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.

Criminal Minds Season 1: 03-16

This first season moves on apace – with Bones and CSI taking a backseat for now in the procedural show stakes. I do wonder whether we’ll go off it when Mandy Patinkin leaves next season. Anyway, five things:

The scenes where Gideon is stuck back at HQ are played down somewhat, but a lot of fun, mainly due to the exasperation he causes for the wonderful techie Garcia, and his inability to remember who she is. Exceptionally sweet is his warm smile and his line: “Her? Oh, she’s great!” when asked by his colleague to go easy on her.

I continue to not entirely be convinced by Ellen. Of all of the characters, she is the one written with the least consistency, and the one who – despite being pushed front and center in every single episode as the “capable female agent” I’m still not buying as a useful member of the team.

However, we are now as fond of the of the team as we are many of our favourite characters from other shows. Girl One is attracted to Shemar Moore as Derek Morgan, and can even manage to go a whole episode without referring to Patinkin’s Gideon as Inigo Montoya. And though Thomas Gibson as team leader Hotch is clearly stoic housewife eye-candy, there has been enough background information given on him in these last few episodes to flesh him out a little, and make him a more believable head investigator.

Despite the similarities, Dr Spencer Reid – played by Matthew Gray Gubler – is a much more developed and human character than his counterpart Zach in Bones. This isn’t down to the actors – though both do great jobs with the roles – so much as the tone of each show. Bones is a much more cartoony proposition, despite it’s often graphic visuals and sharp writing, but the characters, especially Zach, are written a lot broader than those in Criminal Minds. This is great, though, because otherwise Zach and Reid would be much too alike.

Of course, the show is still great, but hasn’t managed to maintain it’s perfect record, for me at least. My one bugbear with it isn’t bone-deep, but it has become quite persistent, quite quickly. Somewhere around episode 11, for some reason the show-makers decided to start using camera filters and POV shots to “capture the mind of the killer”. The quotation marks are mine – though I don’t actually know what the thinking behind using this technique out of the blue was, and it might just as easily have been “a few years down the line, this guy will start watching it, and using this fuzzy camera shit will drive him to distraction! Let’s DO it!”.
Whatever the thinking, it’s an unneccessary dumbing down of a show that was doing a pretty good job of restraining itself from falling into the usual traps of daft TV. These scenes don’t ruin the show, but they do seem a little pointless and gimicky. And I’ve recently decided that the monster/killer POV shot is an anacronism anyway. I mean, thanks to Raimi et al for coming up with it, but we’ve seen it enough, now, and I think audiences might be becoming immune to the trope.

CSI Season 9: 06 – Say Uncle

Only had the one episode to watch this week – we’re bang up to date with vanilla CSI, it seems.

A slight reprieve on the old forensics-lite complaint I raised about recent episodes – they used them a bit here. They also broke out my old favourite – the plastic rods for working out bullet trajectories. There’s a particularly gruesome moment where they are shown extruding from the bodies themselves – which look better here than I’ve noted in recent episodes, but I wish they’d get over the whole “eye” thing.
Also nice having Hodges in the field a little more. He’s a great character, who has grown as the show progresses, but it’s an indication of how little lab-focussed stuff there’s been this season so far that they have to move him into the field to get him on screen.  

Decent enough mystery in this one, with a couple of twists and turns to it, only hampered slightly for me by the fact that – and this is going to sound terrible – the two young-ish male Korean suspects that they had looked near identical, at least for the short times that they were on screen.

Good to see James Kyson Lee – Ando from “Heroes” – in this episode, however briefly, as an interpreter. His appearance was totally low-key. Having someone from such a well-known show make a cameo like that always seems quite cute to me, because it suggests that he just wanted to work on CSI, no matter the role – it makes showbusiness seem just that little bit less unfriendly.

There’s a little bit of friction between Gil Grissom and new girl Riley Adams here, and though it fits the events of the episode, it’s a little uncharacteristic of their relationship so far. I guess it’s either the show’s way of trying to remind us that she’s the new girl on the job, and as such needs to be brought in line by the team’s leader, or trying to indicate that Grissom is changing. Either way, it didn’t distract from the fact that she’s doing alright as the first proper new insertion into the team since Sara Sidle back in season 1.

