Gavin and Stacey

I’m finally catching up after my time away

• Dexter – Not sure about Sunday’s ep. It felt like it ignored the usual ground rules of Dexter and expected us to swallow a whole load of things that just weren’t plausible. For example, doesn’t Dexter have voicemail? Why would he have given his number to Arthur?
• Misfits – I haven’t seen last night’s episode yet, but the first three have been very good. I think I actually prefer it to Being Human now – the characters feel a little more real, if you know what I mean.
• Gavin & Stacey – the rap was a bit painful and watching Sheridan Smith and James Corden doing it as brother and sister got a bit creepy at times. Overall, though, I liked it – it didn’t feel like they were retreading old material more continuing previous themes. Also lost track of the number of times Stacey would do/say something and I thought to myself “That sounds very familiar.” That’s well-observed comedy for you.
• Cast Offs – been catching up with this since I’m writing an article on it. I probably wouldn’t have watched it normally (six disabled characters are put on an island by Channel 4 and we get flashbacks to their lives) and Channel 4 are burning it off as quickly as they can. But I’m quite enjoying it. It’s very different from the usual TV dramas out there. Slowly paced and it’s obviously mostly intended to be educational, but it’s actually pretty good.
• The Thick Of It – caught up with the last two episodes. Not as fun as the previous two series, primarily because you can’t help feel sorry for everyone, rather than laugh at them. But good moments in both.
• Paradox – It has dialogue that makes your ears bleed with its awfulness. It has characters that are beyond stupid. People do moronic things for no good reason (eg We must never tell the disbelieving cop whose life we have just saved that his life was at risk. In fact, let’s not do the very very easy things when harder is much better). But it’s oddly compelling – kind of what FlashForward should have been in some ways. My theory (and probably everyone’s theory): sinister mad scientist bloke is sending the messages from the future back to himself.
• The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret: One of Channel 4’s comedy pilots (available to view on YouTube). I tittered a little, although usually from the performances rather than the script, which was a bit poor. Miraculously, though, since David Cross (Arrested Development) was the co-writer/star, they managed to get cameos from Spike Jonze, Will Arnett and Kristen Schaal. Also featured Russell Tovey. Will Arnett had the best moment though.

What have you been watching though?

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).