New British TV Show
Reviews
November 15, 2013
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Ade in Adland (11/13)
Adrian
Edmondson presents this ITV documentary series that not only highlights
famous adverts but puts them into context with how cultural changes
over the decades affected Britain and the products it wanted to
purchase, particularly food.
Atlantis (11/13)
The latest
fantasy series from BBC Wales following in the footsteps of Merlin
and aimed at the Saturday evening family audience. A modern day young
man named Jason searching for his missing father suddenly finds himself
washed ashore on the fabled island in what appear to be ancient times.
Quickly he is introduced to an oracle (Juliet Stevenson), King Minos
(Alexander Siddig), a nerdy young Pythagoras, and Hercules (played here
by Mark Addy as an overweight lazy coward) all of whom speak what
sounds to us like contemporary English. Jason has some connection to
Atlantis which the oracle frustratingly refuses to divulge, and like
his namesake is pretty good in the hero department and slaying
minotaurs. So far it's not as compelling to me as Sky1's similar Sinbad series last year.
Bad Education (11/13)
Jack
Whitehead co-wrote and stars in this BBC-3 comedy as Alfie, the cool,
hip, but mostly incompetent teacher to a classroom of misfits at a
second-rate school. The head of his department (Mathew Horne) is
bonkers, while the Headmistress (Michelle Gomez) loves to torment
Alfie. After she fakes her death in the second season (with Alfie's
help), her replacement (Samantha Spiro) starts graphically getting it
on with Alfie's dad (Harry Enfield), much to his horror. ABC
is about to do an American remake that will star Whitehead as a
transplanted Brit in San Diego. I'm not sure if it's the Britishness
that makes Bad Education work as a format (as opposed to a "fish out
of water" concept) but it's worth a try.
Badults (11/13)
Ben Clark,
Matthew Crosby and Tom Parry play three young men with the same first names who are housemates
with a serious case of arrested development in this BBC-3 comedy. Their
misadventures bring to mind the zaniness of The Young Ones with
frequent cutaways or fantasy sequences right in the middle of a scene.
Jack Docherty turns up as well as Ben and his sister's boss, and he's
just as nutty. Aimed squarely at the twentysomething demographic of
BBC-3, the energy and comic creativity of the series make it a success.
Big Bad World (11/13)
Blake
Harrison (Way To Go) stars in this UK Comedy Central series who is
desperate to get back with his ex-girlfriend (Scarlett Johnson, Pramface) but must first move back in with his reluctant parents (James Fleet,
Caroline Quentin). Harrison has perfected this sort of twentysomething
bumbling idiot who can never cut his losses and see what's right in
front of him.
Big School (11/13)
David
Walliams co-wrote and stars in this BBC comedy at a dysfunctional
comprehensive school as Mr Church, an anally retentive chemistry
teacher (with a creepy assistant played silently by Julie T Wallace)
who is smitten by Miss Postern (Catherine Tate), the new French
teacher. They are sort of into each other but Church's pathological
need for one-upmanship causes a lot of friction in their relationship.
Other staff include Philip Glenister as the crude mouth-breathing PE
teacher who also has his eye (and another body part) on Postern; a
large Welsh teacher who is bullied by the students; and Frances de La Tour as
a chain-smoking Headmistress who greatly dislikes shenanigans. Harmless
but not in a league with Jack Whitehead's similar Bad Education.
Blackout (11/13)
Chilling
Channel 4 TV movie that has an extended power outage in Britain begin
to break down society when it appears no end is in sight after several
days. A number of characters are followed including a family head by a
survivalist equipped with a generator and food who finds out the hard
way when the veneer of civilization is stripped away from his
neighbors. The gimmick of the movie is it's done in the style of
"found footage" shot either with camcorders or mobile phones that
document the entire story piece by piece all the way to its tragic
conclusion.
Burton and Taylor (11/13)
BBC
TV movie docu-drama about the reunion of Elizabeth Taylor (Helena
Bonham-Carter) and Richard Burton (Dominic West) in a 1980s revival of
Noel Coward's "Private Lives" on Broadway. Having famously had an
affair on the set of "Cleopatra" decades earlier, as well as several
notorious marriages (and divorces), the press can't get enough of this,
and audiences flock to the theater to see what will happen each
evening. Taylor is a huge prima donna of course, but Burton thinks he
knows how to tame her, but then discovers she has the wrong end of the
stick when it comes to their relationship. Much of this has to be
speculation, as many scenes occur with just the two of them alone in a
room where there were no witnesses, but that doesn't mean it's not fun
to wonder just what went on.
