It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.
The usual “TMINE recommends” page features links to reviews of all the shows I’ve ever recommended, and there’s also the Reviews A-Z, for when you want to check more or less anything I’ve reviewed ever.
So now I have to apologise. Sorry, Australia. Sorry, UK. Sorry, Internet. I have failed you, as well as a whole bunch of other countries whose TV I ostensibly review but I never quite get round to.
Oh well. I’m used to failure. Readjusted schedule, then. Some time in the next week or so, I should hopefully be getting through the first few episodes of a whole bunch of Australian TV shows – Hyde & Seek, The Wrong Girl, The Secret Daughter, Deep Water and Rosehaven. As for the US, I should be previewing Epix’s Graves and reviewing HBO’s Divorce. Meanwhile, on the Internet, Netflix’s Easy, Crackle’s Start Up and Amazon’s Crisis in Six Scenes might well be on indefinite hold, but maybe I’ll find the time.
I’ve not yet caught the latest episodes of The Fall and High Maintenance, so after the jump, I’ll be looking over Ash vs Evil Dead, The Good Place, Halt and Catch Fire, Impastor, Lucifer,Westworld and You’re The Worst, as well as the return of Arrow and The Flash. Two of those are for the chop – can you guess which ones?
If you look over all that, you’ll see I did watch an awful lot of TV last week, just not enough. I probably could have watched all of it though if I hadn’t been bogged down with one thing…
Marvel’s Luke Cage (Netflix) Netflix and Marvel’s latest ‘Defender’ is a stonking 13 episodes of… not much. Continuing where Marvel’s Jessica Jones left off, it sees Luke Cage head over Harlem way to keep his head down, but when an old friend gets killed, the bulletproof black man has to wade in to help protect the neighbourhood. But then his past begins to catch up with him…
The show sticks pretty closely to the original Luke Cage comics – I’ve read precisely none of them, but if you watch this video, you’ll be caught up on them and know pretty much the whole plot of the first season. But what do we care about plot? Atfer all, Marvel’s Luke Cage doesn’t, being interested mainly in discussing black culture, history and what is the true and correct course of action for the modern black man of honour. Cage, who is a walking encapsulation of every single African-American stereotype and archetype (gang member, son of a preacher, ex-military, a blue collar worker, frequent denizen of social barber shop, lover, prisoner, medical experiment, boxer et al), becomes a nexus point for modern US politics, wandering around town in a hoodie but able to withstand police bullets, he’s able to demonstrate and confront all manner of arguments, while being the perfect role model at all times. Sweet Christmas, he doesn’t even swear.
And when he’s not doing that, we’re getting a musical interlude down the club, to celebrate black music. Method Man makes a cameo and even raps live about Luke Cage and police brutality.
Unfortunately, despite a cracking soundtrack and numerous homages to blaxploitation movie, that’s really all the show is, despite a grade A, almost exclusively black cast that includes multiple members of The Wire‘s cast (eg Sonja Sohn), Sons of Anarchy‘s Theo Rossi, Alfre Woodward, Banshee‘s Frankie Faison and House of Cards‘ Mahershala Ali. There’s minimal superhero fun, since Cage basically just wanders into rooms, people shoot at him to zero effect and he then punches them unconscious. Even when Cage’s arch-nemesis shows up, their confrontation seems to drag out across about half the season without much really happening.
If you’re expecting crossovers with the other shows or the movies, I’m afraid beyond the now compulsory appearance of Rosario Dawson and numerous references to the other shows and films, you’re going to be disappointed. At most, they offer only a rehabilitation of Justin Hammer.
And the dialogue. Oh gods, the dialogue.
In a sense, Marvel’s Luke Cage is an important show, offering a uniquely black perspective on the superhero genre, just as Marvel’s Jessica Jones was a uniquely female deconstruction of superheroes. But actually watching it, so little of any real interest happens dramatically that all you can do is admire its heart. And how it managed to slip Cage’s original comic book costume in there. That was impressive.
In the US: Fridays, 9/8c, Fox In the UK: Wednesdays, 9pm, Syfy. Starts October 19
Three episodes into The Exorcist, Fox’s TV sequel to the classic 70s horror movie, and it’s becoming clear just how unclear the producers plans for it are.
