nixsight

So yes, we’ve already established that I’ve been lame as hell at blogging recently. I have my excuses. None of them are good.

I mean, look at Rol: He had the perfect excuse to get behind, and he keeps plugging away. Me, I’ve just got a bit distracted and put on a bit of weight. Not even, you know, Marlon Brando weight. LAME!

So, anyway, I’ll try and be quick with these… there were a lot of shows watched in the last couple of months, so as always, skip to the ones you’re interested in, and I’d love to hear your comments…

(We’re still watching “Criminal Minds”, “24″ and “CSI NY”, and those shows are all still worth watching, but I’m missing them out this time round because there’s not much new to say without a deeper examination of individual episodes than I’m able to give today.)

Big Love 0301 – 0303

One of the peculiarities of the US TV system is how long it can take for an apparently successful show that was always intended to continue to actually get round to another season.

“Big Love” was one of those shows, and Girl One had been waiting what felt like forever for season 3 to come along.

When it did, we didn’t quite know what to make of the first episode…

One of the things about “Big Love” is that it has always managed to balance the quirkiness of the central family’s lives with the sometimes backwards, often darker insights into compound life – the loving, near normalised face of living “The Principle” balanced off against the un-civilised and exploitative.

It’s a tightrope that the show has always done a great job of walking, but the first episode of the new season seemed a little off somehow, with too many storylines developed so much since the last season, and too much work going into trying to bring the regular viewer back up to speed. It was as if there wasn’t quite enough heart to it, and without heart, this show gets too busy.

However, by the end of the episode, we’re back on touching and funny ground, and by episode two, it’s back to being one of the few unreserved TV pleasures around – soapy without being anodyne, and funny without being wacky. And more Amanda Seyfried – I can’t stress enough how important that is.

I read somewhere recently the idea that “Big Love” is a show for atheists about religious people, and there’s something to that – through the lens of the LDS hardliners and Bill et al’s adherance to polygamy, the viewer gets to explore a bunch of ideas about how the most alien of lifestyles aren’t really that alien at all…

Which, you know, makes it sound trite and sappy. It really isn’t, and an episode of “Big Love” has as much energy to it as an episode of “24″, and more genuine emotional content to it than a couple of seasons of a show like “Desperate Housewives”.

Still, this season isn’t the best place to start – as I said, that first episode is a little shaky. For the already converted, though, it’s all good.

Lost 0501 – 0506

“Lost” continues to confound and play around with it’s own format, and to be honest I was starting to wonder whether this time round they’d gone a few steps too far for the audience, but the impression I get so far is that people are quite pleased with season 5.

I had my doubts because on the one hand, the idea of the castaways shunting back and forth in time is a pretty big leap to take from what has gone before, and it’s narratively a major league game-changer – moreso than the relatively superficial and more technical-than-diegetic flash-forwards – and it’s a further move away from the episodic structure that gave us some of the best episodes – and on the other, we’re spending more time with fairly new characters – many of whom were introduced during the frenzied and as such not-full-of-opportunities-to-bond 4th season – than we have since the much reviled second season.

Add to that the point that, in these episodes at least, alongside the time-leaping islanders and all of the revelations that they’re illuminating, we’ve got the static future timeline of the people who left.

Still, in some ways, despite the constantly shifting narrative and the fact that as with season 4 we’re not getting distinct episodic storys to get our teeth into, the showrunners are back on solid form, delivering the classic “Lost” tricks of revealing lots of little answers to questions, while giving us enough slivers of the big ones that we feel just satisfied enough to not ask the big questions a lot louder, and then every now and then dropping a twist into the mix that we hadn’t even considered.

The big characters like Hurley, Sayid and Sawyer – largely missing from last season, at least in terms of the characterisation that certainly I loved them for – are finally back, too, which is great fun. And Benry just continues to rock my world.

Battlestar Galactica 0411 -0416

I struggled to get up to speed with BSG before the mid-season hiatus between 10 and 11, but I managed it, and so found myself face to face with the revelation of Earth that that section ended with.

