An archive of articles about US television programmes and production.
Looks excellent at every point except the ones where our heroes try to be action heroes. Nope. Not working. Never going to convince me. But the rest of it could be good even.
[via]
In the US: Thursdays, 10pm, FX
In the UK: Acquired by BBC3
Odds on, when you see a dog and it barks at you, you see something like this:
So spare a thought for poor Elijah Wood’s character in FX’s new show, Wilfred. When he sees his next door neighbour’s dog, Wilfred, he sees this:
Yes, a slightly menacing, crude, dope-smoking, Australian man in an unconvincing dog suit. Is it because he’s mad, because he tried to overdose on drugs or because he has an over-active imagination? Who knows, but Wilfred is about to become his new best friend – and help him to get to know his neighbour a whole lot better. At least, that’s what he thinks.
Here’s a trailer, followed by the original Australian short movie (and subsequent TV show) this is based on.
In the US: Sundays, 10/9c, TNT
In Canada: Wednesdays, 10pm, Superchannel. Starts July 6
In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, FX. Starts July 5
Well, we’re three episodes into Falling Skies and… it’s as dull as it always. It’s like Stargate Universe and Battlestar Galactica never happened. I’m getting a déjà vu to early Stargate SG-1 in fact, in which our plucky band of four heroes faced off against entire armies that seemed unaware of even basic military tactics and never did anything too mean, so got hopelessly slaughtered.
Here we have the intrepid Noah Wylie constantly going to find his kidnapped son whom those nasty aliens who’ve taken over the world have abducted. Off he goes against their heavily armed robots with a couple of his mates and despite his weapons never being any good, he constantly manages to kill them all. How sweet.
Meanwhile, back at base camp, a notorious criminal and rapist is being allowed to cook food for everyone, including one of his victims, because he knows about paprika and has read a book so has therefore redeemed himself. And everyone’s wondering what the hell the aliens are actually up to. Prepare to wait at least 10 episodes to find out, because there are no signs of any actual information emerging any time soon and the mystery itself is so uninteresting, so untantalising, that there’s no reason you’d want to hang around to find the answer anyway.
So don’t bother watching this last hurrah for the noble white male middle class action hero, where women are there to get captured and be doctors, but not do anything too exciting or heroic. There’s not much point unless you miss The Tripods.
Carusometer rating: 4
Rob’s prediction: With ratings dropping by a third from the initial episode, I’m thinking it’ll last a season at most.
Doctor Who
Film
British TV
Canadian TV
US TV
Normally for “Weird old title sequences” I like to confine myself to one show at a time. Had I remembered the show I was going to do this week, I’d be doing that right now. But I can’t and I forgot to write it down, even though I’m always forgetting things, so instead, I’m going to do a brief whistlestop tour through a whole host of title sequences for 60s spy shows which are gone, but thankfully not forgotten.
Here’s a tribute video for the shows I’m going to feature – The Wild Wild West, The Man From UNCLE, I, Spy, and Get Smart – but there are tributes to shows I’ve already covered, including The Avengers, The Champions, Honey West and Mission: Impossible as well, which should show you just how popular spy shows were in the 60s (and that’s barely scratching the surface).
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