Banshee

What have you been watching? Including Hiding, Winter, One Man, Two Guvnors and Agent Carter

9 February 2015 Rob Buckley 17 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 February so time for some more new programmes, some of them quite awkwardly scheduled, given I actually went out and did things this weekend. So, I’ve already reviewed the first episode of Allegiance today, and I’ll be reviewing the first two episodes of Fresh Off The Boat tomorrow. Given that Better Call Saul aired its first episode yesterday and is airing its second episode tonight, I’ll hold off on that until later in the week, too.

However, I did have time to watch two new Australian shows, as well.

Hiding (Australia: ABC)
Criminal is arrested but won’t give up the rest of his gang – until he’s nearly murdered in prison and decides he wants to be safe and free. He agrees to snitch but he and his family have to be relocated to Sydney for their own protection – except naturally, the foreign-sounding gang boss wants to find him… Supposedly a ‘unique blend of humour and tension’, instead, for the first half at least, you’ll be wanting to sue under the Trade Descriptions Act, as it’s got neither humour nor tension (although the prison fights scenes aren’t bad). But things pick up once the relocation has happened, particularly in the university where our ‘hero’ is supposed to now work and when the family have to wrestle with concerns about whether they’ll become ’Sydney dickheads’ or not. I’ll give the second episode a try, at least.

Winter (Australia: Seven)
There is, apparently, one country on Earth that still uses the tried and tested “TV movie then series” method of dipping a toe in the water and then launching a new show: Australia. In this case, Winter is a spin-off series from the 2013 Seven TV movie The Killing Field, in which former Flying Doctors Rebecca Gibney and Peter O’Brien are rival police detectives investigating crimes, which for some reason usually involve teenage girls being killed. Without having seen the movie, it’s hard to say how this stacks up against the original, but as a standalone show, it was astonishingly dull and predictable, with O’Brien a happy slapper cop, Gibney a frosty (one might almost say ‘wintery’) methodical cop who looks down on his unprofessional ways. Despite the obvious nods to The Killing and Broadchurch, the show’s saving grace is that rather than ‘the maverick cop who doesn’t play by the book’ (O’Brien) being the star, it’s Gibney’s show. But that doesn’t stop it being a waste of an hour of your life. Fans of Outrageous Fortune and The Blue Rose will notice the presence of Antonia Prebble.

I’ve not had time to watch Spiral (Engrenages), either, and my wife still hasn’t been in the mood to watch Cougar Town. But after the jump, I’ll take a look at the regulars, including 12 Monkeys, 19-2, The Americans, Arrow, Banshee, Constantine, Elementary, The Flash, Gotham, Ground Floor, Hindsight, Man Seeking Woman, Marvel’s Agent Carter, Spiral (Engrenages), State of Affairs, and Suits. Of those, one of them is being promoted to recommended and two are being cast away from the viewing list forever – but which ones!?

I also went to the theatre this week!

One Man, Two Guvnors (NT touring production)
Carlo Goldoni Commedia dell’arte-esque Il servitore di due padroni is relocated by Richard Bean (Great Britain) to 1963 Brighton, with the easily confused Francis Henshall becoming employed by two gangsters, one upper class, one working class, and having to juggle his responsibilities. Despite the fact that the role of Henshall was originally taken by James Corden, for whom every single line appears to have been personally tailored, Gavin Spokes is a great replacement and the play is actually hilariously funny, respecting and both commenting on Commedia dell’arte as it goes, complete with audience interaction. Highly recommended.

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What have you been watching? Including Gone Girl, Suits, Spiral, The Blacklist and The Americans

2 February 2015 Rob Buckley 4 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 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.

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What have you been watching? Including Backstrom, Young Drunk Punk, 19-2, Spiral and Galavant

26 January 2015 Rob Buckley 16 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.

Lots of new shows to deal with this past week, including 12 Monkeys. Unfortunately, it’s my busy time of the month, so I won’t be able to deal with them at length and there’s a few third-episode verdicts I’m going to have skip, too. Fortunately, though, all the new shows don’t really warrant full reviews…

Backstrom (US: Fox)
Despite having been canned by CBS straight after its pilot, this adaptation of Leif GW Persson’s Bäckström books has been resurrected over at Fox and once again demonstrates that the US really shouldn’t be adapting Nordic Noir. It stars Rainn Wilson from The Office as the eponymous Backstrom, a Portland police detective who’s best thought of as Gregory House MD but without the talent, the charm or the looks, bungling his way from crime scene to crime scene being lazy and offensive and being proved right because the script demands it, rather than because of any insight. So the producers think it very funny that Backstrom have the nearest – and indeed only – black person around arrested because he’s black so probably was involved in the crime. My, how comically racist! Except the black person is involved in the crime – how actually racist!