The first episode was genuinely good, probably the best pilot of the 2016 season so far, being a properly scary piece of TV directed in the style of original director William Friedkin. Episode two, however, went in a completely different direction, taking in more modern horror movies and found footage-style horror, as well as all manner of daftness and a buddy-buddy style repartee between the two leads (Alfonso Herrera and Ben Daniels). It even inexplicably gave us a somewhat jaunty theme tune.
Episode three retreats somewhat from that tonal departure to give us something far more in the style of the first episode, with some disconcerting and upsetting moments of its own, but it still had some very odd qualities. Apparently deciding that you can’t have a slow, drip drip accumulation of evidence in this day and age, the producers decide to make the Devil’s plans so public, he might as well have taken out ad space on every billboard in Chicago. But at the same, they still want to retain some of the original’s shock moments, so that means teenage girls wetting themselves in front of everyone on train. I’m not sure that combination works, but there you go.
Meanwhile, despite the diabolical evidence mounting up on papal iPhones even as he pontificates, our goodies are personae non gratae with the Church. And as well as switching away from the disconcerting in favour of all out gore to obtain its shocks, the show decides to get at least some of its horrors from a touch of Mephistophelian paedophilia. At the same time, we have Daniels being marvellously naturalistic but also just a tad comedic, while ostensible star Geena Davis is nowhere to be found and Alan Ruck keeps passing out.
All in all, it’s just very unclear what The Exorcist is trying to be. It’s not really trying to provide cerebral shocks by slowly persuading you the Devil exists. It’s not really appealing to the heart, since too often it’s comedic. Sometimes it goes for the stomach, but that’s more sickening than anything else.
I’ll probably stick with it for another week at least, just to see if it sorts itself out, but The Exorcist has so far proven to be the biggest disappointment of the season so far after such a good start. I do hope I my faith is rewarded.
Barrometer rating: 2 Would it be better with a female lead? N/A TMINE’s prediction: Likely to face cancellation by the end of the season
Most love stories see boy meet girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl live happily ever after. The CW, being part of the Internet age as well as the home of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, knows life’s not that simple and the boy or girl of your dreams might turn out to be a complete fruit loop.
So it is with No Tomorrow, which should perhaps be renamed Crazy New Boyfriend. Based on Rede Globo Brazil’s Como Aproveitar o Fim do Mundo (How to Enjoy the End of the World), it sees uptight American girl Tori Anderson fall in love at first sight with carefree Englishman Joshua Sasse (Galavant). After a chance encounter reunites them, she’s all prepared to ditch mumbling dull boyfriend Jesse Rath (Defiance) for Sasse when Sasse reveals that the reason he’s so happy-go-lucky is that he believes the world is going to end within the year, thanks to an impending collision with an asteroid. He’s going to live like there’s no tomorrow and he’s got a Bucket List to work through.
At first, Anderson resists but a near-death pogo stick-induced experience causes her to re-evaluate her life – but on her terms not his. Will she and Sasse end up together or will she go back to Rath? And what will she put on her Bucket List?
How much you might enjoy No Tomorrow is almost exclusively down to how much you enjoy the company of Anderson and Sasse. Now normally, Sasse is the kind of transatlantic posh boy who gets on my nerves. He probably pronounces ‘water’ with a tap and his accent is sufficiently odd that The Guardianthought he was Australian. He was certainly annoying in Galavant.
Yet, there’s something actually quite likable about him here, a former science journal copy editor who gave up everything and became free and easy because of science and maths. Although he probably calls it math. He’s a bit controlling in his certainty but he’s got a good heart and is appealing. It’s also good to see an inversion of the usual ‘English dull, American fun’ and manic pixie dream girl stereotypes.
Meanwhile, Anderson is amazing. It’s hard to believe that she’s been confined to Nickleodeon and web TV series until now. She’s appealing, funny and lights up every scene she’s in. Which is pretty much all of them.
Don’t like them? Going to hate this, because it’s going to rely very heavily on their interactions. True, we have all of Anderson’s co-workers, her boss and her family to entertain us, each of them in their own way several shades of whacky; Sasse is a bit more on his own, although there’s a slight twist at the end of the first episode that suggests he might bring his ‘friends’ along for what is likely to be a far scarier ride for Anderson than she expected.
But ultimately, it’s going to be Anderson and Sasse going off on dune buggy rides, singing karaoke together and doing whatever other life experiences 20somethings think they should be doing before they’re dead. Could be good, but the evidence of the first episode suggests it might be more fun for them than for us.
All the same, No Tomorrow has a good deal of charm, two good leads and a promising first episode. One to try just to make your day a little brighter.
