Burn Notice

What TV did you watch last month? Including Gates, Copper, Perception, Suits, The Newsroom and Continuum

3 September 2012 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

It’s “What TV did you watch last month?”, my chance to tell you what I watched on TV in the last month that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.

Yes, that’s right, last month. Don’t worry, we’ll go back to weekly or fortnightly soon – this is a one-off because of the August break. August was mostly a month of season finales, so I’ll talk about them in a moment, but there were some new shows, a lot of which I couldn’t be bothered with because it was August. September is when things start up again and I should have some previews for you this week.

So here’s a few thoughts on what I have been watching:

  • Burn Notice: Gave up on it again, two episodes before the season finale. Just don’t care any more and nothing on it makes me want to care, unfortunately. I hear there was a good twist in the finale, but again, I don’t care.
  • Continuum: This has now been picked up SyFy in both the UK and the US (I think) so I’d recommend watching it if you haven’t been watching it already. The finale, while a little less action-packed than I would have liked, managed to be a good combination of science-fiction, plot-disentangler, cliffhanger and character work. Looking forward to the second season immensely – thankfully, that second season has been commissioned. Woo hoo!
  • Copper: BBC America’s new show set in 19th century New York, where some Irish guys get to be corrupt cops and solve crimes, because no one knows how cops should behave yet. A good deal better than AMC’s Hell on Wheels, it’s still a good deal less interesting than it should be, mainly because the characters are uninspiring, although Anastasia Griffith’s early suffragette (Trauma, Royal Pains) is a big exception. Nice to see Franka Potente (Run Lola Run and The Bourne Identity) getting work again, too.

  • Covert Affairs: Given that up again, too. Bored.
  • Gates: It’s got Joanna Page in it, it’s already being lined up for a US remake, but I’ve barely managed to get through the first episode. It’s not great, I’ll tell you that for nothing.

  • The Newsroom: So it’s all come to an end and there’s a second season to sort of look forward to. A very uneven first season that took a while to find its feet and to dump the majority of its catastrophic sexism. Saddled with some very bad characters, the show is hard to root for, although the plotting remains good throughout. Bizarrely, the only really watchable character was Sloane, who was thoroughly enjoyable, and I promise never to malign Olivia Munn again, seeing as she visibly improved throughout the series and became the show’s big redeeming feature.
  • Perception: After three episodes of pretty run of the mill formula stuff with a surprisingly small amount of Jamie Bamber to relieve the boredom, the last episode was actually rather good, a decent examination of paranoid schizophrenia and why some might not want to take their medication and why some really should. Not many episodes left, but I’ll be adding it to my recommendations list from next week.
  • Royal Pains: In a sense, I admire the clever arc they’ve come up with this season designed to widen the character base and give Hank room to do more things. In another sense, I’m bored by the lack of depth to anything. The first season of Royal Pains did a good job of dealing with some of the deeper emotions and issues facing Hank and co, but the show’s becoming far tamer, far shallower and far sillier. Needs to pull its socks up.
  • Suits: An ever-so-slightly disappointing finale to a fantastic season of the best summer show. The big revelations you could see coming a mile off, but as always with Suits, how the characters then twist and manipulate events and people is what makes it interesting. A couple of things seemed out of character and why they had to introduce a new character when Jenny was within easy plotting distance and able to achieve the same effect, I don’t know.

“What did you watch last fortnight?” 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?

What did you watch last fortnight? Including Maison close, Wallander, Dogtooth and The Hurt Locker

27 July 2012 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

It’s “What did you watch last fortnight?”, my chance to tell you what I watched in the last fortnight 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 recommendations from the first-run shows are: Continuum, The Daily Show, The Newsroom and Suits. Hunt them down.

Here’s a few thoughts on those and what else I’ve been watching:

  • Burn Notice: A shocking death… that everyone predicted and almost certainly not the end of the ‘Burn Notice’ plot. Interesting to note that there was more emotion in the last minute or two as the impact of the death sank in than there has been in the last three episodes of Covert Affairs with a similar situation, which tells you a lot about that show. And as for last week’s episode, John C McGinley is now stuck being Dr Cox from Scrubs forever.
  • Continuum: Actually quite a creepy and nasty episode this week, with more sci-fi twists and a very decent couple of cliffhangers. Good to see some bad guys who aren’t idiots for a change.
  • Covert Affairs: Largely forgettable, except when Richard Coyle is in it. Comes across essentially as a set of stage directions for a spy show, lacking in any real passion or excitement, no matter what happens. Nice location shooting though.
  • Maison close: Canal+ drama set in an early 20th century brothel. Lavishly shot, but inherently silly and exploitative, and absolutely nothing to surprise you.
  • Mesrine: Vincent Cassel as the real-life crook, depicting his life from a solider in Algiers through to his death. But I gave up after about half an hour, since although it was a decent enough story and Cassel was fabulous, it was a pretty ordinary story really, and there was enough misogyny to put me off from watching too much of it.
  • The Newsroom: Well, after an excellent fourth episode, we once again plummeted the depths of the Sorkin style for the fifth episode, making this the most inconsistent of his shows in terms of quality. About the only good thing about it was Olivia Munn being deadpan and snarky, as usual.
  • Prisoners of War: In retrospect, this is a show I wish I’d seen before Homeland, since so many of the revelations, although in a different context from Homeland‘s, were the same. No secret terrorist to worry about, but the final frames and much of the final episode were clearly setting the show up for a second series – which is coming in October.
  • Royal Pains: Reshma Shetty acted! Amazing
  • Sinbad: Basically Sky doing a Merlin, but better. Great to see a show with a principally black and Asian cast that isn’t set on a sinkhole estate somewhere, as well. But fundamentally not that great unless you’re a teenager, I suspect.
  • Suits: The ballet side of things in last night’s episode is pushing Louis over the edge of plausibility, but still a reasonable episode, uplifted by the final poker scene.
  • Wallander: After the dreadful second episode, it was a relief to see the third and final episode of the show return to the quality of the first episode of this series. A proper crime that needed investigating, Wallander doing proper police work and occasional breaks from absolute misery, making the episode potentially a good final one for the show. Worth mentioning that it was possibly one of the most beautifully shot programmes on TV recently and Ken was of course was magnificent.

