The Doctor Blake Mysteries

What have you been watching? Including Banshee, Blå Ögon (Blue Eyes), The Catch, Supergirl and The Americans

2 April 2016 Rob Buckley 15 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. 

Despite the Easter break and being somewhat occupied this week, I’ve actually managed to watch quite a few of the new shows that have popped up on our screens and monitors in the past week or so. Elsewhere, you’ll find shiny reviews of:

I’ve also passed a third-episode verdict on Damien (US: A&E). Still sitting in the viewing pile, however, are the first two episodes of Hulu’s The Path – I think I’ll wait until the third episode next week and review them (or as many as I can bear, depending on how good it is) all in one go.

Last night, Dice started on Showtime, Netflix offloaded The Ranch in one go (not as an April’s Fool) and Syfy also started airing Wyonna Earp. Despite being away for a few days next week, I’ll hopefully be reviewing them all at some point – although as I’m old enough to remember Andrew Dice Clay when he was doing horrendous stand-up in the 80s, it’s possible I might not bother with that.

But I have watched one other new show:

Blå Ögon (Blue Eyes) (Sweden: SVT1; UK: More4)
Well, the plot summary and trailer are back here, so I won’t bother repeating myself. But having now watched the first two episodes, my advice would be stick with it. The show is a mix of the implausible and the very plausible, with Elin Hammar’s plotline, in which she gets plucked from a life of waitressing to return to politics, only to discover her predecessor has gone missing, is eminently daft, with all kinds of odd conspiracies going on that remind me of the silliness of Byw Celwydd (Living a Lie) crossed with 24. Similarly, everything involving the right-wing party Trygghetspartiet is embarrassingly bad.

However, where the show does do well is develop over the course of these first two episodes a frighteningly nasty, anti-immigrant, anti-everyone, racist right wing terrorist group, Veritas, with foot soldier Adam Lundgren quietly frightening and ultimately violent, like a slightly malnourished, prettier Russell Crowe in Romper Stomper. Here, the viewing gets very uncomfortable, but after the uninspiring first episode, the second episode managed to sell the show to me.

From a UK perspective, what’s also interesting is how similar the rhetoric of Trygghetspartiet is to UKIP’s, presumably without the writers borrowing directly. I guess that makes UKIP either very European or very fictional.

After the jump, I’ll be covering the return of Banshee, as well as reviewing two weeks’ worth of episodes of the regulars: 11.22.63, The Americans, Arrow, Billions, The Catch, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, The Flash, Limitless, Lucifer, The Magicians, Second Chance, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man, Supergirl and Vikings. Apart from the ones that are finishing anyway, two of these are getting dropped from the viewing schedule altogether, while a recommended show is going to get demoted. Can you guess which one, tigers?

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Banshee, Blå Ögon (Blue Eyes), The Catch, Supergirl and The Americans”

What have you been watching? Including Spotlight, The Americans, Second Chance, The Magicians,

21 March 2016 Rob Buckley 7 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. 

Can you feel it? It’s springtime, everyone, and that can only mean a changing of the TV seasons. Some current shows are finishing their runs, while others are just starting, and there are more on the way. Others are just lounging around, eating chocolate eggs.

This week, I’ve reviewed Underground (US: WGN America) and Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders (US: CBS; UK: W), and if you cast your minds back to last year, I previewed Crowded (US: NBC), which has just started airing in the US. In the next couple of days, I’m going to be reviewing the entire second season of Daredevil (Netflix), which I somehow managed to binge-watch over the weekend, as well as anything else new that comes my way. Either that, or I’ll be toasting my eminent good sense in not bothering to watch ABC’s Of Gods And Prophets, given it was cancelled after a mere two episodes of Wicked City-bad ratings.

That means that after the jump, I’ll be looking at the latest episodes of 11.22.63, Billions, Damien, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Flaked, Limitless, Lucifer, The Magicians, Okkupert (Occupied), Second Chance, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man, Supergirl and Vikings. One of those is probably not long for this world, one is getting a demotion, but surprisingly, two that had surprisingly awful beginnings are getting promoted to the recommended list. Can you guess which ones?

Oh yes. The Americans is back, too.

