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What have you been watching? Including The Musketeers, House of Fools, Monsters University and Enlisted

21 January 2014 Rob Buckley 13 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.

The January TV deluge has begun in earnest now, with many new shows as well as returning old shows, and although I’m doing my best, I’ve still got a few things sitting in my viewing queue as a result (being a day late with this hasn’t helped…): Sunday’s Looking, True Detective and Mr Selfridge, and last night’s Being Human and Intelligence. I’ve also got to try to preview Black Sails at some point.

I’ve given a few new shows a go, though:

Still Open All Hours (BBC1)
A Christmas special – already commissioned for a new series – which sees David Jason reprise his role of Granville, now the owner of Arkwright’s old corner shop, and with a probable son in tow. Most of the old cast are still there, surprisingly all having aged better than Jason, and the characters still the same, but the jokes are now a bit old and not especially funny.

House of Fools (BBC2)
Vic and Bob return triumphantly to their surreal comedy, pastiching so much that you never know what they’re even pastiching half the time, whether it’s themselves, 70s sitcoms or anything else. Very funny a lot of the time, but the jokes about women (and Sandi Toksvig) left a nasty taste that detracted from the fun and by about 20 minutes in, it had become very wearing. Matt Berry wasn’t exactly stretched much as an actor, either.

The Three Musketeers (BBC1)
Originally planned as a family filler to sit in between seasons of Doctor Who, this has now been promoted to Sunday primetime and sees Dumas’ classic taken and then passed through the BBC1 generic family action washing machine to give us something bland, inauthentic, unfaithful and without any really discernable characteristics, beyond crappy dialogue (cf Merlin, Atlantis, Hunted et al). Nice to see Santiago Cabrera (Heroes) getting work and Peter Capaldi is delightfully evil, without going over the top, but everyone else is as remarkable as battleship grey. Fun enough with some relatively decent action sequences, but could be so much better.

Shows that I’ve been watching but not really recommending:

Almost Human (Fox)
A generic episode that felt strangely out of order in the series run. Tracking bullets was the somewhat silly sci-fi idea of the week.

Agents of SHIELD (ABC/Channel 4)
More of the story arc, more of the Skye story. Still don’t care. I’m wondering if this has passed the point where it can make us care about its characters?  

Enlisted (Fox)
A toxically unfunny 10 minutes followed by a much better second half, with some obvious changes in military accuracy. Lacked a lot of the clever dialogue from the first episode, but had a good range of character moments. 

The Tomorrow People (The CW/E4)
One format change (a swap in leader) that was interesting, but the idea that mole TP could still be a mole after all this time is now terrifyingly implausible. Liz Hurley showed up (not literally) to not much effect as the voice of the bad guys’ computer.

And in the recommended list:

Archer (FX/Channel 5)
A massive series reboot and some delightfully nasty humour, but a final five minutes that were a bit flat. Still, let’s see where it all goes next week.

Arrow (The CW/Sky 1)
Probably the most Batman-esque episode so far. Largely, though, aimed at nudging characters in particular directions, rather than anything radical. And is it just me or are the martial arts fights just not as good or even frequent this season. But more Oliver-Felicity, please, and can we get Black Canary off the island, as soon as possible, too?

Banshee (Cinemax)
A bit soft porn in places and officially moving from ‘heightened reality’ to ‘very silly’, but a couple of good fight scenes and good use of humour. Not entirely sure niece Amish is plausible as a human being…

Being Human (US) (SyFy)
As usual, most of the cliffhanger plot threads were easily resolved in the first episode, and some new ones thrown in our direction instead. Some of these are moderately interesting and the idea of the inverted werewolf (a wolf except during the full moon, when humanity returns) was novel to me at least, but I think, as with Shameless (US), I’m going to be abandonning this, since I can’t see anything in the new threads that interest me, unless last night’s episode was a doozy. The downplaying of evil female vampire in favour of a new male nemesis also seemed unnecessary.

The Blacklist (NBC/Sky Living)
A surprisingly fluid show that keeps on changing format as soon as you think you’ve got it nailed down. Last week’s was marginally better than this week’s, with Spader getting to be downright evil and vengeful rather than merely arch, but everything involved Megan Boone and her hubby needed to be destroyed in fire ASAP.

