Lost

US TV

Review: Cult 1×1 (The CW)

25 February 2013 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

The CW's Cult cast

In the US: Tuesdays, 9pm ET/8pm CT, The CW
In the UK: Mysteriously acquired by an unnamed network

Cults are really big right now on TV. The Following is on Fox and now we have Cult on The CW. Intriguingly, both shows were thought up years ago, The Following as the script for Scream 3 and Cult as a show for the now-defunct predecessor to The CW, The WB.

The two shows both have good pedigrees. The Following comes from long-time writer Kevin Williamson (Dawson’s Creek and The Vampire Diaries) but Cult comes from the even older pen of Rockne S O’Bannon, who started out on The (New) Twilight Zone, before going on to create Farscape, Alien Nation and seaQuest DSV.

So perhaps it’s appropriate that Cult is a trickier, more knowing beast than The Following. The Following, of course, has all kinds of degrees of Scream-esque meta, but Cult takes things a step further. It begins seemingly as a somewhat stupid, tacky The CW show in which a young blonde cop, Kelly Collins, (Alona Tal) and an older, fatter, blacker cop have to investigate the cult run by Billy Grimm (Robert Knepper) to which Collins used to belong.

But just as they find somewhat buried in a wall and he utters the somewhat ludicrous and unfathomable “‘Well hey. These things just snap right off,” we discover we’ve been watching a TV show within a TV show. Collins is really actress Marti Gerritsen and Knepper is actor Roger Reeves and they star in The CW’s Cult.

With me so far? Good. Anyway, so far, so Pulaski/30 Rock. But rather than being a spoof or send up of the making of a TV show, Cult is a far darker creation that focuses on the nature of cult television and its fans. This Cult has fans and it’s created web sites and all kinds of other clues for them to seek out to discover more about the show. Except perhaps it’s not all fiction. Because when one fan seems to work it all out, he disappears. When his journalist brother Jeff Dean Sefton (Matthew Davis) comes looking for him, he starts to discover the same messages in the show that his brother did, and with the help of a researcher on the show, Skye Yarrow (Jessica Lucas), they begin to investigate Cult, to see if they can find out what’s really going on and what’s happened to his brother.

Here’s a trailer that gives away all the good bits from the first episode.

Continue reading “Review: Cult 1×1 (The CW)”

Review: Wedding Band (TBS) 1×1

16 November 2012 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

The Wedding Band

In the US: Saturdays, 10/9c, TBS

Straight men are, in general, catered for very well by US television. Or so you’d think. Not all straight men are created equal, however. There are, in fact, two genres that really don’t seem to want us at all: romcoms and musicals. Glee, Nashville and Smash laugh in our faces, while The Mindy Project is still trying to work out what straight men want.

It’s discrimination, I tell you.

Never fear, though: TBS is here to balance the scales. Now, despite its catchline of “Very funny”, TNT’s sister channel should really have been promoting itself as “Cack – for men”. Glory Daze and Men At Work, I’m particularly looking at you here. But in an effort to stop making appalling television, as well as picking up Cougar Town now that ABC had dropped it, TBS has come up with Wedding Band, a romcom musical for men.

A cross between The Wedding Singer and The Hangover, it sees perennial bachelor Brian Austin Green (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) as the lead singer of a wedding band that includes his married-with-kids Ed Helms-alike best friend, his Jack Black-alike slobby brother and the quasi-hip Harold Perrineau from Lost. The band has been doing weddings for years, but they’re ready to go big, possibly with the help of big-time wedding planner Melora Hardin and her novice associate – and possible romantic interest for Green – Jenny Wade.

And while it’s very male-oriented, features fight scenes and has quite a broad sense of humour, it’s surprisingly funny, nuanced and unmisogynistic. And you get about three or four classic rock and pop cover versions per episode: a romcom musical for men.

Oh, and in case you don’t read the tabloids, Brian Austin Green is married to Megan Fox in real life. Which is probably why she’s in the next episode in a leather outfit. Here’s a trailer:

Continue reading “Review: Wedding Band (TBS) 1×1”

US TV

Review: Hunted 1×1 (BBC1/Cinemax)

8 October 2012 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Hunted with Melissa George

In the UK: Thursdays, 9pm, BBC1. Available on the iPlayer
In the US: Fridays, 10pm, Cinemax. Starts October 19

Action heroines are few and far enough between, particularly on TV, that when a writer creates a female-centric action drama, such as Hunted, he or she has to decide to do one of two things: to be gender-neutral and ignore the fact it’s a woman doing the fighting or to be gender aware and tailor the writing accordingly.

Both ways can work – look at either Buffy The Vampire Slayer or Haywire – but both involve peril. You can be gender neutral like Burn Notice, but then you end up with Gabrielle Anwar, who hasn’t eaten food since 2005, regularly beating 200lb ex-special forces guys in hand-to-hand fights.

Nope, not happening.

Or you can be gender-aware like Missing, tailor your action scenes to the fact your lead is a tad smaller and weaker than the steroided-up 6’5″ male characters, but have have pretty much every single plot item happen because the lead is a woman, and in Missing‘s case, a mother.

Hunted, which features Home and Away star Melissa George as a former army intelligence officer who joins private sector company Byzantium Security – this decade’s Saracen Systems – to carry on spying but for the highest bidder, goes for the secret third approach: the hybrid option, in which pretty much everything happens because George is a woman, but the action scenes remain gender-blind, even though George is built like a Littlewoods catalogue model.

Hunted‘s implementation is probably the least satisfying of all the options (Haywire – more on that later – is secret option four: how to do it properly), results in George mooning about lovers, moving in with the bad guys to look after their kids and getting pregnant by a colleague. Yet somehow, despite the hand of Frank Spotnitz being behind the plotting and dialogue, both of which have the power to make your brain rot in the manly mirror universe of Sky/Cinemax’s Strike Back, Hunted is actually surprisingly okay: nothing extraordinary, nothing too smart and in many ways quite stupid, but with enough flair and action that it’s a passable enough way to spend your time.

Here’s a trailer:

Continue reading “Review: Hunted 1×1 (BBC1/Cinemax)”

Some of the best and most famous US audition tapes, including Hugh Laurie as House

13 September 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Almost every actor has to audition to get a role in a TV show – unless they’re really, really famous. Audition tapes allow producers to see what the actor would like in the role and although most audition tapes remain private, a few have escaped onto YouTube. Flavorwire has put together a collection of the best, including Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner as Arya and Sansa Stark from Game of Thrones, Seth Rogen as Ken Miller in Freaks and Geeks and Lea Michele as Rachel Berry in Glee, but I’ve put a few of them below as well:

Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad

Josh Holloway as Sawyer in Lost

Hugh Laurie as House

Blake Lively as Serena van der Woodsen in Gossip Girl