I haven't ever started a new season of tv fresh and unfettered by opinion before. Normally I'll wait to see what stays and what goes before staking my claims on anything but in the interests of science, of keeping you abreast of any popular culture that may well infiltrate your cosy little middle-class English lives sometime soon, and also because I'd quite like to review television shows for a living (so think of this like some A-Level Media Studies homework exercise) here are my thoughts on what should stay and what should go in the 2007 fall line-up...
Gossip Girl
Sad to say that I missed the cultural phenomenon that is the Gossip Girl book series. Is it possible to have not been aware of the existence of something and that in itself impacts negatively upon your life? I say yes when that thing is all about bitchy Upper East-siders who smoke and drink and fuck each other a lot. Now we can observe these (toned-down a smidge for broadcast) shenanigans with a mixture of delight (for who here doth not enjoy skinny, shiny-haired 17 year olds quipping, drinking, and getting laid?) and revulsion (for who here doth not despise themselves for enjoying watching a bunch of skinny, shiny-haired, straight-backed 17 year olds quipping, drinking, and getting laid?). As it comes from the mind of Josh 'I can't believe that's the ending you gave us for The O.C.' Schwartz it's pretty much a given that this is a trash obsession that's just going to run and run. It's not terribly smart or funny but it gives me that warm glowy feeling that you only ever get from eating raw cookie dough or watching tv shows where everyone is perfect and dresses like they've just stepped out the pages of Mode (even in their school uniforms! Ties skewed *just* so, the exact amount of knee sock peeping coquettishly out of the 'they cost how fucking much?!' boots, skirt lengths a quarter inch shy of being straight off a Britney video shoot... 'smazing). The only downside is that they've removed a lot of the things that, as far as I'm concerned, makes the book series sound like something I want to order off Amazon immediately; the principal weirdo character (Dan Humphrey) in the books apparently chain-smokes, has a caffeine addiction and writes poetry. In the tv show he has none of these traits and his only weirdo attribute is the fact that he looks like something conjured up by Pixar. Also, the love triangle guy (Nate Archibald) is (apparently) a total stoner in the books (which makes him more interesting to me at least) but in the show is so utterly forgettable that I have to wait for someone to say his name every time he comes on screen before I remember he's been in it before. However, that's not to say this isn't great tv. For instance, my favourite character is the louche Sebastian Valmont-a-like. You gotta love a bad boy. Especially one that seems a little gay. And of course, there's the social butterflies that the show itself revolves around, Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf (COME ON! The names alone make it worth a viewing or five), both of whom may appear to have it all but each share their own particular brand of private pain (oh yeeeah). The show is mostly about their bitching and reuniting, and who don't enjoy shit like that? In conclusion if you're sad, lonely, depressed? Watch Gossip Girl and it will provide everything you feel you've been lacking in your life. Shiny-haired, skinny, straight-backed? Watch Gossip Girl and you'll get to see just how awesome your life is played out on screen. Everyone wins.
Chuck
I wasn't aware of this show till Rob Sheffield brought it to my attention in Rolling Stone. It was the following quote from the show what nailed it... 'I'm working on a five-year plan. I just need to choose a font first'. Oh hell yes. Zachery Levi from the 'I know this show is kind of hokey but it doesn't quite fit the bad sitcom genre I adore so much as it's actually quite funny at times' sitcom, 'Less Than Perfect' is a guy with a fairly awesome Jew-fro (TARGET HIT!) who... wait for wacky situational comedy set up... manages to download the entirety of the American government's secrets into his brain. So now he's like some walking, talking, dorkified super-computer. It sounds as if all my dreams have come true doesn't it? Well yes, but alas I feel pretty certain this show is going to get canceled. It's supposed to be a comedy but I think they've shot themselves in the foot by having made it an hour long. Hilarity prefers a shorter time format. There's also too much going on, and I found it a struggle to keep my attention focused. It should work, I want it to work, but it *just* manages to miss the mark. I will, however, persevere on the off chance it improves.
Reaper
Bret Harrison from another of my 'if I ever admitted to people who think I have good taste that I seriously enjoy this show then they'd probably never want to talk to me again' sitcoms 'Grounded for Life' (although, if I'm honest the fact that Kevin Corrigan was in that show was what kept pulling me back in because he is all kinds of awesome). This is a show about a kid whose parents sold his soul to the devil when he was a baby (yes, really) and the devil is now coming to collect on that debt. Thus he grants Bret (also known as 'Sam' in the actual show) a few special powers to become a bounty hunter for the dead that have escaped hell (yes, really). The first show totally had me hooked despite the fact that it's not great. It falls a little flat primarily because the tone veers wildly from merriment to melancholy to action and back again with barely a pause for breath, but also due to the fact that this premise was executed with a greater deal of finesse in "Dead Like Me" (which I adored back in the day and is another Bryan Fuller production... more of which later). However, having said that, anything where there's a chubby side-kick that buys a marker to draw his buddies eyebrows back on after they have been singed off by a hell-escaping arsonist is going to find it's way on to my 'must-see' list very quickly indeed, especially as the pilot was directed by Kevin Smith (yeah, THE Kevin Smith innit). Worth a casual, disinterested, 'I'll watch for five minutes and if I'm not impressed I'm turning off... hmm, this seems a bit lame... hang on where did the last 40 minutes go?' look at any rate.
