Every Wednesday, TMINE reviews two movies and infringes a former mobile phone company’s trademarked marketing gimmick
Orange Wednesday is back again and despite the format, it’s brought three movies along to be reviewed. Is that a breach of the rules? No, because one was so bad, I couldn’t get through more than half of it, so it isn’t technically a review.
Have a guess which of the three movies it is I couldn’t stomach very long:
The Breaker Upperers (2018) – A New Zealand comedy in which two best friends run a business breaking up relationships
Hunter Killer (2018) – Gerard Butler is a submarine captain who must avert a third World War
Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) – Jake Gyllenhaal is an art critic whose live falls under the baleful influence of a haunted painting
NBC may now be the number one US network again, but it’s not got there through originality. To be honest, it tried originality 10 years ago with the likes of My Own Worst Enemy and it took the network about five years to climb out from bottom place in the ratings as a result, so maybe that’s a good thing.
All the same, it does mean we get an awful lot of the same stuff reheated, once a show has proven to be popular. Like shows set in Chicago? Then have Chicago PD, Chicago Fire, Chicago Medand Chicago Justice. Like Law & Order? Then have Law & Order: SVU and Law & Order: CI, too.
The Blacklisthas proven to be one of the network’s more enduring shows. However, after five years, its twinkle is dimming and a spin-off, The Blacklist: Redemption, didn’t exactly pan out well.
So how about a sex-swapped version that’s a bit duller? Cue The Enemy Within.
The Enemy Within
Taking over from James Spader in the role of “evil criminal who helps the authorities to catch other evil criminals for some reason” is the potentially almost as fascinating Jennifer Carpenter. Best known as the titular sister’s foul-mouthed cop sister in Dexter but who was also a whole lot of fun in Limitless, Carpenter’s a firebrand who can set the screen alight – when she’s allowed to.
Here she plays the ‘most notorious traitor in US history’, Erica Shepherd, a brilliant codebreaker and former CIA deputy director of operations, who was convicted of treason for working with terrorist Mikhail Vassily Tal. Three years after she’s arrested by top FBI counterintelligence agent Morris Chestnut (Rosewood, Legends, V, Nurse Jackie), Tal is back and setting off explosives around the US, so Chestnut’s boss suggests he talk to Carpenter, who’s held Spader-style in a box of a prison. Reluctantly – because she was responsible for his fiancée’s death – Chestnut capitulates and Carpenter is soon bringing her valuable insight to bear to try to work out what Tal is up to.
And if she can escape from custody using her big brain at the same time, that would be a bonus…
In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, ABC
In the UK: Not yet acquired
Ever since James Bond spotted Ursula Andress rising out shimmering Caribbean waters – and left her shaken as well as stirred – the spy genre has been associated with ‘sexy fun times’, as it is officially described. Lots of jetting around to foreign locations and lots of shagging, interspersed with the occasional murder. Sexy fun times.
Of course, once people cottoned on to the idea that women weren’t mere disposable objects, even the Bond movies had to change and try to make their female characters closer to equals.
One of the perennial solutions to this dilemma has been to make the female lead a spy as well. Think The Spy Who Loved Me‘s KGB agent Barbara Bach who knew how to drive Bond’s submersible Lotus Esprit because she’d already stolen the plans and was as liable to kill him as be seduced by him.
The question is how to do all this without removing the chemistry and without duplicating skills, making one of the leads a second-fiddle in the storyline. Here, Whiskey Cavalier actually has a good idea about how to do it – make them work for somewhat morally different services with different remits.
Whiskey Cavalier
Despite being on ABC – the home of almost no good action dramas ever – and being a mid-season replacement (usually a sign a show’s not good enough to duke it out with other shows in the fall schedule) and having an eminently stupid name, Whiskey Cavalier is a surprisingly decent comedy spy drama from the sexy fun times sub-genre.
It sees Scott Foley playing a crack FBI agent with a “high emotional quotient”. Well, former crack FBI agent, since his French fiancée dumped him a year ago and he’s still blubbing his eyes out to tearful tunes of an evening.
Soon, this ‘Captain America of the FBI’ is sent on a mission to Moscow to recover former NSA analyst Tyler James Williams (Everyone Hates Chris) who’s stolen a list of CIA agents. There he bumps into tough, morally ambiguous CIA spy Lauren Cohan, who wants to render Williams to a black site for interrogation and is prepared to sabotage Foley’s efforts to do it, even though they’re working for the same side. The two are soon sparring to get control of Williams using their own highly different methods.
Every Tuesday, TMINE flags up what new TV events BAFTA is holding around the UK
Only one addition to the March schedule this week, but it’s a Q&A. And in Glasgow! Sure, it’s an ITV show again, so surprise, surprise, is a crime drama. Remember the days when ITV made something other than period dramas, crime dramas and period crime dramas? I’m not sure I do any more.
New ITV original drama The Bay from award winning writer and playwright Daragh Carville (Being Human, The Smoke, Cherrybomb) and starring Morven Christie (The A Word, The Replacement).
When Detective Sergeant Lisa Armstrong is assigned to a missing persons investigation, at first it seems like any other – tragic, but all too familiar. As a Family Liaison Officer, she’s trained never to get emotionally involved. Her job is to support families during the worst time of their lives whilst also to be the eyes and ears of the police investigation; a cuckoo in the nest. But there’s something very different about this particular case. With horror Lisa realises she’s got a personal connection with this frightened family; one that could compromise her and the investigation. As she grapples to get justice for the grieving family, Lisa discovers it could come at a cost.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with actor Morven Christie and Script Executive Sophie Bicknell. Networking drinks in partnership with STV take place in the Everyman bar afterwards.