The Bridge (BBC4)
A little annoyed that most of the past few weeks has been red herrings, but some great moments, particularly for the main characters. If you aren’t watching, you absolutely should be.

Community (NBC/some random UK channel)
For a character that largely wasn’t in the show much of late and whose actor didn’t half annoy the EP, Pearce has cast a very big shadow over the first set of episodes. Essentially another ‘bottle episode’, last week’s was still hilarious and weird, and enlivened even more by Walter Goggins (Justified) as Pearce’s lawyer. A definite return to form for the show, and also a clever way to write out another character.

Cougar Town (TBS/Sky Living)
Back but everything’s pretty much the shame, apart from that new romance. The ‘international penny can’ thing worked well, as did ‘the evil twin’, though. The arrival of Matt Perry for the Monica/Chandler reunion lifted the second episode considerably, too, although it did show how much better as a comic actor he is than Josh Hopkins.

Ground Floor (TBS)
And promoted to the recommended list, thanks to a really good, game-changing episode, that as well as a couple of innovative storytelling points (including a Shining reference), we got some seriously good and moving acting from Briga Heelan.

Intelligence (CBS)
A very silly episode involving digestible explosives and the return of Sawyer from Lost‘s dead wife from Homeland. Just an obvious attempt to ditch the romance-inhibiting backstory the pilot lumbered the show with or will she be back? I wonder…

Shameless (Showtime/More 4)
In the interests of sanity and because this is now effectively a reboot, all the old stories having ended last season, I’ve decided to drop Shameless, since I can’t see the value in continuing it – at least in the direction it’s currently going. These are all new plot strands that don’t really add anything to what’s gone before, and in some cases, are only likely to diminish it. I might/probably will turn out to be wrong, but c’est la vie. It’s been four seasons. I’m still recommending it though, so let me know if I should start watching again.

And in movies:

Monsters University
A prequel to Monsters Inc, in which we learn how Mike and Sully got their jobs at Monsters Inc by following them during their college days. Unfortunately, not a patch on the original in terms of imagination, even if the animation has improved considerably, and despite the likes of Nathan Fillion and Helen Mirren lending their voices this time round, it’s not until about halfway through that it starts to garner anything more than a titter. Somewhat disappointing, but not a total washout.

“What have you been watching?” 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 have you been watching? Including Killer Women, Chicago PD, Banshee, Sherlock and The Bridge

13 January 2014 Rob Buckley 10 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.

Although The Assets went and got itself cancelled, lightening my viewing load slightly, lots of new shows inconveniently launched themselves over the past few days, which means I haven’t had a chance to watch many of them. That means Enlisted, Helix, Bitten and True Detective are going to have to bide their time in the viewing queue, as are the return of Shameless (US) and Cougar Town, although I’m about an episode in (of the three episodes already shown) of Helix and it’s not bad so far – no BSG though.

I did give two new shows a go, though:

Killer Women (ABC)
Tricia Helfer is a recently divorced former beauty queen and Texas Ranger. Uh huh. That’s the level we’re dealing with. Although clearly not entirely serious, it’s pretty dreadful all the same and not even as good as Walker, Texas Ranger, unfortunately. Given its ratings, it’s likely to be murdered by ABC soon, too.

Chicago PD (NBC)
A spin-off from another Dick Wolf show, Chicago Fire, this essentially sees an elite group of cops in Chicago’s ‘intelligence’ division ‘bending’ the law in order to keep the streets clean. While not divorcing itself from reality in the same way that Killer Women does, it’s a love-letter to human rights violations and corruption that’s unpleasant viewing that isn’t redeemed by a great cast or interesting characters.

Death Comes To Pemberley (BBC1)
A murderous sequel to Pride and Prejudice, but so much more PD James than Jane Austen and lacking in any warmth that I couldn’t get into it.

Shows that I’ve been watching but not really recommending:

Ground Floor (TBS)
The show’s starting to get slightly more innovative in its story-telling techniques, with a fun dream sequence this week. There’s also a cliffhanger. At this rate, I’m going to be popping it onto the recommended list, although my wife did sit and watch a couple of minutes of it with me before saying, “What’s this? It’s not very good is it?”