The Riches
A show about a family of gypsies who assume the lives of rich folk in a gated and privileged community. I figured with a starting point like that then we'd be in for a bit of fun and frivolity, sort of an updated version of
"The Beverly Hillbillies". This assumption appeared to be valid as we opened on Eddie Izzard (Wayne Malloy) infiltrating a class reunion and taking the 'buffers' for all they were worth, aided by his two youngest. (Oh what crazy high-jinks these wacky traveling folks have!) But then, within the next ten minutes of the pilot it was clear this my assumptions had made an ass out of me... and err... me. When I first saw Minnie Driver (playing Dahlia Malloy) with, gasp!, cornrows and, gasp!, in prison get-up, I kind of thought she looked like a heroin addict and was a bit disgusted. Turns out, Dahlia got a taste for Mister Brownstone ( I swear I didn't make that slang up) (but I really wish I had) behind bars, and it wasn't that Minnie was just going down the Size Zero route to success. Nice. What really hooked me in was the reunion between Wayne (Eddie Izzard) and Dahlia. It lasted barely 30 seconds but it was incredibly touching and told you everything you needed to know about the characters, their history, and their feelings for one another in just one look. From thence, I was a fully fledged paid-up member of The Riches fan club. Regardless, I do like me some dysfunctional family action and this certainly delivers on that score but it's also witty and I expect it to have some interesting things to say about the dichotomy between rich and poor in contemporary small town America. Definitely recommended.Dirty Sexy Money
I think this is my favourite show of all. Again, it deals with the wacky world of monied Upper East siders but with the twist that Peter Krause plays a grounded lawyer brought in to their world after the death of his father in... wait for it... mysterious circumstances. They have managed to pitch this - which so easily could have gone down the Dynasty path with an overabundance of camp - with the exact right mix of humour and drama (something which happens very rarely but was last employed well on the first season of Six Feet Under). It looks great; glossy but not overly conditioned, they've managed to assemble a stellar ensemble cast (Krause and Donald Sutherland rock my world fairly hard at the best of times, let alone when they're filmed in a room together), plus the title is as far superbad as you can get without using the title Superbad. I just thoroughly love it already and, I suspect, at some point in the near future, you will too.
Californication
David Duchovny plays Hank Moody; a talented yet troubled misanthropic writer who has an ex-wife (of sorts) that he still loves, a precocious kid that is still young enough to love him unconditionally, and a fairly crippling sex addiction. He drinks and smokes and fucks. A lot. He's rude to everyone, cares about no-one (or at least pretends to care about no-one), and on top of all this is plagued with writer's block. Despite my earlier witterings about high-concepts, this is all fairly well-trodden stuff but Duchovny elevates what could have been something utterly cliché ridden into something that's extremely compelling, funny, and even to some extent quite charming. The only thing I'm really not a fan of is the title sequence. It was obviously made by someone who has never seen an episode of the show all the way through. I'm not sure why it bothers me so but maybe it's the fact that it looks like a pastiche of the titles from
The Wonder Years and Californication is as far removed from The Wonder Years as it's possible to get. I guess I can just fast-forward through those so I'll try not to let it keep me up at night (though that will be hard).The Big Bang Theory
Geeks plus hot chick equals comedy. It's a formula that has been peer-reviewed a thousand times over, and each of those times coming up trumps. This show has the added bonus of boasting a few of my (admittedly fairly obscure) favs; Roseanne alumni and second best thing about The Opposite of Sex (after Ricci) the very lovely homosexual-as-hell Johnny Galecki, the shimmying guy from the Virgin Credit card adverts and Studio 60 (Simon Helberg), and the 'it says balls on your face' guy from Garden State *hyperventilates*. It's by Chuck Lorre who specialises in above-average classic sitcoms. Thus the set-up is pure sitcom, the couch faces the audience, their apartment is wider than it is deep, people say something and then pause before saying the next thing in order to give time for the audience to laugh (this is a dialogue issue that sometimes detracts and sometimes makes things flow better. In a classic sitcom environment it's something we've come to expect so you don't even really notice it to some degree, however, anything that plays outside the regular sitcom genre and it's utterly abysmal. Observe the original pilot episode of The Mighty Boosh to see why that show would never have worked in this way. Or imagine Flight of the Conchords or Peep Show with intended laughter-gaps. Hideous). I'm not immediately obsessed with this show. The first couple of episodes have had some laugh-out-loud moments, usually courtesy of Sheldon (who may well be my new fantasy boyfriend for his dress sense alone), but I always like to give sitcoms at least one season before judging as with most of these things you need to get to know the characters intimately before the comedic moments really start flying. In the meantime it's likable and mildly amusing enough to keep me interested, even if it is a little brainless (despite all the quantum mechanics talk).
