In France: Some time last Summer
In the UK: Saturday 16th April, 9pm, BBC4. iPlayer: Episode 5, Episode 6
Well, we’re at the point where the less said about this on the front page, the better, so join me after the jump to discuss episodes 5 and 6 of season 3 of BBC4/Canal+’s Engrenages (Spiral), which is rapidly turning out to be France’s version of The Wire – season 5, or possibly the very first Prime Suspect.
So our Ali is up to more charity fun, helping Pampers celebrate its 50th anniversary and giving out care packages to parents as part of the Little Miracles Mission program:
Randomly, though she’s also been off launching a new line of Reebok trainers and giving out beauty tips while she does so.
Clearly, she’s back in the random business again. But that won’t stop her fellow randomeers, who’ve clearly got a taste for it.
Scarlett Johansson has been jogging with Sean Penn, but making Owen Wilson follow them.
Amber Heard, who’s normally off campaigning for marriage, has decided to campaign against it now – at least for girls around the world under 15 – and would like you to sign a petition to stop it from happening.
Her Drive Angry co-star, Nicolas Cage – possibly the most random man in the world – has been in jail for alleged domestic abuse and has now been rescued, randomly enough, by Dog The Bounty Hunter.
But it’s Alex Breckenridge who’s gone truly, truly random, by deciding to go a little bit pink and not being sure she likes it.
Here ends the randomness for the week.
In the US: Erm…
Well, I’m not sure how much point there is doing this now, given that it’s just been pulled from the schedules, but let’s go with a third-episode verdict on CBS’s slightly comedic spy show. The first episode, while not exactly perfect, still managed – after its initial doomed exploration of comedy – to turn in some decent spy moments, with double crosses and action aplenty. It also made us care for all the characters, who actually seemed interesting.
Unfortunately, episode two was an exceedingly dull affair, in which our team of spies have to go to North Korea to rescue a diplomat’s family so he can defect to the West. Here, we lost most of the things that made the pilot bearable. The characters really didn’t get much exploration, the two female characters suddenly had nothing to do, James Murray’s accent was on the fritz, and the action was lightweight to say the least.
Episode three was at least slightly better but suffered from the exact same problems as the second episode. It didn’t help that despite the fact there are three Brits in the acting team, not one of them pointed out that Art History is not a compulsory subject at Oxford and asking someone who supposedly went to Oxford “Where did you live on campus” when there’s no university campus per se, just individual college campuses, isn’t going to help you in the accuracy stakes.
The trouble with Chaos is that it doesn’t do comedy at all well. It does spy stuff pretty well and when it tries, it can do characters. But since it wants to do comedy, everything else is tarnished by its failed attempts. The spy stuff loses its edge and the characterisation doesn’t work as well.
The result is… well, it’s got cancelled, pretty much.
Carusometer rating: 4
Rob’s prediction: You don’t need to be psychic for this one.
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