But first, a movie!

Spotlight (2015)
Journalism always seems exciting to outsiders, but if you actually look at what it involves, even if the results can be exciting, to be honest, the actual process is pretty monotonous. I use Excel in my day job just as much as I use Word – that should tell you something. Certainly, the most realistic movies and TV shows about journalism point out that it mostly involves endless note-taking, fact-checking, research, dead-ends and meetings, with even All The President’s Men being a major snoozefest most of the time – I think only the TV version of State of Play has ever managed to be both fun to watch while depicting something that a journalist would recognise as been similar to his or her day job. 

So it is with Spotlight, a meticulously exacting recreation of how the Boston Globe‘s investigative journalism department revealed in 2001 that nearly 100 local Catholic priests had abused as many as 1,000 boys and girls in their charge over the years and the church had covered it up. Featuring a star-studded but unflamboyant cast (Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Stanley Tucci), the almost pre-Internet story largely consists of Ruffalo, McAdams and Keaton setting up spreadsheets, looking in books, sifting through legal documents and trying to find evidence, all without a gunshot, car chase or even fist fight (it is Boston) along the way.

The film just about manages to keep the viewer’s attention, helped in part by the sheer horror of the story, but also by the attention to location, the period details – yes, it really does feel like a period drama – and the exploration of the politics of the situation, with powerful pressure being applied to the paper and its journalists through subtle means, as the social interconnections between the paper, the church, the police and other institutions worked to try to prevent anyone rocking the boat. But there were times when even my desperate need to nitpick the movie’s accuracy (I couldn’t) wasn’t quite enough to stop my attention from wandering.

Don’t get me wrong – this is undoubtedly not only the second best journalism film ever made, but the second best film about a member of the Bradlee clan (Mad Men‘s John Slattery plays Ben Bradlee Jr). It’s also marvellous to have a grown-up film, telling a grown-up and important story, in which journalists are the good guys for the change. It just would have be nice to have a car chase, too.

PS It’s coming up to the Easter double holiday here in the UK, which means this will be the last WHYBW until 1st April. Or maybe the 2nd. Or maybe, just to be wacky, 30th March. It’ll just appear at some point around then, anyway.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Spotlight, The Americans, Second Chance, The Magicians,”

What have you been watching? Including Flaked, The Intern, Lucifer and Billions

14 March 2016 Rob Buckley 21 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*. 

As you might have noticed, things are hotting up in the tele stakes. In the past week, I’ve reviewed the first episodes of:

But that’s by no means all the new shows. In the next few days, I’m hoping to give Underground (US: WGN America) a look over, as well as – assuming it’s not cancelled before then, given its ratings – Of Kings And Prophets (US: ABC), which sees one ‘Ray Winstone’ playing King Saul of Israel, who has to deal with some bloke called ‘David’. Careful – no spoilers, please.

I still haven’t got round to watching Netflix’s Love, but I did manage to watch a couple of episodes of…:

Flaked (Netflix)
Will Arnett is Chip, a furniture store owner in Venice Beach, California, who spends a lot of his time:

  1. Hanging around at AA meetings
  2. Cycling everywhere, because he’s been banned from driving, having killed someone while on drugs
  3. Having sex with/fancying much younger women on popular types of mattresses
  4. Lying about pretty much everything

And that’s about it, really. Just as Master of None didn’t have much plot and was really just a series of character moments, so Flaked is really a character study of a complete tosser who screws over everyone he meets, albeit in very small ways, for his own selfish needs. There also aren’t many jokes, either.

Despite that, it’s actually quite watchable, in part thanks to Arnett, in part because it’s smarter than this otherwise standard ‘edgy’ comedy format would suggest. The Venice Beach location is different from the usual standard settings for sitcoms, too.

There’s also a certain knowingness about the show similar to Arrested Development‘s (perhaps because of exec producer Mitch Hurwitz) that makes it less of a male fantasy: Arnett may be sleeping with hot young women a lot, but his unattractive male friends aren’t, and even Arnett is finding it all a bit empty and pointless, having nothing culturally in common with the woman he professes to love. 

