House

US TV

What have you been watching this week (w/e May 20)?

20 May 2011 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Happy Endings Karate

Time for “What have you been watching this week?”, my chance to tell you what I’ve been watching this week and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case we’ve missed them.

My usual recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure this week: Cougar Town, The Daily Show, Doctor Who, Endgame, Happy Endings, House, Modern Family and Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. Watch them (and keep an eye on The Stage‘s TV Today Square Eyes feature as well) or you’ll be missing out on the good stuff.

Now to the irregulars and new things, as well as a few thoughts on some of those regulars:

  • The Apprentice: They seem to be making the tasks almost sensible this year. And they’re chucking out rubbish people early. It’s almost like a proper contest. How odd.
  • Chuck: A reasonable enough way to wrap everything up when you have no budget for anything exciting. But, the reboot of the show ready for the final season doesn’t really make me want to watch it. Sorry.
  • Happy Endings: Oh FFS. It’s one thing to show episodes out of order – it’s quite another to show episodes 2 and 3 as episodes 10 and 11 when they follow on directly from episode 1. What’s up there, ABC? All the same, really funny – funnier than the aired episodes 2 and 3 in fact – subtly tonally different from later episodes, filled in lots of details about the various friends and almost acts like a manifesto for the show. Watch it!
  • House: a whole five minutes in the middle that was just too gruesome for me to watch. Sorry. Just ugh! Bit of a limp season finale (and indeed season), but more intriguingly structured than usual, and Chase and 13’s bonding gave me hope for the show.
  • Running Wilde: Was that the finale or the penultimate episode? Almost funny, with a few Peter Serafinowicz moments to lift it, but didn’t quite make it to laugh out loud funny, apart from an Arrested Development joke.
  • The Shadow Line: the plotting was a bit off on this one, with some really horribly boring, drawn out bits, interspersed with some really very good exciting bits. The dialogue wasn’t so dreadful this week and Stephen Rea is awesome, but it also suffered quite the most moronic fight sequence since the UNIT slapping matches of the 70s, as well as a few research problems and the female cop is just horrendous. But some good twists and turns that should keep me watching next week.

But what have you been watching?

“What have you been watching this week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched this week. 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?

Wednesday’s “have Faith in Torchwood” news

18 May 2011 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Doctor Who

Film

British TV

  • Sky poaches Glee from Channel 4

US TV

Wednesday’s “Fox upfronts” news

11 May 2011 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Film

British TV

US TV

What have you been watching this week (w/e April 15)?

15 April 2011 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

My usual recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure this week: Archer, Community, The Daily Show, House, Modern Family, Stargate Universe and 30 Rock. Watch them (and keep an eye on The Stage‘s TV Today Square Eyes feature as well) or you’ll be missing out on the good stuff.

Separate reviews of this week’s episodes of Spiral/Engrenages are over here, but this is what else I’ve been watching this week:

  • Being Human (US) – an interesting way to end a series that actually became a lot more interesting over the course of the season than its first couple of episodes would have suggested. Once it found its feet, starting picking and choosing from the UK original and then twisting it to its own ends while sticking to the same template, it actually became better than the original in a lot (but not all) ways. It was actually able to take things that had been squished into a single episode and let them breath over a couple of episodes. To avoid Internet spoilers, the finale really wasn’t what you might have expected if you’d seen the original – and actually used expectations of what happened in the original to mislead you. So looking forward to the next season now!
  • Breaking In: Cleverer than the first episode and Alyssa Milano was rather a good guest star. But not really very funny at all and I don’t really care about any of the characters.
  • Chaos: after an acceptable start, episode two was actually rather dull, despite some quite nice spy stuff. James Murray’s toned down his Scottish accent a lot – and now is starting to sound English a lot more. Not awful, but not worth tuning in for. Disappointing.
  • Chuck was quite fun, but Chuck’s just a dull character now, Sarah still really hasn’t got a character and what’s happened to Linda Hamilton? The family Volkoff are the only things to look forward to on this show now.
  • Endgame was really quite excellent, bar a slightly disappointing ending, so it’s going to be promoted to the “you should watch” bit at the bottom
  • Happy Endings: Coming to a separate review near you, soon!

But what have you been watching?

“What have you been watching this week?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched this week. 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?