Almost Human (Fox)
Quite a fun episode (sci-fi idea this week: Dorian runs out of charge and his personality starts to go all ‘low blood sugar’) but one that’s firmly based in 20th century ideas of people, rather than even early 21st century ideas.

Agents of SHIELD (ABC/Channel 4)
Tahiti – not such a magical place after all, but I think we’d all guessed that. And it turns out that the explanation for why it wasn’t such a magical place was even less magical than we’d all hoped. Sky gets all agenty, too. Like we care.  

And in the recommended list:

Sherlock (BBC/BBC America)
As usual, the Sherlock series template was as follows:

  1. A great episode by Steven Moffat
  2. A dreadful second episode
  3. One other very good episode

So praise be, we went out on a Stevie high, one fueled by a sterling performance by Lars Mikkelsen (The Killing, Those Who Kill), who should be the next Bond villain, just like his brother Mads (Hannibal). It wasn’t entirely flawless, but it certainly reminded me of why we fell in love with the show in the first place. Well done, Stevie. Not so sure about the final reveal, but fingers crossed, there’s more to that than meets the eye.

Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
On the other hand, Elementary reverted to ‘case of the week’, this time reversing the experiment in character development with Detective Bell that they’d been playing with for all of two weeks. Nice to see Paul Sorvino turn up, though.

Community (NBC/some random UK channel)
Not as funny as the previous week’s double-header, episode three was a darker affair, with not just one but two returning characters and a somewhat sad finish for another character. Probably won’t do the ratings any good, but it was appropriate, nevertheless.

The Bridge (BBC4)
Already shaping up to be better than the first season, The Bridge is treating us with Saga Noren moments aplenty as well as lovely character moments for Martin (particularly his defence of Saga to one of his colleagues), while giving us a villain who’s plausibly far less of the improbably omniscient and omnipotent Jens of season 1. Thoroughly recommended.

Banshee (Cinemax)
Not quite the smash, bang return I was expecting, given the first season’s kinetic arrival in our lives. More, instead, a recalibration for the second season, given how many of the plot threads got burnt through by the end of the first season. A few of the usual Cinemax sex excesses, although none as egregious as Strike Back’s soft porn, and no decent fights, and Lucas is far too appealing to every single woman in town for plausibility’s sake, but a good solid opening ep nevertheless. Except for the fact Julian Sands was in it. Who ordered that?

“What have you been watching?” 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 have you been watching? Including Doctor Who, Sherlock, Elementary, Community, The Bridge and The Ground Floor

6 January 2014 Rob Buckley 20 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.

There have been lots of Christmas specials and few regular TV shows over the holiday period, some of which I watched, some of which (thanks to the iPlayer’s one-week cut-off) I didn’t:

Doctor Who (BBC1/BBC America)
Bye bye Matt Smith, hello Peter Capaldi. A little bit of a smorgasbord of things here, with Steven Moffat once again reverting to usual form following The Day of the Doctor, particularly poorly thought-out, identical female characters (although Clara had a personality for once, which was nice). Stevie hates having to do anything that feels like a sequel so he injected as much original but meaningless and silly stuff into The Time of the Doctor as possible. It also meant he glossed over really, really important things (the Doctor dying, the conspiracy of Silence) in mere minutes that should have kept him in episodes for months but would have required that dreaded sequel word again. Even the cameo from Karen Gillan was a poor idea (poor Clara). But bits of it worked quite well, loose ends were tied up and there were some touching moments (the death of Handles) and good ideas (wooden Cybermen). It wasn’t quite the proper send-off we’d hoped for Matt Smith, but it wasn’t the worst Doc send-off we’ve ever had and we now have 13 more Doctors to look forward to.