There’s some decent supporting characters, including an MMA-beat cop (Page Kennedy); a New Age medical examiner (Kristoffer Polaha from Ringer, Valentine, Life Unexpected), whom everyone reacts to like he’s English, even though he doesn’t even have an accent; an investigator whom everyone reacts to like she’s French, because she is (Beatrice Rosen); and Dennis Haysbert (The Unit, 24) as Backstrom’s boss. But this is as lazy as Backstrom himself, trying to fake being intelligent and gimmicky by having Backstrom ‘empathise’ (saying out loud, “I am character x, I feel y, therefore I would have done z”) and come up with insight such as “Anyone who says ‘Absolutely not’ is absolutely lying”, rather than actually being intelligent or having insight.

Weirdly, between moving from CBS to Fox, there’s been some recasting and a lot of the funnier and smarter stuff has been removed, making it worse not better than it was before.

Young Drunk Punk (Canada: City TV)
After last year’s slew of 80s nostalgia shows in the US, time for some 80s nostalgia from Canada, with Young Drunk Punk, in which two teenage nerd punk-wannabes search for their destinies after leaving high school. Despite being written by and starring Bruce McCulloch (Kids In The Hall) this is very much like the previous half dozen Canadian comedies that have come by in having a total laugh count of zero.

After the jump, 19-2, Arrow, Banshee, Constantine, Cougar Town, Elementary, The Flash, Galavant, Gotham, The Ground Floor, Hindsight, Man Seeking Woman, Marvel’s Agent Carter, State of Affairs, Spiral (Engrenages) and Togetherness. One of them’s on the verge of getting recommended, one of them’s going to be dropped, and one of them is on the borderline. But which ones? You’ll find out after the jump.

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What have you been watching? Including Hindsight, Elementary, Banshee, Spiral and Constantine

19 January 2015 Rob Buckley 12 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.

More new and returning TV shows mean the return of the backlog, I’m afraid. Sigh. It’s not easy this job with all its highly demanding… sitting in front of a TV and then writing about it…

Anyway, moving swiftly on, I’ll just promise that I’ll be reviewing Syfy’s TV version of 12 Monkeys either later today when I’ve finished watching it or tomorrow during my lunchbreak. One of those.

But last week, I managed to review:

Which ain’t bad. The Book of Negroes, I’m afraid, will have to go on the pile of ‘probably quite good mini series I haven’t watched’ because I’m now two episodes behind.

But after the jump.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Hindsight, Elementary, Banshee, Spiral and Constantine”

What have you been watching? Including Empire, Togetherness, Taken 3, Engrenages (Spiral) and Banshee

12 January 2015 Rob Buckley 11 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.

Slowly, broadcasters have been emerging from the Christmas holidays and into the New Year, like so many blinking cave dwellers faced with the removal of their entrance-blocking rocks. That means not only do we have some exciting (and not so exciting) new shows to deal with, we also have the return of some old favourites.

In the past week, I’ve reviewed VH1’s Hindsight and ABC’s Marvel’s Agent Carter, but I’ve managed to give a couple of other shows a glance over as well.

Empire (US: Wednesdays, 9/8c, Fox)
Compared to the last mainstream black show about hip hop moguls – Starz’s depressingly exploitative and unpleasant Power – Fox’s Empire should be a masterpiece. It could well be, in fact. It’s created by Lee Daniels (Monsters Ball, Precious, The Butler) and Danny Strong (best known as Jonathan from Buffy The Vampire Slayer but he’s also the Emmy and Golden Blobe award-winning writer of Recount, Game Change, The Butler and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay [parts one and two]). It’s based on King Lear and The Lion In Winter. And it stars Terrence Howard (Iron Man, Hustle & Flow) and Taraji P Henson (Person of Interest). Howard is a former drug dealer who’s diagnosed with ALS and has to work out how to portion out his kingdom to his three sons.

