Joanna Page

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?

Friday’s “NBC and ABC’s renewals, Cougar Town moves and NBC and CBC’s new series” news

11 May 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film

Canadian TV

  • CBC unveils 2012-3 season, including Cracked and Titanic: Blood and Steel, as well as the return of Arctic Air

UK/French TV

  • France’s Canal+ and Sky Atlantic to remake Sweden and Denmark’s The Bridge
  • Sky Arts orders Psychobitches, with Catherine Tate, Rebecca Front and Sharon Horgan, as well as a full series of Nixon’s the One with Harry Shearer, while Sky Living commissions The Spa by Derren Litten and Gates with Sue Johnston and Joanna Page
  • Next series of Top Gear postponed until 2013

US TV

US TV pilots

  • Luther creator to write NBC’s Republic of Pirates
  • NBC orders Do No Harm and Infamous

What did you watch last week? Including Magic City, Best Friends Forever, Tower Heist and Arrested Development

10 April 2012 Rob Buckley 13 Comments

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

First, the usual recommendations from the first-run shows: The Almighty Johnsons, The Apprentice, Awake, Being Human (US), BeTipul, Community, The Daily Show, Happy Endings, Mad Men, Ringer, Shameless (US) and 30 Rock. Hunt them down.

You’ll notice that after last week’s episode and this week’s mindbender, Awake has now been promoted to the A-Team – go and watch it.

So first a few shows I’ve tried over the past week but didn’t have the time to review separately:

  • Arrested Development: Miracle of miracles, Netflix actually has something to watch (even if its new releases section hasn’t changed in two months) so I thought I’d catch up with my list of shows that everyone loves that I’ve never found the time to watch (next up: The Sopranos). I’m now up to episode eight of AD and I’m not laughing much, but it’s promising at least. When does it get good? I’ll probably keep watching for Portia De Rossi for a while at least – she’s a lot hotter than I remember.
  • Best Friends Forever: NBC’s latest attempt to do a female-oriented comedy show does at least not insult your intelligence unlike Whitney and Are You There, Chelsea? It has a quirky line in dialogue and the central characters are fun and idiosyncratic. But it’s another of those shows that seem to have been written by women who have never met any men before, only seen them on TV, and which assumes that women want to watch shows in which other women want to talk about waxing, relationships, divorces, etc, and nothing else. Not funny enough to keep watching unfortunately.
  • Magic City: Not even a knock-off of Mad Men, this is a terrible Starz knock-off of The Playboy Club of all things. Basic set-up: mobster hotel boss in 1950s Miami. And that’s it. No other distinguishable characters and although it looks fantastic, it’s only real appeals are lots of nudity, that Ukranian woman who was in the second Daniel Craig Bond movie (I think it’s her anyway) and Christian Cooke from ITV’s Demons, putting on his Sontaran Stragem accent. Utterly forgettable.
  • The Syndicate: Well, I did try to watch some more of it, but the only scenes I could get through were the ones with Joanna Page that didn’t involve any stereotypical, overacting northerners. So not much of it.

And a few thoughts on the regulars:

  • The Almighty Johnsons – A really, really good episode, with some actual swordfighting in it. The goddesses got to do something for a change, although they’re still being treated badly by gods and scriptwriters alike, and Loki got to do more than just posture.
  • Being Human (US) – I haven’t finished yesterday’s episode yet, which has been really good so far. But last week’s was a bit wishy washy although the writing out of a certain character was unexpected and well handled.
  • Community – A decent pastiche of civil war documentaries, and the Britta photography was fabulous, as was the reference to The Cape , but not as funny as last week’s.
  • Happy Endings – Overall, a disappointing second season, lacking the bite of the first. Disappointing was the increasing flamboyance of Max, the gay character, who had been refreshing unstereotypical last season. Plenty of fun to be had, though, although the finale had a little bit of a forced cliffhanger.
  • Mad Men – More interesting than the first episode, Betty getting some intriguing nuances, likewise Don.
  • Missing – a big improvement: the fights were decent, Sean Bean, John Carradine and Gina McKee were back. The predictions I made in my first review are coming true, it seems, which means that it’s all a double-bluff, since my predictions can never be true.
  • Ringer – Even Ioan is finding it hard to keep a straight face at times, but it’s still gripping me.
  • Shameless – which I should have written about last week, but didn’t. All in all, an odd season that consisted mainly of writing out characters and returning everything to the status quo after going in several directions for the first half of the season. But the journey was still very much worth taking.
  • 30 Rock – better than the previous episode.
  • Touch – it seems like all the guest characters might actually start getting linked together, which hints at a greater story arc that should make the show that much more interesting to watch. But I showed my wife the episodes and as predicted, blood nearly came out of her ears whenever they showed a supposed health or social worker interacting with special needs boy.
  • Two and a Half Men – Sophie Winkleman’s still in it and is making it watchable, but otherwise a horrible, horrible show.

