The Medium is Not Enough TV blog

Third-episode verdict: The Philanthropist

Rob Buckley — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:46:58 +0000

The Philanthropist is one of those ideas which seems good in someone's head, quickly becomes appalling once it's been stuck down on paper and then can either get better or get worse once it's on television. It will never, ever be great, however.

While you have to give the show brownie points for dealing with socially worthy issues in primetime drama, you can't have a show about a rich white guy travelling the world, sorting out other countries' problems in under an hour and for it not to be offensive in some way.

The first episode at least went to scrupulous pains to point that out, almost to the extent of sacrificing all drama and characterisation from the piece. Episode two tried its hardest to deal with Burma/Myanmar and to introduce the characterisation the first episode so desperately needed. In doing so, it became more than a touch offensive, with white billionaire managing to sneak passed the Burmese army to interview imprisoned former leaders. As you do.

It wasn't helped by the new title sequence, with James Purefoy jetting around the world to generously pet small African boys on the head.

Episode three, while not appalling, was pretty close, dealing as it did with the import of Eastern European women to Paris to act as prostitutes. Yes, someone's been watching Taken, but decided to remove any hints at the drug trade, because then we might have a complicated story to deal with. It was all very crassly handled, and once more, the best you can say for it is that its heart was in the right place.

Despite all this philanthropy, it's very hard not to hate all the characters. James Purefoy's character may be on a mission to heal himself, but at the moment, he's a drunk, self-centred, emotional wreck who womanises semi-vulnerable attractive women as part of a self-confessed addiction; his co-CEO is little more than a cipher and Neve Campbell's character barely even warrants that, despite attempts to broaden her in the third episode. Shockingly, Michael Kenneth Williams has had even less to do, and most of that has been getting his head kicked in and standing around helplessly.

The whole thing could still have been handled better if it wasn't told in flashback. Each week, it's a different story, being recounted by a different lead to a different supporting character. It's clumsy, takes up too much, and takes you out of the action altogether.

The result, unfortunately, is that while the show tries hard to be intelligent, it's just glib, moderately offensive and not very involving. And I'm not sure, no matter how hard the producers and production crew worked, that it could ever have been anything more.

Carusometer rating: 3
Rob's predication: Will not be renewed for another season, and might not make it to the end of this one

BBC1 autumn drama showreel, including Waters of Mars

Rob Buckley — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:14:51 +0000

The Beeb's just unveiled its Autumn drama showreels, which includes snippets of Criminal Justic,Emma, Framed, Garrow's Law, Material Girl, Paradox and Small Island, which I've embedded above (UK only – take that Hulu users!).

Oh yes, it also includes clips from Spooks with Richard Armitage and Doctor Who with David Tennant, who some of you quite like, I hear.

The Beeb's also come up with a carousel of more clips that I can't embed over here.

Full summaries of all the new shows – as well as Gavin & Stacey – after the jump.

(continued)

Review: Warehouse 13 1x1

Rob Buckley — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:53:23 +0000

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, SyFy

Let's play a game: guess the TV series. I give you some clues, you have to guess the show.

Clue 1: A top-secret government organisation has a mission to capture strange artefacts

What do you reckon? Torchwood?

Okay. Clue 2: Two government agents - one intuitive male, one rational and methodical female - investigate the paranormal

Hmm. The X-Files?

Clue 3: A man and a woman, together with an older guy, have to store away dangerous supernatural objects to protect the world.

Friday The 13th: The Series?

No, in fact, all the clues were for the same show: Warehouse 13, SyFy's new "'The X-Files meets Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Moonlighting' meets Torchwood meets Friday The 13th meets Eureka meets The Dresden Files meets The Middleman" series.

Do I need to mention it's a little bit derivative?

(continued)

Random Acts of Ali Larter: Answering The Phone

Rob Buckley — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:11:43 +0000

Today, Ali Larter is answering the phone. Hmm. That's a bit dull. Oh wait. She's answering it in character on the set of the fourth season of Heroes, which is now filming. That's more interesting.

Bit of a change in costume since the end of last season, but nice clothes all the same, Ali.

UPDATE: And there's more!

Have you seen Ali Larter acting randomly? If so, let us know and we'll tell everyone about it in "Random Acts of Ali Larter"

Thursday's new Hillary Clinton news

Rob Buckley — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:59:31 +0000

Film

Cameron Diaz to star in Green Hornet?
Dodgeball 2?
Remo Williams returns?
Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk to sar in Tucker and Dale vs Evil

British TV

Smack the Pony cast reuniting

US TV

Flashpoint held back by CBS to 2010
Terry Kinney joining The Mentalist
New promos for Community and Parenthood
SJP acquires Prospect Park West
Hope Davis replaces Julianne Moore as Hillary Clinton in The Special Relationship
A character returns to Dollhouse [spoiler]

Meme of the Week: your favourite 'TV transplant'

Rob Buckley — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:03:10 +0000

No. Not that. Well, not unless you really want it to be, you sicko.