By Any Means (11/13)
Tony
Jordon co-created this overly slick BBC police drama about an elite
"impossible missions" force of cops who get assignments from Gina McKee
to go after baddies the regular police can't touch. The influence of Hustle is very strong here, as our gang plan an elaborate ruse to
trap their victim, it appears to all go wrong near the end, but
SURPRISE, thanks to scenes we weren't shown earlier, they planned ahead
for the disastrous contingency and win the day. And this happens every
single week without fail. I suppose on one hand it's no different than
paying to see a magician perform where there's a tacit agreement
between him and the audience that even though we know he is fooling us,
we allow ourselves to be entertained by the spectacle and not knowing
how it's done. But as a TV drama, I remain unconvinced.
Chickens (11/13)
Simon Bird,
Joe Thomas and Jonny Sweet co-wrote and star in this Sky1 comedy series
set in
1914 just after the war breaks out, as the last men in the small
village
of Rittle-On-Sea. Cecil (Bird) is medically unfit to serve, George
(Thomas) is a conscientious objector hanging on to his fiancee by a
thread, and Bert (Sweet) is just an amoral idiot. The fiercely
patriotic women of the village despise these men who stayed behind and
make their lives hell. For some reason, perhaps owing
to stiff-upper-lipism, the boys continue to endure this abuse in a
world now run by women, often to comic effect.
Count Arthur Strong (11/13)
Steve
Delaney has played the titled character for years on radio, and here it
was loosely adapted for TV along with writer Graham Linehan for the
BBC. Strong is a former vaudevillian double-act whose late partner's
son Michael (Rory Kinnear) wants to write a book based on their lives.
What Michael doesn't realize at first is that Arthur is insane, an
easily-befuddled and distracted talentless old man who always gets the
wrong end of the stick when he isn't rambling off-topic about
something. He mostly hangs out in a nearby cafe, and Michael soon
becomes one of the regulars there. The episodes are about their
misadventures together. The highlight for me came when Arthur goes to a
talent competition audition (with a borrowed dog) only to go on a tear
about their intelligence, "I mean, dogs don't have much of a brain, do
they? If they did, they'd be ruling the world, riding round on horses
with machine guns, like the monkeys did that time. Glad all that's
blown over," he muses. Of course, nobody else in the room has a clue what he's talking
about.
Dates (11/13)
Channel 4
series about a series of first dates that at first go spectacularly
wrong but then head off in an unexpected direction. It appears to be an
anthology series with a different set of characters each week, but then
old ones come back and we realize we're seeing one interconnected
universe. The cast included Ben Chaplin, Will Mellor, Andrew Scott,
Oona Chaplin, Greg McHugh, Gemma Chan and Sheridan Smith.
Father's Day (11/13)
Ray
Winstone, Charles Dance and John Simm star in this ITV4 short film
which introduces a great deal of characters and situations and makes us
guess at how they are all connected. Spoilers: Turns out the theme is prostate
cancer.
The Ginge, The Geordie and the Geek (11/13)
Hilarious
sketch comedy from Scotland (where all is made clear with the subtitles
turned on). Some bits are less than 30 seconds, getting to the joke and
moving on, others such as Scottish warriors riding brooms instead of
horses, last several minutes as they ride off to battle. The hits-to-miss ratio is pretty darn high,
making this an entertaining series.
The Guilty (11/13)
Three-part
ITV mini-series in the mold of Broadchurch about a small town where a
young boy has been missing for five years. Suddenly his body is found
and it reopens the investigation (and old wounds) for the family,
neighbors, and the police. Now in charge is a police inspector played
by Tamsin Greig who finds the case makes her worry about her own son.
The father (Darren Boyd) remains a possible suspect, and there are
plenty of red herrings to uncover before the the truth finally comes out.
Jo Brand's Great Wall of Comedy (11/13)
UK
Gold brings a number of celebrities together to talk about classic TV
comedy, with clips, interviews, and even some messing about in the
studio in front of a live audience. The perfect show for a nostalgia
channel like UK Gold.
Lawless (11/13)
A pilot on
Sky Living starring Suranne Jones as a newly minted judge (technically
a recorder) dealing with the issues in the court and in her personal
life. Her former mentor who opened a lot of career opportunities for her
has grabby hands and is not above exploiting his knowledge of her when
appearing in her court. A number of subplots are also introduced,
presumably to be taken up should this advance to a series.