And in movies:

  • Princess Diaries 2: Don’t ask. But one of those minor movies you watch 10 years after it was made and go “Oh my gods, it’s them! They’re famous now! And so are they! And them!” Here, we have Anne “Catwoman” Hathaway, Callum “Kneel before Zod” Blue from Smallville and Chris Pine from Star Trek, with a script written by Grey’s Anatomy/Private Practice/Scandal showrunner Shonda Rhimes. Probably great if you’re an 11-year-old American girl who knows nothing about Europe, royalty, etc, since it takes every stereotype about royalty you’ll ever come across and marries it with American idealism (“Everyone can be a princess and if you just care enough, you can rule a country wisely, too!”). The problem is it’s nearly two hours long and takes out about 20 minutes for a sleepover and karoake session. But okay.

  • Dogtooth: Probably not a movie I would have watched, had it not been to brush up my Greek for holidays next month. Very weird film about a pair of protective parents who keep their grown-up children in an almost childlike state, confined in their home, teaching them the wrong words for things (‘sea’ means ‘chair’ and ‘zombie’ means ‘a small yellow flower’) and that planes in the sky are just toys. The only visitor is a female security guard whom the dad pays to come and have very mechanical sex with the son. And then things go pear-shaped. Some very odd acting and a very odd script and central idea, but a very interesting movie. Worth watching.

  • The Hurt Locker: the movie for which Kathryn Bigelow won the best director Oscar, it’s a much-deserved win, even if the script itself is a little lacking. Jeremy Renner is a adrenaline-addicted bomb-disposal guy in Iraq who puts his comrades’ lives in danger. Interesting as much for its cameos – Ralph Fiennes (who starred in Bigelow’s Strange Days) as a British mercenary, Guy Pierce as another bomb disposal guy, David Morse as another soldier, Evangeline Lilly as Renner’s girlfriend – who disappear as quickly as they arrive. Visually magnificent and extremely tense, the film really only falters when it moves away from action and tries to deal with character and emotion.

“What did you watch last fortnight?” 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?

News

Thursday’s “Multiple Doctor Who specials, Life of Pi trailer and a 2nd season for Line of Duty” news

26 July 2012 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Misfits' fourth series cast

Doctor Who

Film

Trailers

  • Trailer for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi
  • Trailer for Jack and Diane with Juno Temple

UK TV

US TV

New US TV shows

Friday’s “Pop star cameos, Lifetime pilots and Aaron Sorkin fires everyone” news

20 July 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Film

Trailers

  • Trailer for The Campaign, with Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis
  • Trailer for Jayne Mansfield’s Car with Robert Duvall, John Hurt and Billy Bob Thornton et al
  • Trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams

UK TV

  • John Barrowman’s Hollow Earth to be adapted
  • Jamelia to guest on Death in Paradise
  • BBC2 to extend The Hollow Crown series [subscription required]
  • Channel 5 acquires Hatfields & McCoys [subscription required]
  • Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn and Dorothy Koomson’s Ice Cream Girls to be adapted by BBC1 and ITV1 [subscription required]

US TV

New US TV shows

Streaming TV

What did you watch last fortnight? Including Parents, Romanzo Criminale and Drive

9 July 2012 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Sky 1's Parents

It’s “What did you watch last fortnight?”, my chance to tell you what I watched last fortnight 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 recommendations from the first-run shows are: Continuum, The Daily Show, Suits and Prisoners of War. Hunt them down.