Since then, the show has been pretty much unrelentingly bleak, but you know what? I’ve been enjoying it anyway. I don’t mind the bleakness, because their situation is looking pretty bad.

And I’ve been loving it, but I admit, I can understand why other people haven’t. Because I’ve been enjoying the show for the little moments – the times when Adama meditates with his ship, as opposed to the seemingly endless and irritating times when he languishes with Roslin, herself now exposed as ultimately weak – the scenes where some of Starbuck’s old fire comes back for a second, or the moments where Saul Tigh’s brilliantly flawed character actually shows where it’s strongest, as the idealistic and stubborn backbone of characters who have otherwise given up.

I’m even quite enjoying some of the space operatics, though there’ve been precious few of them.

Though people who complain about the show can normally give very different examples of why the show isn’t any good any more, all of them boil down to the same problem, I reckon: The show tied itself to a formula of mystery and revelation, when what was attractive about it – what was actually it’s unique selling point – was actually the militarism and epic “spaceness” of it’s setting and the scope and potential effects of it’s mission.

The intrigue was a function of the cute – but never really satisfying – fact that now there were Cylons that looked like humans, and we didn’t know who they were – but at some point the showrunners forgot that who they were was the interesting part – how they were was never really an issue. I don’t recall anybody asking that question after watching the first two seasons – because in fact other media has already provided plenty of perfectly adequate and simple reasons why the Cylons might have developed human-looking models – either deliberately or through a kind of natural machine evolution.

There then followed a sequence of key points where the writers seemed to become enamoured of the more trite, less entertaining aspects of their story. That Roslin believes she is on a holy mission, that the Cylons have a single god, or that Starbuck is at the centre of some huge prophecy are all nice bits of flavouring, and stories like the discovery of another Battlestar, or finding a potential home only to be invaded by an occupying force of Cylons in internal conflict over how to deal with the human threat are proper, meaty ideas that you could spend months worth of episodes over. But what happens instead is for some reason we get months of navel-gazing and quasi-religious philosophising, and all of the epic storylines get relegated to a couple of throwaway episodes.

And because they’ve made things complicated for themselves, they’ve ended up exposing themselves as setting up a narrative that gives the impression of being planned, without it actually being laid out in advance.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that – I suspect that it’s the way “Lost” is being run. The problem is Battlestar Galactica’s “all or nothing” approach to these story elements. I don’t know if there were fears of cancellation early on that forced the issue, but pretty much since the Admiral Cain storyline, the show has given the impression of rushing through the big plotlines that they wanted to pull off.

So unlike “Lost”, with it’s mastery of the classic frog-boil approach to mystery storytelling, wherein they release lots of small revelations, giving the impression of moving the mysteries forward without often shocking the audience with the unlikeliness of any particular route that the story is going down, “Battlestar Galactica” will seed and release a massive game-changer in the space of one episode, and rather than it having the perhaps desired effect of making it seem extra shocking, it makes the clearly just-invented or unconvincing just more garish and unwieldy.

One friend hasn’t really been getting on with the show since the “All Along The Watchtower” reveal at the end of the penultimate season, and I totally feel his pain. Personally, though, I think that had that story been seeded over half a season, rather than an episode and a half, the way “Lost” would have done it, we would have had a bit more time to get used to it, and been a bit more intrigued to see it reach fruition when it did. As it is, it still sits there like a huge undigestible lump.

So anyway, I’m still enjoying the show, and these have been consistently well produced and acted episodes, but I really do wish they had paced themselves – it’s what would have made the difference between great fun TV and truly classic science-fiction.

Also, is it me, or has nearly every character thought about eating a gun at some point in the last two seasons?

CSI 0907 – 0911

What I can’t believe is that it’s so long since I’ve written one of these TV posts that I haven’t even covered William Petersen’s final story and Laurence Fishburne’s arrival.