Sounds quite good, doesn’t it, apart from the drug dealer bit, and it was certainly a whole lot better than Power. Unfortunately, within about five minutes, I began to realise there was going to be a whole load of R&B and hip hop assaulting my eardrums so I bowed out. I said no to Nashville, I’m saying no to Empire. Tough on music, tough on the causes of music, me.

Togetherness (US: Sundays, 9.30pm, HBO; UK: Mondays, 10.35pm, Sky Atlantic, starting tonight)
Most HBO comedies barely warrant the title, and for about the first 15 minutes of this ‘comedy’ from Steve Zissis and Jay and Mark Duplass, you get pretty much the same old, same old HBO. Brett (Mark Duplass) and Michelle (Melanie Lynskey) are married but their relationship is struggling, with Lynskey preferring diddling herself with 50 Shades of Grey to having sex with Brett. Meanwhile, Brett’s friend from High School, Alex (Zissis) is being evicted and being fat and balding, his acting career isn’t really going anywhere, so he moves in with Brett and Michelle. At the same time, Michelle’s sister, Tina (Amanda Peet), is breaking up with her boyfriend and ends up moving in with them all, too.

For half the episode’s run, this feels like a standard #WhitePeoplesProblems affair, a somewhat introspective look at actors struggling in LA, marriages failing and the difficulties of dating when you’re older that we’ve seen innumerable times elsewhere. The idea that schlubby Zissis will eventually hit it off Peet, once named by People magazine as being one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world, prompts an almost Pavlovian eye rolling, too. However, once Peet and Zissis meet, everything becomes a lot more fun and it actually starts to become a comedy at last. It’s still a bittersweet piece about people disappointed by life and not getting what they want, even when they think they have, so doing what they can to enjoy themselves, but it’s a lot more likeable than it seemed to be at first.

Still in the viewing queue because it’s a mini-series is the first episode of the Canadian Book of Negroes. But after the jump, I’ll look at the latest episodes of Banshee, Cougar Town, Elementary, Forever, Gotham, Ground Floor, The Librarians, Scorpion, Spiral (Engrenages) and State of Affairs, as well as, for no well explored reason, Person of Interest. One or perhaps even more than one is getting dropped this week – can you guess which one?

But first, movies!

Warrior (2011) – Netflix
Tom Hardy is an ex-marine; Joel Edgerton is a high school physics teacher. They’re brothers and former wrestling champions trained by their abusive alcoholic father (Nick Nolte). However, for different reasons, they end up fighting in the same MMA competition. Will they end up facing off in the final, maybe? Hmm. Despite the somewhat inauspicious plotting, Warrior is nevertheless actually a very good sports movie, shot Friday Night Lights style and managing to resist the obvious revelations or even a pat ending. The MMA’s a little basic, but still genuinely exciting. Frank Grillo (Captain America 2, Kingdom) pops up as a trainer, but does surprisingly little fighting.

Taken 3 (2014) – down ‘t cinema
Surprisingly, given the horror story that was Taken 2 and the fact Olivier “Taxi Brooklyn” Megaton is back directing, actually a much better affair than the second entry in the series was. Liam Neeson’s back but he’s in the US and no one’s been taken in this time, with Neeson framed for a murder and he having to escape from the law while protecting his family and finding out who really did the crime. The script by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen touches on all the better aspects of Taken, with Neeson using some of his special set of CIA skills that don’t involve punching. Maggie Grace gets a lot to do for a change, too, albeit forced to play someone who’s about 10 years younger than herself. That’s the good side and everyone seems to enjoy that, even Neeson, although he seems a little tired and in need of a nice sit down and a Bovril at times.

True, the casting could be better, with most of the cast composed of people you’ll recognise from minor roles on TV shows, including Banshee and The Last Ship. Forest Whitaker heads up the cops, but he spends the entire time playing with a rubber band. None of this would be insurmountable, though.

But where it all goes to epic pants – literally at one point – is the action scenes. Even if Megaton, who’s an otherwise perfectly good director, could actually shoot an action scene in a way that was engrossing rather than soporific, it’s as though neither he nor the rest of the cast could be bothered. Every action scene might as well have been replaced with <<INSERT CONTRACTUALLY AND GENRE-OBLIGATED SCENE HERE>>. Ridiculous things happen and no one can even be bothered to explain how Neeson escaped them, lots of the best bits of Taken are reused and whenever something even slightly exciting is about to happen, the camera either looks away or some very bad CGI kicks in. Decent script – shame about the direction.

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