Here’s a few thoughts on those and what else I’ve been watching:

  • Burn Notice: Continues to tread slightly away from its formula, so I’m countenancing watching it again.
  • Wilfred: Is now just dark, not funny at all, so I gave up after the first 10 minutes of episode two.
  • Suits: Loving the Hardman narrative and that they’re starting to explore the secondary characters more. The must-see show of the week.
  • Continuum: Starting to weaken a little, now most of the SF elements have been stripped from the present-day side of things. But still a pretty good show, and Rachel Nichols is an involving lead.
  • Men At Work: Thought I’d give it a try again since Alex Breckenridge was in last week’s episode, but they gave her one funny line, and the rest of the show was as desperately unfunny as the previous episodes I saw.
  • Parents: I must remember that although Sky Atlantic is getting better, Sky 1 is merely trying to get better. Despite the presence of Sally Phillips and Tom Conti, this is a really poor sitcom about Phillips getting fired from her job and being forced to move herself and her family back in with her parents. Couldn’t even survive one episode, although Phillips is as excellent as always and it did have a few decent touches.
  • The Newsroom: Dear God, what is up Sorkin’s writing of female characters. Quite a poor episode, too, that had me yawning for most of it, and it comes to something that Olivia Munn was actually the least annoying actress on the show (Emily Mortimer and Alison Pill beating her on that score). I’m hoping last night’s episode was better
  • Line of Duty: Episode two was marginally less ludicrous than episode one, but most of the flaws are the same, particularly the lead’s lack of charisma. But it did have a very interesting cliffhanger, so I’ll be sticking around for episode three.
  • Romanzo Criminale: Sky Arts is currently repeating what is supposedly Italy’s finest TV show. This is a very low bar indeed, apparently, because this tale of the Mafia in the Rome of the 70s was so laughably ridiculous, I switched off after 10 minutes. I think there’s an intended level of humour to it, but it was just plain daft.
  • Royal Pains: Marginally improving, but the departure of Jill Flint in a typically unresolved, undramatic way signalled a sharp downturn in quality for the last episode.
  • Prisoners of War: It’s interesting to see what elements of this were retained for Homeland, since they are both similar and different. No terrorist plot and no real Carrie character for the original, but still enough elements retained by the remake that you can still see how much the remake owes to its originator.
  • Alan Partridge: The two new Sky Atlantic episodes both contained a good number of funny moments, but I didn’t think the episodes as great as everyone else seems to. But a good deal funnier than Parents.
  • Coming Here Soon: BBC3 does investigative reporting. Give me strength. Just horrendous. Like a lot of BBC3 shows, this has a good concept at its core – here, it’s let’s go and talk to the people on the ground about how the economic crisis is affecting real people in different countries – and then in an attempt to get young people to watch it, puts a suitable young person with no training or perceivable talent beyond an ability to talk to other people in the role of reporter. Here we had Stacey Dooley tackling Greece – someone who thinks the Parthenon is the Akropolips (sic) and who “totally, totally gets” the situation. While she had a certain gumption and the show did manage to speak to some useful spokespeople, it was so utterly bereft of any ability to ask any probing questions of those it had concluded had done Greek society wrong, that you might as well have sent a tape recorder instead – and then ignored it and simply passed judgement anyway. As a sample, in an interview with a Greek politician who said there were basically two ways to resolve the crisis – a bad way and a very bad way and the politicians had had to go for the first option, all Dooley could do was say after the interview was over “I don’t understand how people can do this.” What option would she have picked or does she disagree with the fundamentals of the politician’s premise? Who knows. It’s just A Bad Thing and politicians should only do Good Things using their special magic powers. Judging by the BBC3 blog on the subject, I’m not the only one who thought it was a bit of a waste of time.
  • Blackout: No, not the SyFy gameshow but BBC1 trying to do noir with Christopher Ecceleston (currently appearing as quite a poor Creon in Antigone at the National at the moment. Sigh) and apparently that means renting out an old copy of Dark City. Possibly a good script in there, although given that the way to indicate Ecclescake is an alcoholic is to have him with a drink in his hand at all times and having is wife comment on it so not the subtlest of scripts if it is, but the direction is so effected and stupid, that it’s impossible to pay any attention to its possible saving graces.

And in movies:

  • The Ghost: Essentially, one of the least thrilling thrillers ever, with Ewan McGregor as a ghost-writer hired to edit the memoirs of Pierce Brosnan’s Blair-like former PM, following the demise of the previous ghost-writer in suspicious circumstances. Sometimes funny, with one good twist, but that’s about it.

  • Drive: Starring that Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan, who are both so hot right now, this is a La Samourai-esque thriller about a taciturn getaway driver who’s empty existence is turned upside down by a waitress he meets and her ex-husband. Surprisingly little driving but a whole lot of ultra-violence, it’s a beautifully shot and intelligent thriller with a great cast that includes Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman. Not to everyone’s taste, but if you can stomach a little blood and do look the occasional tense car chase, this is one movie that is very definitely worth watching. Incidentally, it’s free on Netflix – yes a decent recent movie on Netflix: how extraordinary. The trailer does give away almost all of the movie, mind.

Still to watch: Mesrine – Killer Instinct, starring the always reliable Vincent Cassel, in a French gangster mini-series that has already aired on FX but is now on BBC4. Anyone seen it? Also on the Sky box is the latest Ken Branagh Wallander and Sinbad, which looks fun and has that nice Naveen Andrews from Lost as a baddie.

“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?