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What have you been watching? Including Ófærð (Trapped), The Shannara Chronicles, Lucifer and The X-Files

4 March 2016 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.

I’m back. You may have noticed at least some stirring of activity from TMINE this week, following my return, with a third-episode verdict on 11.22.63 (US: Hulu; UK: Fox), but the trouble with going away for a bit is that you have to catch up with all the things you should have been doing while you were away. 

But I have. Just about. Okay, I didn’t make it more than 10 minutes through Netflix’s Love, despite Gillian Jacobs being in the cast. I will try to remedy that next week, although there’s a whole bunch of new shows just beginning right now, including Hap and Leonard, Damien, Slasher and The Family, that will warrant some of my time, too. I can’t imagine myself trying to watch Netflix’s Fuller House, though.

After the jump, the regulars, some of them getting a double helping of reviewing: American Crime, Arrow, Billions, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, The Flash, Limitless, Lucifer, The Magicians, Man Seeking Woman, Okkupert (Occupied), Second Chance, The Shannara Chronicles, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man, Supergirl, Vikings and The X-Files. I’ll admit now that I might be a bit hazy about some of them.

As well as all of those, I managed to watch the first three episodes of…

Ófærð (Trapped) (Iceland: RÚV; UK: BBC Four)
Small-town Icelandic police officer (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) has to deal with winter and his personal problems, as well as the bigwigs of Reykjavik and a ferry full of annoyed passengers, when a chopped up body is found in the sea. Is the murderer one of the passengers, who is the victim and is it all linked to something in town?

Thematically, the show has a lot in common with Fortitude (although without the horror/sci-fi twist) and not just the location of the filming. It’s all about the claustrophobia of an artic island in winter, people having to get on with one another because there’s nowhere else to go, and quirky police who’ve never had to deal with anything except parking tickets and stolen cameras having to deal with people trafficking, gangsters and vicious murders. There’s also the inevitable concern of not wanting foreign investors to be scared off by the crime.

Ólafsson is a strong, bear-like presence against the beautifully photographed and breathtaking Icelandic landscape. The characters are interesting and the show avoids the dramatic absurdities of Den Som Dræber (Those Who Kill), 100 Code, etc, in favour of a far less flashy telling of a plausible story. And there’s fun Icelandic-Danish conflicts, too. So far, it’s shaping up to be my favourite Nordic Noir after The Bridge.

At least for the first three episodes. I’ll let you know if that changes…

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Ófærð (Trapped), The Shannara Chronicles, Lucifer and The X-Files”

What have you been watching? Including Vinyl, Wanted and Vikings

20 February 2016 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.

Apologies for the silence this week – you can blame Windows 8 for that. It wasn’t even my Windows 8 (like I’d have it in the house), but the Windows 8 of somewhere at which I do volunteer work. My advice? Don’t try to fix Windows 8 – just wipe it and start again. Which is what I eventually did.

Anyway, that meant I couldn’t write about tele for several days, but don’t worry – it didn’t mean I couldn’t watch tele. Elsewhere, of course, I’ve reviewed the first episodes of:

And after the jump, I’ll be dealing with the regulars: American Crime, Arrow, Billions, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, The Flash, Limitless, Lucifer, The Magicians, Man Seeking Woman, Marvel’s Agent Carter, Okkupert (Occupied), Second Chance, The Shannara Chronicles, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man and The X-Files. At least one of those gets the chop this week. Can you guess, which? This week also saw the return of Vikings, so I’ll be having a go at that, too. 

Out yesterday was Netflix’s Love, and I’ll try to give that a watch over the next few day; I’ll probably be playing catch-up with BBC4’s showing of Iceland’s Trapped, too.

But there was a couple of new shows out in the past week or so that although Windows 8 stopped me from reviewing them, I did manage to get a chance to watch them. Largely while I was fixing Windows 8.

