It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you each week what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently and your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching. TMINE recommends has all the reviews of all the TV shows TMINE has ever recommended, but for a complete list of TMINE’s reviews of (good, bad and insipid) TV shows and movies, there’s the definitive TV Reviews A-Z and Film Reviews A-Z. But it’s what you have you been watching? So tell us! Tell us if you want to live
As the temperature outside starts to get colder, things start to hot up again in the world of tele, which means new shows are starting to pop up again on both network TV and Internet TV. Elsewhere, I reviewed the hilarious Get Krack!n (Australia: ABC) while in the new ‘Boxset Monday’, I reviewed Amazon’s Comrade Detective.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’m currently four episodes into Sky Atlantic’s slightly bonkers Canadian-set Tim Roth revenge thriller Tin Star, but I’ll Boxset Monday that next week so you’ll have to wait until then to hear my opinion.
There have also been three other new shows in the past week: TVNZ (New Zealand)’s Rake-ish Dear Murderer, S4C (UK)’s bilingual gun drama Bang and Fox (US)’s The Orville. I’ll be covering all of them after the jump, as well as the regulars – כפולים (False Flag), The Last Ship and the premature season finale of Shooter. See you in a mo.
I have a new idea for Mondays that as with all plans probably won’t survive contact with the enemy (ie September’s US TV schedule and all the new shows). It’s called Boxset Monday, and the plan is that every Monday, I’ll review an entire ‘boxset’ that I’ve managed to watch either over the weekend or since the previous Monday. Given how Internet TV is changing broadcast TV, resulting in instant releases, shorter seasons et al, I think this is a necessary response. It’s just a question of how much of a life I actually ever plan on having as to whether I can pull it off…
Anyway, we’ve had two unofficial Boxset Mondays so far, both of them from Netflix: Marvel’s The Defenders and season three of Narcos. So now it’s the turn of Amazon with Comrade Detective.
Comrade Detective
Comrade Detective is an odd beast. The ostensible idea is that during the 1980s, one of the most popular Romanian TV shows was a buddy-buddy cop show in which two police detectives do more or less the exact same things that their American counterparts did, just in Romania under the Soviet system. But it was also a propaganda tool, designed to show the power of communism and the wickedness of capitalism to USSR citizens.
Although even Stanley Kubrick was a fan, following the collapse of the USSR, the programme was then almost completely forgotten about. But now some lost episodes have been recovered from the archives, restored to their former glory, then dubbed by famous actors so that we in the West can see what the East was hooked on during the Cold War.
However, inactuality, what we have is a 6x30ish minute season of a satirical TV show created by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka (Animal Practice, Dice) that’s designed to mock US TV shows and movies of the 80s and highlight the hidden Western propaganda within those works. Although initially planned to be based on Czechoslovakia’s Třicet případů majora Zemana (Thirty Cases of Major Zeman), it turned out that obtaining the rights to an old Central European TV show and then dubbing it was actually harder than filming an entirely new show from scratch.
So they did that. They actually wrote an entire TV show, got it translated into Romanian, went to Romania and filmed it with Romanian actors and with Romanian production staff, then got the likes of Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Chloë Sevigny, Nick Offerman, Jake Johnson and – wowzers – (spoiler alert) (spoiler alert) Daniel Craig to dub their original English-language scripts on top of it. They even got in that Jon Ronson to provide introductions to episodes with Tatum, to add an air of verisimilitude. Impressive, no?
Every month (more or less), TMINE flags up what TV events BAFTA is holding around the UK
I really wish BAFTA would just send one big email at the start of the month – or even a month before that – letting me know what’s in their list of upcoming TV events. However, they don’t, so here’s some more to add to the previous list of September events:
Thursday, 21 September 2017 – 6:45pm
Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London
A preview of The Commuter, an episode of Channel 4’s sci-fi anthology series, inspired by Philip K. Dick’s renowned shorts stories. Followed by a Q+A with BAFTA-winning writer Jack Thorne (National Treasure), director Tom Harper (War and Peace) and actors Tuppence Middleton (The Imitation Game) and Anthony Boyle (The Lost City of Z).
The Commuter follows Ed Jacobson (Timothy Spall), an unassuming train station employee alarmed to discover that daily commuters are taking the train to a town that shouldn’t exist.
Each of Electric Dreams’ standalone episodes are set in their own unique world; some lie in the far reaches of the universe, whilst others lie closer to home. Philip K. Dick’s short stories have been adapted by an exciting list of leading British and American writers and directors, featuring an all-star cast.
Tuesday, 26 September 2017 – 6:45pm
Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London
A three-part BBC drama following Robert Catesby, the Warwickshire gentleman behind the Gunpowder plot of 1605. Followed by a Q+A with director J Blakeson, writer Ronan Bennett and actors Kit Harington and Liv Tyler.
Robert Catesby (Harrington) is a committed Catholic in Protestant England, where Catholics are persecuted relentlessly. The authorities, directed by King James’ spymaster in Chief Robert Cecil (Mark Gatiss), execute priests and target lay Catholics. Despite the peaceful protestations of head Jesuit Father Garnet (Peter Mullan), Catesby, unable to stand by, recruits friends and family to his audacious – and now infamous – plan.
This series is produced by Kudos in association with Thriker Films. Produced by Laurie Borg with executive producers Ollie Madden for Kudos and Steven Wright for the BBC. Kit Harrington and Daniel West are Co-Executive Producers for Thriker Films.
Thursday, 28 September 2017 – 6:30pm
Princess Anne Theatre, BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, London
The team behind the BAFTA-winning mini-series National Treasure discuss the creative collaborations that brought the show together.
Based on Operation Yewtree, National Treasure examines the public and private impact of historical sexual offence accusations against a fictional, much-loved public figure. Channel 4’s four-part drama is written by BAFTA-winner Jack Thorne and stars Dame Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane, Andrea Riseborough and Tim McInnery. The hit show garnered seven BAFTA nominations, winning for Best Mini-Series, Best Director and Best Original Music
The panel will include:
BAFTA-winning director, Marc Munden
BAFTA-nominated editor, Luke Dunkley
BAFTA-nominated cinematographer, Ole Bratt Birkeland
