Vikings

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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News: Romeo & Juliet sequel; Wong to play Wong; Sky gets Twin Beaks, Billions; + more

22 January 2016 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film casting

Canadian TV

Internet TV

  • Walter Presents gets 1m views [registration required]

UK TV

  • Sky Atlantic to be exclusive home of Showtime dramas, including Twin Peaks and Billions

US TV

US TV show casting

New US TV shows

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: The Last Kingdom (US: BBC America; UK: BBC Two)

26 October 2015 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

In the US: Saturdays, 10/9c, BBC America
In the UK: Thursdays, 9pm, BBC Two

It seems that it’s not just US TV that’s fallen for this season’s “crap first episode, much improved second episode” rule – UK TV in the form of The Last Kingdom is doing the exact same thing. True, it’s a co-production between BBC America and BBC Two, but it’s interesting that this seems to be the new rule on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps it’s time for the return of the ‘pilot movie’ to give shows enough time to both establish the ground rules and then settle down to telling the story?

A dramatisation of Bernard Cornwell’s ‘Saxon Stories’ (how much did he want to call them the Saxon Chronicles, I wonder?), The Last Kingdom tells the story of how King Alfred managed to defend England against the Vikings and set the foundation stones for a future unified England. Unfortunately, episode one was a tedious, uninvolving mess that made all the mistakes of modern TV historical drama but without having any of the virtues. In particular, it had a desperately uninteresting hero Uhtred (Alexander Dreymon), a Saxon noble raised by Danes, who discovers in adult life that neither side really likes him.

I was very tempted to give up after the first episode as a result, but as King Alfred was a no show in the first episode, I decided to hang on in there until he made his appearance. And I’m glad I did, because Alfred is the show’s saving grace – a very different portrayal than we’re used to of the wise king who moonlit as a shoddy locum baker.

Here, he is a coldly calculating yet pious man who also suffers from terrible pains and David Dawson gives a blinding performance as the invariably cleverest nobleman in the room.

The trouble is that while Dawson’s great to watch, taking Alfred in an unsuspected direction, and Cornwell’s characterisation gives him a lot to work with, the rest of The Last Kingdom is considerably less interesting. Indeed, the show is almost the mirror image of Vikings in that as soon as we start dealing with anyone even slightly Scandinavian, the show becomes terribly, terribly stupid and trite. As I said when I reviewed the first episode, the show could really have benefitted from watching Vikings, just to learn how to make them interesting and not complete idiots – and to learn the sunlight really isn’t the enemy of good drama.

That’s meant the second and third episodes have varied in watchability as we’ve seen increasing amounts of both our hero and the vikings. The second episode was the superior of the two, as we also had Alec Newman (Frank Herbert’s Dune, Spooks, Star Trek: Enterprise, Rogue, Waterloo Road, The Bastard Executioner) as Æthelred, Alfred’s elder brother, who is as well drawn and portrayed as Alfred is himself. Unfortunately, episode three was more interested in Uhtred and his girlfriend Brida.

The Last Kingdom is at its best when dealing with Alfred and to a lesser extent the Saxons, where it’s fascinating and engaging, at its worst when it’s dealing with the vikings, when it becomes eminently missable, hokey and historically dodgy. I can only hope that as the show progresses, Uthred simply becomes more Saxon, since he might then be interesting. Until then, though, I’m equivocating. I want to see more Alfred, but I’m concerned I’m just going to get loads of Uthred, worrying about whether he’s going to get some land. I’ll let you know next episode how it goes.

Barrometer rating: 3
TMINE prediction: Probably won’t make it to the second season, since it’ll offend historical purists with its frequent distortions, and offend regular viewers who quite fancied a new Game of Thrones. But BBC America and BBC Two don’t place as much of a premium on ratings as other networks so it might get a stay of execution.

The Last Kingdom
US TV

Review: The Last Kingdom 1×1 (US: BBC America; UK: BBC Two)

14 October 2015 Rob Buckley 12 Comments


In the US: Saturdays, 10/9c, BBC America
In the UK: Thursdays, 9pm, BBC2

A long time ago, I came up with ‘Buckley’s Crime Show Hypothesis‘. Also known as Buckley’s ‘All producers live in Islington’ Hypothesis, this hypothesises that all TV producers live in Islington, because only people who live in Islington say things like “Of course, we don’t actually watch television. In fact, we don’t even own a television set. Ha, ha, ha!” and it’s very obvious that a lot of TV producers don’t watch TV. Or at least not TV that other people have made – I bet they all watch their own stuff.

The change in name came about because it was clear that this was true of TV producers working in genres other than crime. And with BBC America/BBC Two’s The Last Kingdom, which details how the plucky King of Wessex, Alfred the Great, defended England against the invasion of Vikings, we have proof that it’s true of those working in historical drama, too, because watching it, you can’t help but think “You guys haven’t seen Vikings, have you?”

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