No, this week's Meme of the Week is inspired by Frasier, Ashes to Ashes, After M*A*S*H, etc. You have a favourite TV character – or merely favourite TV show. You take that character or a character from the show and you transplant them to a new environment. That's a 'TV transplant'. So…

What's your favourite TV transplant?

I've given you a couple already, but feel free to suggest your own: after all, TV is littered with plenty of spin-offs (K9 and Company, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Private Practice, Going Straight, Highlander: The Raven). But what's your favourite?

For advanced students, what's your least favourite, or perhaps you'd like to create your own: Frank Spencer on Batllestar Galactica? Neil Burnside on The Brittas Empire? Jack Bauer on Pushing Daisies? What do you fancy?

As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.

Review: 10 Things I Hate About You 1x1

Rob Buckley — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:16:01 +0000

In the US: Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC Family

10 Things I Hate About You was a teen comedy in 1999 that had two distinct advantages over other teen comedies: it was smart and it had a great cast, including Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, Allison Janney, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and David Krumholtz. Based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and set in Padua (High School), it depicted the various attempts - some fair, some foul - by boys of the school to woo the two sisters, Bianca and Kat.

Ten years on, ABC Family have tried to recreate the magic of the movie in a TV series, by dragging in its original director and most of the script. It's not a bad try, but it's just not all that.

(continued)

Deadliest Warrior: IRA vs the Taliban

Rob Buckley — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:30:13 +0000

Charlie Brooker's You Have Been Watching started on Channel 4 last night. I won't bother with a review: it was pretty good, I thought, but I think we're getting a bit meta when we start reviewing shows that review shows.

But it was gratifying to see that he picked up on, Deadliest Warrior, which I nominated at the start of last month for the title of the stupidest TV programme ever. There weren't any clips available on YouTube at the time, but there are now, since in case you missed it – and it's still on 4oD if you want to give it a whirl – here's the match you've all been waiting for: the IRA vs the Taliban, handled as tastefully as you'd expect from Spike TV.

Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Sid and Nancy

Rob Buckley — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:15:12 +0000

The wonderful Zooey Deschanel and the perfectly acceptable Joseph Gordon-Levitt have a new movie out called 500 Days of Summer. I haven't seen it, but I hear that despite them, it's not very good. Oh dear.

But in the movie, there's a scene where the two young lovers compare their relationship to Sid and Nancy's. Here it is:

Cinemash is doing a new project in which various actors re-enact scenes from famous movies. So it's appropriate that they start off with our Zooey and Joseph Gordon-Levitt re-enacting a scene from Sid and Nancy. Unfortunately, you can't embed the vids (easily), so you'll just have to go to Cinemash to watch it.

Also coming up: Cheech and Chong do Tron (seriously), Milo Ventimiglia from Heroes doing Oldboy and Will Arnett and Xavier from Adult Swim do Carrie. Should be interesting.

Wednesday's rejuvenated Caruso news

Rob Buckley — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:53:28 +0000

Doctor Who

Torchwood gets nearly 6m viewers

Film

Randall Wallace to rewrite McG's 20,000 Leagues
Ryan Phillippe and Val Kilmer to star in MacGyver parody MacGruber?

British TV

Simon Brodkin gets his own BBC3 sketch show pilot
ESPN to launch a new UK sports channel
S4C to do Fferm Ffactor – The Apprentice meets The X-Factor… on a farm

US TV

Clip from missing Dollhouse episode
Trailer for NBC's Day One
The origins of Lost
CSI: Miami to flashback to 1997

Review: Torchwood - Children of Earth - Part 1

Rob Buckley — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:30:18 +0000

In the UK: Monday 6th July, 9pm, BBC1. Parts 2-5 airing Tuesday-Friday
In the US: Monday 20th July, 9/8c, BBC America. Parts 2-5 airing 21st-24th

You know Apple, right? Makes iPods.

Well, it was set up by a guy called Steve Jobs. You know him, right? He has a reality distortion field.

Anyway, he got thrown out - and the whole company fell apart. When he came back, it suddenly became great again. Insanely great.

All of Apple's intervening bosses said more or less the same thing: Apple has Steve Jobs' DNA. Only Steve Jobs can run it.

I'm beginning to wonder if Russell T Davies is the Steve Jobs of Torchwood. He created it. It's his baby. He wrote the first ever episode, which was really very promising. Since then, he's had minimal input and it's range from absolutely horrifically bad to not bad but still not great.

However, has it ever quite achieved the heights we thought it could achieve?

No.

Essentially, it's an embodiment of all his obsessions and interests: sci-fi, soapy relationships, sexuality, Welshness, action and Doctor Who. Who else could ever work with those themes as well as he can?

