The West Wing

US TV

Preview: 1600 Penn 1×1 (NBC)

18 December 2012 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

1600 Penn

In the US: Thursdays, 9.30/8.30c, NBC. Starts January 10

In US TV, there’s the thing called ‘development’. It’s when someone comes to a TV network with an idea for a show, except it doesn’t quite work. So the idea goes into development so that the problems can be solved, ideally before it goes into production.

Of course, even then, it’s not too late for the show to change. Take The West Wing. Originally, the president wasn’t going to show up at all – he would only ever be talked about, but would never appear. But come the pilot episode, the President needed to appear, the producers cast Martin Sheen and the rest is history.

But sometimes, despite all these safety valves, one big, looming, giant black hole of a problem can’t be removed, usually as a result of politics, sometimes because it’s one of the executive producers or it’s even the person who came up with the idea for the TV show in the first place.

To preserve some air of mystery and suspense, I’ll let you guess what the problem is with 1600 Penn – a sort of West Wing meets Modern Family set in the White House – that couldn’t be removed before it aired. I’ll give you a clue: have a look at the cast photo.

Here’s a trailer if you need any more clues:

Continue reading “Preview: 1600 Penn 1×1 (NBC)”

The West Wing cast reunited! Again! To help one of their sisters! Not again!

20 September 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

It’s at times like this, particularly now that The Newsroom‘s on the air and offering a pale political shadow of its predecessor, that we wish Aaron Sorkin was still dedicating his life to giving us more episodes of The West Wing. The show that effectively predicted that a young non-white politician would soon be the president of the United States, it’s sorely missed and with a fall season of soon-to-be-forgotten dramas lined up for most networks and a stream of “WTF were they thinking commissioning that?” already polluting NBC’s schedules, one might be wondering why no one has thought of reuniting the old gang.

I say no one, but actually they have been reuniting quite a lot of late. Bradley Whitford was doing a walk and talk somewhere near Rob Lowe over on Parks and Recreation in April. Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, Dulé Hill, Joshua Malina, Melissa Fitzgerald and William Duffy got together for a public service announcement over on Funny or Die back in May.

Is that enough though? Hell, no. We want a full deck!

Thankfully, we’ve got something pretty damn close. In an ad to get Bridget Mary McCormack* elected to the Michigan Supreme Court and to explain how US voting forms work, we have Richard Schiff, Bradley Whitford, Allison Janney, Joshua Malina, Janel Moloney, Mary McCormack, Melissa Fitzgerald, Lily Tomlin and, yes, Martin Sheen, all recreating their The West Wing characters.

And you know what? It actually feels like the real thing. Woo hoo! Now get voting and/or writing to NBC and Aaron Sorkin.

* Yes, Bridget Mary McCormack is Mary McCormack’s sister, now you ask

What did you watch last week? Including Political Animals, Covert Affairs, Wallander, The Newsroom, Perception and Line of Duty

17 July 2012 Rob Buckley 4 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 I’ve missed them.

The usual recommendations from the first-run shows are: Continuum, The Daily Show, and Suits. Hunt them down.

Also being added to the list this week (with some reservations) is The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing-but-with-journalists TV show within a TV show. It’s still very flawed; white, usually middle-aged men are still the heroes, with everyone else orbiting around them and glorifying their names; and the whole Bigfoot thing in the latest episode was beyond ridiculous. But this was the first episode that really felt fun, that dialled all these flaws down to a minimum, that actually made me like Olivia Munn a lot, and that didn’t feel that smug at all. Worth tuning in if you miss The West Wing.

Ken Branagh’s Wallander is back on as well, although I’ve only seen the first of the two episodes that have been broadcast so far. Although the absence of Tom Hiddleston (Loki from Thor/Avengers Assemble) is keenly felt, this was the first episode from the three series so far that I felt actually worked as both a proper crime story and a Wallander story, rather than simply a great big hour and a half version of ‘The Scream’, in which a guy with minimal understanding of police procedure twats around and falls over his own feet a lot. While there was a certain element of that (spoiler: Wallander’s breaking into the yard), it was a decent story, well executed. I’m not sure if that’s because it was only based on a short story, so the script writers had to fill in the blanks himself or herself, rather than relying on Mansell’s apparently sketchy approach to police procedure. Added to the recommended list anyway.

