It’s time for our regular look at the TV that the BFI is showing, this time in March 2015. Surprisingly slim pickings this month, but there is a preview of Jimmy McGovern’s forthcoming Banished, complete with Q&A with McGovern, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Russell Tovey, a short season of Jenny Barraclough documentaries and a triple bill of Peter Watkins films, including The War Game and Culloden, a faux documentary about the Jacobean uprising. And as you can watch it below, it’s also this week’s The Wednesday Play… on a Tuesday.
News: More Musketeers, 35 Diwrnod, US Cordon remake, James Cromwell to Halt and Catch Fire + more
Film casting
- Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny to star in Whit Stilman’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Lady Susan, Love & Friendship
Internet TV
- Richard Gunn joins Hemlock Grove
- Vikings to get online spin-off Athelstan’s Journal
- Carrie-Anne Moss joins Netflix’s AKA Jessica Jones
UK TV
- BBC One renews: The Musketeers…
- …and Last Tango In Halifax
- S4C renews: 35 Diwrnod
- E4 cancels: My Mad Fat Diary
- Lifetime acquires: Blue
New UK TV show casting
- Denise Welch, Rebecca Root and Harry Hepple to star in BBC Two’s Boy Meets Girl
US TV
US TV show casting
- Sarah Carter joins Rogue
- James Cromwell to recur on Halt and Catch Fire
- Nathan Fillion to play himself on Big Bang Theory
- Garret Dillahunt to guest on Brooklyn Nine-Nine
- Sandra Bernhard to guest on 2 Broke Girls
- Lee Tergesen, Nichole Galicia and Conrad Coates join Defiance
New US TV shows
- Fox green lights: pilot of comedy Cooper Barrett’s Guide To Surviving Life
- Weinstein Co developing The Reaper as mini-series
- MTV developing: feminism comedy
- The CW green lights: remakes of Tales From The Darkside and Belgium’s Cordon, plus supernatural drama Dead People
- OWN developing: adaptation of Queen Sugar
- Cinemax green lights: Quarry
New US TV show casting
- Augustus Prew to star in HBO’s Mamma Dallas
- Gillian Vigman, Alexie Gilmore and Jessica Meraz join TBS’s Quality Time
What have you been watching? Including Gone Girl, Suits, Spiral, The Blacklist and The Americans
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. And if you want to know when any of these shows are on in your area, there’s Locate TV – they’ll even email you a weekly schedule.
It’s February. How did that happen? Anyway, what with the Superbowl and the fact that no one launches any new shows at the end of January, it’s been a relatively quiet week in terms of new shows, with only Sky/Pivot bucking the trend to give us Fortitude. On the other hand, a few old hands have returned with new seasons…
After the break then, all the regulars, including 12 Monkeys, 19-2, The Americans, Arrow, Banshee, Constantine, Elementary, The Flash, Gotham, Ground Floor, Hindsight, Man Seeking Woman, Spiral (Engrenages), State of Affairs, and Suits. The observant will notice that neither Cougar Town nor Marvel’s Agent Carter are on that list: that’s because I’m watching them with my wife and she only watches TV – get this – when she’s in the mood. It’s just inconceivable, isn’t it? I also tried to watch Backstrom‘s second episode but failed, as it was even less engrossing than the first episode.
But that relative lull means I’ve been able to squeeze in a movie this week.
Gone Girl (2014) (iTunes, Amazon Prime)
Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike meet, fall in love and get married. Then one day, Affleck returns home to find his wife gone in mysterious circumstances. But it’s not long before the finger starts pointing at him. Novelist Gillian Flynn adapted her own bestseller for this slightly meandering, variable piece, shot with the usual visual precision by David Fincher. By turns disturbing, upsetting and even comedically ridiculous, the film veers close to misogyny, but the specificity of Affleck and Pike’s characters means they can’t be generalised to All Men and All Women or even to reality itself, such are some of the ludicrous twists. It’s at its best when analysing the nature of media coverage of criminal cases and allowing the Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross soundtrack to dominate, at its worst when trying to convince the audience that This Could Happen.
News: BBC3’s Murder In Successville, multiple US pilots, new Heroes and Game of Thrones trailers + more
Film casting
- Rose Byrne back for X-Men: Apocalypse
UK TV
- Channel 4 cancels: London Irish
- Thursday ratings
- Friday ratings
- Saturday ratings
New UK TV shows
- BBC Three green lights: interactive murder mystery Murder In Successville
- Trailer for BBC One’s The Casual Vacancy
New UK TV show casting
- David Thewlis to star in BBC One’s adaptation of An Inspector Calls
US TV
- Trailer for season 2 of Undateable
- TBS cancels (maybe): Ground Floor
- Trailer for season 5 of Game of Thrones
- Thursday ratings
- Friday ratings
US TV show casting
- Fairuza Balk and Shree Crooks and Jason Butler Harner to recur on Ray Donovan
New US TV shows
- Teaser trailer for USA’s Dig [US only]
- Teaser trailer for NBC’s Odyssey [US only]
- CBS green lights: pilot of medical drama LFE…
- …and civil rights drama For Justice and crime drama Sneaky Pete
- ABC green lights: pilots of medical-legal drama The Advocate, oil rush drama Boom, family legal drama The Adversaries and thriller Kingmakers…
- …six comedies including Delories and Jermaine, The King of 7B, The 46 Percenters, and The Brainy Bunch…
- …plus Uncle Buck adaptation and Family Fortune
- Fox green lights: pilot of rock star comedy DeTour
- HBO green lights: Lewis and Clark mini-series
- Trailer for NBC’s Heroes Reborn – The Aurora
New US TV show casting
- Busy Philipps joins HBO’s Vice Principals
UK TV
Review: Fortitude 1×1-1×3 (UK: Sky Atlantic; US: Pivot TV)
In the UK: Thursdays, 9pm, Sky Atlantic
In the US: Thursdays, 10e/p, Pivot TV
I remember watching the first episode of Twin Peaks very well. It was my first year at university and I was sat in the TV room. The hype for the show had been huge, and the room was full as a result. We sat waiting in expectation through the previous programme for the moment when David Lynch’s very first TV series would begin.
And for about 30 minutes, we sat there wondering what the hell all the fuss was about. This was boring. This was dull. David Lynch made this? David Lynch?
But then, through a simple straight cut scene change, we were catapulted into the Twin Peaks everyone would come to grow and love. Because we were suddenly in the car with Special Agent Dale Cooper of the FBI and finally we understood what the fuss was about.
Fortitude doesn’t quite have that moment but it has something almost approaching it. For pretty much two episodes, you sit with baited breath, watching the beautiful Icelandic filming and the famous cast as they enact a lifeless and – punningly enough – glacial script. Set in a small town on a Norwegian island in the Arctic circle where the inhabitants are outnumbered by polar bears and no one’s allowed to die, even the murder of one of the inhabitants isn’t enough to get things going in the frozen wastes of the prestige filming.
But then, in the last act of the second episode, Stanley Tucci arrives to save the day. The Agent Cooper of the piece, almost single-handedly he makes this a must-watch show… and he even brings the Twin Peaks with him. Here’s a trailer.
Continue reading “Review: Fortitude 1×1-1×3 (UK: Sky Atlantic; US: Pivot TV)”