Love and Marriage (11/13)
ITV comedy series about Pauline Paradise (Alison Steadman) whose three
children have all grown and she realizes one day she's married to a
bore and walks out on him. She moves in with her sister (Celia Imrie) a
former model who lives life to the fullest. The Paradise children are
keen to get their parents back together, but they all have family
problems of their own. A familiar TV cast along with Steadman's always
impeccable performance (Pauline pathologically carries a shopping bag
with her at all times) gloss over some of the cliches that are
encountered.
The Mill (11/13)
Based on
the people and history of the Quarry Bank Mill, Cheshire, this Channel
4 19th Century drama shows what life was like for "employees," (more
like slaves) who signed on to work at the mill as kids to avoid living
in grim Victorian orphanages. In return for room, board and a basic
education until they turn 19, they were expected to work 12 hours a
day, six days a week without complaint. A trade union movement to
reduce work hours is bitterly opposed by the mill owners who have hired
an engineer to work on a automated loom that will eventually usher in
industrialization. While the overseers are mostly portrayed as
dark-souled villains (particularly Kevin McNally), the family that own
the mill believe in their hearts that they are giving a better life to
children who otherwise would be starving and suffering. But sometimes,
sacrifices must be made.
Pat & Cabbage (11/13)
Barbara
Flynn and Cherie Lunghi play lifelong middle-aged friends in this ITV
comedy. Pat (Flynn) is a widow with two grown daughters, while Cabbage
(Lunghi) is a free-spirit former model who got her nickname from a
famous photo she once posed for. Pat takes a shine to another parent
(Peter Davison) where her grandson attends school, but it's been so
long she's forgotten how to court properly. It's mostly about women in
their 50s getting into hijinks, which I suppose is harmless enough.
Peaky Blinders (11/13)
Cillian
Murphy stars in this intense and stylish BBC drama series set in 1920
Birmingham. He plays Thomas Shelby, a young man back from the trenches
of WWI and now the ambitious family patriarch of gangsters specializing
in illegal gambling. Their gang gets their name from their trademark
caps which have razor blades sewn in which they use as weapons in
fights against rivals. As Shelby is building his empire across the city
he stumbles upon a cache of weapons which he promptly steals. This
brings the attention of not only the IRA who are keen to get their
hands on the guns for their incipient revolution in Ireland, but also
Winston Churchill who deploys a ruthless police inspector (Sam Neill)
with orders to recover the weapons at any cost. The inspector's secret
weapon in his cat-and-mouse game with Shelby is Grace (Annabelle
Wallis), an Irish undercover agent posing as a barmaid at his local.
Shelby also is dealing with a war with a rival gypsy gang, trying to do
business with the syndicate that controls the race tracks, and keeping
his own family in check including a sister who is in love with a
Communist (Iddo Goldberg), a matriarch aunt (Helen McCrory) and several
brothers. Steven Knight wrote the series which is stunningly realized
by director Otto Bathurst, every episode looks like a movie. The
Weinstein Company has already picked up US distribution rights for
three seasons of Peaky Blinders, clearly putting a great deal of
faith in this period drama.
The Psychopath Next Door (11/13)
In
the first of a series of pilots on Sky Living, Anna Friel plays the
title character, Eve Wright, who has apparently stolen the identity of
a therapist, moves onto a suburban street, and begins wreaking havoc
with her new neighbors. The first episode is all set-up, it would be in
subsequent stories whether we see if she succeeds like Dexter, or
finally gets her comeuppance.
Run (11/13)
Four episode dramatic mini-series from Channel 4 that each week focused
on a different character who were loosely connected and how they made a
decision to alter their lives. The first was about Carol (Olivia
Coleman) who trades in stolen phones and whose sons murder a stranger.
Then Ying (Kaie Leung) who received the property from Carol tries to
break free of the Chinese gangsters she's indebted to, only to involve
a black barber. One of his clients, Richard (Lennie James), a former
drug addict tries to get enough money to buy his estranged son a
computer after stealing a car. The woman who owned the car, Katarzyna
(Katherina Schuttler) turns out to be the fiancee of the dead man the
boys killed and who owed a lot of money to the Russian mob.
Sound of Cinema: The Music That Made The Movies (11/13)
As
a huge consumer of movie soundtracks, this BBC-4 documentary series was
right up my alley. Presented by Neil Brand, he interviews composers
and uses generous clips from films (thanks to blanket BBC licensing
agreements) to illustrate the evolution of music in movies from the
silent era to today, and how styles have changed over the years.