A new show and some returning shows appeared on the radar and I’ve given them a try, at least:

  • Political Animals: Basically, a parallel universe in which Sigourney Weaver is Hillary Clinton, Ciaran Hinds is Bill Clinton, and after Hillary loses the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, she asks Bill for a divorce. Everyone involved seems to find this all very funny and entertaining, in a cheeky schoolboy, “look how naughty I am!” kind of way, even Weaver, but I lost interest after about 10 minutes, just after the Russian foreign minister goosed pseudo-Hillary at a press conference.

  • Covert Affairs: there have been changes promised and as well as the death of one regular and the welcome arrival of Sarah Clarke (Nina Myers from 24) as Piper Perabo’s new, kick ass, women-power boss, we have the somewhat surprising casting of Richard Coyle – yes, Jeff the Welsh one from Coupling – as a Cambridge-educated, billionaire super-spy, who used to be in the Russian special forces. Hmmm, that’s not entirely plausible, is it? I wouldn’t say it’s that much better than it was before – even the death of the aforementioned regular had the emotional impact of being told that your local convenience store is out of Bran Flakes – but it was intriguing enough for me to want to watch the next episode, particularly since the first episode was not only set in Morocco, but actually filmed in Morocco, rather than the Mojave Desert, which is the usual way of these things.

Here’s a few thoughts on those and what else I’ve been watching:

  • Burn Notice: Nice to see Painkiller Jane/Terminator 3‘s Terminatrix Kristanna Loken getting some work again from someone other than Uwe Boll, but even though it’s innovating, it still feels like it’s going through the motions.
  • Continuum: After last week’s lacklustre effort, we’re back on form again, albeit one that only lightly touched on the series arc. Guest starring Tahmoh Penikett from BSG and Dollhouse (I suspect he’ll be back in future episodes), we got a fleshing out of sidekick’s character and most important of all, the return of the suit and some decent sci-fi concepts.
  • Line of Duty: Such a shame. Episode three started so well. It wasn’t as ridiculous as it had been in previous episodes, there was progression, character development. It was almost going to end up on the recommended list. Then something so stupid happened (spoiler: Lennie James is kidnapped by the drug dealers) that I had to abandon it in disgust.
  • Perception: although a somewhat format-bound show, there were more than a few sparks of intelligence in the second episode. As predicted, we did have a guest syndrome, although not in the way I predicted it, and so the show actually managed to come up with a plot I’d never seen before (unless I squint at one of the worst episodes of CSI: Miami that was ever made). BSG‘s Jamie Bamber is a welcome addition, although he sounds like a complete tool with his normal accent for some reason. And they’re playing with the hallucination side of things pretty well, too. Worth watching then for what they do on top of the formula, rather than the formula itself, I think.
  • Royal Pains: The return of Boris to the main plot is to be welcomed, as is the (spoiler) reintegration of Hank into the Hankmed family so that all the regulars are in one place. But Paige’s storyline needs some work and Reshma Shetty needs acting classes urgently.
  • Suits: Really, this is the top show on TV right now, so you should be watching it. Good to see the return of Eric Close as the only guy who can mess with Harvey and the Louis sub-plot is being handled well. The minor complaint, as always, is that it’s all very ‘male gaze’, even when dealing with the strong female characters.

Still to watch on the Sky box: Mesrine – Killer Instinct and Sinbad. Still. Plus Sky Arts 2’s Maison close, which started on Sunday. Anyone catch it?

“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?

The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: The Newsroom (HBO)

11 July 2012 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

In the US: Sundays, 10pm, HBO
In the UK: Tuesdays, 10pm, Sky Atlantic HD

The Newsroom is frustrating. It is perilously close to being brilliant – with Aaron Sorkin writing it, how could it not be? Yet it’s also very flawed and often falls far from the Brilliant Tree.

Essentially, this is a show in which Sorkin tells us how TV news reporting should have been for the past two years, by going back to incidents we all know about and using the benefit of hindsight to give us the facts that may or may not have been apparent at the time. As with The West Wing, it posits a team of dedicated and mostly talented people working towards the betterment of humanity. Here though, that team is journalists – as with Studio 60, this is a show within a show – rather than politicians and their aides.

Or should I say male journalists? Because this is where the problems start. There is an almost universal divide between competent, dedicated male journalists, focused on doing the best job possible, and dizty women worried about their relationships, usually with the male journalists. Even when they are doing their best, they either fail or it’s to help the men do the best they can and to glorify those men.