But back in the world of regular TV, I saw:

Ground Floor (TBS)
Possibly the best episode so far, since, for a change, it focused on the Ground Floor and how undouchy they are compared to the Top Floor. Briga Heelan got her groove back and we saw that at least one woman works on the top floor. We also got our first Doctor Cox Scrubs joke – eight episodes they managed before slipping one in. And then there was the HR video…

And in the recommended list:

Sherlock (BBC/BBC America)
The Empty Hearse
Well, I say recommended but… Okay. In many ways it’s brilliant, but this season has effectively seen the show shift from being an innovative take on Sherlock Holmes and crime dramas, with a hint of comedy, to being a fully fledged comedy with implausible characters (well, one anyway). The New Year’s Day episode was written by Mark Gatiss who chose for his pastiche genres: Sherlock Holmes (the Robert Downey Jr movie) and… Steven Moffat. Strange it was indeed to see Gatiss emulating his co-writer, but it was like a bad carbon copy of Stevie’s finer season 2 moments. Overall enjoyable, with plenty of wry in-jokes (Martin Freeman’s wife playing Watson’s fiancé, Mary Moran; Benedict Cumberbatch’s parents playing Holmes’ parents; Cumberbatch re-using his dodgy Cabin Pressure French accent), but lacking in self-discipline – if it has just dialled itself back a bit, taken a deep breath and remembered what reality looks like, it would have been really good. As for the lack of true explanation for how Sherlock survived despite the multiple explanations that we did see, I did quite like that, even if it we ended up going through numerous levels of meta to get there.

The Sign of Three
Then there was last night’s episode. Now, the second episode of every Sherlock season is usually almost irredeemable sh*t and last night’s was no exception. In its defence, it was supposed to be a complete change of pace, a comedy character piece all about Holmes and Watson, rather than a proper crime story. It also had a pretty good plot structure, with several unsolved crime stories told in flashback that are eventually solved at the end of the episode (although if you didn’t see that coming, frankly, I’m surprised you even know what drama is, let alone what a TV looks like). But the trouble was it was 60 minutes of the utterly ridiculous and insultingly poor – and worse still, dull – before a final 15 minutes that tried to redeem what had come before and could only do so partially. It also had to twist Sherlock’s character into all sorts of weird knots to make him fit the script. How can a man who doesn’t understand human emotions at all be able to make deductions the way he does? To say he may lack empathy is one thing; to say he has no comprehension is quite another. And frankly, the hints at the stories we didn’t get were far more fun than the ones we did get.

But a lovely cameo by you know who.

Elementary (CBS/Sky Living)
By contrast, Elementary delivered one of its finest episodes. While it’s debatable just how much like Sherlock Holmes Jonny Lee Miller’s character is – The Mentalist and House give you better deductions and cases than Elementary – its Irene Adler/Jamie Moriarty is a tour de force in chilling evil. Or is she? This was a touching examination of the two characters’ bonds. I wonder where they’re taking this – redemption or double crossville? And what were all those hints by Moriarty that she knew she would soon be free about? Unlike Sherlock, this made me want to watch another episode.

Community (NBC/some random UK channel)
After the disastrous, Dan Harmon-less fourth season, it was a delight to watch last week’s double bill to be able to say Community is back and almost back to form. With a hell of a lot to do to reboot the show – in true Community fashion, the episode was called Re-Pilot and even referenced its own reboot as well as Scrubs‘ – the writers pulled out all the stops and by the end of the second episode, harmony was restored, cameos performed and the show was put back on the rails. Let’s see where this baby goes now.

The Bridge
And they’re back! Just as Sky’s remake finished, season 2 of The Bridge (aka Bron/Broen) returned, complete with the proper Martin and Saga. While not quite as sharp as the first season and perhaps a little more distant from reality again, it’s still an excellent piece of work, Saga Noren is still wonderful (and more plausible now that she actually knows something about emotions) and I heartily recommend it. I even managed to watch both episodes live on a Saturday night, that’s how good it is.

“What have you been watching?” 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?

US TV

Community’s back. With Nicolas Cage. Kind of

6 January 2014 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Community returned (with Dan Harmon) on Thursday. Much improved over the lamentable fourth season, it showed there was still life in the show, particularly since the first episode, Re-pilot, rebooted the whole thing.

Want a taste in case you didn’t see it? Well, here’s part of the script to a scene in the second episode. It should leave you wanting more.

Abed's Nicolas Cage scene

[via]