In Norway: TV2. Aired from October 2015 In the UK: Wednesdays, 9pm, Sky Arts
What is science-fiction? It’s a harder question than you might think. As soon as you think you know what it is – it’s set in outer space, it involves some non-existent technology or science, it involves aliens – you can think of some counter-example, such as The Man In The High Castle that doesn’t fit your rules. Often, it boils down to a definition like that of pornography: you know it when you see it.
Even then, there are disagreements. Think back to 1987 and you’ll remember the BBC’s Star Cops. Set in the then far-off year of 2027, it simply tried to imagine what life would be like in that year, particularly when it comes to investigating crime. No aliens, yet clearly science-fiction, with its imagined new technologies (computer viruses! Personal digital assistants!), moon bases and space stations.
Star Cops, for all its ambitions at future reality, suffered from the fact that like most future-set science-fiction, it was an extrapolation of the then present. Like 2010, The Terminator and other 80s sci-fi shows, it assumed that the USSR and an aggressive Russia would be intact in the future and antagonistic to the West. My, how we laughed at their naivety when the Berlin Wall fell, and even Terminator 2 had to revise the franchise’s predicted 1997 to take account of the fact the “Russians are our friends now”.
My, how we laugh at our naivety now. Who predicted the rise of Valdimir Putin and the return of an antagonistic Russia? Who foresaw the return of Russian jets probing Norway‘s airspace? Apparently, Chris Boucher did in Star Cops. Sorry for laughing at you in the 90s, Chris.
All of which takes us to Occupied (Okkupert), a thriller based on an idea by noted Scandi author Jo Nesbø that could be described as science-fiction or political thriller, depending where you sit in the whole ‘what is science fiction?’ debate. Set in the ‘near future’, it predicts the US achieving energy self-sufficiency and withdrawing from NATO, leaving the EU and other nations in the West to try to get by on dwindling oil reserves, largely produced by Norway.
Then in the wake of a climate change-induced hurricane that devastates Norway, along comes a new Norwegian prime minister (Henrik Mestad) with a strong green agenda. He shuts down oil production and instead offers the world nuclear-generated electricity powered by Norway’s Thorium reserves. Except the EU and other neighbouring countries aren’t too impressed by the instant move to green power – how exactly do you run existing petrol-powered cars on nuclear energy? – and in a somewhat radical move, team up with the Russians to force Norway to start up oil production.
The Russians kidnap Mestad, make it clear what’s going to happen next, and before you know it, Russia’s doing a ‘US in Vietnam’ and sending in teams of ‘advisors’ (with Mil Mi-24 helicopter gunships) to help Norway crank up oil production again. Yes, Russia has invaded Norway – although Mestad tries to convince everyone that it’s all very peaceful – and there’s seemingly nothing anyone can or will do about repelling the former superpower.
Or is there? Because Norway has its own Jack Bauer – security service guard Hans Martin Djupvik (Eldar Skar) – and he’s going to do his upmost to deal with the Russians, in his own way.
Here’s the original Norwegian trailer for the show or you can watch the unembeddable English-language one over on Sky Arts.
In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, USA Network In the UK: Not yet acquired
They say the secret of comedy is timing. I think the same is true of TV. A bit over a year ago, I was asked on Radio 5 why I thought zombie shows were so popular. I went for the glib Zoolander quote “they’re so hot right now”, but also mentioned that there was an obvious subtext – just in case you weren’t listening, I was talking about rich versus poor, fear of diseases and the other, with an enemy that can’t be understood and negotiated with, only fought, and yet which keeps on coming, no matter what you do.
That, of course, was two years ago and was at the back end of the zombie/disease/Occupy Wall Street trend. Now the big fear is that immigrants are going to come in, swamp us, and take over our countries. They’re going to invade us.
TV, of course, can take a long time to get made, with years sometimes passing between genesis, gestation and eventual realisation of a show. Had Colony come out a year or so ago, back when I was doing that radio show, it would have looked prophetic and pioneering. Had it come out say two or even three months ago, it would have been riding a wave. Coming out now? It’s missed the boat.
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.
The Christmas holidays/Saturnalia are a time for revelry and fun, followed by bloated lounging around watching TV. At least, they usually are. This year, good TV was slightly harder to find, so after the jump in this Christmas viewing round-up, the only Christmas specials I’ll be looking at are Doctor Who and Sherlock, as well as the slightly unexpected and un-Christmasy Marco Polo: One Hundred Eyes. Several of the regular shows also finished their runs over Christmas, so I’ll be taking a gander at Ash vs Evil Dead, TheBridge and Legends, and I finally finished the first season of The Man In the High Castle, too.
That doesn’t sound like much viewing for two weeks, and you’d be right. I also watched a few movies and even went to the theatre:
Elf (Dominion theatre, London) A stage adaptation of the delightful Will Ferrell Christmas classic movie, in which a Christmas elf discovers he’s really a human and ventures south to New York to find his children’s book-publisher father (James Caan), only to discover that daddy is in Santa’s naughty list. He gets a job at a department store, where thanks to adorable co-worker Zooey Deschanel, he discovers the human thing called love, and manages to restore Christmas cheer to the world.
Initially tediously slavish to the original, right down to the New York setting requiring the entirely British cast to put on US accents, this musical version starts to get better only when the story begins to diverge halfway through. The show is also more knowing than the original, losing some of its innocence and adding jokes that only the adults in the audience will get.