And in movies:

  • Tower Heist: Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy – with associated extras – get their own back on the 1%. Has its moments, but directed by Brett Ratner so as entirely average as you’d expect.

“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?

What did you watch last week? Including The Syndicate, Punisher: War Zone and Steven Seagal’s True Justice

2 April 2012 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

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

First, the usual recommendations from the first-run US shows: The Almighty Johnsons, Being Human (US), BeTipul, Community, The Daily Show, Happy Endings, Mad Men, Ringer, Shameless (US), Spartacus and 30 Rock. Hunt them down.

For the love of Joanna Page, I’ve been trying to watch The Syndicate, but it’s hard going. I know it’s written by Kay Mellor, who’s both quite good and a Leeds native, but like every BBC drama about ‘regular people’, it’s just so patronising, with every Northerner written as or acted as a stereotype. Heaven forfend that you might overlap with another stereotype, such as ‘the overweight woman’ because then you’ll be comedy relief in a show in which everyone is pretty much self-pastiching anyway. But I’m going to keep giving it a try. Apparently, they focus on one character every week and Joanna’s episode four.

Now, some thoughts on the regulars, apart from last night’s Mad Men, which I’ve still to watch:

  • The Almighty Johnsons – There’s light at last! A bit more of a season one-style episode than some of the latest efforts have been and I’m hoping it’s a sign that there’s going to be a bit more balance to the show in the next few episodes.
  • Awake – Interesting ending, which suggests some more possible story arc and for once, the story was really more about relationships than the procedural. But there were bits I didn’t get at all (why did he go to the warehouse, just because it was the one his wife used?). Surprisingly though, as the series is progressing, I’m glad there’s no sci-fi reason for what’s happening being suggested and that one reality might actually turn out to be a dream.
  • Being Human (US) –  Nice to see some funny in what has become quite dark, even if it was for a limited time only, but a bit of a soapy episode and the return of the “less fun than she used to be” Nora wasn’t as welcome as I thought it would be.
  • Community – Who would have thought that last year’s KFC product placement show could ever have been topped? John Goodman was marvellous, but the show’s starting to sideline Pearce and Chiang a bit too much at the moment.
  • Happy Endings – Would have made more sense if I’d watched Three’s Company, but some good moments, largely from Elisha Cuthbert, and a great end sketch saved it. Feels better in retrospect than when I was actually watching it.
  • Mad Men – Interesting but dull, like all Mad Men season openers. But how messed up were Don and Megan? Ouch. Oh and that song? WTF?
  • Ringer – Well, it all seems to be coming together, suggesting there may all have been a cunning plan all along. But there were too many obvious misdirects that you could see coming a mile off. Fun to see them happen though.
  • Spartacus – Bloody, with some very interesting choices that mostly neutralised most of this season, with the deaths (you knew there would be some) predominantly the ones who have been wandering around without much story this year. I’ve started to notice, incidentally, that the least effective stories are typically the ones written by Steven DeKnight and this finale was no different. Despite everything that happened, there wasn’t quite enough surprise and good writing to really lift this beyond the good. But it was still good.
  • True Justice – Quite how I could have missed this when it aired on 5 USA this year, I don’t know, but now it’s airing on Reelz, I’ve finally caught up with it. Written by Steven Seagal, created by Steven Seagal and starring Steven Seagal, this is the first TV show I’ve ever watched that’s made from pure Carusonium, the most talentless element in the known universe. Just fascinatingly bad, borderline (if not actually) racist, terribly acted, sometimes impenetrable Canadian accents (seriously, when have you ever heard an impenetrable Canadian accent before this? And it’s supposed to be set in Seattle, FFS), horribly exploitative (it actually has one of the female leads poledancing in the titles) and the fight scenes are so badly directed, you can’t see what’s happening half the time – which given the only good thing about a Steven Seagal movie or TV series is watching some excellent aikido, entirely removes the only good thing about the series even before it starts.
  • 30 Rock – Possibly the first duff one this year, although the meditation scenes were fun.

And in movies:

  • Punisher: War Zone – I wasn’t expecting much of this, which I was largely watching to see how Ray Stevenson did in a lead role and how Lexi Alexander did in her own element (fights – she’s a former world karate and kickboxing champion, who even taught the US marines), but this was substantially worse than I was expecting. More or less everyone appears to be in it for the cash, particularly Dominic West, sporting possibly the worst Brooklyn accent committed to celluloid; Colin Salmon’s US accent isn’t much better, although Stevenson’s is acceptable. The violence is incredibly sadistic, although given the nature of the subject matter and the fact they’re trying to get closer to the comic, maybe that shouldn’t be too surprising. The writing is abysmal. Julie Benz is entirely wasted. Don’t watch. Well, watch this trailer to see how bad it is and how awful West’s accent is.

“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?