US TV

I’ve had a little bit of time to watch tele this week, and most of it’s been catch-up, but there’s been a few things:

• Cougar Town: Last week’s episode, not this week’s. Still, it was – surprisingly, given it’s a show about women – I think the first episode so far that’s been written by a woman, and easily the best. It rang a lot more true than previous episodes in some of the details. Lisa Kudrow was excellent as the evil dermatologist. More Lisa, please
• Leverage: An okay episode. Jeri Ryan‘s a good (temporary) replacement for Gina Bellman, but the show’s starting to slack off a little. They were never a really plausible bunch of con artists, but the show seems more to be about everyone having a laugh while they’re making it than about being convincing now. That would certainly explain the ‘accents’, the outfits, etc. Oh, and if you’re going to create a fake fashion magazine, try not to get a graphic designer off a failed US trade magazine to design it, because there’s a substantial difference between one of those and a consumer glossy – not the least of which is that the latter look good, the former look like sh*te. Having said that, Heroes managed to mock up a newspaper clipping on Monday and left it full of lorem ipsum Jabberwocky text, rather than copy so hey ho…
• Modern Family: Again, last week’s not this week’s. Funny. Nice to see Benjamin Bratt back in action after The Cleaner got slaughtered, and good to see Ed O’Neill’s character being out-machoed.
• Piers Morgan On… Las Vegas: Not a brilliant piece of work, it has to be said, and Morgan’s fake laughter to woo interviewees was insanely bad (do people really believe it?). But it was an actual piece of journalism all the same, which is something to be revered in this age of Fearne Cotton Talks To… A Plank of Wood, and an interesting look at an interesting topic.
• The Daily Show is back. It’s okay at the moment, looks a little light on correspondents, and John Oliver is actually being more entertaining than Jon Stewart.
• Wallander: Much better than last week’s depression fest, this one actually made sense and some of the supporting characters got a look in as well. There were a few cringe moments in it, but very good, although it felt like there should have been more continuity with his father’s storyline

What have you been watching though?

As always, no spoilers unless you’re going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please. If you’ve reviewed something on your blog, you can put a link to it here rather than repeat yourself (although too many links and you might get killed by the spam filter).