New British TV Show Reviews
November 24, 2011
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Appropriate Adult (11/11)
Based
on a true story about Janet Leach, an advocate who is brought in to
advise suspected serial killer Fred West (Dominic West) when the police
interrogated him in this ITV1 mini-series. Fred and his wife Rose were
eventually convicted for killing 11 women in the 1970s although the
case wasn't brought against them until 1994. Leach's role was to make
sure West's rights were observed because he was considered to have
diminished capacity, so she had a front-row seat to his incarceration
(and eventually became an obsession of West's before he hanged himself
in 1995).
Beaver Falls (11/11)
I was prepared to dismiss this E4 series about three randy English
university graduates who have blarged their way into jobs at a summer
camp in California. It's certainly not aimed at anyone in my
generation, and if I had teenage boys I would hope they weren't
anything like Flynn, Barry and A-Rab. But, I don't have kids, and I
grew to like the characters in Beaver Falls. Though there have been
comparisons to The Inbetweeners, that series operates on a much more
farcical level which serves to heap as much humiliation as possible on
the boys, mostly of their own doing. Beaver Falls is slightly more
dramatic, which isn't to say their main goal doesn't consist of wanting
to get high, drink and shag, and see their summer in America as a
chance to indulge in all three. Flynn (Samuel Robertson, a veteran of Coronation Street) is way too good looking and knows it. Computer
science major Barry is played by John Dagleish (best known as Alf from Lark Rise To Candleford) with his hooded eyes and curly floppy hair
reminding me of a young Peter Serafinowicz. Arsher Ali plays an ethnic
character who insists that people call him A-Rab, whose girlfriend left
him after he proposed to her at their graduation party back in
England. They get stuck as camp counselors to the lowest caste of camp
attendees, which kicks off the underdogs versus the jocks cliches
you've seen a million times before in movies like this. What saves Beaver Falls are the performances, the character moments and the
chance to relish pasty Brits kicking the arses of the obnoxious
American bullies. If the days of summer camp are decades behind you,
then Beaver Falls is probably not for you, but I thought it was
well-made for what it was trying to do.
Comic Strip Presents: The Hunt For Tony Blair (11/11)
The
Comic Strip reunite on its 30th anniversary (they were the first
program ever transmitted by Channel 4) with a 1950s style period movie
that posits Tony Blair (Stephen Mangan) on the run. It almost seems
like beating a dead horse at this point to mock Blair, long out of
power, but the 50s pastiche at least make it interesting to watch.
DCI Banks (11/11)
Stephen
Tomkinson (Ballykissangel), usually cast as a dim-bulb, gets to play
a hard man for a change, a Yorkshire police detective inspector solving
grisly two-part mysteries in this ITV1 series. Essentially the series
is Inspector Morse but set in the North, with a supporting cast of
detectives and Banks' interactions with the suspects and his team.
Based on the novels by Peter Robertson, the mysteries are nicely
adapted by a broadcaster that is well experienced in these sorts of crime
dramas.
Death In Paradise (11/11)
A
BBC-French TV co-production mystery drama set in Saint Marie, a
Caribbean island that conveniently has a locked-door murder each week.
Brought in to solve them is Detective Inspector Richard Poole (Ben
Miller) from the Met, which sets up a classic fish-out-of-water
interplay with the more laid-back members of the Saint Marie police
force. Miller seems a bit miscast as a crack detective who has no clue
about human relations, similar to his uptight character in Primeval.
But it's an opportunity to cast many well-known black actors including
Danny John-Jules, and with guest appearances by Patterson Joseph,
Lenora Crichlow, and Don Warrington. ITV have been doing this genre for
so long that you expect a particular style and when the BBC give it a
shot, something just seems a bit off. Maybe it's Miller's casting, or
the attempt to combine humor and murder, but for fans of whodunnits who
enjoy beautiful scenery, you could do a lot worse.
The Fades (11/11)
BBC3
continues its horror streak (begun with Being Human) with this
six-part drama that sets Angelics (humans with the power to heal as
well as see the dead) in an epic battle with ghosts that have not
ascended and have discovered a grisly way of regaining human bodies and
taking over the earth. A high school student named Paul is the newest
Angelic, haunted by post-apocalyptic dreams who must discover his
powers before its too late. Up-and-coming actor Daniel Kaluuya
(Psychoville, Harry & Paul) plays Paul's best mate Mac who lays
on the nerdy cultural references a bit too thick, but does lighten the
dark tone of the proceedings (even scenes shot in bright daylight seem
ominous). Well-acted and shot, it seems a shame The Fades was (like Being Human) relegated to a digital channel by the BBC.