Southcliffe (11/13)
Four part Channel 4 mini-series about a town that is the victim of a
shooting spree. Much of the timeline is jumbled up which makes it a bit
hard to follow, but eventually the focus falls on David Whitehead (Rory
Kinnear), a BBC reporter who grew up in Southcliffe and is forced to
reconnect with a difficult past when he returns to cover the story.
Other residents were played by Shirley Henderson and Eddie Marsan.
Stephen Fry's Key to the City (11/13)
Stephen Fry takes advantage of his honorary "freedom of the City of
London" to explore parts of the Square Mile of the capital not often
seen by either residents or tourists in this breezy one-off ITV
documentary. I'm not sure how much access is due to Fry's "freedom" or
just having a film crew and the National Treasure status he has
attained that allows him to interview all sorts of people around the
city, but it's a great travelogue.
That Puppet Game Show (11/13)
It's a BBC celebrity quiz show where all the presenters are puppets
made by The Jim Henson Company, except for the two human contestants.
Half the show have the players doing various games and competitions
egged on by the puppets, but the other half is the backstage of the
show with the lives of the puppet characters. It's almost like
Executive Producer Brian Henson misses the days of "The Muppet Show"
and the behind-the-scenes shenanigans, and they've brought it back
here. Clearly aimed at a family audience on a weekend, I would
have ditched the humans and the game show aspects entirely and focused
just on the puppets.
Time Travelers Guide To Victorian England (11/13)
A
three-part BBC Open University documentary series presented by Dr Ian
Mortimer that has the unusual premise of showing what the 19th Century
was like if you were able to go back and visit. Each episode focuses on
a different social class: the common people, the rich, and the newly
created middle class, and how their lives were so much different than
ours.
Up The Women (11/13)
Jessica
Hynes (Spaced) wrote and co-stars in this brief BBC Four comedy set
100 years ago in a small village. Women's suffrage has yet to come to
England, and progressive Margaret (Hynes) must convince the more
reluctant members of the Banbury Intricate Craft Circle to support the
cause, including Queen Bee Helen (Rebecca Front). The entire series is
set in the village hall the Circle meet in, and there are occasional
male characters introduced as well. Low-key but charming.
What Remains (11/13)
Tony
Basgallop wrote this complicated BBC suspense mini-series set in a
residential building with different tenants on each floor. It begins
with the surprise discovery of the body of the woman from the top floor
who had been dead in the attic for months without anyone having noticed
she was missing. This intrigues the about-to-retire detective Len
Harper (David Threlfall) who begins to investigate the neighbors and
ferret out their stories. This includes the lesbian couple with a
secret, the newspaper man with a creepy son, the young married couple
about to have their first baby, and the fastidious school teacher in
the basement flat who supposedly lives alone. Over the course of the
four episodes, we find out how they were all connected with the dead
woman (seen in flashbacks), and Harper continues the investigation even
after he leaves the force without mentioning it to anyone. You can try
to guess whodunit, but you'll probably be wrong; it's the twists and
turns that are entertaining here.
The Wipers Times (11/13)
Ben
Chaplin and Julian Rhind-Tutt star in this fact-based WWI drama about a
subversive satirical newspaper that was published in the trenches by
soldiers who found a printing press in a destroyed French village (the
title comes from way many British tommies pronounced Ypres as
"wipers"). It's done anonymously but their old-school commanding
officer is not amused, but fortunately a sympathetic general (Michael
Palin) provides cover and lets them get on with it. The man most
responsible for the paper was Captain Fred Roberts who despite the
paper's success with fellow soldiers is unable to parlay it into an
actual journalism job after the war and went back into mining in North
America for the rest of his life.
The Wrong Mans (11/13)
Mathew
Baynton and James Corden wrote and star in this BBC comedy/drama as two
doofuses working for the county council who get wrapped up in an
elaborate web of deception involving assassination, kidnapping, Chinese
gangsters, Russian spies, and a femme fetale. Baynton plays the
reluctant Cary Grant-like character who would prefer that it just all
go away so he can return to his boring life, but Corden dials it up to
11 as is his wont, overeagerly jumping in even when it might be life
threatening. The closing titles are actually more interesting than the
opening ones, rare for a BBC series (co-produced by Hulu and available
to watch now on Hulu Plus).
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Written and maintained by Ryan K. Johnson (rkj@eskimo.com).
November 15, 2013