I’ll try to watch the remaining episodes this week – Daredevil season two is on the way, very soon, so I’m going to need to clear the decks – and let you know how the rest of it goes. If you can’t wait, don’t go into it expecting big laughs. Instead, just expect to enjoy a lot of Will Arnett hanging out with a bunch of people and having a little sex.

I haven’t managed to watch any more episodes of Ófærð (Trapped), unfortunately, but after the jump, the regulars, including a couple of season finales and some double-episode rundowns: 11.22.63, American Crime, Billions, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Limitless, Lucifer, The Magicians, Man Seeking Woman, Okkupert (Occupied), Second Chance, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man and Vikings. At least one of the recommended shows is being demoted – can you guess which one?

But first, a movie:

The Intern (2015) (iTunes)
Four things in the credits made me think this was going to be absolute unwatchable: the title, which in combination with Anne Hathaway’s presence, made we think I was going to be getting The Devil Wears Prada 2; writer/director Nancy Meyers, whose It’s Complicated was so unimaginably bad and dull, I nearly fell asleep in the cinema; and Robert De Niro, who has been working purely for the cash for what feels like decades now.

However, I needn’t have been worried, since it seems like everyone involved induced everyone else to raise their games. De Niro looks like he’s actually putting some effort in as the 70-year-old retired widower who takes an internship at an Internet start-up to give himself something to do and ends up becoming friends with CEO Hathaway. Hathaway is likable and believable as the perfectionist workaholic businesswomen, while Meyers (who, in case we forget, also wrote Private Benjamin, Irreconcilable Differences, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Baby Boom, Father of the Bride and The Holiday) turns in a surprisingly authentic look at both twentysomethings and seventysomethings in modern business.

The first half of the movie is better than the second, with my lovely wife (who set up and runs her own company) finding a lot to identify with, but the second half adds an unnecessary dramatic twist that ruins a lot of the good, frequently (unpreachy) feminist work the first half develops. De Niro’s romance with in-house masseuse Rene Russo doesn’t quite work and a lot of plots are developed but ultimately go nowhere. The firm’s grasp of business isn’t totally top notch either, such as the question of why Hathaway’s firm needs a new CEO, rather than a halfway competent COO for Hathaway to delegate to.

Nevertheless, frequently moving, frequently funny, with a good range of characters and surprisingly smart, The Intern is that rare breed of movie: one aimed at adults that is entertaining, enjoyable but untaxing. I also think it speaks to my age that I identified far more with De Niro than with any of the 20something man-boys he works with.

  • If you’re wondering where all the references to Locate TV have got to this week, turns out they’re shutting down on Wednesday. Can’t say I’m totally surprised, given the effort v reward potential of the idea, but it’s a shame all the same.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Flaked, The Intern, Lucifer and Billions”

What have you been watching? Including Ófærð (Trapped), The Shannara Chronicles, Lucifer and The X-Files

4 March 2016 Rob Buckley 8 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.

I’m back. You may have noticed at least some stirring of activity from TMINE this week, following my return, with a third-episode verdict on 11.22.63 (US: Hulu; UK: Fox), but the trouble with going away for a bit is that you have to catch up with all the things you should have been doing while you were away. 

But I have. Just about. Okay, I didn’t make it more than 10 minutes through Netflix’s Love, despite Gillian Jacobs being in the cast. I will try to remedy that next week, although there’s a whole bunch of new shows just beginning right now, including Hap and Leonard, Damien, Slasher and The Family, that will warrant some of my time, too. I can’t imagine myself trying to watch Netflix’s Fuller House, though.

After the jump, the regulars, some of them getting a double helping of reviewing: American Crime, Arrow, Billions, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, The Flash, Limitless, Lucifer, The Magicians, Man Seeking Woman, Okkupert (Occupied), Second Chance, The Shannara Chronicles, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man, Supergirl, Vikings and The X-Files. I’ll admit now that I might be a bit hazy about some of them.

As well as all of those, I managed to watch the first three episodes of…

Ófærð (Trapped) (Iceland: RÚV; UK: BBC Four)
Small-town Icelandic police officer (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) has to deal with winter and his personal problems, as well as the bigwigs of Reykjavik and a ferry full of annoyed passengers, when a chopped up body is found in the sea. Is the murderer one of the passengers, who is the victim and is it all linked to something in town?

