Briga Heelan

What have you been watching? Including Ascension, The Fall, State of Affairs, Ground Floor and Scorpion

19 December 2014 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.

Yes, a doubler – two in one week to cater for the Christmas break and mop up a few leftovers. There’s only been one new show of note this week, though, and that’s…

Ascension (US: Syfy; UK: Sky1)
A spaceship is sent out in the 1960s to colonise a planet in the Alpha Centauri system. 50 years later and the ships’ descendants experience their first murder. Except there’s a Completely Obvious Twist…

I’m only about halfway through the second of the three episodes, so I can’t comment on how this ends, only that the first episode is catastrophically dull as it tries to establish its Mad Men in space vibe while simultaneously trying to avoid giving away that twist, which even a passing acquaintanceship with science, technology, history and the release date of Elton John’s ‘Rocketman’ will reveal within the first ten minutes. However, once the twist is revealed, everything gets a lot more bearable as the writers stop contorting themselves to avoid giving the game away. It’s still not great, and the main stars – Tricia Helfer and Lauren Lee Smith – are lumbered with duller versions of their best known roles, but you might be relieved to know it does at least get better. And you can while away the time spotting references to classic SF authors and noted authors of the 1960s.

After the jump, I’ll be running through only The Fall, Ground Floor, Scorpion and State of Affairs. I’ll tell you now, though – I’m only halfway through Elementary (it’s okay so far – who is the publisher of the ornithology quotes, hmm? – but isn’t this a show that’s supposed to be about Holmes and Watson? I’m not getting that any more).

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What have you been watching? Including Ground Floor, Arrow, The Flash, The Newsroom, The Machine, Jack Reacher and Red 2

15 December 2014 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.

Time for a little bit of a catch-up, given I haven’t done one of these in a fortnight. There are still a few things in my viewing queue that I haven’t yet had time to watch: last night’s The Librarians I’ll cover in a third-episode verdict this week and I’ll probably do the same for The Legacy, although the subtitling makes it hard to watch when I’m doing the ironing. I’ll also try to give Netflix’s Marco Polo a watch, given they dumped the whole series online over the weekend.

I have managed to watch a few films, though.

Red 2 (2013)
The gang from Red are back to far less effect, with Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker and Helen Mirren joined by Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Lee Byung-hun as the old/amateur spies (plus one deadly young one) forced to use their lifetime of skills to save the world. Again. There’s a lot more travelling to foreign climes but only Byung-hun’s martial arts and Hopkins’ performance really lift the piece above the humdrum, with most of the interesting edges of the first movie filed off or toned down. It does give us a brief onscreen meeting of Hopkins and Brian Cox, which is probably the only time you’ll get two Hannibal Lecters together.

Jack Reacher (2012)
Tom Cruise is improbably the 6’5” military policeman of the Lee Childs novels, here investigating a seemingly random sniper shooting with an obvious suspect who needs his help being vindicated. A perfectly adequate, reasonably intelligent thriller with military trappings that does little to excite, beyond a few decent fights. Rosamund Pike is wasted.

The Machine (2013)
A strange little independent sci-fi thriller funded by the Welsh Government, of all things, in which scientists Toby Stephens and Caity Lotz work on developing intelligent machines for the Ministry of Defence and have to wrestle with the Turing Test, the nature of consciousness and intelligence, and other existential questions, as well as killer robots. Lotz is the obvious star, demonstrating all the qualities that made her such a powerful presence in the second season of Arrow, but Stephens is no slouch either. The film doesn’t quite manage to square all its intellectual concerns with its need for gore, and the ultra low budget means that the action is largely confined to a couple of rooms. But it’s a lot more interesting and intelligent than you might have expected. Plus it’s got Siwan Morris from Mine All Mine and Caerdydd in it

After the jump, I’ll be running through lots and lots of episodes of: Arrow, Constantine, Elementary, The Fall, Forever, The Flash, Gracepoint, Ground Floor, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, The Newsroom, Scorpion and State of Affairs.

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What have you been watching? Including Reckless, The Last Ship and Crossbones

4 July 2014 Rob Buckley 7 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.

Despite the fact that a few shows have finished and I’ve decided to drop a few others from my regular viewing, I have a wee backlog of NBC’s new comedy-action show Taxi Brooklyn to get through. Fingers crossed, a review of the first two episodes of that later. I’ve already reviewed some new shows elsewhere, though:

I’ve also given another new show a try:

Reckless (US: CBS)
Absolute bobbins. As soon as you say the word ‘southern’ to an American from one of the northern states, apparently, through some form of word association, ‘sexy fun times’ is the first thing they think of, because what we have here is a desperate attempt to get in predominantly female viewers with a cop show set in the south that sees lots of cops and lawyers having sex and flirting with each other. Being CBS, though, it’s so tame and old hat that when people start sexting pictures of themselves, they still use email and no naughty bits are exposed, yet despite that, the female cop in question (Georgina Haig) gets fired. She decides to sue and hires lawyer Anna Wood to prosecute the police department; the PD hire her flirt partner Cam Gigandet (The OC, Never Back Down, Twilight), prompting muchos sparks. Except it turns out that another cop might have been raped by a bunch of other cops and things take a serious left turn.

There’s a good cast, including Adam Rodriguez (CSI: Miami), Shawn Hatosy (Southland) and Gregory Harrison (Logan’s Run). But the script is dreadful, perhaps even knowingly so at times – legal eagle Gigandet sails a motor boat to work in the morning, wearing his suit under his waders the whole time – and the gang rape of a woman by police officers after they’ve drugged her doesn’t exactly equal the sexy fun times the producers are after.

