What have you been watching? Including Hobbit 2, Penny Dreadful, Hannibal, Game of Thrones and Elementary

17 May 2014 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

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 been finale week in the US for the main networks, so nothing new for me to try out, but I did watch a movie.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
The second in a trilogy of movies that could easily have been squished into one movie or at most two, without losing anything. Considerably better than the first, however, the second sees aspiring burglar Hobbit Bilbo (Martin Freeman) heading off towards the Lonely Mountain with a bunch of dwarves headed by Richard Armitage to help them reclaim their birthright from the dragon Smaug with just a little help from the wizard Gandalf and a certain magic ring. As you might imagine, there’s a lot of extra plotting, largely involving Evangeline Lilly from Lost as an elf who has designs on Legoland Legolas (Orlando Bloom) but starts getting interested in Aidan Turner from Being Human (UK) instead, and Stephen Fry does an odd turn as the leader of Lakeland Laketown; Benedict Cumberbatch manages to interact with Freeman as the voice and motion-captured body of Smaug without conjuring the memory of Sherlock at any point. But for all the extras, which excel when they try to recapture the more adult feel and tie into the plot of Lord of the Rings, this still feels like a kids movie and not a particularly good one, either, although there are some good scenes recreated from the book at least. Watching it on iTunes, it suffered a bit from not being in 3D since as well as largely being shot like a fairground ride, with dwarves, elves and dragons sliding in and out of shot willy nilly, the colour loss of 3D hides the fact that the CGI is more than a bit rubbish.

After the jump, a round-up of the regulars, with reviews of 24, Agents of SHIELD, The Americans, Arrow, The Blacklist, Continuum, Elementary, Game of Thrones, Hannibal, Penny Dreadful, and Silicon Valley.

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A trailer for E!’s one new show: The Royals

16 May 2014 Rob Buckley Post a comment

In true Steve Jobs style, there’s one last thing: E!’s The Royals.

No, really, it’s a thing. E! – best known for fawning/stalkery celebrity content – is actually venturing into scripted programming for the first time. And for its first project, it’s lined up The Royals. An hour-long drama from One Tree Hill‘s Mark Schwahn, it follows a fictional British royal family led by Queen Helena (Elizabeth Hurley), a hard-drinking, table-dancing, fancy hat-wearing modern matriarch who will do anything to protect her family’s reputation. 

Can’t wait – can you? Unfortunately, it’s not airing until 2015. That’ll give you time to prepare.

Trailers for USA’s new shows: Rush, Complications and Satisfaction

16 May 2014 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Last up of all the networks this week is USA, which has three new shows on its roster, most of which it’s already been promoting for a while now and are all set to air pretty soon anyway.

Still, for completeness’ sake, after the jump, you can look at trailers for Rush, with Miranda‘s Tom Ellis (yes, BBC1’s Miranda) as a private doctor who absolutely, definitely isn’t Hank from USA’s Royal Pains because the show’s set on the West Coast; Complications, which has Jason “I was the voice of Batman. Once” O’Mara starring as… a doctor called Ellis; and Satisfaction, which isn’t about doctors at all, but does explore Maslow’s hierarchy of needs instead, looking at exactly what is enough for happiness, if money ain’t it.

Unfortunately, if you’re not in the US, you won’t be able to watch the Complications trailer without ‘help’. Don’t blame me.

Continue reading “Trailers for USA’s new shows: Rush, Complications and Satisfaction”

Trailers for all two of SyFy’s new shows: Ascension and Dominion

16 May 2014 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

After that big slab of new shows that NBC, ABC, Fox, CBS, TNT, TBS and even to a lesser extent The CW are putting out in the Fall, SyFy’s upfront presentation of a mere two shows looks a bit rubbish. Even more rubbish is that Dominion is due out in June, Ascension in November. And most rubbish of all are the shows themselves – at least, judging by the trailers.

Dominion, which stars Anthony Head doing his best American accent (cf Jonathan Creek, Free Agents), is a spin-off from dreadful Paul Bettany starrer Legion. The show carries that on in a transformed post-apocalyptic future, 25 years after an army of lower angels, assembled by the archangel Gabriel, waged a war of possession against mankind. If you enjoy this, you are probably a very unique and special snowflake of a person.

Ascension, which stars Tricia Helfer, who’d almost certainly rather be on ABC in a second season of Killer Women rather than back on SyFy, imagines that while Kennedy was busy exhorting America to aim for the moon back in ’63, he was also sending off a covert colonising spaceship full of families on a 100-year long voyage. Seems plausible, doesn’t it? 

Trailers for all two of The CW’s new shows: The Flash and Jane The Virgin

16 May 2014 Rob Buckley Post a comment

As always, bringing up the rear in the US’s upfronts week is The CW (and assorted cable channels). The CW has traditionally been associated with – and indeed has specifically targeted – young women with its shows, but thanks to the success of the likes of Supernatural and Arrow and the lack of success of The Carrie Diaries et al (as well as a little pressure from the affiliates), it is looking to get some more men watching

“As you might have noticed, it’s a very different CW,” CW Chief Mark Pedowitz says, explaining that when he started with CW in 2011, “we were the Gossip Girl network…We wanted to bring more men to the network – and to add more original programing throughout the year.” 

The means to achieve this? More superheroes. Well, The Flash, anyway. And angels and zombies. But the channel isn’t going to forget its core, so it’s also lined up Jane The Virgin. Yes, in The CW world, men like superheroes, women like programmes about women and babies. Sigh.

Anyway, here are the trailers for the Fall line-up, but we’ll have to wait to see glimpses of mid-season shows iZombie and Messengers.

The Flash (Tuesdays, 8/7c)
Produced Bonanza Productions in association with Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros TV based upon characters published by DC Entertainment. From writer/executive producers Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg, director/executive producer David Nutter and executive producer Sarah Schechter.

Jane the Virgin (Mondays, 9/8c)
Produced by CBS Television Studios. From writer/executive producer Jennie Snyder Urman, director/executive producer Brad Silberling and executive producers Ben Silverman, Gary Pearl and Jorge Granier.