The Medium is Not Enough

In the US: Fridays, 8/7c, The CW
In the UK: Some time in 2010 on E4

No matter how you look at it, the Superman comics can be a bit silly. To be fair, as soon as you accept that there are aliens from the planet Krypton who can leap tall buildings in a single bound, etc, when they’re on Earth, you have to accept there’s going to be a certain amount of silliness anyway.

Smallville, however, did its level best when it started to avoid too much that was implausible in an effort to create a realistic view of what it would be like for young Clark Kent to grow up in Smallville, encumbered with super powers. Yes, to ensure that it wasn’t boring there was the ‘krypto villain of the week’, but it still was on the less silly end of all the possible Superman worlds.

Over the years though – and we’re in our ninth year now – it’s gradually become sillier and sillier as more of the DC Comics intellectual property has been added to the scripts. So Green Arrow, the Flash, Aquaman, Brainiac, Black Canary, time travel, the Phantom Zone, Supergirl and a whole lot more have come and made everything a whole lot dafter.

For this, the opener to season nine, we have Lois Lane coming back from the year 3000 thanks to a ring she borrowed off Clark; Metallo’s stomping around trying to chat her up; Chloe has become the Oracle of the Justice League’s Watchtower; the Green Arrow is off cage fighting; Clark’s decided to abandon his human side and embrace his Kryptonian destiny, complete with natty S on his chest; and there’s a new boy in town. He’s a soldier. One day he’s even going to be a general. He comes from Krypton.

Kneel before Zod everyone. Or is that a bit silly?

Continue reading “Review: Smallville 9×1”

In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, ABC

The Witches of Eastwick is one of those movies that everyone seemed to enjoy. An adaptation of John Updike’s novel, it sees three women in a small town suddenly get their wishes granted by Jack Nicholson – they discover they’re witches, but worryingly, they also discover he’s the devil.

Depending on your views, you can see it as a feminist parable – three women get together and triumph over evil using their own power – or an anti-feminist parable – three women are doormats until they meet the right man and then bad things happen to them because they use their own power.

Eastwick, ABC’s version of the story, isn’t really worthy of the word ‘parable’. In reality a slightly – but only slightly – more adult version of Charmed it makes Practical Magic look like The Shield and has worse acting than the average soap opera.

And any show that has that nice mountie from Due South as a Jack Nicholson-esque devil has problems.

Continue reading “Review: Eastwick 1×1”

In the US: Wednesdays, 9/8c, ABC
In the UK: Thursdays, 8pm, Sky 1/Sky 1 HD. Starts October 15

If your only source about modern life was American TV, you’d pretty soon come to the conclusion that all families are either nuclear or have single parents struggling to make ends meet. Yet modern families can be a whole lot more complicated than that.

The appropriately if unsubtly named Modern Family tries to show something a bit different. A mockumentary following three separate but related family groups, we see a nuclear family struggling in its own special way to cope with life with children, a gay couple who have just adopted a Vietnamese baby and Ed O’Neill on his second marriage with a much younger woman from Columbia and her son.

While it’s not the funniest show around, it does have some laugh-out-loud moments and some interesting characters to watch at least.

Continue reading “Review: Modern Family 1×1”

In the US: Thursdays, 9/8c, CBS
In the UK: Five then everywhere. No airdate yet

Most people who watched the last season of CSI will have to admit it was a bit of a mess. While the quality of the writing was still strong and there were some very good episodes, it was hard to care about the show. New girl Riley still hadn’t evolved a personality; Warrick was gone, Sara was gone, Grissom went; Laurence Fishburne turned up and while he was great, he didn’t quite gel with the team.

The producers appear to have noticed that and are doing their best to rectify the situation with some tinkering to the cast and characters, something that made up the bulk of the season opener. The rest: a really quite awesome homage to The Matrix, appropriately enough. I hope they haven’t spent the whole CGI budget for the year on it.

Continue reading “Review: CSI 10×1”