Fresh Meat (11/11)
Joe
Thomas (The Inbetweeners) stars in this Channel 4 series about the
residents of university housing and the many, many mistakes and
tribulations that people that age have with their roommates. I never
had that
going-to-college-and-forced-to-live-with-people-I-have-nothing-in-common-with
experience, so it's fun to watch it play out on a TV series (I used to
love "Felicity" too, sue me). Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain (Peep
Show) wrote Fresh Meat and although that era was probably years ago
for both of them, the situations that are encountered are universal and
well-handled here, including an episode that includes the characters
going to London to participate in the student protests there that
happened in real life.
Fry's Planet Word (11/11)
Stephen
Fry shows off his love of language around the world, how it evolved,
how it's used, how it's misused, in this informative and educational
BBC2 series (which probably nobody saw, transmitted against über-popular Downton Abbey and the final series of Spooks). Fry
gets to travel all over the globe for the production and chats with
various celebrities including Brian Blessed, David Tennant, and Peter
Jackson. If you love Stephen Fry, you'll want to watch this, simple
enough.
Hidden (11/11)
Tough
guy Philip Glenister (Life on Mars) gets to do his thing as Harry
Venn, a dodgy solicitor who takes on a case that has ripples that
connect right up to a scandal involving the prime minister. Hired by
Gina, a beautiful French barrister, both her past and Harry's are
somehow connected with a scheme by powerful interests to bring down the
government, and only Harry can solve the mystery. David Suchet appears
as Gina's father who wants to protect his daughter but turns out to be
more involved with the conspiracy than he knows. Hidden is a good,
exciting romp, similar in style to Glenister's earlier turn in State
of Play.
Holy Flying Circus (11/11)
This
BBC-4 TV Movie recounts the events in 1979 when the Monty Python troupe
were under siege in Britain for their "blasphemous" movie, "The Life of
Brian." The climax was a bit of legendary TV when John Cleese and
Michael Palin were confronted by cultural critics Malcolm Muggeridge
and Mervyn Stockwood, the Bishop of Southwark, on Friday Night
Saturday Morning. This dramatization tries far too hard to be
"Pythonesque" with surreal bits like Palin's wife being played by the
actor also playing Terry Jones, cutaways of God (Stephen Fry) watching
the action, and Cleese (Darren Boyd) behaving more like Basil Fawlty
than a real person despite a disclaimer. We're continually reminded
that Palin is "the nicest man in Britain," which is supposed to
contrast with his increasing lack of patience that occurred during the
broadcast. To be fair, Holy Flying Circus, is almost exactly the
kind of movie I would have made when I was 18 when these events are
set. I was a die-hard Python fan at the time, like all my friends in
high school were, and I would have found such onscreen shenanigans
hilarious and inventive. Alas, I'm not 18 any longer and I can tell
when someone is trying just a bit too hard to replicate their comedy
masters and not succeeding.
The Hour (11/11)
This BBC drama series is set in the world of TV news during the
1950s. Romola Garai is Bel Rowley, an ambitious producer who gets
promoted out of the ghetto of the BBC news department. At the time the
BBC presented the news simply with a stodgy newsreader narrating a
newsreel, akin to how history was presented in Ricky Gervais' "The
History of Lying." Bel is to be the producer for the foreign desk
of a new, more dynamic magazine style show to be called "The
Hour." The presenter is Hector Madden (Dominic West), who isn't
alone in thinking women should know their place. Bel knows how to
handle his type. She wants her colleague Freddie Lyon (Ben Whishaw) to
get a job with "The Hour" as well, but he is too independent and
willful for the conservative producers at the BBC. Meanwhile,
Burn Gorman (late of Torchwood),
is running around London mysteriously murdering people as part of some
conspiracy that Freddie begins to investigate. I have to admit, I
was spending more time fascinated by the set dressings than the actors
in front of them, particularly the signage around the BBC that had all
the charm of a tube station. But maybe that's just me because I like
those sorts of period touches. I'm not saying The Hour
is bad, like any British drama, I'm willing to give it a lot of
patience to see where it is going, and how it all pays off. I saw
complaints in The Guardian from someone who worked in that era who said
the details were completely wrong and anachronistic, but it could just
be sour grapes and 60 years of memory cheating too. There were
obvious comparisons of The Hour
to "Mad Men" although it's more like "All the President's Men," itself
a period movie now. However, much is not resolved by the end of
the first season, although fortunately the BBC has commissioned another
one.
