It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week
The CW (US)’s Nancy Drew
This week’s reviews
I miss my iPad. The screen broke a couple of weeks ago and although I had it repaired, they didn’t repair it properly, so I had to take it back again.
That means I’ve been confined to watching TV on my iPhone and not ‘co-browsing’ any more. Couple that with the “one connector so you can listen or charge but not both” syndrome and the crap battery life now available on my now old iPhone 7 and you can see my lack of iPad has been seriously cramping TMINE’s style – and review schedule.
However, over the past week, I’ve managed to review Nancy Drew (US: The CW) and season one of Raising Dion(Netflix), which ain’t bad. But as always, it’s the francophone TV that suffers in these things and I didn’t manage to watch either season two of Plan Cœur (The Hookup Plan) or any of that Beau Séjour on Walter Presents.
Oh well. Cometh the weekend, cometh the iPad, so hopefully I’ll be able to start watching more again.
HBO’s Watchmen
What’s coming this week
I’ve not watched any movies this week at all – thanks, broken iPad – but that does give me room to review Jason Bourne spin-off Treadstone (US: USA; UK: Amazon) tomorrow.
Competition for Boxset Monday/Tuesday is frenetic, however. Released today on YouTube is season two of Impulse, which I hope to watch, and coming on Friday are Paul Rudd comedy Living With Yourself (Netflix) and romance anthology Modern Love (Amazon). I suspect I’ll go with Living With Yourself, as it’s only 8×25 minutes, but let’s be surprised next week, hey? I might even watch The Hookup Plan or Beau Séjour.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, we’re finally be getting HBO’s Watchmen sequel series, so I’ll definitely be chatting about that on either Monday or Tuesday.
Conner and Krypto in DC Universe (US)’s Titans
The regulars
I’d like to have watched Engrenages (Spiral), but no iPad, two episodes? I got 10 minutes in and decided it was up to the usual quality, but never had the chance to get any further. I never even got to see Audrey Fleurot, bar the ‘Précédemment dans Engrenages‘ at the beginning. Shame!
Cometh the iPad, cometh more Spiral.
That meant I had to stick to the new, stable, regulars list for now. After the jump, I’ll be talking about Batwoman, Evil, Magnum PI, Mr InBetween, Mr Robot, Pennyworth, Stumptown and Titans.
Lots of US TV, huh? But as always, the rest of the world has television we can watch. In Australia, a show called Total Control has just started. Dull name, hey?
But as we learned with Doctor Doctor – aka The Heart Guy – Australians do like to rename their shows for international audiences. So while Australian readers and I can chat about Total Control after the jump, by the time it hits UK screens, you’ll find we may have been talking about the far more excitingly titled Black B****.
There is a line in Netflix’s Raising Dion that more or less sums up its raison d’être: “Moms aren’t any fun – that’s why they’re not in comics.” Certainly, if you look through the vast range of superhero comics, you’d be hard pressed to find many mums who aren’t dead and who are integral to the plots, other than (of course) in Wonder Woman.
Raising Dion is an attempt to counteract that – but simultaneously proof that there’s barely a genre on Earth that hasn’t now been cross-contaminated by the superhero genre. In this case, the genre is “heartwarming family tales about single black mums who try to raise their talented sons, and have to overcome all the obstacles that society – and men – can throw in their path”. It sounds niche, but there’s actually more stories like that then you might imagine.
Raising Dion, not Arizona
Adapted by Carol Barbee from Dennis Liu’s comic book (and short movie) of the same name, Raising Dion sees Alisha Wainwright (Shadowhunters) playing the former dancer turned single mum in question. She’s recently lost her scientist husband, Michael B Jordan (Creed, Black Panther), who apparently died rescuing a drowning woman during a recent storm.
Moving back to her old neighbourhood but a new home and putting her son into a good but virtually whites-only local school, she’s soon struggling to make ends meet and juggling the demands of working life with those of her seven year old son Dion (Ja’Siah Young). She gets some help from her doctor sister (Jazmyn Simon), as well as her new neighbourhoods, but principally she starts to lean on her husband’s nerdy engineer best friend Jason Ritter (Joan of Arcadia, The Class, Parenthood, The Event, Kevin (Probably) Saves the World), who also happens to be Dion’s godfather.
Dion’s demands only seem to increase. Not only does he have a racist principal and new enemies in the form of the cliquey skateboarders in his class, he soon starts to exhibit strange powers, such as the ability to levitate things, to teleport and even to heal things. Can Wainwright protect her son, keep his powers secret while helping him to control them, keep him in school and decide whether to start dating again, all while trying to get a job that will give her medical coverage?
I guess it’s just the typical story of a single mum’s life. Apart from the man made from lightning.
RTS is taking a leaf out of BAFTA’s book in terms of sneaking out events without telling anyone. Notably, tomorrow, at 6.30pm at 30 Euston Square, London NW1 2FB, it’s organising an exclusive screening of UKTV’s new crime drama, Traces. Not much notice, hey?
Anyway, said screening will be followed by a Q&A with cast and crew, as well as “lots of food, drink and forensic science!”
Why forensic science? Well, it’s based on an original idea by best-selling crime writer Val McDermid and explores the world of the Scottish Institute of Forensic Science and Anatomy.
Who are the cast and crew? Well, it’s written by Amelia Bullmore and directed by Rebecca Gatward and Mary Nighy. It stars Molly Windsor, Laura Fraser, Jennifer Spence, and Martin Compston, as well as Laurie Brett, Vincent Regan, Michael Nardone and John Gordon Sinclair.
Fortunately, there are more details about the other new showing this month (here are the other ones).
Exclusive screening of Britannia Season 2
Date: Tuesday 29 October Timings: 6.00pm for a 6.30pm start Venue: Curzon Soho, 99 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 5DY
On behalf of the RTS, Vertigo Films and Neal Street Productions, we would like to invite you to an exclusive screening of Britannia Season 2 on Wednesday 29 October, ahead of its broadcast on Thursday 7 November on Sky Atlantic.
Following the screening of the first episode, there will be a Q&A with key cast and creatives behind the series, including Jez Butterworth, Tom Butterworth, David Morrissey, James Richardson, and key cast members.
Tickets for RTS Members are complimentary but must be booked in advance. Tickets for non RTS members are £10.
