My usual recommendations for maximum viewing pleasure this week: Community, Cougar Town, The Daily Show, Doctor Who, Endgame, Happy Endings, 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.
Just a few thoughts on a couple of the regulars:
Last week’s attempt on Smallville to copy Spartacus was dreadful, even if it did have Callum BestBlue as Zod in it. Still Supergirl’s in this week’s episode and after that, it’s the final episode ever and Lex is back for that, so I’m sticking with it it.
Happy Endings – some great moments in both episodes, particularly "the Hipster makeover" and "you’re a gaycist", but also a few touching romantic moments. It’s at least as funny as Modern Family now.
Chuck – the ending was obvious but I enjoyed this week’s more than I’ve enjoyed a lot of the previous weeks’ episodes.
Doctor Who – couldn’t quite work up the energy to review the two-part The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon and since it’s clearly a three-parter in disguise, there were so many plot threads left hanging at the end, it was almost impossible to review it anyway. At times, I did feel like the Silence had wiped my memory, since things seemed to jump around an awful lot without explanation (where did the people who still hadn’t quite got to the Moon in an Apollo spacecraft get white dwarf star alloy from? Why did the Doctor, Amy and Rory need to be chased down? How come Amy missed and what happened next? What was Nixon doing inside the prison?). You could probably fill in the gaps with a bit of work, but it does feel like all the working out has been scribbled over. All the same, there were some wonderfully clever bits, wonderfully scary bits and so much tease, there had better be a good pay-off or I’m going to… well, sulk probably. And how come they went to the US for the first time and ending up getting two Brits/Irish people, Mark Sheppard and W Morgan Sheppard, to play the lead American?
Since the last "What have you been watching?", I’ve tried
Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe – basically, exactly like every Bruce Campbell straight-to-DVD movie of the 90s. If that’s your thing, watch it. If it’s not, don’t.
Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle – Glad to see a move away from the grumpy old man routine of last series, aided by some pointless sketches, to his more traditional stand-up. Very funny, brilliantly clever and had the best Godzilla reference of the week.
Anyone watch The Shadow Line – I taped it but I hear it might have been a bit rubbish. And as mentioned earlier this week, stupid scheduling meant that I didn’t watch Exile or Case Sensitive – were they any good (thanks to everyone who’s already weighed in on this)?
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?
In the US: Sundays, 10pm ET/PT, Showtime In the UK: Acquired by Sky Atlantic for the Summer
First, a request: in one weekend, we’ve had two hours of Camelot, two hours of Spiral, two hours of The Killing, two hours of The Kennedys and now two hours of The Borgias – dear TV networks, please can you just show one episode at a time of your TV shows because I won’t watch them again if you don’t. I won’t have the time. Not that there’s much chance of my watching either Camelot and The Borgias again.
There, I’ve already ruined the ending of this review for you. Oops.
So, let me tell you for why I say that. Here’s something curious. HBO is upper class. It has natural breeding. Showtime is middle class. It looks up to HBO, but it looks down on Starz. And Starz is working class. Each knows their place.
Yet for some strange reason, all of a sudden, Showtime would like to be Starz and Starz would like to be Showtime. Yet there is no social mobility here. Starz cannot be Showtime; Showtime cannot be Starz. Starz may have nicked the bloke who made The Tudors to come up with their own Arthurian version, Camelot, but it’s still a tacky piece of vulgarity – much like Spartacus. But that does at least have the virtue of some cracking plotting, internecine politicking, John Hannah and Xena: Warrior Princess. Oh, and some full frontal nudity, softcore porn, language that would shock a sailor and massive bloodletting.
Starz cannot be Showtime.
Similarly, although Showtime would like to make something like Spartacus, in which there’s sex, incest, murder and swordfights, it ends up hiring Neil Jordan to make something with Jeremy Irons in it that’s largely about the 15th century Catholic church’s papal laws of ascendency. Who’d have though sex, incest, murder and swordfights could be so boring?