Ben Forster (winner of ITV’s Superstar), who’s got a cracking set of pipes on him, plays Buddy the Elf a bit closer to Jim Carrey than to Will Ferrell, while Girls Aloud’s similiarly pipe-equipped Kimberley Walsh (I’d misread that as Kimberly Wyatt from Sky 1’s Got To Dance, so was a bit disappointed when I realised my mistake…) foregoes Deschanel’s hipster quirkiness in favour of being just a cynical woman embittered by too many of life’s disappointments. More interestingly – again for the adults – is the presence of 80s/90s stars Joe McGann (The Upper Hand) and Jessica Martin (Doctor Who, The Bobby Davro Show) as Buddy’s human parents.
It’s a lavish affair with a good cast that’s still very entertaining and that eventually finds its feet, but it’s better if you’ve never seen the original and imagine it’s all set in London – they missed a trick there.
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) (iTunes) Every Mission Impossible is a bit different but this time we do get something a bit closer to the first movie in the series, with an attempt to do proper spy stuff again. Senator Alec Baldwin is trying to shut down the Impossible Mission Force, just as Tom Cruise cottons on to the fact that rogue agents from other countries’ spy agencies have clubbed together for nefarious purposes, forcing the team to go on the lam. Can Cruise, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner and generic token woman Rebecca Ferguson (The White Queen) stop the ‘rogue nation’, even though its agents are supposedly every bit as good as IMF and wise to how it does business?
You betcha, but the fun is in finding out how. Writer-director Christopher McQuarrie gives us some occasionally thrilling, mostly too-CGIed action set pieces, as well as some surprisingly funny moments and the traditional con jobs, although an attempt to create parallels to Casablanca are ill judged, Renner is confined almost entirely to chatty scenes in Washington and London has about 1,700 red telephone boxes for no good reason. Also amusing for UK viewers is that the British government appears to be entirely composed of the cast of Rev.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (20150 (in cinemas) Simultaneously answering the questions “What if it had been Princess Leia rather than Luke Skywalker left on Tatooine?” and “What must it be like to work for the Empire?”, this new Star Wars movie has newcomer Daisy Ridley as Rey, a scavenger on a desert planet waiting for her family to return to pick her up. Into her life come a comedic stormtrooper-with-a-conscience sidekick (John Boyega) and a droid looking for an old jedi. Together they have to escape the revamped Empire, find the rebels, meet Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon and destroy the Empire’s new, definitely-not-the-Death-Star-oh-no superweapon.
JJ Abrams gives us the first decent addition to the Star Wars series since the 80s through the simple measure of giving us Star Wars again, but with modern special effects and a few character/relationship switches just to obfuscate the fact it’s the same movie as the first one. But it is a very decent remake-sequel, reminding you of just how good the original was, being genuinely thrilling, funny and enjoyable throughout, not invoking any of the tedious cruft that Lucas added in the prequels, and giving us a decent new cast and a return of the old cast. And it’s great to have one of these things about a girl rather than a boy for a change, too.
The big question, given where the film ends, is whether the next one is going to be a simple retread of The Empire Strikes Back or whether there are still new stories to be told in the franchise.
Kung Fu Killer/Jungle (2014) (Netflix) Top martial artist Donnie Yen’s in Hong Kong nick for murder, when other top martial artists start getting killed off, forcing the police to recruit him to stop the murderer from killing anyone else. But does Yen know more than he’s letting on and can he stop the killer before he gets to his girlfriend?
It’s a largely unremarkable plot, but what lifts Kung Fu Killer are its fight scenes, direction and cast. Featuring pretty much a who’s who of the Hong Kong martial arts industry, both behind the scenes and in front of the camera (stick around to the end to see if you spotted everyone), the movie is often a Chinese travelogue and has some directorial flourishes that nod to a diverse range of movies, including The Bourne Supremacy, although its CGI is a bit weak and the wire work a bit too obvious. The best fight is saved for Yen and till last, but the movie fills its runtime in an almost Game of Death-style deconstruction of kung fu, each scene showing a different aspect of Chinese martial arts.
Worth watching if you want to see what a modern Hong Kong martial arts movie looks like and to see Donnie Yen on good form.
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.
It’s actually Saturday evening and I’m writing this
To make sure you’ve all got something to read (if you want) on Monday, when I’m away
Because I had a bit too much work to do on Friday, when I should have written this
So that means I haven’t seen this week’s episodes of The Bridge. Otherwise, though, I’m up-to-date with both the new and old shows that are generous enough to air only an episode a week. I’m now about four episodes into The Man In The High Castle, which is fine but stringing things out a bit and – odd accusation though this may seem – painting the Nazis out as more evil than they were, yet missing out on some of their greater evils. I’m also about 10 minutes into Kung Fu Killer, as GYAD recommended (turns out Netflix did have it, as well as Ip Man 2), but I’ll hold off commenting on that until I’ve seen the whole thing (interesting so far, though).
Elsewhere, I’ve already reviewed Telenovela (US: NBC) and previewed The Expanse (US: Syfy), so after the jump, a look at the latest episodes of Arrow, Ash vs Evil Dead, Bron/Broen (The Bridge), Doctor Who, The Flash, Legends, Supergirl and You’re The Worst.
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.
December’s here, Christmas is nearly upon us and a lot of series are coming to the end of their current seasons or have had their mid-season finales. The only new shows hitting our screens now are either trying to get in under the wire by box-setting us or are mere previews for shows that will get their full runs next year. Cases in point are South of Hell (US: WE tv) and Superstore (US: NBC), which I reviewed earlier this week.
That means that after the jump, given I’ve already passed a third-episode verdict on Into The Badlands (US: AMC; UK: Amazon Instant Video), I’ll only be looking at Arrow, Bron/Broen (The Bridge), Doctor Who, The Flash, Grandfathered, Legends, Supergirl and You’re The Worst. I’ve made a start on The Man In The High Castle but I’ve only got a couple of episodes in, so I’ll save them up for a full review next week or the week after. Some time before Christmas anyway.