Well, guess what? After moving from BBC3 to BBC2 and now to BBC1, Torchwood once again has Russell T Davies in charge for a five-part, nightly mini-series called Children of Earth. I won't pretend episode one was an absolute classic of television, but it really was pretty good.

See what I mean? He'll be creating the TorchPod before you know it.

(continued)

Today's Joanna Page: Bleak Expectations

Rob Buckley — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:35:36 +0000

Today's Joanna Page was going to be Radio 4's Dickens piss-take, Bleak Expectations:

The plot revolves around Philip "Pip" Bin and his two sisters, Poppy and Pippa, whose seemingly ideal life is disrupted by the death of their father and the madness of their mother. They are then locked away by their guardian, Mr. Gently Benevolent, in St. Bastard's, the most vicious boarding school in England, and St. Bitch's, a nearby convent. Pip and his sisters attempt to free themselves of their guardian with the help of Harry Biscuit, whose father invented the biscuit.

I knew she was in it: her IMDB page says she is* and IMDB would never lie, would it?

I listened to the whole first series, trying to work out which character she might be. It's actually pretty good if you know Dickens even vaguely, although it does remind me of all those skits you used to write in sixth form where you'd play on words, looking for a silly alternative meaning to every line and then running with the sillier meaning. But it's very funny all the same, and Anthony Head's great as the evil Mr Benevolent. I'll probably scout out the second series when I can, and a third series has just been recorded.

Anyway, for a second, I thought she might be Flora Dies-Early, a pastiche of David Copperfield's Dora Spenlow, whom she played in the most recent BBC1 adaptation. But she wasn't.

Was IMDB mistaken? Surely not. So I investigated further…

(continued)

Weird old titles: Help!… It's the Hair Bear Bunch!

Rob Buckley — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:58:36 +0000

I remembered what one* was I going to do last week: I can't imagine why it slipped out of my mind.

It was, of course, Help!… It's the Hair Bear Bunch!

Possessing one of the longest, oddest names of any TV programme, Help!… It's the Hair Bear Bunch! was a show of its times – the swinging, free love, hippies and playboys 70s. Produced by Hanna-Barbera in 1971, it featured three bears who live in a zoo: the giant-afroed Hair Bear, Square Bear and Bubi Bear. However, unbeknownst to the zoo keeper, their cave is really a convertible bachelor pad, and the pacifist sleuth of bears spends all its time trying to escape from the zoo to get to parties. This they do with the aid of their invisible motorcycle.

Huh. How 70s is that.

It got cancelled pretty quickly and obviously hasn't lasted, being so much a product of its time. It probably only lingers on as a memory for anyone who watched Multi-Coloured Swap Shop on Saturday mornings in the UK.

Anyway, here are the titles. The theme's pretty catchy though.

* By which I mean 'old title sequence that probably isn't that weird but which makes Rob a little bit nostalgic'. I know what I'm doing next week, too. How's that for planning?

Tuesday's "girls behaving badly" news

Rob Buckley — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:54:29 +0000

Doctor Who

David Tennant and Sarah Harding to star in new St Trinian's film

Film

Trailer for Megan Fox's Jennifer's Body
Virginia Madsen joins Father of Invention
Mandate acquires You Are A Miserable Excuse For A Hero
Blade prequel to focus on Stephen Dorff?
Peter Krause joins Beastly
George Clooney to play Jack Ryan?

British TV

Comedy pilot season at Channel 4
David Suchet, Charles Dance and Richard Coyle to star in Sky1 version of Terry Prachett's Going Postal

US TV

Lost writer Brian K Vaughan leaves show
Rita Wilson to develop Middlesex for HBO
Jane Lynch leaves Party Down for Glee

Monday's Sitting Tennant from Ms Rullsenberg, Sister Chastity, Ms Jaradel and Amy!

Rob Buckley — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:58:45 +0000

Hallelujah! We have a new arrival! Join with me in welcoming Amy to the world-improving joy that is Sitting Tennant. Welcome, Amy! May you enjoy your stay with us.

As per usual, it's Monday so it's relax and meditate day, with David Tennant as your mantra. Feel free, though, to keep captioning Friday's pic of the week if you tire of looking at these for some reason.

Rullsenberg: 35.5
Sister Chastity: 33.5
Jaradel: 25.5
Rosby: 2.5
Amy: 2
Persephone: 1

Got a picture of David Tennant sitting, lying down or in some indeterminate state in between? Then leave a link to it below or email me and if it's judged suitable, it will appear in the “Sitting Tennant” gallery.

Every photo displayed on Monday (one per person who sends one in) gets a point, with a bonus point if it's from the latest DT production; the best pic in the stash each week will appear on Friday and get three points.

You can also enter the witty and amusing captions league table by commenting on Friday's Sitting Tennant photo, the best caption getting 10 points.