Thematically, the show has a lot in common with Fortitude (although without the horror/sci-fi twist) and not just the location of the filming. It’s all about the claustrophobia of an artic island in winter, people having to get on with one another because there’s nowhere else to go, and quirky police who’ve never had to deal with anything except parking tickets and stolen cameras having to deal with people trafficking, gangsters and vicious murders. There’s also the inevitable concern of not wanting foreign investors to be scared off by the crime.

Ólafsson is a strong, bear-like presence against the beautifully photographed and breathtaking Icelandic landscape. The characters are interesting and the show avoids the dramatic absurdities of Den Som Dræber (Those Who Kill), 100 Code, etc, in favour of a far less flashy telling of a plausible story. And there’s fun Icelandic-Danish conflicts, too. So far, it’s shaping up to be my favourite Nordic Noir after The Bridge.

At least for the first three episodes. I’ll let you know if that changes…

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Ófærð (Trapped), The Shannara Chronicles, Lucifer and The X-Files”

What have you been watching? Including Vinyl, Wanted and Vikings

20 February 2016 Rob Buckley 11 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.

Apologies for the silence this week – you can blame Windows 8 for that. It wasn’t even my Windows 8 (like I’d have it in the house), but the Windows 8 of somewhere at which I do volunteer work. My advice? Don’t try to fix Windows 8 – just wipe it and start again. Which is what I eventually did.

Anyway, that meant I couldn’t write about tele for several days, but don’t worry – it didn’t mean I couldn’t watch tele. Elsewhere, of course, I’ve reviewed the first episodes of:

And after the jump, I’ll be dealing with the regulars: American Crime, Arrow, Billions, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, The Flash, Limitless, Lucifer, The Magicians, Man Seeking Woman, Marvel’s Agent Carter, Okkupert (Occupied), Second Chance, The Shannara Chronicles, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man and The X-Files. At least one of those gets the chop this week. Can you guess, which? This week also saw the return of Vikings, so I’ll be having a go at that, too. 

Out yesterday was Netflix’s Love, and I’ll try to give that a watch over the next few day; I’ll probably be playing catch-up with BBC4’s showing of Iceland’s Trapped, too.

But there was a couple of new shows out in the past week or so that although Windows 8 stopped me from reviewing them, I did manage to get a chance to watch them. Largely while I was fixing Windows 8.

Vinyl (US: HBO; UK: Sky Atlantic)
Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger co-created this story of the 70s music business, in which Bobby Carnavale (Cupid, Boardwalk Empire, Nurse Jackie) plays the boss of a struggling company trying to work out what’s hip and cool, as punk et al arrive on the scene. Scorsese directs, there’s a soundtrack including Slade and Abba, there’s a strong supporting cast, including Ian Hart, Paul Ben-Victor, Juno Temple, Olivia Wilde, Ray Romano and Birgitte Hjort Sørensen. What could go wrong? Well, lots apparently. Maybe it’s just because it’s about the music business, in which I have minimal interest. Maybe it’s because of the sexism, racism, et al of the period. Maybe it’s some of the dodgy English accents floating around. Whatever it was, despite its having a certain degree of authenticity, I barely made it to the end of the extremely long pilot episode. Not for me.

Wanted (Australia: Seven)
Continuing her majestic stranglehold on all of Seven’s drama output, Rebecca Gibney stars in this odd-couple-on-the-run drama that she also created. Gibney plays a rebellious, free-spirited but broke checkout woman; Geraldine Hakewill is an uptight accountant with a nerdy boyfriend and a criminal secret. They’re both waiting for a bus when a car chase ends in front of them and they witness a murder. Unfortunately for them, crooked cops are involved in the action and before you know, there are more bodies, everyone thinks they’re responsible and they’re on the run, while trying to clear their name and avoid getting caught by bad cop Nicholas Bell or good cop Stephen Peacocke. It’s mildly diverting stuff, but everything goes pretty much how you expect, the jokes are weak, and neither Gibney nor Hakewill make you want to hang out with either of them, let alone go on the run with them.

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