Vinyl (US: HBO; UK: Sky Atlantic)
Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger co-created this story of the 70s music business, in which Bobby Carnavale (Cupid, Boardwalk Empire, Nurse Jackie) plays the boss of a struggling company trying to work out what’s hip and cool, as punk et al arrive on the scene. Scorsese directs, there’s a soundtrack including Slade and Abba, there’s a strong supporting cast, including Ian Hart, Paul Ben-Victor, Juno Temple, Olivia Wilde, Ray Romano and Birgitte Hjort Sørensen. What could go wrong? Well, lots apparently. Maybe it’s just because it’s about the music business, in which I have minimal interest. Maybe it’s because of the sexism, racism, et al of the period. Maybe it’s some of the dodgy English accents floating around. Whatever it was, despite its having a certain degree of authenticity, I barely made it to the end of the extremely long pilot episode. Not for me.

Wanted (Australia: Seven)
Continuing her majestic stranglehold on all of Seven’s drama output, Rebecca Gibney stars in this odd-couple-on-the-run drama that she also created. Gibney plays a rebellious, free-spirited but broke checkout woman; Geraldine Hakewill is an uptight accountant with a nerdy boyfriend and a criminal secret. They’re both waiting for a bus when a car chase ends in front of them and they witness a murder. Unfortunately for them, crooked cops are involved in the action and before you know, there are more bodies, everyone thinks they’re responsible and they’re on the run, while trying to clear their name and avoid getting caught by bad cop Nicholas Bell or good cop Stephen Peacocke. It’s mildly diverting stuff, but everything goes pretty much how you expect, the jokes are weak, and neither Gibney nor Hakewill make you want to hang out with either of them, let alone go on the run with them.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Vinyl, Wanted and Vikings”

What have you been watching? Including The Man From UNCLE and Sicario

14 February 2016 Rob Buckley 6 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 if not a bumper week for TV, one that’s certainly full. Elsewhere, I’ve passed verdicts on:

After the jump, the regulars: American Crime, Angie Tribeca, Arrow, Billions, The Flash, Limitless, The Magicians, Man Seeking Woman, Marvel’s Agent Carter, Okkupert (Occupied), Second Chance, The Shannara Chronicles, Supergirl and The X-Files, as well as the return of The Doctor Blake Mysteries. At least one of those is for the chop, one of them earned a last minute reprieve and another could be departing soon.

I’ve a few new shows from Thursday night onwards that I haven’t had a chance to watch yet, but which hopefully I’ll be able to let you all know about this week: Wanted (Australia: Seven) and Those Who Can’t (US: TruTV). Otherwise, I’m bang up to date.

In fact, I’ve had a go at a few movies, too.

Sicario (2015) (iTunes)
Emily Blunt is an FBI agent drawn into the moral greys of the drugs war, as she joins an inter-agency taskforce with Mexican drug dealers in their sights. Despite some lovely cinematography, and a good cast that includes Josh Brolin, Benicio del Toro and Jeffrey Donovan, it’s something of a yawn fest that thinks it’s saying something clever about the lengths good men must go to to fight evil. Except it’s all been done before. There are two excellent, tense sequences, but otherwise it’s a yawnfest, and Blunt’s neophyte is practically superfluous requirements – had it simply about our ‘grey areas’ friends, it would have been a much leaner and more interesting movie.

Fantastic 4 (2015) (iTunes)
Yet another origin story for the Fantastic Four, in which plucky scientists and their friends and relatives get given special powers through a cosmic accident. This version is probably the worst so far, however, despite taking more than a few liberties with the original story, swapping out cosmic rays in favour of some inter-dimensional travel experiments. The lovely wife and I tried to watch this a few months ago, but quickly gave up through sheer boredom. This rewatch revealed it was a full hour and 20 minutes before anything that could be quantified as ‘mildly exciting’ happened in the movie – that being the 10 minute final battle between the Four and evil hacker/scientist Victor Von Doom. An excruciatingly painful bit of movie-making that proves that everything Marvel is not gold and that superheroes need to have both personalities and fun to be worth watching.

