US TV

Mini-review: Longmire (A&E) 1×1

8 June 2012 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Longmire

In the US: Sundays, 10/9c, A&E

After Saving Hope, here’s another show that doesn’t quite merit a full review. Longmire appears to take a page out of AMC’s book – as well as Craig Johnson’s series of mystery novels – by being a slow-moving character piece about a widowed sheriff out in Wyoming – the eponymous Longmire (the Australian actor Robert Taylor, best known as one of the agents from The Matrix).

Longmire doesn’t really have a lot to do, at first, beyond dealing with an uppity but friendly new female deputy from out Phili way (Katee Sackhoff from Battlestar Galactica), a male deputy who wants his job, his lawyer daughter (Cassidy Freeman from Smallville) and a bunch of native Americans who don’t like him and are either off running mobile brothels or being corrupt reservation cops – all apart from that nice Lou Diamond Phillips, of course. Then the unthinkable happens – there’s an actual crime and Longmire has to investigate it, doing as little talking as possible.

It’s beautifully shot on location in, surprisingly, New Mexico. It has an impeccable cast, has some real attention to detail and manages to offer a relatively fresh view on crime stories, although it’s not a million miles away from Justified‘s ‘modern western’. It’s also touching as well, with Longmire’s love of his deceased wife shining through.

But it reads like a last hurrah for conservatism and patriarchy, with the old, white straight guy being smarter and more honourable than everyone else, particularly city folks, women and those pesky Indians who aren’t to be trusted. And despite a few action scenes, it’s not the most exciting of shows either.

Still not bad so far, although since the trailer for the next episode has Sackhoff stripping by a pole in a club, I might be switching off in protest. Not that I count towards ratings, of course. Oh well.

US TV

Mini-review: Saving Hope (CTV/NBC) 1×1

8 June 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Saving Hope

In Canada: Thursdays, 9pm ET/PT , CTV
In the US: Thursdays, 9/8c, NBC

I can’t quite muster the enthusiasm to write a full review of this, since it’s quite a bad, quite a boring show. Essentially, you have Erica Durance (Lois Lane in Smallville) and Michael Shanks (Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1) as irritating, arrogant doctors who work together and are about to get married. Unfortunately, there’s a car crash, Shanks is nearly killed and he ends up in a coma.

You might think that was the end of that, but he then spends not just the rest of the episode but quite probably the rest of the series in an out-of-body experience, moving around, talking to ghosts and anyone else in a coma presumably, mulling over whether he was too much of a dick when he was alive.

Meanwhile, in the background to all of that, you have an incredibly tedious standard medical procedural where every patient has an Issue that needs to be dealt with.

Weirdly, we’ve already seen this done before very recently with A Gifted Man and it wasn’t that good then. What makes this worse is that rather than the lead interacting with the invisible lover as per A Gifted Man, Shanks and Durance don’t actually get to interact at all now Shanks is disembodied. To some this may seem romantic; to others, it means the show is even less interesting than it otherwise would have been. Even the addition of a supposedly hunky, sensitive Australian ex-lover for Durance to triangle with doesn’t lift the script anywhere above forgettable.

Durance is fine, showing slightly more range than she was allowed in Smallville, but only a little. Shanks is very one-note, which is disappointing, given we know from Stargate that he’s pretty versatile. The rest of the cast might as well be made from polystyrene for all they matter, but at least you can like them, unless Shanks’ and Durance’s characters.

Although the central concept is at least interesting, it’s tedious, derivative, shows no sign of getting much better, so don’t bother with it.

Events

Because there needs to be more pictures of Patrick Stewart in a Greek tragedy half-mask and knitted wig on this blog

8 June 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Patrick Stewart in Oedipus

Yes, in 1976, as part of course A307 Drama, along with Shakespeare’s Macbeth and other famous works of English theatre, the Open University mounted a production (or at least half a production) of Sophocles’ Oidipous Tyrannos. Starring Patrick Stewart, Rosalie Crutchley, Ronald Radd, Roy Marsden and John Forbes-Robertson, it was a semi-authentic (well, not full masks, it was in English and there was an actress involved) version of the play, complete with false echoes to suggest it was filmed in an amphitheatre.

Why don’t they do great things like this any more? I don’t know.

Anyway, it was on last night at the BFI as part of the BFI’s Greek Plays On The Small Screen season in a double bill with a Play of the Month version starring Ian Holm. The event was organised in association with the AHRC-funded research project Screen Plays: Theatre Plays on British Television, which is concerned with all plays written for the theatre produced for British television since 1930 and will publish a database of productions, a book and journal articles, as well as organise screenings, conferences and other events.

It’s worth noting they have a rather an impressive seminar organised for the afternoon Friday 22nd June (fingers crossed for a half-day off work…), by the way, so do try to go along to that and the rest of the season if you can.

As a treat, after the jump, a couple of videos: a discussion from Utah State University on the play and Don Taylor’s 1984 TV production with Michael Pennington, Claire Bloom, John Gielgud, John Shrapnel, Michael Byrne, Cyril Cusack, Dvaid Collings, Edward Hardwicke and Nigel Stock. Sorry, no Patrick Stewart in a tea cosy.

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