Jennifer Saunders: Laughing at the 90s (11/11)
Cancer
survivor Jennifer Saunders, her blonde hair growing out again,
presented this Channel 4 retrospective about the state of British
comedy 20 years ago. She interviews a lot of the big names at the time
and there are plenty of clips, alas blown up to fit widescreen, which
means they are cropped top and bottom and a bit grainy--my pet peeve of
the 21st Century. Captions mistakenly keep crediting a majority of BBC2
shows as having run on BBC1--hey, I remember these shows! Saunders
begins by chatting with her husband Ade Edmondson who talks about doing Bottom with Rik Mayall. What's scary is with his bald head, dress
jacket and plastic rimmed eye glasses, he's a dead ringer for a
filmmaker I know here in Seattle. She also reminisces with her former
partner Dawn French about their various triumphs both together and
separately in Absolutely Fabulous and The Vicar of Dibley. Also:
Vic Reeves & Bob Mortimer who brought their surreal brand of humor
to television, which continues to this day with their panel show Shooting Stars. David Baddiel was part of a double act that was so
famous in its day they sold out Wembley Stadium--for a comedy show.
Paul Whitehouse on The Fast Show, and finishes off with Patsy
herself, Joanna Lumley, still glamorous as ever. The program makes
some good points about how the politically correct 80s gave way to a
more free-form type of comedy that was allowed to be more experimental,
as well as having characters, both male and female, doing outrageous
things on screen. All in all, a good decade.
Joanna Lumley's Greek Odyssey (11/11)
Glossy
and informative ITV1 travel documentary about Greece hosted by the
always glamorous Lumley, who shuttles us around various landmarks
around the nation and its many islands, as well as meeting inhabitants
along the way in this four-part series.
The Jury (11/11)
Peter
Morgan ("The Queen") wrote this five-part ITV drama series shown in a
single week that takes us through a retrial of a murder suspect mostly
from the point of view of the jurors. We get to meet them as
characters and see how their normal lives are suddenly interrupted for
this trial. This creates a number of subplots, all the while driven by
the mystery of the suspect's guilt or innocence (though we aren't
really given enough information before the verdict to decide
ourselves). The first series went out 2002 starring Gerald Butler; the
second was in 2011 with Julie Walters as the defense barrister.
Life's Too Short (11/11)
Ricky
Gervais and Steve Merchant team up yet again in this BBC-2/HBO comedy
with Warwick Davis standing in as Gervais as the bumbling idiot who
gets himself into embarrassing situations mostly due to extreme acts of
wanting attention. Davis plays a thinly disguised version of
himself,
one-time star of "Willow" and "The Return of the Jedi," having fallen
on hard times and supporting himself as an agent for fellow little
people. He's funny but that's because he is essentially doing
Ricky's
schtick, the way he talks and reacts to things. Big-time stars
like
Liam Neeson and Johnny Depp make cameo appearances as themselves and
not surprisingly steal the show every time (there's a reason why
they're stars and Davis, and to a lesser extent Gervais, are not).
Neeson absolutely kills in his scene as he tries to do improv
comedy with Gervais without really understanding how it works.
The Man Who Crossed Hitler (11/11)
In
this BBC dramatization about a real life incident that occurred in 1931
Berlin, the Nazis are on the rise in an economically ravaged Germany.
The Communists are their main enemy and after a violent brownshirt raid
at a communist gathering, a private prosecutor named Hans Litten is
persuaded to put Herr Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party, on the
stand. Ed Stoppard (Upstairs Downstairs) portrays Litten, a Jew from
a wealthy family whose parents had baptized to protect him from
persecution. Ian Hart, best known for playing Professor Quirrel in the
first Harry Potter film, is Adolf Hitler, a rising figure in German
politics in 1930 but still stoppable by Litten and his allies. Their
cunning plan is to show Hitler perjured himself in a trial in Leipzig
six months earlier when he swore on oath that his party had renounced
violence. It's a calculated risk, and at first the judge, played by
Bill Patterson, lets Litten cross-examine Hitler and make him sweat.
But you don't become one of the greatest mass murderers in history by
collapsing on the stand in a minor trial just as you're getting
started. Hitler eventually gets the upper hand when it becomes clear
he won't be stopped and he promises that although he will use legal
means, he will forever change the German state and the way it conducts
the law. After the trial, Litten refuses to leave Germany and a
post-script tells us how he was picked up in the first purge as soon as
Hitler was granted unlimited power. Hitler continues to be a
fascinating subject for the British. Not only because he got so close
to conquering their island, but the way the Germans fell under his
spell, and their own history with fascist parties who were sympathetic
to the Nazis.
