Lost

US TV

Mini-review: Intelligence 1×1 (CBS)

8 January 2014 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

CBS's Intelligence

In the US: Mondays, 10pm/9pm CT, CBS

Ever since The Six Million Dollar Man, TV history has been littered with shows about ‘upgraded’ humans: The Bionic Woman, The Bionic Woman (again), Chuck, Jake 2.0, Northstar – the list goes on.

Fancy another one, this time starring Sawyer from Lost?

Here, since that “super strength” and “super speed” thing is so passé (and scientifically impossible – plus they’re doing it on Almost Human anyway), we have former Delta Force soldier Sawyer from Lost getting a chip implanted in his head that allows him to connect to computers wirelessly and access data, control them, etc, through a sort of sixth sense. He can even do virtual walkthroughs of crime scenes, in order to provide something more visually exciting than him just squinting a lot.

He’s also got issues to do with his wife, who may (or may not) be dead and/or have been a terrorist/CIA agent. Still, nobody’s perfect, hey?

Because this is airing on CBS, it’s vitally important that he have a slightly dull team backing him up, just like with NCIS, The Mentalist, Criminal Minds, Elementary, Unforgettable etc. This one’s run by Marg Red Head from CSI. She barks orders and sits on chairs in various combinations.

However, despite being ex-Delta Force, Sawyer from Lost is too reckless so Marg Red Head from CSI decides the show needs to be more like Eleventh Hour and give the US government’s most important asset – more important than the President, even – a protection detail with a grand total of one member of staff: Red Riding Hood from Once Upon A Time. Her job is to talk sassy, be duller than Marg and be both professional and sexy, without having any real chemistry with Sawyer from Lost. And to get shot and captured a lot.

To round off the members of the cast that have a personality is the obligatory CBS nerd – Doctor Alien from Star Trek: Enterprise, who’s the guy who came up with the chip idea in the first place.

This first episode is a bit of a damp squid, however, since rather than showing us just how awesome Sawyer from Lost and his chip is, it’s dedicated to showing us how awesome the Chinese are as spies and developing/stealing their own version of the chip. It’s also clear that the chip actually does give super speed and super strength, judging by how many bullets Sawyer from Lost can avoid simply by walking quickly.

It’s not without charms, and it’s a pleasant throwback to a simpler age. And although it’s very much a show that you need to switch your brain off to watch, surprisingly, given its set-up, you’ll actually find far stupider shows on television right now.

All the same, this is just another CBS procedural that fits the CBS procedural template with just one or two tweaks. You’re better off watching CBC’s Intelligence, instead.

US TV

Review: The Tomorrow People 1×1 (US: The CW; UK: E4)

11 October 2013 Rob Buckley 7 Comments


In the US: Wednesdays, 9pm/8c, The CW
In the UK: Acquired by E4

As we all know, US TV is prone to remaking other countries’ TV shows, but if you’d asked me a year what the most likely remake of a UK TV show would be this season, never in my wildest dreams would I have suggested 1970s sci-fi gay metaphor and excuse for borderline S&M paedophilia The Tomorrow People. Yet here it is. Do they have no shame?

Amazingly, although I tend to prefer remakes that are faithful to the original, in this case, the lack of fidelity is an improvement. The original show was dreadful. Just dreadful. Although possessed of one of the best and most disturbing title sequences in TV history, it had numerous faults, most of which I’ve spelt out over here. Or you could watch this brief clip, which should show you what you’ve been missing all these years.

Yet here, although we don’t have something that’s much above “not bad”, we don’t have something outrageously terrible. What we do have is, however, is also a bit more mundane. Following on from the original, the story posits that all over the world, a new race of human beings called Homo Superior or The Tomorrow People is ‘comingbreaking out’. Able to teleport, read minds and move objects with their thoughts, unlike the nasty new humans of Prey, these genetic mutations can’t kill and just want to be left alone to lead normal lives like anyone else.

Unlike the 1970s Tomorrow People, there are some complete TP spanners ruining for it everyone by breaking into bank vaults and the like, so a government scientist called Jedekiah who definitely isn’t a fierce, shapechanging, alien robot is out to stop these new Tomorrow People and give them genetic therapy to make them normal ‘saps’ (Home Sapiens) – assuming he can’t get them to join his team of black-suited TPs.

With new and super-powerful mutation Stephen (Robbie Amell – cousin of Arrow‘s Stephen Amell) just breaking out and teleporting into people’s bedrooms while he’s asleep, both sides in the war are looking to recruit. Which side will he join? Well, that would be telling, so maybe you’ll just have to read my mind to find out. Or watch it.

Here’s a trailer. Spoilers after the jump.

Continue reading “Review: The Tomorrow People 1×1 (US: The CW; UK: E4)”

BAFTA events

Preview: Y Gwyll (Hinterland) (UK: S4C/BBC Wales/BBC Four)

8 October 2013 Rob Buckley 12 Comments

Hinterland/Y Gwyll

In the UK (in Welsh): S4C. Starts 29 October.
In the UK (English/Welsh): BBC Wales in early 2014. Then BBC4

TV is getting more and more international. Not only are different countries remaking other countries’ shows, more and more are willing to show the originals, even if they were shot in a different language.

Here in the UK, we have BBC4 and its foreign TV slot of Wallander, Spiral, The Killing, The Bridge, Inspector Montalbano et al; meanwhile, Sky Arts has given us Prisoners of War, Isabel, In Treatment, Grand Hotel, Maison Close, Hard and their like, while Channel 4 has made its first foray into French in years with Canal+’s The Returned.

