Banshee

What did you watch this week? Including The Following, Spartacus, Mr Selfridge, Being Human (US) and Arrow

1 February 2013 Rob Buckley 9 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.

First, the usual recommendations: 30 Rock, Archer, Arrow, Being Human (US), The Daily Show, Don’t Trust The B—– in Apartment 23, Cougar Town, Elementary, Go On, Last Resort, Modern Family, Mr Selfridge, Shameless, Spartacus and Suits. These are all going to be on in either the UK or the US, perhaps even both, but I can’t be sure which.

Being added to the list this week after rather a long time hovering close to the qualifying bar is Vegas – it’s not an absolute must-recommend but it’s about as good as network TV is probably ever going to be able to do with a period gangster show set in Las Vegas and it did have a cracker of an episode this week that managed to mix comedy with the nasty to great effect.

I’m also sticking Banshee on, even if it’s going to be a bit too ultraviolent for a lot of people and doesn’t exactly aim for verisimilitude a lot of the time. Spartacus is back and so is Top Gear: strange how the three presenters are great when they’re together, merely bearable when there’s two of them, and unbearable when it’s just one of them.

Some new shows started this week, none of which I had a chance to watch: The Americans, which has started on FX and has been acquired by ITV, which looks good but at two hours, was just a little bit too much for me to have caught in time; last night’s Do No Harm, which is a modern Jeckyll and Hyde story on NBC; BBC2’s Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe and Channel 4’s Derek with Ricky Gervais. I’ll review them all (or the first two at least) when I’ve had a chance to watch them, probably on Tuesday. Oh yes, and Netflix has the whole of the new House of Cards for us to watch, too.

Also in the viewing queue: this week’s episodes of Suits, 30 Rock and Yes Prime Minister. But that’s it.

Now, some thoughts on the regulars.

  • Archer: Timothy Olyphant from Justified is gay for Archer. As fun as always, with a great ending that used silence to maximum effect.
  • Arrow: I appreciate that the producers would probably rather be making ‘Batman: The Early Years’, but did they have to take an existing Green Arrow villain (Count Vertigo) and basically turn him into the Joker, even getting the actor to do an impression of Heath Ledger? Good ep though. The flashbacks could do with advancing the story a bit faster, now, and when are they going to make the IT/general purpose science girl a regular?
  • Being Human (US): Curious how they’re shifting the show’s power dynamics to make it more female-centric. Where once it was all about Aidan and Josh with Sally a bit of an after-thought (a bit like the original then), it’s now all about Aidan, Nora and Sally instead. Everything’s in flux though, so let’s see if they can stabilise with the new dynamic.
  • Bob Servant Independent: Tried watching it, but despite Brian Cox’s best efforts it’s the usual “small man in a small town trying to be big” stick that huge chunks of bad British comedy are based on. So I gave up.
  • The Carrie Diaries: Got about 10 minutes into episode two before we completely lost the ability to concentrate. We’ll try again but I suspect this is a definite dud.
  • The Following: Well, what an amazing turnround. After a deeply nasty first ep that was empty and full of misogyny, it’s like the producers have sat down, asked “What’s wrong with this show?” and done as much as they could to fix it. So they’ve amped up the characterisation, dropped a lot of the sadism, dropped the rubbish female character and added a couple of good and interesting female characters, added in some Scream meta-ness, and focused a lot more on character relationships. Don’t watch episode one, if I were you, but start watching from episode two instead. Assuming you fancy watching a show about Edgar Allen Poe-inspired serial killers, that is.
  • Go On: A good Lauren episode and a good expansion of the set up with some more incidental characters. But it really needs to get funnier if it’s too avoid cancellation, as well as drop a few of the more rubbish characters that are hogging up the screen time.
  • Mr Selfridge: The first downright poor episode of the show, more soap opera than drama, and with some terrible acting in some quarters. But still enjoyable and had a few interesting historical notes about ‘the rational dressing’ movement.
  • Spartacus: Usually, it takes the show two or three episodes before it settles down and stops being all about the swearing, sex and violence, and gets on with the plot. This season, they’ve leapt straight in with plot and characterisation. Yes, it’s still a blood-bath and there was an orgy or two – it is still Spartacus – but some clever plotting and writing and actually not much by way of ornate swearing for a change. Also featured Ty from The Almighty Johnsons in a bit part, which was odd.
  • Suits: A decent Louis episode but not as clever as in previous weeks.
  • Yes, Prime Minister: Episode two was a marked improvement on episode one, but watching re-runs of the original, it’s clear just how inferior the new version is, both in terms of writing and performance, and it’s actually a little offensive at times. All the same, it does have some insight and good qualities, so if you’ve nothing better to watch, try it.

“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?

Wednesday’s “First Doctor Who cast, Entourage: the movie, The X-Files continues and more Banshee and Shameless” news

30 January 2013 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Doctor Who

Film

Film casting

Trailers

  • Clip from The Dark Knight Returns – Part 2

Comics

Theater

French TV

  • Canal+ acquires Hunted, Arte acquires The Hour, TF6 acquires Real Humans

International TV

  • Skyfall writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade to write Barbarella TV series

UK TV

US TV

US TV casting

New US TV shows

New US TV show casting

  • John Schneider cast in OWN’s The Haves and The Have Nots, plus casting on Love Thy Neighbor
The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 2

Third-episode verdict: Banshee (Cinemax)

28 January 2013 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

In the US: Fridays, 10/9c, Cinemax

Already time for a third-episode verdict on Banshee? Well, that’s what happens when you have a backlog, isn’t it?