The Man From UNCLE (2015) (iTunes)
Guy Ritchie’s reboot of the 60s TV series attempts to do what Sherlock Holmes did for Sherlock Holmes. Here, we get an origin story of sorts – how CIA agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and KGB agent Ilya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) end up working together to defeat a greater enemy, with the help of Mr Waverley (Hugh Grant). The first 15 minutes isn’t half bad, as we learn a lot more about Solo than we did in the TV series (he’s a former war profiteer who agreed to join the CIA to avoid prison) and get a decent version of post-war Berlin to enjoy. Unfortunately, the intellectual, cool Kuryakin of the TV series here is yet another stereotypical Russian, ex-Spetsnaz soldier, and there’s almost zero cameraderie between the two of them.

At least for the first half, after which I turned off because it was just so astonishingly boring.

Fast and Furious 6 (2013) (Channel 4)
Seeing as both Gina Carano (would have been good as Wonder Woman) and Gal Gadot (fingers crossed, will be good as Wonder Woman) were in this, I thought I’d tune in for this, having studiously avoided all the previous installments of this ‘fast cars, fast criminals’ movie franchise. Unfortunately, it was just as awful as I thought it would be, with no trace of acting skill displayed by anyone, characterisation that’s beyond insulting and almost zero grasp on reality. I didn’t even make as far as any of the stunts. Oh well.

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The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Lucifer (US: Fox; UK: Amazon Instant Video)

11 February 2016 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, Fox
In the UK: Tuesdays, Amazon Instant Video

Since the 80s, there’s been a move on US TV away from shows about lone heroes towards more ensemble pieces with a core cast of characters. Whether it’s to provide variety, to support the number of plots of a long-running season, to give the main actor respite from arduous filming duties, or to hedge bets in case the lead isn’t that popular, the trend is clear. When you look at remakes, it becomes even more obvious with formerly hero-centric shows taking on the trappings of ensemble pieces, whether it’s Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Night Stalker, Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation or Hawaii Five-O and Hawaii Five-0.

Normally this is by design, so the trouble comes when you forget what kind of show you’re making – is it a lone hero show or an ensemble show? Try to make both at the same time and you end up with something that’s not good at either.

Lucifer is a case in point. As the name suggests, it’s a show about the Devil himself. Adapted from the DC/Vertigo comic, it sees Miranda’s Tom Ellis as the bored fallen angel Lucifer Morningstar taking a vacation from Hell in Los Angeles, where he has loads of fun running a night club, shagging and generally tempting mortals. One day, he runs into a police detective (Lauren German) when one of his protégés is murdered, and he starts trying to solve crimes with her so he can keep up his former day job of punishing evil-doers.

It’s a somewhat silly idea but as I pointed out in my review of the first episode, it all works largely because of Ellis who’s clearly having the time of his life as a decidedly English supporting character from the Old and New Testaments (“I’ll rip his bollocks off then stamp on them one at a time”). He alternates between luxuriating in raining down diabolical torture and pain upon anyone who crosses him and camping up to the point you think he’s impersonating Kenneth Williams. It’s a marvellously engaging performance.

The trouble is that although the show is really all about Lucifer, the comic is more of an ensemble piece. And Lucifer takes on trappings of Lucifer to become partly an ensemble show as well, spending time with German, her young daughter, her ex- (Southland/True Blood/Arrow‘s Kevin Alejandro), Lucifer’s fellow devil Maze (Lesley-Ann Brandt from Spartacus and The Librarians) and Lucifer’s therapist/shag partner Rachael Harris (The Hangover, Suits, Surviving Jack). Which would be fine if any of them were in any way interesting or at least having as much fun as Ellis.