The Night Watch (11/11)
A
BBC adaptation of Sarah Waters' novel, "The Night Watch," a time
twisting tale of forbidden love during the WWII. Anna Maxwell Martin,
Jodie Whittaker, Anna Wilson-Jones and Harry Treadaway star. Martin
plays Kay Langrish, a lesbian who has survived the war despite having
been an ambulance driver during the London blitz. She had been in a
relationship with the rather impulsive Helen Giniver (Claire Foy), who
now lives with Kay's former partner, writer Julia Standing. Only
through flashbacks do we see how Kay originally met Helen and later
lost her. Martin is outstanding, and unafraid to appear with a minimum
of makeup and a utility haircut. She lets her performance do the work,
just a look often says more than lines of dialog.
Spy (11/11)
This
Sky1 comedy is like two different sitcom genres that have been bolted
together like a horrific Frankenstein's monster. The good part is
Darren Boyd as Tim, an unlikely candidate for MI5 training school, led
by the insane Robert Lindsay in a distinguished beard and three-piece
suit. The bad part is Tim's attempt to gain custody of his snobbish
son who despises him and wants to live with his mum and her clingy
boyfriend. The son is utterly without a redeeming feature and played
in a way that just screams "child actor." There is nearly no connection
between these two concepts, or even much explanation how a loser like
Tim could get accepted in MI5 in the first place, Lindsay's unerring
faith in him, or why his therapist is fixated on him beyond all
reasonable control. Lindsay as always is worth watching but the show is
a mess.
Sugartown (11/11)
I have to admit I was unintentionally laughing at this new BBC drama
set in a town best known for producing rock. What I didn't know
was that Rock is a hard stick-shaped boiled sugar confectionery
commonly sold in seaside resorts...not literally rocks. The joke
was on me. Tom Ellis (the love interest in Miranda) here displays his sinister side (as seen on Merlin)
as one of two brothers who were left the rock factory by their father
and has just returned to the rundown resort town in order to open a
casino, much to the horror of the residents. He also wants to
close down the factory, to the dismay of his brother and the brother's
new fiancee. So the sides are drawn up: the forces of modern
vices and urbanization versus tradition, in a seaside town once as well
known as a dance capital as for candy. Can the locals, with a
little help from a former dancer and her ditzy accident-prone daughter,
stand up to the coming tide? In the case of a mini-series like
this, it's not the outcome but the journey one has to appreciate.
This Is Jinsy (11/11)
Fans
of The Mighty Boosh, League of Gentlemen or Psychoville (which
shares the same director here, Matt Lipsey) will enjoy This Is Jinsy
about the inhabitants of an island nation completely unconnected with
our reality. Written and starring Chris Bran and Justin Chubb, it
initially began as a pilot for BBC3 but was subsequently picked up by
Sky1 along with an all-star guest cast including appearances by David
Tennant, Catherine Tate, Harry Hill, Simon Callow, Jane Horrocks, and
Jennifer Saunders as the continuity announcer on the island's
ubiquitous "tesselators" (interactive TVs that dot the island with
sub-public access fare). Bran and Chubb play many of the island's
residents who seem to have all the trappings of modern society without
really knowing how any of it works (is it an alternative reality? a
post-apocalyptic society that forgot its origins? or we're not meant to
care?). I found This Is Jinsy amusing just because it was so
different than anything else, with its parodies of dodgy low-rent
television, odd musical numbers, and the celebrity guest stars.
Trollied (11/11)
Jane Horrocks, Mark Addy and Jason Watkins star in this new comedy from
Sky1. It's fortunately done in the deadpan style of The Office
on location at an actual supermarket, or an amazing facsimile, with no
audience or laughtrack. Horrocks plays Julie, the uptight interim
deputy manager, Watkins her boss Gavin, and Addy as one of two wiseguy
butchers. Other characters include a daft trainee senior citizen,
the naive stock boy, and a sweet relationship between one of the
checkers and a butcher. It's mostly an observational comedy,
nobody tells actual jokes in 2011, so whether you are going to bust
your sides with laughter probably depends on your taste for these types
of programs. But I have to give Sky1 props for attempting
original programming, and going for the BBC2 understated route rather
than a three-camera show in front of an audience, which shows they are
hoping to target the part Britain that appreciates subtle humor rather
than some cheap American knockoff.
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Written and maintained by Ryan K. Johnson (rkj@eskimo.com).
November 24, 2011