But it’s easy to forget (well, if you live in England it is) that English isn’t the only native language still spoken in the UK. Although the likes of Manx and Cornish are confined to relatively few speakers, both Scots Gaelic and Welsh not only have thousands of speakers who regard them as their first languages, there are entire TV channels dedicated to programming in these languages: BBC Alba and S4C respectively.

While BBC Alba is a relatively new phenomenon, the output of which is largely confined to dubbed English-language programming, sport and factual programmes, S4C is over 30 years old and has produced everything from soap operas (Pobol Y Cwm) to comedy (Dim Byd) and drama (Caerdydd).

And yet, despite this new keenness for multi-lingual, global programming, you’d be hard-pressed to find any of this home-grown, Welsh language programming on the BBC or Sky Arts, not even in the foreign language slots.

Until now.

Because for the first time since A Mind To Kill 20 years ago, S4C has made a cop show. Not only that, it’s made it simultaneously in both English and Welsh. Airing first on S4C this month and then in the rest of Britain next year on BBC Wales and BBC4, Hinterland/Y Gwyll* follows the investigations of DCI Tom Mathias (Richard Harrington from Lark Rise to Candleford), who’s newly arrived in Aberystwyth from London. Partnered with DI Mared Rhys (Mali Harris from Caerdydd), Mathias has to investigate four dark and disturbing, 120m cases against the backdrop of the Welsh landscape in a way that should appeal to the rest of the world. In fact, Denmark’s already bought it.

Here’s the trailer. A preview with minor spoilers of the first episode after the jump, together with some more information from a Q&A that I attended at BAFTA last week.

Continue reading “Preview: Y Gwyll (Hinterland) (UK: S4C/BBC Wales/BBC Four)”

TV reviews

Review: The Blacklist 1×1 (NBC/Sky Living)

24 September 2013 Rob Buckley 28 Comments


In the US: Mondays, 10/9c, NBC
In the UK: Acquired by Sky Living. Starts 4 October

Ah, James Spader. Star of the original Stargate movie and Sex, Lies and Videotape, he was the thinking heterosexual woman’s crush of the early 90s, the sensitive, hot intellectual actor it was okay to collect a sticker album for.

But time marched on and thanks to a process called ‘Shatnerisation’, he stopped being the subtle, sophisticated actor he once was, preferring instead to ham it up something chronic on The Practice and Boston Legal. It’s therefore somewhat appropriate that for his return to mainstream TV, he’s picked one of the least subtle roles available to him this season: ‘the concierge of crime’ Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington on NBC’s The Blacklist.

Reddington is a Moriarty, a man other criminals come to to organise their plots, put them in touch with other criminals and get them what they need. But one day, he mysteriously turns up at the FBI’s headquarters, voluntarily surrendering himself to the authorities. He then offers up the name of a criminal and agrees to help the FBI catch him on one condition: that he only speak to FBI rookie Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone). Why her and what he’s doing are even bigger mysteries, but before the end of the first episode Reddington is offering his continuing help to catch everyone on his ‘blacklist’ of big bads, providing he gets to stick with Keen.

And while that’s all as ridiculous as it sounds, it’s actually a surprisingly enjoyable hour and Spader, despite being the headline act with the spotlight firmly on him, curiously decides to diet his performance and reduce the ham. The hat doesn’t help though.

Continue reading “Review: The Blacklist 1×1 (NBC/Sky Living)”

Review: Bates Motel (A&E) 1×1

20 March 2013 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

In the US: Mondays, 10/9c, A&E

Psycho was of course Alfred (and Alma) Hitchock’s greatest triumph, a 1960 horror masterpiece that has become embedded in popular culture. It sees Janet Leigh steal money from employer and run away with the swag. Unfortunately, along the way she stops at ‘the Bates Motel’, where despite being a big star of the time, she’s murdered in an iconic shower scene by the mother of the motel’s owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) – it’s a trick Scream repeated several decades later.  

Eventually (spoiler alert), it’s discovered that the disturbed, schizoid Bates has been murdering women in the motel while dressed as his mother, believing that his actually deceased mother wouldn’t like his being sexually attracted to the women in question. I say spoiler alert, but pretty much everyone knows this much already. 

So powerful a movie is it that as well as the Bates Motel being preserved by the studios, there were two sequels made in the 80s, with Perkins reprising his role as Bates.

There’s even been a movie this year about its making. It’s got Scarlett Johansson in it. You should watch it.

Now along comes Bates Motel, a prequel starring the marvellous award-winning actress-director Vera Farmiga (returning to TV nine years almost to the day since my beloved Touching Evil debuted) as the still-living Mrs Bates and Freddie Highmore (Charlie Bucket from the Tim Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) as the still-teenage Norman. It attempts to explore what could have made Norman into such a fruit-cake in his later years.

What’s interesting is that the show attempts to emulate Psycho with a completely different twist shortly after the beginning of the first episode, one I really didn’t see coming. And just like the original, it takes about half an hour before anything at all happens, so you’ve really got to stick with it to get to the good stuff.

And so far, do we have an explanation for Norman’s craziness? We do. And, for the sake of avoiding all spoilers until after the jump, I’ll just say it rhymes with ‘anger’. Here’s a trailer that does, unfortunately, spoil the twist.

Continue reading “Review: Bates Motel (A&E) 1×1”