In the US: Sundays, 10pm ET/PT, Showtime. Starts January 17 In the UK: Not yet acquired
Back when Suits started on the USA Network, it was a refreshingly strong show about lawyers that took a different tack from most legal dramas – it almost never ventured into the courtroom. Instead, it was all about the moves and counter-moves that lawyers made outside the courtroom to force their opponents to concede without the cost and randomness of a trial. Unfortunately, over the years, Suits‘ real-world chess-playing fell by the wayside, in favour of relationship-based drama and comedy, but the first couple of seasons were hugely enjoyable pieces of Machiavellian manipulation.
A little known fact about Suits is that originally, it was going to be about investment bankers. The show did eventually venture into that realm, where it was clear there was a very powerful pecking order in the world that made those legal eagles look like mere sparrows.
Of course, there’s a group of people who make investment bankers look like wrens in the scheme of things: hedge fund managers. Managing billions and potentially worth billions themselves, depending on how you look at them, they’re either the oil that prevents the wheels coming off the modern financial world or sociopaths that destroy others purely for their own personal gain.
Billions is a show that gives us Suits to the max, in that a pits a hedge fund giant (Damian Lewis) against America’s top lawyer, the district attorney (Paul Giamatti) in a chess match that would make even Harvey Specter balk. Lewis is a genius of analysis, both of figures and people. He’s made billions by knowing how to combine the two, deducing who’ll do what, why and how to invest accordingly. He’s also worked out how to play the PR game – he may be worth billions, but he’s given hundreds of millions to 9/11 charities and the families of all his co-workers who died during that tragedy.
There’s also a very strong chance he’s made at least part of his fortune through insider trading.
In turn, Giamatti has been raised since birth by his lawyer dad to think through every move and counter move white collar criminals might make. He knows whom to prosecute, when to prosecute and what it’ll get him, and he knows how to play the PR game, too.
When an SEC official brings evidence to Giamatti that Lewis might have broken the law, Giamatti has to decide whether now is the time to take down Lewis or whether he’s finally met the man who’ll break his undefeated prosecuting streak. The best legal chess match in America is about to begin.
But while Billions is in many ways an excellent drama that has all the best qualities of Suits in its heyday, with smart people doing smart things to outwit each other, it’s also just a little too Showtime for its own good.
In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, Freeform (ABC Family) In the UK: Wednesdays, Netflix
When The Shannara Chronicles hit our screens less than a week ago, it would have been tempting to assume that ‘peak fantasy bobbins’ for the year had already been achieved. Surely, nothing so weighed down by expositional dialogue, overly intricate world-building and general teenage angsting could be beaten. Yet here we are facing Shadowhunters, which makes The Shannara Chronicles look as uncomplicated as an episode of Pingu.
The success of Twilight and The Hunger Games in recent years at the cinema opened the flood gates for a whole bunch of dystopian young adult (YA) novels to be adapted. Some, such as The Maze Runner, fared well and continue to spawn sequels; The Mortal Instruments, on the other hand, didn’t do quite so well and the intended franchise never materialised. Yet, in an age where TV networks are hungry for more scripted drama – particularly one formerly family-oriented network that still carries evangelistic church services but that would like to go a bit darker by rebranding itself (cough, cough, ABC Family) – death at the movies for yet another (YA) YA franchise doesn’t mean the end of all adaptations.
And so we have Shadowhunters, YA2 TV series in which a teenager discovers she is the most important person in the entire world and so consequently is fought over by both all manner of forces, both good and evil – and boys. You’d think that that would be a relatively simple concept to put forth (again), but Shadowhunters is for today’s generation of wired kids, whose brains have been so sped up by constant digital communication that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is comparatively as mythos-lite as The Andy Griffiths Show.
So stick with me, grandpa/grandma, as I spell it out for you. Try to keep up.
Clary Fray is a perfectly ordinary teenager who wants to be an artist. Art college isn’t so impressed by her work, but they do like her creepy demon doodles for a graphic novel she has planned.
However, on her 18th birthday, she comes into her powers as a Shadowhunter, a human-angel hybrid that hunts demons. Yes, demons. And warlocks, vampires and in fact every other legendary beastie that likes to prey on humans, because all the stories are true. You just can’t see them unless you’re a Shadowhunter – or they let you.
So far so simple. Thing is, Clary never knew that she the daughter of a rogue Shadowhunter who used to work for a group of other rogue Shadowhunters based out of Chernobyl, the boss of whom fancied her and may even be her real dad. Her mum (Annie Wesching from 24) hid her, with the help of a warlock who wiped her memories, along with the Mortal Cup.
I don’t know what the cup is. Sorry. But everyone seems to want it, particularly Chenobyl people.
Meanwhile, Wesching is marrying the Old Spice Guy (Isaiah Mustafa), who may be a traitor Shadowhunter and in league with ‘the Circle’. But fortunately, there’s a group of regular Shadowhunters, including hotty Jace (Dominic Sherwood), female underclad hotty Isobelle (Emeraude Toubia) and her broody brother Alec (Matthew Daddario), and they’re going to help Clary find out about her true calling. Which is going to involve rune tattooing (because of the demon venom – duh!) and stabbing people with glowy swords in reasonably competent but unconvincing martial arts fights.
But what will Clary’s best friend Simon (Alberto Rosende) make of this new life and the usually invisible Shadowhunters, particularly Jace, who finds Clary ‘interesting’? And will you be on team Jace or team Simon?
In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, NBC In the UK: Not yet acquired
If you want to know how to turn around a struggling TV network, you need to ask NBC. A little less than a decade ago, its primetime broadcasting slots filled with the likes of Knight Rider and My Own Worst Enemy, you couldn’t pay people to watch it and it was a much deserved fourth out of the four broadcast networks in the ratings. Fast forward to now and NBC has overtaken CBS to become the number one network. Just how did it do it?
By broadcasting generic, unexceptional, reasonably stupid drek. Not too stupid and not too bad, since people will still turn off. But try to cater to the average viewer – bearing in mind that in terms of gender, race, sexual orientation, age et al, the average viewer is changing from year to year, but in terms of intelligence they’re pretty much the same as always – with something that won’t offend, that can be used as background viewing in place of the radio, that you can follow while playing with your iPhone, and that is pretty much like everything else that’s been on TV forever and you’ll do well.
Could The Shield work on NBC? Not a chance. But Shades of Blue, which is basically The Shield for the average viewer? That’ll thrive.
Jennifer Lopez stars… Yes, let’s stop there. JLo. She’s the producer and the star. She is NBC’s Michael Chiklis.
Considered that enough? Right, let’s try again.
Jennifer Lopez is a corrupt New York detective working for the even more corrupt police lieutenant Ray Liotta (GoodFellas, Smith). They keep the peace between local gangsters in return for extortion money and they’re happy to plant evidence, hand over suspects for the gangs to murder et al in order to do this. Then JLo gets caught by an FBI anti-corruption squad and is forced to turn against Liotta and the rest of their unit – otherwise, she’s going to jail and won’t be able to keep paying the tuition fees for her daughter’s artsy-fartsy college.
Will she send family friend and trusted pal Liotta down to save herself and her family, or will she get killed by Liotta in the process if he finds out? Only time will tell.
