US TV

Review: Don’t Trust The B—- in Apt 23 (ABC) 1×1

Don't Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23

In the US: Wednesdays, 9.30c/8.30c, ABC

If there’s one good thing about this year’s season of shows, it’s that there are women in them front and centre. All kinds of women. Good women. Bad women. Secret agent women. Policewomen. Criminal women. PR women without children. Stay-at-home moms. Moms with careers. Playboy bunnies. Air hostesses. Christian women. Rich women. Broke girls. Bent women. Drunk women. Gifted women. Scared-of-commitment women. Fairy-tale women. Girls (more on them later). Not many female scientists – although what did Leslie Hope do in The River? – but a pleasing variety of women nonetheless.

Less pleasing is the growing fear of women in some of these very same shows. Apart from shows such as Last Man Standing and Work It, which are essentially about men’s fear of women, we have GCB – the show formerly known as Good Christian Bitches – which is all about grown-up mean girls. Ringer has Sarah Michelle Gellar being persecuted by her own twin sister. Revenge sees a woman trying to bring down the women (and men) who led to the ruin of her father.

Shows, in other words, in which women should fear women.

Now we have another show which can’t bring itself to use the word ‘bitch’ but kind of includes it in the title anyway – Don’t Trust The B—- in Apt 23. It’s all about a naive woman who moves to New York and finds her life falling apart, in part because of a new, female, sociopathic roommate, whom she absolutely should not trust.

Apparently. Even though the bitch is friends with con artist James Van Der Beek. Yes, Dawson from Dawson’s Creek. He’s out to get you and your money. Turns out you can’t trust actors either. Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Don’t Trust The B—- in Apt 23 (ABC) 1×1”

Tuesday’s “Star Trek captains united, Jared Harris is quiet and Joe Gilgun to guest on Ripper Street” news

Doctor Who

  • Virgin removes Doctor Who logo from David Tennant ad

Film

  • Mad Men‘s Jared Harris to star in Hammer’s The Quiet Ones

Events

UK TV

US TV

US TV

The strange nature of international casting: Strike Back: Project Dawn

So the wife and I were talking about Sky 1’s Strike Back the other day, since my violence-loving mother-in-law was coming over and we were wondering what to show her. Being like her daughter, a Richard Armitage fan, my mother-in-law did really rather like it and wanted to watch more*.

The question was, should we show her Strike Back: Project Dawn. The dilemma: the two main leads, who were serviceable enough but afflicted with characters who were so under-written, we couldn’t even remember

  1. the characters’ names
  2. the actors’ names

Unlike, of course, Richard Armitage’s John Porter.

Here they are in action, anyway:

So I go online to have a look and what should I discover? Apart from their names, obviously.

Well, being an international co-production with the US’s Cinemax, it wasn’t exactly surprising that Project Dawn should have a US character and a UK character as leads.

But let’s look at the UK character, Michael Stonebridge, played by Philip C Winchester. Now, Winchester sounds English and indeed he played Robin Crusoe in NBC’s defunct Crusoe. But waddaya know, it turns out he’s British-American and grew up in the US, only coming over to the UK after graduating high school.

Huh. So essentially two American leads in an originally UK-only show. Why I ought to…

Oh, hang on. Who’s this playing the American character? Why it’s Sullivan Stapleton from The Secret Life of Us, Underbelly and Neighbours. Those are all suspiciously Australian shows.

And yes, Sullivan Stapleton is Australian. So an Australian playing an American and an American playing a Brit. That’s international co-productions for you.

Here they are with their normal accents

* They both have limits: 20 minutes of Robin Hood proved too much for my wife last week, despite the presence of Richard “smoldering looks” Armitage.