US TV

An archive of articles about US television programmes and production.

US TV

Review: Tyrant 1×1-1×2 (FX)

3 July 2014 Rob Buckley 12 Comments


In the US: Tuesdays, 10pm, FX

Sometimes, before criticising fiction, it’s worth looking at reality and noting just how much weirder it can be. 

Take Bashar al-Assad. He’s the ruler of a little country called Syria that you might have heard of recently. He’s very much A Bad Man, having amongst other things deployed chemical weapons against his own population in a very bloody civil war that’s claimed the lives of over 100,000 people.

Guess what? He never wanted to be ruler of Syria. He wanted to be a doctor. In fact, he went to Western Eye Hospital, part of the St Mary’s group of teaching hospitals in London, so that he could become an opthamologist. 

In fact, it was his brother Bassel who was being groomed for power by their father, Hafez al-Assad. However, Bassel was killed in a car accident, which meant that Bashar was recalled back to Syria and his father decided to prepare him to become president instead.

Reality is strange: had that car accident not happened, one of the bloodiest dictators of modern history would be off treating eye disorders somewhere.

Thus, going into FX’s new show Tyrant, it’s worth remembering that despite all the seemingly preposterous conceits of the show, reality is almost certainly serving up something stranger somewhere in the world. Set in a thinly veiled version of Syria that’s separated by a mere star on its flag from the real thing, it sees an Arab-American paediatrician return back to his home country for his nephew’s wedding. While there, his father has a stroke and his brother has a car accident, which would be merely tragic were it not for the fact that his father is the ruler of the country and he in turn is now its new de facto ruler – at least until his brother gets better. Will he prove to be a better, kinder ruler, or will power turn him into the thing that he’s tried to so hard to avoid?

Written by Gideon Raff, the Israeli writer/director who created the original Homeland, Prisoners of War/Hatufilm, the show is a hard but rewarding watch, albeit one that knows it. But it’s not without its problems. 

Here’s a trailer. 

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News: The Penguin’s mum, season 4 The Killing trailer, Man Seeking Woman + more

3 July 2014 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Trailers

  • Trailer for Foxcatcher with Channing Tatum and Steve Carell

Internet TV

  • Trailer for season 4 of The Killing

UK TV

New UK TV shows

US TV

US TV show casting

New US TV shows

New US TV show casting

31 actors and actresses who were in Law & Order and Orange is the New Black, too

2 July 2014 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Law & Order in all its various guises has been going on for decades. By now, pretty much every actor and actress in the US must have worked in it or Criminal Intent or Special Victims Unit at some point.

In fact, despite Orange Is The New Black only having run on Netflix for two seasons, all 31 of the core cast members have appeared in Law & Order at some point. And here’s a video to prove it.

That should give Toby something to think about…

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Iranian Modern Family turns out not to be very modern

2 July 2014 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Believe it or not, there is an Iranian version of Modern Family. No, really, it’s true. It’s not official – in fact, it’s decidely unlicensed, but you can do the math on the relationship between copyright, Iran and the US – yet Haft Sang/Seven Stones, which airs on the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, not only has a very similar set-up also borrows a lot of the original’s scripts, although some have been changed so that men and women aren’t alone together unless they’re married.

For your delectation, here’s a video that compares them, side by side. However, before you watch, do you want to have a guess which big change has been made so that two of the characters aren’t identikit copies of the originals? Shouldn’t take you long…

[via]

Constantine
US TV

Preview: Constantine 1×1 (NBC)

2 July 2014 Rob Buckley 18 Comments


In the US: Fridays, 10/9c, NBC. Starts October 24

I was remarking only yesterday how DC comics and adaptations in other media now have something of a reputation for gloomy grittiness. When did this start, you might wonder, given how light and breezy the 1980s Superman and 1990s Batman movies were (yes, they were. Don’t argue)? Some might argue it was Denny O’Neil’s Batman strips. Others might point to the mid-80s decision by DC to try to appeal more to adults than children with its comics, which led to ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’. 

But it probably began with a strand of DC comic-writing that began in the 80s and blossomed in the 90s with DC’s ‘Vertigo’ imprint, which was intended for ‘mature readers’. Many of Vertigo’s creations are still with us: Shade the Changing Man, Animal Man and Doom Patrol still crop up in DC Comics, although most people haven’t heard of them. They will almost certainly have heard of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman – indeed, it’s the creation that introduced the world to Gaiman and even now, movie producers are trying to come up with a way to adapt it that can feature Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

The other Vertigo character of note is John Constantine. Not truly a Vertigo original – Alan Moore created Constantine as an escort for another future Vertigo character, Swamp Thing, during that mid-80s ‘Crisis’ – it was nevertheless Vertigo and writer Jamie Delano who turned Constantine from a chain-smoking, trenchcoat-wearing, petty London street thug and Sting-lookalike with a certain knowledge of the occult into one of DC’s most popular, authentic and powerful characters in Hellblazer. Since then, Constantine has gone on to fight demons, devils and angels in his own comic, Constantine, as well as heading Justice League Dark. He’s even appeared in a movie of his own, played by no lesser and no less an inappropriate actor than Keanu Reeves:

Now NBC, which scored something of a critical, if not ratings success with ‘elegant horror’ show Hannibal, is trying to branch out into more conventional horror with its own version of John Constantine. Vastly more faithful visually and culturally than the movie, and drawing considerably on Delano’s Hellblazer run for its plot, NBC’s Constantine is nevertheless a horror show exemplified by the fact that its bad boy protagonist isn’t allowed to smoke on network TV in case it sends the wrong message.

Here’s a trailer.

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