Pushing Daisies
This is a Byran Fuller production so there's a lot to live up to given that he's abandoned the good ship Heroes to work on this (hopefully not to the detriment of that show but I have my private concerns). Visually akin to Amelie or Tim Burton in his more stylised moments; the colours are super-bright and hyper-realised, the locations are pure comic illustration come to life, and the characters are all curiously affected to some degree or another. From the get-go it's clear that this is intentionally done as a dark fairytale. Thus, we get a shot of a rosy-cheeked boy running through a field of sunflowers with his boundy dog 'Digby' and, two seconds later, see Digby get smooshed by a lorry. At which point the boy discovers that just by touching his deceased companion he can bring things back to life. However, there are a couple caveats that come with this gift. One is that if he touches something that he's brought back to life a second time then it will die forever. The second is that if he brings the dead thing back for more than 60 seconds another living thing has to take it's place. With hilarious consequences. Well, not really, more with wry and fanciful consequences. Adding to the fairytale-ish visuals is the constant narration from a kindly sounding guy with an impressive baritone who offers no immediate judgments but does give us some idea of what we're supposed to be thinking at certain points in the story. Ned the pieman (the show is going to make you crave pie like hookers crave crack) has had this secret ability found out by Emerson Cod the P.I. who persuades him they can make some money solving murder cases if Ned brings the victims back to ask who killed them. Ingenious. However, things go a bit wrong when Ned's childhood love 'Chuck' (played to perfection by Anna Friel who is sweet without being saccharine) is found strangled whilst on a cruise and is brought back for longer than her alloted sixty seconds. Although Ned could not bring himself to let her die a second time he now is faced with having her in his life without ever being able to touch her again. And thus the story... Epic love that can never be acted upon? Check. Gorgeous visuals? Check. Bizarre and unusual premise? Check. It might well be the real deal with this one and is marginally pushed into second place on my list of favourites by Dirty Sexy Money. It will be interesting to see how it develops but Bryan Fuller has proven his worth time and again so I'm quitetly confident it's going to consistently deliver.
Bionic Woman
I wanted to like this but it's terrible. Michelle Ryan isn't as bad as some have been making out, in fact I like her unconventional looks, think her American accent is passable at the very least, and don't see why her acting is being so soundly criticised (I mean, it didn't blow me away but nor was I clawing my eyes out in disgust). Where it all goes wrong is with the writing. There were far too many emo scenes ('I've just found out I have mind-blowing powers, I think I'll run away very fast so I can go cry in my bath!'), far too much of her acting all sappy around her fella (anytime some chick starts asking a man 'Why are you with me?' I want to bash myself in the head with the nearest blunt object), and far too little of her showing herself to be a capable, strong-willed, clever young woman. This is the vital ingredient for a show like this to work. If you want the audience to accept there's wacky-science abound and go on this adventure then the protagonist needs to be somewhat identifiable or at least likable. Not to mention there was no humour evidenced at any point during it's 40 minute running time. If you're putting in sexy rain-drenched cat fights then there needs to be an ironic, detached approach. Else it just looks like some throwback 70's schlocky nonsense. (Oh. Oh, I see what they've done there.) Sadly, I have no doubt this was an unintentional development in something that had the potential to be insanely amazing. But is most definitely not.
So that's that. Some improvements needed here and there but we can't all be as perfect as me. The only problem I have is where is this year's Veronica, or Lorelai, or even (not to go too old school on your asses)
Buffy? The only new show we've been given with a woman in the main role is Bionic Woman. And that's a remake (and also too abysmal to count). We have aspirational heroines in most of the shows as in 'I love your bangs! Ooh! And those shoes!' type aspiration (particularly Gossip Girl) but nothing new and fresh and exciting is female-lead. Nothing is aspirational in terms of 'Wow. She's confident, intelligent, isn't swayed that easily by guys and is just generally awesome. Oh, and I love her bangs. And those shoes'. What happened to the Joss Whedon inspired television revolution?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment