Tuesday’s “The Doctor fights Moriarty, a Neil Gaiman Sandman prequel, and Michael Palin returns to acting” news

2 July 2013 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Doctor Who

  • The Doctor to fight Moriarty with the help of Q and the Queen

Trailers

  • Trailer for the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis with Carey Mulligan, John Goodman et al
  • Trailer for Ride Along with Kevin Hart and Ice Cube

Comics

  • Vertigo to launch six new titles this year, including a Sandman prequel by Neil Gaiman

UK TV

UK TV casting

US TV

US TV casting

New US TV show casting

  • Jenna Elfman replaces Parker Posey on NBC’s Growing Up Fisher
US TV

Question of the week: have you ever abandoned TV shows during the final seasons?

1 July 2013 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Dexter

Dexter has been going on for seven seasons and has just started on its eighth. Now I loved the first season – it was great. The second season was excellent, too, after a faltering start. Then came the Jimmy Smits season and the first sense that maybe the show was losing its edge. Season four gave us John Lithgow as Trinity, which was a much more promising affair.

All seemed to be good.

But then along came season five, with Julia Stiles as an abuse victim who turned the tables on her abusers with Dexter’s help. Despite the presence of Stiles, Chris Vance and Jonny Lee Miller, it was very Mamite-y: you either loved it or hated it. I loved it… right up until the end of the season, which had possibly the stupidest ending imaginable.

After that, things just got ridiculous, with Edward James Olmos and Colin Hanks as the Big Bads of season six, with a twist you probably saw coming, but even if you didn’t, you wondered how Dexter got so stupid the rest of the time. And then Debs decided she fancied Dexter. Ugh.

Then last year gave us season seven, the stupidest of them all, which despite a good start, gave us Dexter shagging one of his victims while she was still on his ‘table’, all the while Debs was trying to wean Dexter off this murdering thing. Before murdering someone herself.

So Dexter‘s eighth season started last night. I hear it had some good elements. Yet despite having watched seven seasons already, I find myself not wanting to watch it. At all. I just can’t see, short of Dexter being killed or stuck in prison, how they could make it interesting enough and smart enough again for me to want to watch it. Not even Charlotte Rampling can do that.

Now this isn’t the first time I’ve bailed on a show at the last moment, as a result of a show’s increasingly insipid nature. I gave up on Chuck for much the same reason. So this week’s question is:

Have you ever given up on a long-running TV show just as it’s hit its final season? If so, why?

As always, leave your answers below or on your own blog.

Monday’s “More Wonderland, Sky Living’s drama casting and a Jacob’s Ladder remake” news

1 July 2013 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film

Film casting

UK TV

US TV

  • Trailer for season 3/4 of Strike Back

US TV casting

New US TV shows

New US TV show casting

What did you watch this week? Including Perception, Under The Dome, World War Z and A Good Day To Die Hard

28 June 2013 Rob Buckley 24 Comments

It’s “What did you watch this week?, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I’ve watched this week that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.

Perception (TNT/Watch)
Last summer’s slightly surprising combination of dull old procedural and interesting examination of psychology and mental health returns with a new character, the probable loss of at least one character, the surprising return of another character and the same old dull procedural. However, as well as the usual mind-bending issue with the show that you’re never sure what’s real and what’s hallucination, we have a possible slight departure from format – this first episode was less concerned with investigation and more concerned with the philosophical question of whether someone who’s had a brain injury and resulting personality change is still the same person they were before the injury. It’s a question that other shows probably wouldn’t touch with a barge pole but the show was all the better for it. Rachael Leigh Cook is still the least plausible FBI agent in TV history, though.

Under the Dome (CBS/Channel 5)
Based on a Stephen King novel, this mini-series sees a small town full of Diverse People With Issues And Secrets suddenly enveloped by a forcefield dome that blocks everything from sound and cars through to radio signals and electricity. Why’s it happening, who’s behind it, what’s going to happen next and will everyone sort out their issues before their secrets are discovered? Probably.

Full of people who’ve never been the stars of things but you’ll have seen being really good in loads of other shows – Rachelle Lefevre (Life on Mars, The Deep End, Twilight), Dean Norris (Breaking Bad) and Mike Vogel (Bates Motel, Pan Am) – as well as Britt Robertson (The Secret Circle, Life Unexpected), this is very odd flashback to the 80s, when Stephen King mini-series were all the rage. As back then, you’ll spend all your time working out who’s going to end up dead next and what precisely is going on. It’s pretty much exactly what you’d think if you’ve seen any such mini-series before, with dodgy dialogue, stock characters but an intriguing central idea. It’s also surprisingly gruesome at times.

With ratings of 12m, hopefully it’ll boost the careers of at least Lefevre, who’s needed a breakout role for ages and was unceremoniously dumped from the third Twilight movie in favour of the somewhat inferior Bryce Dallas Howard, and Norris, now that Breaking Bad is leaving us. I could do without the dodgy stalker bloke, though.

And in movies:

World War Z
Brad Pitt travels the world looking for a way to fight the zombie plague that’s broken out. Taking in Korea and Israel, he eventually finds his solution is… Torchwood. Well, maybe. You’ll get that joke if you ever watch the movie.

Not great, doesn’t make huge sense, Mireille Enos (The Killing US) is largely wasted and as in movies such as Contagion, a plethora of stars turns up for five minutes only to disappear almost as quickly. But it’s tense all the way through and has a few funny moments. Better than the average zombie movie, anyway.

A Good Way To Die Hard
Bruce Willis goes off to Russia when his wayward son shoots someone in a nightclub and is put on trial. However, all is not what it seems and soon Willis and Willis Jr are double-acting their way through numerous shoot-outs and car chases around Russia.

The best that can probably be said about this is that it’s probably the second-best of the Die Hard movies, with at least some intelligence on display in places throughout the movie. But it shows nowhere near the level of human involvement and innovation of the original, and the constant CGI effects mean that nothing feels real enough to care about.

“What did you watch this week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?