In the US: Sunday 17th October, AMC In the UK: Acquired by BBC4. Will air 2010/early 2011
I’ve more or less stopped doing these full-season reviews of TV shows, on the general grounds they take time and effort, and I’m quite lazy – plus there’s always What Have You Been Watching? on Fridays to do brief reviews.
But the first season of Rubicon, I think, is quite an instructive piece of TV, and what with it coming to BBC4 soon, I thought I’d go over some of the things that make it interesting and worth watching, and what it teaches us about US television production.
I’ll avoid spoilering anyone who has yet to see it because they’re waiting for it on BBC4.
Well, it’s been a month so you’d have thought I’d have caught up with everything. And I did catch up a bit. But two weeks away means that there’s a whole slew of things I’m still working my way through: I’ve got a load of episodes of The Gates, Mad Men, Scoundrels and Persons Unknown to get through for starters. Wonder Woman season 1 is turning out to be better, more subversive, more feminist – and weirder – than I remember though: Steve Trevor’s still a complete dick, mind.
But I have managed to see the following:
Burn Notice: Notably picking up in the final few episodes, but still hampered by that formula. And who could have seen that ending coming? Oh yes – everyone.
Dark Blue: Which should now more properly be called ‘Light Blue’, since the addition of Tricia Helfer to the mix has really messed the show up (although it’s not her fault). There were two things that made the show dark – it was about undercover cops doing things that might seem a little questionable and not especially enjoying it; and it was all shot in the dark. But now we have Helfer, suddenly it’s going all jokey and flirting with comedy. Fluffy haired Dermot M is off gardening and has a girlfriend, secondary characters that complicated storylines emotionally have been removed, Dermot no longer is his own boss so what they’re doing isn’t as dark any more. It’s all just a little bit less interesting now. There have been some good moments though and the secondary stars are all quite interesting in their own way. It’s just too far from reality to really make it a decent show any more. I wonder if that’s why TNT haven’t exactly been pushing themselves to promote it?
Covert Affairs: Has continued to be decent but not outstanding. Piper Perabo is great, but all attempts to make ‘Auggie’ interesting have been flawed. Sendhil Ramamurthy is getting more to do though which is good. I’m also liking the fact that while Annie can kick arse, she’s not as kick arse as most of the people she’s up against. Arrival of (spoiler) old boyfriend was anti-climactic though and Anne Dudek is largely being wasted. But it’s remaining an okay stab at action-spy realism.
Persons Unknown: Very much a chore, this has gone from excellent to awful. I’m hoping it picks up in the final three eps, when all will be revealed, but I don’t hold out too much hope.
Royal Pains: So a disappointing season overall, mainly because the first season was so good, rather than because this one was bad. It wasn’t bad, in fact, merely lacking in the edge the first season had. It was all a little too easygoing, too routine. The Jill/Hank relationship was sorely missing and much as I love Anastasia Griffith, her character wasn’t much of a replacement. I’m not that interested in Divya, and making her a mini-Hank didn’t make me love her more. Evan was at least less irritating this season, but the lack of Boris has been a problem, too. What the show really needed was the depth the first season had – the questions about Hank’s business, whether he would stay in the Hamptons, whether Jill was a holiday fling or not, Boris’s scarier qualities and so on. Fingers crossed for next season (or half-season) since there were hints in the final episode that it was all coming back.
Sherlock: So after an impressive first episode, written by Steven Moffat, we get a truly dreadful episode written by someone no one had heard of (he writes for the theatre, apparently). Should we be surprised that something written by someone other than Steven Moffat isn’t as good as something that is written by Steven Moffat? No, of course not. But this was bland and barely Sherlock Holmes at all. Then we get the third episode, this time by Mark Gattiss. Now this did at least recapture some of the fun qualities of the first ep – it does make me wonder about SM as a showrunner though. For Sherlock did he really only bother talking to Mark Gattiss and forget to talk to second guy at all, beyond “it’s Sherlock Holmes. You work it out,” or what? Because ep 2 just ignored all the series set-up that ep 1 incorporated (Watson’s blog-writing, his service revolver, etc) leaving almost all of it other than Moriarty for ep 3. Now ep 3 still wasn’t SM quality but it was pretty good. If you’re a Sherlock-lover, you’d have spotted the references to the five orange pips, the Bruce-Partington Plans, etc; the (spoiler)cliffhanger ending by the pool with Moriarty was of course an obvious reference to The Final Problem as well. Moriarty was a surprise and well handled, if a little OTT. But I do worry they’ve gone too far along the line of making Holmes almost sociopathic and uncaring. Watson’s lost his edge since the first ep too. But fingers crossed, with a second season, they’ll iron out the bugs.
But what have you been watching?
As always, no spoilers unless you’re going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please. If you’ve reviewed something on your blog, you can put a link to it here rather than repeat yourself (although too many links and you might get killed by the spam filter).
It used to be that you could rely on AMC for one thing: movies. That’s what AMC used to stand for – American Movie Classics. But after it changed its name to AMC in 2003, before you knew it, it could be relied on for another thing: re-runs of The Sopranos.
Mad Men changed all that. Suddenly, AMC was in the business of making TV drama. Excellent TV drama. Slow, excellent TV drama that takes a long time to develop and in which not much happens for a long time.