After the jump, a round-up of the regulars, with reviews of 24, Crossbones, Halt and Catch Fire, The Last Ship, Murder In The First, Old School, Penny Dreadful and Undateable.

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What have you been watching? Including Belle, Halt and Catch Fire, and Continuum

27 June 2014 Rob Buckley 14 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.

The heat’s back on again, both in terms of the summer weather and the arrival of new shows, so I’ve not been able to get round to/force myself to watch FX’s Middle Eastern-yet-largely Caucasian dictator and familial rapist show, Tyrant. I’ll try to get round to that by Monday, assuming that all these Dulux swatches I’m keeping my eye on have lost enough moisture that I can compare them accurately. But I have reviewed two new shows:

One was better than the other.

I also managed to watch a couple of movies. Well, one and a half.

Belle (2013)
Jane Austen but with a black woman and slavery. Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Undercovers, Bonekickers (yikes), and Touch, but best known as Martha Jones’ sister Tish in Doctor Who) excels as the daughter of a slave whose aristocrat father places her with his uncle to look after – his uncle being the highest-ranked judge in England (Tom Wilkinson). Based on a true story, it’s a two-threaded piece, on the one hand examining the place of black and mixed race women in 18th century society, with Belle too high-born to eat with servants yet because of her skin too low-born to formally eat with her own family. She may have a £2,000 income a year, unlike her impoverished, equally-illegitimate white cousin, but that doesn’t mean anyone wants to marry her either. Contrasted with that is a case being examined by Wilkinson in which slaves are thrown overboard a ship and the ship’s captain tries to claim on the insurance for loss of cargo. The two threads mirror each other, with Wilkinson’s growing awareness of Belle’s station informing his opinion on the case and vice versa. The cast are fabulous, with Penelope Wilton, Miranda Richardson and Emily Watson shining, too, although Tom Felton (Murder in the First, but best known as Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter) is horribly typecast as an evil racist aristo. Some tear-jerking moments and a lovely romance, but a little too gently paced and in need of trimming in places.

Monuments Men (2013)
Another film based on a true story, this sees George Clooney, Matt Damon, John Goodman and others as somewhat past-it art experts at the end of World War 2 flying out to Europe to try to rescue whatever art they can before the Nazis steal it or destroy it – or the Allies bomb the hell out of it. That’s the first half-hour anyway, but we gave up after that because pretty much nothing much happens. There’s no good dialogue, the direction is limp, there’s no action, no scenes of note: there’s more excitement in a Pathé newsreel.

After the jump, a round-up of the regulars, with reviews of 24, Continuum, Enlisted, Halt and Catch Fire, Old School, Penny Dreadful, Suits and Undateable.

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The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Fourth-episode verdict: Undateable (NBC)

12 June 2014 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

In the US: Thursdays, 9/8c, NBC

Not that I’m suggesting NBC’s Undateable is needy or anything, but after two weeks, it’s already shown us four episodes and is asking for validation. Time to back away and break the bad news to it?

Not quite. So what if its sense of humour isn’t that great and it’s made a few mistakes? It’s really trying and has winning personalities so maybe we should just stick with it until it works out what it needs to be doing.

At a time when just about every drama and comedy is telling men (particularly nerds) that they don’t need to try hard, don’t need to look good, don’t need to be sensitive or consider what women want and don’t need to change, Undateable is giving us something different: a show in which the sensitive guy who tries hard and gets to know the girl wins through, while the cool alpha male has to learn that treating women as disposable objects is a distinctly uncool thing to do.

After a couple of episodes that set up the show’s basic premise and lead characters, episodes three and four again did different something unexpected and interesting: rather than string out the central “nerd pines after woman” plotline for a season or more as any other show would have done (eg The Big Bang Theory), essentially sending out the unwholesome message that if you stalk a woman for long enough, she’ll eventually give in and have sex with you, Undateable followed in Ground Floor’s footsteps and (spoiler alert) simply paired up the two central characters, giving the woman in question (Briga Heelan) a good motivation for doing so at the same time. It effectively nullifies the show’s title, but provides a much needed education to certain members of the audience, so no great loss.

Episode four continued this theme and flipped it on its head, giving alpha male (Chris D’Elia) a taste of his own medicine so that he has to learn from the nerd how to be nice to a woman for a change so that he’s at least in with a chance of a second date with a woman who used him the way he uses women. The supporting cast are getting a little more characterisation, with the English gay character (David Fynn) getting a look in in episode four and the overweight Shelly (Ron Funches) being the focus of episode three, which was also the first episode to properly address the show’s notional location of Detroit.

It’s all very worthwhile public information but not quite as funny as it should be. The continued repetition of jokes that weren’t funny in the first place needs to stop. Brent Morin’s nerdy character is a bit of a cock and not especially likable, even if he is sensitive, and while the producers had a good off-screen reason for all the singing in Ground Floor – both Heelan and co-star Skylar Astin have singing training, Astin was, of course, one of the stars of Pitch Perfect and the two characters hang around a karaoke bar a lot – here it feels forced and unnecessary. There’s not a huge amount of chemistry among the cast, either. No one feels especially like a real person and although there are various digs at Fynn’s Britishness (some of which he counters), he feels more like an American with an English accent than someone genuinely English – slightly unsurprising given that his character was originally played in the pilot by American actor Matthew Wilkas.

But it’s trying, there are surprising moments – two male characters, one gay, having a bubble bath together, to prove the straight one isn’t uptight, for example – Heelan’s always worth watching and D’Elia has so far grinned at his own jokes only once, which must have taken iron self-control on his part. Although it’s not quite gelling at the moment, given time and the pedigree of the leads and the producers, it could settle down into a pretty decent ensemble comedy.

Barrometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Will last a season and might even be renewed for a second one