Hannibal

News: Massive US cancellations and pick-ups, The Trip to Italy deleted sccene, ITV Encore ad + more

12 May 2014 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

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What have you been watching? Including Bosch, 24, Agents of SHIELD, Hannibal Rising and Prisoners of War

10 May 2014 Rob Buckley 4 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.

Thankfully, there wasn’t much new on this week, so I haven’t been able to play catch-up on a few shows, and in fact I was able to watch one new show:

Bosch (Amazon Prime)
Based on the Michael Connelly series of books (which my mother in law likes so they must be okay), this stars Titus Welliver (of numerous shows but particularly Lost) as LA police detective Hieronymous Bosch. No really. That’s his name. Apparently co-starring most of the cast of The Wire, including Lance Reddick and Jamie Hector, it sees Bosch dealing with a civil suit in which he’s accused of shooting an unarmed man while also dealing with the discovery of the body of a long-buried child. But there’s no resolution to any of these stories, since this is just the pilot episode and a series is now on its way. It’s above average as cop shows go and there’s a definite air of authenticity to everything, but fundamentally it features a preposterous lead character who is also simultaneously very ordinary – it’s not like he’s writing poetry or doing brass rubbing for a hobby but is off listening to jazz and drinking while having a silly name. Worth a glance, but nothing special.

I also watched a movie!

Hannibal Rising (2007)
Given it’s the one Hannibal Lecter story I’d neither read nor watched, I figured it was about time, despite the bad reviews, to give it a go. And it’s an odd little piece, a prequel story that gives us a teenage Hannibal Lecter escaping cannibalism in wartime Lithuanian to find refuge in France. It’s interesting as it both informs and is informed by other Lecter pieces, giving us a reasonable explanation as to why Hannibal’s Hannibal is so handy in a fight, for example, while also giving us some piggy foreshadowing for Hannibal (the movie). It’s also got a good cast, with Dominic West as a dodgy-accented war crimes investigator, and Rhys Ifans and Kevin McKidd as the naughty war criminals who ate Hannibal’s sister. But its low budget, poor French lead (Gaspard Ulliel) and equally French setting make this feel like an international co-production B-movie along the lines of Mr Frost, rather than any of the preceding blockbusters, it uses the same technique as Hannibal to try to make Lecter look a hero by giving him an even worse enemy to deal with (although as the name suggests, he does become monstrous towards the end) and it can’t be said to be scary or horrifying in any real sense. One for completists only.

After the jump, the regulars, with reviews of 24, Agents of SHIELD, The Americans, Arrow, The Blacklist, Continuum, Elementary, Game of Thrones, Hannibal, Prisoners of War, Silicon Valley and Surviving Jack.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Bosch, 24, Agents of SHIELD, Hannibal Rising and Prisoners of War”

What have you been watching? Including Salem, Trying Again, Last Week Tonight, Vikings and Hatufilm

2 May 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.

Well, there’s been an epic quantity of new stuff this week so I haven’t quite been able to fit in ITV’s Prey and BBC1’s Happy Valley. But I’ve already reviewed the first episodes of

I’ve also managed to sneak in a couple of other shows:

Salem (US: WGN America)
WGN America’s first scripted series, it’s a pseudo-historical from Star Trek showrunner Brannon Braga that goes back to the time of the Salem witch trials and – how original – suggests maybe there were witches at work. TBH, I couldn’t get very far into this at all – it’s almost unwatchable, dull and predictable, ahistoric in every sense, even if you let the modern day conventions of eyebrow plucking, etc, endemic in these things go as a lost battle. Even the witchiness isn’t very good and not even sexy. But then it’s Brannon Braga, so what do you expect?

Trying Again (UK: Sky Living)
Chris Addison and Jo Joyner star as a couple that split up and have got back together again and are trying to get over the fact she had an affair. Good cast, but no jokes. But then it’s Sky Living, so what do you expect?

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (US: HBO; UK: Sky Atlantic)
The Daily Show‘s good correspondent gets his own TV show that is essentially The Daily Show (with more than a hint of TV Nation) except weekly and with only him doing it. Still, at least it’s funny.