Then came Breaking Bad, a slow, excellent TV drama that took a long time to develop and in which not much happened for a long time, and The Prisoner, a slow bad TV drama that took a long time to develop and in which not much happened for a long time.
Rubicon, AMC’s latest TV drama, is a conspiracy theory show set in the world of American spies that echoes movies like Three Days of the Condor, Parallax View and The Conversation. It stars James Badge Dale (24, The Pacific) as an analyst who begins to see crossword clues take on greater significance – and Miranda Richardson, whose husband commits suicide after he receives a four-leafed clover.
Anyone want to guess what it’s like? I’ll give you a clue – you’ll have to wait until episode five before you’re even going to get a hint at what’s going on… and it gets good.
This is going to be the last entry on the blog for most of (if not all of) August, so it’s going to be an open-ended thread for y’all to chat about what you’ve been watching on TV this month – assuming you want to, of course. I’ve a few things in my queue that I’m going to be watching on planes, including Rubicon, ep 2 of Mad Men (which is already looking better than ep 1) and the first two eps of the new Tricia Helfer-enhanced Dark Blue (I’m unsure if this is a good thing or not, but I remain open-minded).
But this week, I’ve been watching:
Burn Notice: Reasonably fun, but in the scheme of things, a throwaway ep, bookended with a couple of interesting character scenes.
Covert Affairs: The first really good ep of the series, with Oded Fehr as a Mossad agent. It had a real Bourne Identity feel to it, and the activities back at Langley seemed to be more coherent. Fingers crossed the rest of the season will be like this.
The Gates: Vampire fun! A good ep, but when will Nick find out about the rest of the Gates’s secrets?
The IT Crowd: Nice cameo by that bloke off The Mighty Boosh and as funny as always.
Persons Unknown: Silly. But could it all be in their heads?
Rev: A nice way to end this series. Not many belly laughs since the first ep, but surprisingly deep with a knowing humour. Fingers crossed for a second series.
Royal Pains: Slightly interesting playing around with time and Fringe-esque graphics. Some decent character moments, but I’m missing Hank-Jill and the general edge the show had in season one, even if it’s nice to have Anastasia Griffith around.
Scoundrels: Moderately amusing at best, but it does seem to be settling down and working out a vibe for itself.
Top Gear: A so-so season over all. It’s definitely losing its appeal now it’s trying to be more serious.
As always, no spoilers unless you’re going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please. If you’ve reviewed something on your blog, you can put a link to it here rather than repeat yourself (although too many links and you might get killed by the spam filter).
I’ve given up on a few shows over the last fortnight, most notably Leverage, which has been boring the pants off me of late (YMMV), and Rizzoli & Isles, which made Women’s Murder Club look like a documentary. But here’s what I have been watching
Burn Notice: This season is really just fantastically unmemorable at the moment. I literally can’t remember what’s happened in it within about an hour of viewing it. But while I’m watching it, it’s fun.
Covert Affairs: Embarrassingly for Burn Notice, despite Covert Affairs being a duller show, it is making Burn Notice look a bit daft in comparison to the far more realistic tradecraft that goes on here (not that it’s that realistic, of course). I am enjoying Covert Affairs, and the arrival of Sendhil Ramamurthy (who despite having a US accent normally, still sounds like he’s putting one on) is excellent news. But despite the awesome Piper Perabo, it doesn’t quite have that magic it needs to make it must-see TV.
The Gates: Glad they’ve finally pushed a couple of revelations, but we’re going to need a few more answers soon, IMHO, to avoid this becoming dull.
The IT Crowd: Last week’s wasn’t quite as funny as previous weeks’ episodes, but it still had some great moments.
Mad Men: Season four’s here and it’s a little dull, I have to confess. A few nice moments and obviously the first ep was largely dedicated to establishing where everybody is a year on from season 3, but it didn’t really come alive until its last few moments. Oh, and the Advertising Age guy’s shorthand? All good teeline, but together, didn’t mean a thing. Absolute gibberish.
Persons Unknown: Massive outbreak of silliness in the last two episodes. Sigh. I knew it couldn’t last.
Rev: The first episode not written by the series creator and the first I didn’t enjoy. It just felt a bit nasty, to be honest.
Royal Pains: Doesn’t quite have the edge of last season, the demotion of Jill to an occasional walk-on is a real body-blow to the show, as is the absence of Boris at the moment. But Anastasia Griffith is fine and the Pretty Woman reference last week was fun.
Scoundrels: Now, I’ve never been to a strip club (I just haven’t. Honest), but even I know that the one they have in Scoundrels is pretty tame – much like the show. It’s chugging along though, has some fun moments, and some fun characters. It just flounders as soon as anything too much like drama hits it. Also had the first Terminator in-joke of the season this week, which only took five episodes. Well done on the restraint guys.
Southland: Onto episode four and it’s just become a slightly soapy mush, which is very disappointing given its first couple of episodes. I’m going to stick with it, particularly since I hear season two focuses on the two interesting characters from the first two eps, but that was a real plummet in quality.
Top Gear: Rubbish interview of Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, but nice to see them both do so well in the circuit. The Ayrton Sena piece was a surprisingly lovely tribute as well. Generally, though, this season has lacked a certain pizazz.
But what have you been watching? Anyone catch The Pillars of the Earth?
As always, no spoilers unless you’re going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please. If you’ve reviewed something on your blog, you can put a link to it here rather than repeat yourself (although too many links and you might get killed by the spam filter).