Perhaps if the show could also decide not to throw all its moments of characterisation at Lucifer but give each a few scraps from the table, it might be possible to care about them or even like them a little. But it doesn’t. The result is you have Ellis, bright and shiny in centre-stage, surrounded by pale shadows who take away from his screen time with their tedious concerns, but don’t really add anything except when they’re acting as sounding boards and ways to expand on Lucifer’s character.

The plots are also a little timid and repetitive. Murder followed by investigation in which Lucifer charms people and gets them to confess their deepest desires, all while German somberly and without any trace of real animation uses various synonyms of ‘back off’ to stop Lucifer from muscling in on her investigations, which Lucifer then studiously ignores. Even when Lucifer gets up to potentially exciting acts of sin, it’s Fox at its tamest: a ‘devil’s threesome’ and a foursome, none of which is ever shown, just the monring after when everyone wakes up with their clothes and underwear still intact.

The show works best when Ellis gets to enjoy himself and the writers provide lines and situations for him to really chow down on the scenery. It also becomes 100% more interesting whenever it’s dealing with the supernatural. Interactions with fellow angel DB Woodside, sent by God to convince Lucifer to resume normal duties, give someone for Ellis to really bounce off, while Lucifer’s acts of devilish punishment give the show a welcome edge of iron.

But for Lucifer to really work, it needs to decide whether it’s an ensemble show or a lone hero show: either drop some of the additional characters to really focus on Lucifer or give them something to do that makes them more than mere stock characters. 

Barrometer rating: 3
Would it be better with a female lead? No. Different, but not better
TMINE’s prediction: Could get a second season but a bit touch and go at the moment and needs to strengthen itself up to avoid a trip to ratings Hell

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Fourth-episode verdict: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (US: The CW; UK: Sky1)

8 February 2016 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

In the US: Thursdays, 8/7c, The CW
In the UK: Thursdays, 8pm, Sky 1. Starts March 3 (TBC)

You know what should be both fun and awesome? DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. You know what is instead just a bit limp and unremarkable? DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. It’s such a disappointment. 

It has a great central idea: take all the best supporting characters from both The Flash and Arrow, stick them together as a team, and have them travelling throughout time to defeat an immortal Big Bad. It’s a limited series, promising us all kinds of possibilities in terms of character development and mortality. It has elements ripped straight from Doctor Who, right down to having Rory (Arthur Darvill) playing time hunter Rip Torn. It’s got a great cast, including the two Prison Break brothers Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell, former Superman Brandon Routh, the kick ass Caity Lotz and the very cool Victor Garber. 

But each and every episode, from beginning to end, bar the second, has been nothing except low-budget, comic book escapism of the highest order, with no real significance or import. Even deaths are trivial and a bit meaningless.

Character development is defined as ‘starting off a bit mopey/fighty and progressively becoming a bit more/less mopey/fighty’. Fights are a bit poor. Special effects are okay at best. Attempts to recreate a particular time period largely come down to giving everyone some new clothes to wear, while someone hangs up a banner on a Canadian building and hopes everyone will just buy it as 1975/1986/2000 BC. Plots are a bit poor. Dialogue’s sometimes okay, but largely not. Acting is frequently hammy and dreadful. 

Given all the effort that’s been spent on developing the characters in other series, it almost feels like the producers thought it would just be so awesome having everyone together, they didn’t need to put any effort into the eventual team-up. Or maybe everyone good was already so tied up with Arrow and The Flash that it was left to the B-team to put together DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Or maybe it’s simply because The CW doesn’t actually have the budget to put together an entire TV series like The Avengers.

An unthreatening villain facing a not especially inspiring team-up in a series of uninspiring, plot loophole-riddled, joyless episodes of comic strip harmless? Who could resist? Probably not me actually. I’m not loving it, but the idea of not watching it seems odd, simply because of the good members of the cast.

All the same, I really, really wish it was a lot better than it actually is.

Barrometer rating:  3
Would it be better with female leads? N/A
TMINE’s prediction: Unlikely to get renewed with the current team, but the mooted anthology-type structure with completely different characters could well get traction