While this was to a certaint extent apparent in the first episode, the entire second episode had lead female Emily Mortimer failing to comprehend the basics of corporate email and worrying that the entire company thought that Jeff Daniels had cheated on her. This from a seasoned war reporter and executive producer.

Meanwhile, in the third episode we had her former producer using his war reporting experience to minister field training to help one of the female journalists during one of her panic attacks. We’re almost beyond pastiche at this point.

Even the arrival of Jane Fonda in the third episode as the Ted Turner-like tycoon who owns the network didn’t help, since she’s not on the side of the angels, but only cares about business, and is a bit rusty in the old acting department.

That leaves us in the unprecedented position of relying on episode two’s new arrival, Olivia Munn (of The Daily Show, Attack of the Show, Perfect Couples, Iron Man 2, et al), to be the competent, intellectual heavyweight of the female team. She’s a welcome oasis of professionalism and snark, although the effect is slightly spoilt by Mortimer recruiting her because she has ‘nice legs’.

Another problem with the show is that it’s on HBO. Nothing wrong with that you might think, until you realise that means no adverts and Sorkin is trying to pad out 40 minutes of actual material to a full 60 minutes. The show feels in dire need of an edit because there’s not quite enough there at the moment. It doesn’t help that without the talents of Thomas Schlamme in the direction department, everything is much slower than it should be: where there was once ‘walk and talk’, there’s now ‘sit and prosletyse’.

Bar Munn, who’s had about 10 lines so far in three episodes, there are no characters to really like yet. We’ve also reverted to Sorkin’s default of loving lawyers, with it apparently not enough that Jeff Daniels be a journalist in order to ask probing questions – he’s also a former lawyer because Sorkin loves lawyers. That’s kind of disheartening for people who thought the show might be a tribute to journalists, rather than a slating.

But squinting hard, ignoring these flaws and forgetting for a moment that a lot of the plots and ideas are recycled from Sorkin’s earlier shows, this is a very good programme. There’s sparkling dialogue, decent plotting and an actual message trying to be imparted. True, it’s the same message that Keith Olbermann was doing in slightly more hyperbolic terms until he was fired, but it’s a worthwhile message nevertheless. It’s also fun, even while it’s being frustrating.

So give it a try, because even if it is almost Sorkin by numbers, it’s one of his better shows and certainly one of the best shows on at the moment. With time – and HBO has already committed to a second season – Sorkin will actually have to give the female characters some work to do and there’s even a chance they’ll do it competently.

Carusometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Will definitely last two seasons and might even go to three or more

US TV

Review: The Newsroom (HBO) 1×1

26 June 2012 Rob Buckley 15 Comments

 

In the US: Sundays, 10pm, HBO
In the UK: Acquired by Sky Atlantic. Will air starting July 10

I guess it was only a matter of time before Aaron Sorkin got around to creating The Newsroom. You could probably have proved it with Venn diagrams or something.

Sorkin does, of course, love two things above all others: politics and TV shows about TV shows. On the politics side, The West Wing looked at the undeniable vital national importance of decent politics and politicians, but Sorkin also wrote the Guantanamo-tastic A Few Good Men. As far as TV shows about TV shows go, he’s had a patchier track record: Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, which looked at the vital national importance of live comedy sketch shows, was a flop, as was Sports Night, which looked at the vital national importance of TV sports shows. 

So I guess it was inevitable that Sorkin would develop a TV show that incorporated into its storylines not just politics but also a TV show about politics. Thus we have The Newsroom, almost a ‘Greatest Sorkin Hits’ collection of things you’ll have seen and loved in previous Sorkin productions: politics; a TV show with behind-the-scenes relationship problems for the production team; ditzy women; failing men; witty banter; talking and walking; beautifully written, fact-heavy sermons; ethnic minority assistants; people doing the right thing; people doing jobs to the best of their abilities; and exhortions about how much better America could be if only all its citizens were well educated.

In this show, of course, we also get journalism and long speeches about how important it is. And as with much of The Newsroom, although you may have seen something similar on Studio 60 et al, here it just about works, because journalism is plausibly of vital national importance – unlike live comedy sketch shows. It’s not quite The West Wing, either in the quality of the cast, which includes Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, Olivia Munn, Sam Waterston, Dev Patel and Jane Fonda, or in the power of its execution, but it’s certainly a pretty good start – assuming you like Sorkin.

Here’s a trailer or two and if you’re in the US, you can watch the whole of the first episode.

Continue reading “Review: The Newsroom (HBO) 1×1”