Friday’s “on the bubble” news

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Review: Past Life 1×1

Past Life

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, Fox
In the UK: If Living doesn’t pant at it like a dog in a desert, I’ll be surprised

Underneath its logo, Fox should really have etched like a motto below a family crest, “Never knowingly avoiding a formula.” All the other networks have sitcoms – it has to have sitcoms, even though it’s very bad at them. Other networks had cop shows, medical shows, comic book shows: it had to have them, too.

Now, other networks have had for quite some time shows in which people, usually cops, investigate and solve old crimes and bring justice to bereaved families. There’s obviously Cold Case, but ABC moved in with The Forgotten in the fall, so Fox clearly had to get some of that action. Here’s its mid-season stab at the same idea.

Being Fox though, and although there are exceptions to the rule, it’s gone for something supremely rubbish and tasteless. In Past Life, ‘psychologist’ Kate McGinn with the aid of former police officer Price Whatley helps people who find themselves remembering past lives to discover who they used to be, and who murdered them.

Would it be obvious and cliché to say that this one is pretty much “dead on arrival”?

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Thursday’s “The Best Little Akira, Laverne and Shirley in a Big Whorehouse Valley in Hawaii” remake news

Doctor Who

  • Interview with guest actor Neve McIntosh reveals returning monster [spoilers]

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The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 4
Spartacus: Blood and Sand
US TV

Third-episode verdict: Spartacus – Blood and Sand

It’s hard to know what the makers of Spartacus: Blood and Sand think they’re doing. It could be the show is intended as a way:

  • to exploit the liberal regulatory regime on US cable television to push the boundaries of acceptable taste
  • to show us what a graphic novel, complete with rubbish dialogue and plotting, would be like if it were turned into a TV series
  • to replace traditional dialogue with nothing but swearing
  • to give Lucy Lawless some work
  • to give lots of bad New Zealand and Australian actors work
  • to educate and inform viewers who missed HBO’s Rome about what life was like in Roman times
  • to homage I, Claudius.

No matter, three episodes in, it’s time to decide whether to keep watching or not.

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Wednesday’s flashing FlashForward forward news

Doctor Who

Film

British TV

Canadian TV

US TV