These were pretty good episodes, all in all, and Grissom’s departure was handled with appropriate emotion and very little schmaltz – he’s been on the show for ten years, so a little sentimentality is fair – and Fishburne’s arrival was handled in a wonderfully atypical way.

For a start, the idea that he was replacing Petersen was a great piece of misdirection by the show – in fact, though they technically swap places in the credits at around the same time, Fishburne’s Dr Raymond Langston joins as a green trainee CSI, with the peculiar sex symbol Catherine Willows being promoted into Grissom’s old role.

And Langston’s introduction is also peculiar, by procedural standards, because so far he has been more clearly defined by his deficiencies rather than his expertise. In fact, whereas we’re used to characters in such shows either being prodigies or naturals, Langston joins the team as part of his third distinct career – a mature man who has previously left two other professional lives largely based on what he perceives as his own failures in those roles.

What we did see in 0911 – The Grave Shift - the episode covering his first day in his new job – was his ability to fail, but also his determination to get stuff right, and it’s an interesting tack to take in a show that otherwise has been rolling along fairly established tracks for a few years now.

Damages Season 1

I heard about this series last year, but it didn’t really catch my eye until Amazon.co.uk offered it for under a tenner. At that price it’s pretty amazing telly.

Actually, at any price it’s a pretty good show.

A legal drama with the added bonus of artful structure and cinematic cast and production values – so not “LA Law” or “Ally McBeal” – the season follows one case and the intrigue and human relationships that go on around that case.

What gives the series an added kick is that the season is structured with a wonderfully effective dual timeline – you see, “Lost”? You see how you can do that and it just be a narrative technique without any problems? – alongside the main sequence of events in the show, we get a look into the horrific, mysterious events that occur at the end of the season, and this adds context and momentum to what we’re watching.

Glenn Close beautifully plays the delightfully hard to read and often monstrous Patty Hewes, with Ted Danson playing against type to great effect as the oily and corrupt billionaire defendant, and Rose Byrne playing the role of the talented, ambitious but ultimately naive law school graduate Ellen Parsons. There’s a warm and appealing performance by Tate Donovan, and a beautiful, understated portrayal of a conflicted man in Zeljko Ivanek’s Ray Fiske.

The one thing this season does wrong is that it falters ever so slightly at the last hurdle, choosing setting up a next season over giving itself a nice, punchy closer. Several storylines tie themselves up and give satisfying closure in the final episode, and there’s nothing wrong with leaving a few threads or a decent final scene cliffhanger to get the viewer invested, but it shouldn’t get in the way of a decent finale, and this one runs the risk of that happening.

Dammit, people, act like you’ve already got a next season, and let the story unfold properly! It’s the new season premiere where you’re supposed to set up the new season! This is something that Whedon and “24″ and early seasons of “Prison Break” and “Lost” really got right, and so far “Heroes” and “Battlestar Galactica” have mostly screwed up, pacing wise, and it’s a shame something as masterful as “Damages” wobbled on this score.

Being Human Pilot and Season 1

“Being Human” was, hands down, probably my favourite piece of British TV in the last few years.

Sadly, having commissioned such a singular and solid piece of drama, BBC seemed to struggle with working out what to do with it, and left it in one of their invisible slots – late night on one of the supplemental Beeb channels – and then panicked when it came to marketing it, labelling it as youth horror comedy through their handling of it.

If you saw any of the trails – because some people did – you probably thought you were getting a piece of high-concept bedsit comedy. You know, like “Spaced” but with monsters.

What the show actually is is totally different. Though hopefully there’d be enough of a crossover of interest with the early adopters of the one show that they’ll become early adopters of the other.

So, basically, the gist is:

Two chaps – one of whom happens to be a reformed vampire, and the other a reluctant werewolf – decide that they have to try and reconnect with humanity. So they rent a house. Which turns out to be haunted.

It’s easy to see how the BBC might have got a little nervous – it does sound like the setting of a joke, I suppose.

But the thing is, “Being Human” isn’t funny. Wait, that’s not right… it is funny, quite often, but it’s funny in that way that a really well observed script reflecting conversations between ordinary people can often be funny.