So, to recap, I was quite impressed by the first two episodes, in which a master criminal accidentally ends up the sheriff of a small Pennsylvania town while he’s looking for his former partner and lover and his share of a diamond robbery. Yes, it had a marked tendency towards the ludicrous, the bombastic and the downright sadistic, but it had some decent characters, dialogue a cut above the usual Cinemax migraine-inducers, and interesting things to say about the line between criminality and law enforcement.

The third episode was, in a sense, a make-or-break episode for the main character – is he just pretending to be a sheriff or is he actually a sheriff? Here the choice was to ignore a woman’s rape in order to bring money to the town and avoid antagonising the head criminal, or to bring the accused to justice. Notable for one of the longest, protracted fights you’ll have seen on television, it was clearly put together by a stunt team that knows the difference between a sport like MMA and a genuine martial art and wanted to illustrate the difference in graphic detail.

The show’s still a little ludicrous, a little “heightened reality”, particularly the scenes involving Ivana Miličević and/or her father Ben Cross. But if you like a decent action show that’s also got some thought and character behind it, Banshee is a definite recommendation.

Rob’s rating: 2
Rob’s prediction: Should last at least a season, maybe even two or three.

US TV

Review: Banshee 1×1-1×2 (Cinemax)

24 January 2013 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Banshee

In the US: Fridays, 10/9c, Cinemax

Once upon a time, TV regarded cops as unimpeachable examples of morality. Whether it was Dragnet in the US or Dixon of Dock Green in the UK, cops did their jobs, stuck to the rules and never did anything bad.

Times changed, of course, albeit slowly. When writer GF Newman was pitching ideas to the script editor of Z Cars in the 70s, he suggested that one of the detectives be offered a bribe – and that the detective accept it. Newman was told: “Maybe this isn’t the show for you.” The script editor was right, because Newman went off and created his own show, the ground-breaking Law and Order (no, not that one), which depicted cops as corrupt, willing to bend and even break the law, and sometimes little more than criminals with badges.

This ambiguity continued through the 70s in the UK and into the 90s with the likes of Between The Lines all the way through to the present day with Luther.

In the US, while pretty much every cop show from the 80s onwards showed police who were ‘mavericks who didn’t play by the rules’, the police largely stuck to the rules. But again times changed, giving us first The Wire and then eventually The Shield, in which the corrupt cops committed almost as many crimes as the criminals they were supposed to be investigating.

Cinemax’s new show, Banshee, however, goes one further. All the shows I’ve mentioned are about cops who become criminals. But what if a criminal became a cop?

The show, exec produced by True Blood‘s Alan Ball, sees Lucas Hood (Antony Starr), one of the most notorious thieves in the US, get out of jail after a 15-year sentence for a diamond robbery. When he goes looking for his share of the diamonds from his former girlfriend and partner Anastasia Hopewell (Ivana Miličević), he ends up in the ultra-corrupt Pennsylvania town of Banshee, which coincidentally is expecting a new sheriff. When the sheriff is killed in a fight, Hood assumes his identity and becomes the new sheriff of Banshee, so that he can win Hopewell back, watch over the daughter he never knew he had and earn some money in the process, all while trying to evade Mr Rabbit (Ben Cross), a New York crime boss and Hopewell’s father, who’s been looking for her for 15 years.

Anyway, as you might expect, Hood uses criminal methods to do his job and the result is… interesting. Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Banshee 1×1-1×2 (Cinemax)”

US TV

On the ubiquity of advertising for TV shows in the US

8 January 2013 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

A couple of months ago, I asked whether UK TV advertised itself enough. Some people argued yes, it does, but as I pointed out, compared to the US, it’s all just baby steps.

Anyway, just to prove a point, I took a few pictures of the TV adverts plastered all over New York. The sides of buses are the major areas for TV advertising. Imagine that every single bus you saw (well, 95%) had an ad for a TV show on the side and you could see perhaps one a minute while walking down any given avenue: that’s how ubiquitous it is.

Squint hard and you’ll see Portlandia on the side of this one in front of the UN building:

Portlandia on a bus

Deception currently makes up about 50% of all bus ads, despite being rubbish.

Another bus

But Banshee, The Americans, Girls and a couple of other shows make up the rest (adverts for The Hunger Games on Epix make up a goodly proportion, too)

Banshee

And then, of course, there are old ads that haven’t been removed from the sides of buses yet. You can still see a fair few for the last season of Dexter. And then there’s this one for Go On plastered all over the bus outside the window of this restaurant I was in. The whole bus. It was even painted Go On yellow.

Go On bus

Yes, the picture is rubbish. Sorry. I was eating.

But buses aren’t the only story, of course. About 50% of phone booth and newsstand advertising is dedicated to TV programmes. Season two of the dullish Enlightened gets most of the look-ins, as does Girls.

Enlightened phone booth ad

But you can also see the likes of Real Time with Bill Maher, Project Runway and 1600 Penn everywhere you go.

More newstand and phone booth advertising

Project Runway

1600 Penn

Hell, even the latest Lifetime movie gets some advertising love:

Rob Lowe in HBO's Prosecuting Casey

I should probably have cropped some of those, so you wouldn’t have to squint, but I can’t be arsed.

Anyway – that’s how to advertise a TV show. Admittedly, it’s mainly Showtime, FX, NBC and HBO that seem to have got their acts together on this and they’re mainly doing it to pump their more rubbish output, but compare that with the UK’s anaemic efforts.

To be fair, I did spot an advert for Channel 4’s Utopia and one for GOLD’s Yes, Prime Minister in Victoria station yesterday. That’s two whole adverts in two hours of travel from zone 6 to zone 1 and back out again in London. Wow.