After the jump, the regulars, with reviews of The Americans, Arrow, The Blacklist, Crisis, Elementary, Fargo, Game of Thrones, The Gods of Wheat Street, Hannibal, Prisoners of War, Silicon Valley, Surviving Jack and Vikings

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Salem, Trying Again, Last Week Tonight, Vikings and Hatufilm”

US TV

Review: Black Box 1×1 (ABC)

30 April 2014 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Kelly Reilly in Black Box

In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, ABC

Mental health is so hot right now. I don’t mean that in the sense that it’s a subject for serious examination in drama or that it’s something that is thoughtfully used in characterisation. I mean it’s a great gimmick.

Time was when dramas would have set-ups like “two brothers are private detectives”, “he’s a Vietnam vet with a super helicopter”, “he’s an angel wandering the Earth helping people” and the like. But you can only have so many of those unique set-ups before you start to repeat yourself.

Mental health issues, by contrast, used to be the motivations for crimes, not something that could affect a hero, because it was unmanly. Well, maybe PTSD so they could have really manly flashbacks to Nam.

Thankfully, those times are gone and it’s all change. With first Monk giving us the OCD detective and then Touching Evil giving us the slightly lobotomised detective, TV has worked out how valuable these personality quirks can be. Why, right now, on TV we’ve got Asperger’s aplenty (Community, The Bridge, Hannibal, Parenthood) and the new top, post-Silver Linings Playbook condition, bipolar disorder, has been jaunting around both Homeland and Mind Games, giving them all sorts of entirely medically accurate depictions of how helpful mental health issues can be.

Producers have also worked out thanks to medical shows such as House, Mental and 3lbs that ‘brain weirdness’, to use it its technical definition, can be really entertaining in guest characters as well. So what better than a show that features not just lots of supporting cast weirdness but also a central character who has the bipolar, hey?

Black Box is such a show – and it turns out that despite its having not just the delightful Kelly Reilly as the lead as well as no lesser actress than Vanessa Redgrave as her psychiatrist, a whole lot of things could be better.

Reilly, putting on her best US accents, is a talented neurologist/doctor who is also bipolar. As long as she’s on her meds, she’s fine, but believing that medication stops those with mental health issues from achieving their true potential or even being truly happy by coming to accept themselves, she has a history of ‘non-compliance’. The result is that sometimes she’s manic and productive, other times she’s crazy, hallucinating, doing all kinds of bad things, including almost committing suicide. Yet somehow it makes her a better doctor.

Gosh, how quirky and interesting. Gosh how almost unwatchable.

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: Black Box 1×1 (ABC)”

UK TV

Preview: Penny Dreadful 1×1 (Showtime/Sky Atlantic)

29 April 2014 Rob Buckley 5 Comments


In the US: Sundays, 10pm ET/PT, Showtime. Starts May 11
In the UK: Will air on Sky Atlantic in May

Sometimes, it’s nice to have a fresh pair eyes come to a genre, free of its cliches, unwritten expectations and rules, and history, and throw everything up in the air to create something new and different. If that writer or director is also extremely talented, so much the better, since they can perhaps create a new ‘paradigm’ for that genre that will change it forever.

Look at literary history and you’ll see how neophytes have created some of horror’s greatest icons: consider, for example, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Oscar Wilde and Robert Louis Stevenson, 19th century authors who without any history of writing horror came fresh to it and created Dracula, Frankenstein, Dorian Gray and Dr Jekyll.

That, though, is the utopian vision. The flipside, of course, is that the new arrival, no matter how talented they are, simply won’t know what hoary old tropes they’re recycling and will add precisely nothing, no matter how well written it is.

So how much should you be looking forward to the self-consciously titled Penny Dreadful, a US-UK co-production between Showtime and Sky Atlantic, that’s written by no lesser a scribe than John Logan and exec produced by Sam Mendes? Neither has done much by way of horror but still have the likes of Skyfall, Gladiator, Coriolanus and American Beauty under their belts.

The series, as you might imagine all those of you who know what a penny dreadful was, is a Victorian horror show. It pulls together the acting talents of Timothy Dalton, Josh Hartnett, Eva Green, Billie Piper, Rory Kinnear, Helen McRory and Simon Russell Beale, to name but a few, and imagines a London where the works of Shelley, Wilde and co are all true and Dracula, Gray and other creatures of the night really do skulk in the dark. It’s up to Dalton, Green and Hartnett to rescue those in peril from the supernatural horrors that are mere legends.

Revolutionary or merely Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen again? If you’re in the US, you can watch and find out below; the rest of you can watch the trailer then follow me after the jump and I’ll let you know.

Continue reading “Preview: Penny Dreadful 1×1 (Showtime/Sky Atlantic)”