“Spaced” is a useful touchstone, actually… where that show approaches everyday life in a hyper-real way that almost makes a genre narrative of it, this one takes a completely genre-based situation and totally normalises it. At times, you almost forget the secret nature of the characters, and it’s just about three people living together.

There are some odd points – for a start, Russell Tovey as George, the neurotic chap struggling with his lycanthropy, sometimes feels a little too wacky for the show, but after a couple of episodes you start to realise that his twitching mannerisms – normal for Lee Evans and “the nervy one” in the modern sitcom – are actually completely in keeping with his character, and it almost becomes tragic watching him. He always seems about ten seconds from a nervous breakdown.

Toby Whitehouse (Whithouse?) very occasionally allows his characters to drift into sixth-form purple prose in voice-over, most often when talking about the nature of being human and lonely and monstrous, but it’s hard to hold it against him when the words so often hit on pretty insight.

And sometimes the music choices are a bit… obvious.

And yeah, if it sounds like I think those complaints are a little weak, it’s because I do.

The things that are great about this show are hard to explain, so if you didn’t see it, you should seek it out and work out what you think for yourself. Because if nothing else, it’s that damn-near rarest of things: a different and sharp piece of British genre drama that isn’t so self-conscious that it feels the need to shout all the time about how it’s just horror/sci-fi, so doesn’t need to be taken too seriously. This doesn’t happen often enough, as it is. For it to actually be this good as well is to be applauded.

Flight Of The Conchords 0201 -0207

After a not-that-good first episode, season 2 of “Flight Of The Conchords” properly kicked off on episode 2, and is just awesome! I thought that having used up most of the duo’s pre-existing songs in the first season might slow this one down, but if anything, there are more songs, and without the benefit of familiarity, I can’t be sure, but I think some of them are almost better.

Standout points for me: I think if anything Murray is more funny this season. The visit by New Zealand’s prime minister mostly recycled one joke over and over, but it was a pretty funny joke, and there was a lovely “Matrix” riff in there. And the appearance of Mary Lynn Rajskub – Chloe from “24″ – was most welcome in the same episode.

Outnumbered Season 1 & 0201 – 0204

We’ve been watching lots of episodes of this show at the end of the night, when there isn’t time for another long episode, but we want to watch something bright.

It’s a tough show to explain, because it should be awful – it’s a BBC produced sit-com about two worn-down parents and their out-of-control children, for a start – but in the execution something magical happens, and it’s just wonderful, funny and touching in equal measures.

And when it’s funny, it’s really funny.

Though the fact that much of the show is improvised around the children’s spontaneous output is what has got the show noticed – and some of it truly is hilarious, especially from the youngest child, a precocious and too-sharp little girl called Karen – I’m always impressed by the skill and restraint put into the adult roles in the show, with the always reliable and lovely Claire Skinner wonderful as the not-quite-perfect mother, and Hugh Dennis showing craft and talent not remotely hinted at in most of his career’s output as the father.

Can you tell we love it?

(Though it is slightly disturbing how much Ramona Marquez – Karen – resembles a very young Girl One, which gives us a worrying glimpse into one of our potential futures. Not the one where the economy crash spirals down into the downfall of civilisation, and I’m a grotesquely bare-chested renegade, stealing and killing my way across the post-society ruins of the South of England.)

Dollhouse 0101 – 0102

The main reason I started doing TV episode blogging was so that I would have somewhere to put the musings that all of the online discussion of new shows or episodes generated in my fevered headcase.

The problem with that is that when I fail so dismally at posting, everyone else has already said what I was going to say.

So, then, “Dollhouse”. Not as bad as people seemed to think, but still a dramatic step down from Whedon’s other output.

It’s not the basic concepts or themes I’ve got a problem with, and thus far the script and actors have done their best, but it’s difficult to imagine how Whedon, who created some of the most steady-handed and fun – if not always awesome – pilots in recent TV history could helm such a floppy-handed and over-rendered one here.

