tudyk).
What makes Mr Nobody so fascinating a character – and Doom Patrol a work of genius – is that he is both a character in the show and its narrator. More so, he actually has power over the narrative and knows he’s in a TV show. Specifically, one on streaming TV service DC Universe…
That’s enough background. Now watch all of this. All the way to the end.
All through ‘upfronts’ week, TMINE will be revealing the new shows that are going to be hitting US TV screens from September 2019
It’s that time of year again – the ‘upfronts’. What’s that, I hear you ask?
What are the upfronts, TMINE?
It’s when all the US networks reveal to advertisers the new shows that are going to be hitting the TV screens some time from September 2019 through to nowish 2020. However, this isn’t the same as the international screenings, where buyers from TV networks around the world turn up to see what they’d like to acquire, so we won’t know what will be heading our way for quite some time.
This weekend, US TV networks killed off a whole bunch of existing shows (prompting howls of protest from their fans) and are about to commission a whole bunch of new shows (prompting howls of ‘you cancelled x for this rubbish?’ from said-same fans).
5. CBS’s upfronts
For years, CBS didn’t have to do much at the upfronts, since it was king of the ratings and could renew pretty much everything. However, for the past few years, it’s been flagging, while simultaneously doing its best to acquire a young, new vibrant (or at least under 60) audience to replace its current dying breed.
Last year, CBS went big with nostalgic remakes for the 40+ age-group, procedurals, studio comedies and minoriteams, unveiling:
Only two cancellations, then, which is probably the best strike rate of all the networks. That means that this year, CBS has less work to do. All the same, it’s still unveiled four new dramas and four new comedies, which is perhaps a sign of both ambition and the fact that a lot of its longer-running shows are starting to wind down. Or its firm expectation that a reasonable number of them are going to be cancelled by this time next year.
The newbies are:
All Rise
Bob ❤️ Abishola
Carol’s Second Act
Evil
The Unicorn
And for mid-season:
FBI: Most Wanted
Broke
Tommy
That’s more new shows for the autumn than for mid-season, which makes a nice change; there’s also only one spin-off from an existing CBS TV show, which also makes a nice change.
Want to know more and exactly when these (and the surviving old shows) will be airing? And do you want to get TMINE’s hottest of hot first takes? Follow me after the jump if at least one of those things interests you…