The key concepts in the show have some potential for great genre TV, f’r sure, but what Whedon does with that first episode is neurotically flood it with too many details. The TV wisdom behind such a thing, presumably, is to hook the viewer in to how many cool secrets and pieces of the different supporting character’s pasts might unspool over the following months, but the result is quite different.

What actually happens is that you already know enough about every character in the show – through overlong meaningful glances or misjudged exposition – that there doesn’t seem to be much need to tune in for future episodes, especially if they are as dense and funless as this one.

And though every genre series requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief – even moreso the ones supposedly set in a real-ish world – Whedon’s approach shines too bright a light on the slightly shabby workings of the show universe.

Personally, I could have done with a pilot that was all told from Echo’s point of view, with minimal attention to the workings behind her mindwipes and handling, so that the viewer had just one solid narrative to bite into. What we get instead is not one but two false starts – so three points where we’re supposed to start paying attention to this whole new series.

The thing is, Whedon knows better – his other shows have been the perfect balance of audience-pleasing action and weightier fare – so I have to wonder how much pressure, perceived or real, he felt from the network to make the first few episodes as grabby as possible.

The second episode isn’t bad, though there’s still a tad too much exposition. And really, Whedon? In the second episode you have someone essentially hiring her to be a victim? Are you that desperate to fire up feminists over one of the key issues already coded into the show?

Terminator Sarah Connor Chronicles 0214 – 0215

You know, fuck you, internet! And I include the guy who runs this show, and yet still made some weak-ass excuse for 0215 – Desert Cantos. Yes, that episode was a bit slow and downbeat, but it immediately followed an episode that had a T1000 killing fucking everyone in a secret factory, and then blowing the whole thing to hell!

Exactly how much action do you want? That was the first genuinely awesome sequence that Shirley Manson has been in since she first showed up!

And of course the next episode was a bit depressing – a terminator killed pretty much every employed person in a whole town! A bit of solemnity isn’t out of the question – one woman dies in a car crash in Paris and the whole UK came to a stand-still, so the first definitive, measurable mass casualties in the total war between humans and machines can be a bit of a tragedy!

Life 0211 – 0215

Okay, still intriguing cases and wonderful scripts continue to make this show a lot of fun, and still nobody is really talking that much about it. Hopefully, that doesn’t mean much in terms of viewing figures, and it’s in for a nice healthy run.

These episodes feature lots more Garrett Dillahunt, which is always a pleasure – incidentally, he is also outstanding in supporting roles on “Terminator – Sarah Connor Chronicles” and “Damages” – and a lot of nice scenes with the always entertaining Donal Logue – also providing a brief performance in “Damages”.

But you know, much as I have a bit of a man-crush on Damian Lewis, it’s basically Sarah Shahi that I can’t take my eyes off on this show.

The L Word 0105 – 0203

Speaking of which, Sarah Shahi has just turned up in the second season of “The L Word”.

This show continues to surprise me with how much it doesn’t suck. It’s about women! Who are in relationships with other women! In the medium that brought us such “women in relationship” shows as “Desperate Housewives”, “Ally McBeal” and “Sex And The City”. The sheer amount of disproportionate drama and irritating mood-swings should make it unwatchable.

But strangely, it’s totally not. Though the show does, very occassionally, take a trip into the slightly wacky slapstick exchanges that such entertainment can’t help when showing the awkwardness of two people in love or lust (a trend started by the spaghetti nose-bump in “Lady And The Tramp”, perhaps?), it’s otherwise quite real when it comes to dealing with the women’s personalities and interactions.

Yes, yes, they all have recognisable archetypal characters, and they all have very Hollywood jobs – the manager of an art gallery, a writer, a super-successful hair-stylist, a journalist etc etc – but when they’re upset or happy, it’s generally about pretty real things, and the actresses do a great job with it.

Plus, you know – Mia Kirshner, Sarah Shahi and Jennifer Beals? That’s a hell of a lot to have going for it.