And it’s clear that Grissom leaving mid-season isn’t going to be sudden or unsupported. So far, the main focus of the season has been about Gil losing his way, and we’ve had a lot of Grissom “firsts”. This episode’s got perhaps the most pertinent one – throughout it, he has been more affected by the plight of the story’s young victim/suspect than we’ve ever seen him, and in the final scene, he turns to Brass and admits that he was sorry that they had solved this one.
This is a complete contrast to his mantra throughout the show’s run, that you go where the evidence takes you, and that you don’t let it get personal. Far from being inconsistent, though, it’s definitive of the changes that his character is going through, and it’s a brave move on the part of the showrunners to encode what is essentially a cast-change into a show’s whole half-season like this.
It might make for far too morose television, if William Petersen wasn’t so damn good at his job, and so damn watchable.
Actually, going back and typing in the episode name just made me wonder – though “Say Uncle” as a title is relevant to the crime being investigated here, I wonder if it isn’t also a reference to Grissom’s surrender to his growing discontent? 

The Office Season 3: 09-12

The merged office continues to work it’s magic, with Michael making the worst of it:

Michael has three girlfriends in the space of these episodes, and though Girl One struggled to make sense of Jan’s attraction to him, she hasn’t yet seen how quickly it becomes apparent that, against all odds, Michael is the better-adjusted one in that relationship.

“Why did he have to be black? That’s so stereotypical…” Michael’s discomfort at the potential problems of having an ex-convict in the office who is also black are brilliantly observed. But not as funny as his attempts to show his employees that the office is better than prison.

Kevin rules over many of these episodes. He’s easily one of my favourite things about the show. Him and Stanley. And Phyllis. Plus, y’know, of course, Pam and Jim and Dwight.
Michael’s alright. In fact, I came to the conclusion the other day that you aren’t really supposed to laugh at Michael, as much as you are supposed to both recognise and feel uncomfortable about him. This is more of a tightrope in the US show than it was in the UK one – David Brent didn’t have to earn his place in the show for nearly as long as Michael Scott does, which I think is why every now and then they’ll throw you a human moment for Carrell to work with.
With Brent, we really only got those at the end. 

Pam crying by herself in 0912 is just heartbreaking, and it’s testament to these actors, and their writers, that when Dwight comes and comforts her, it remains awkward, but is also totally poignant and believable. Despite, you know, it being Dwight. He goes from a vengeful and protective “Who did this to you?” to “I guess you’re PMSing pretty bad, then, huh?” in the space of two minutes.

Other standouts – Jim and Dwight as an actually pretty awesome sales team, Toby’s little boy “…why?” when Dwight snatches his gift package and Pam’s subsequent gift to him, Karen’s terrible hair, and Andy’s not-subtle-at-all subtle attempts to turn Michael against Dwight.

The IT Crowd Series 3: 01 – Hell

This is one of the better sit-coms to come out of the UK in the last few years, so it’s a welcome return. I could go on about it, but luckily I’ve got this whole “five” thing going on:

Channel 4 scheduling made the return of this a little bit of a damp-squib. Putting it on at 10 on a Friday night meant that all of the people that I’d expect to be texting each other about it as it was broadcast, or talking about it online, were either out at the pub, or had dropped off before it started.
Yes, yes, I know, this being the age of “watch when you want”, everyone will get to see it eventually, but there’s no need to force the point, and while I expect that it’ll still be discussed come Monday at work, that’s hardly the sort of respect a show that has been as good as this one should have been shown.

Having said that, this wasn’t a particularly strong episode. The jokes that there were were still pretty strong, but the balance of the episode was slightly off, and though both Matt Berry as Douglas Renholm and Katherine Parkinson as Jen are great, starting the series with an episode that focussed on storylines for them at the expense of Roy and Moss, who are the real humour-generators of the show, felt like a misstep. Rich Ayoade in particular is tragically under-used in this one, which is a shame because his subplot had a lot more potential than Jen’s. And the final shocking pay-off of Jen’s storyline doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, even by the often surreal standards of the show, and of Graham Lineham’s ouvre.

Still, Douglas’ slap of his advisor across the desk was perfect – an attempt to calm a hysterical man who clearly isn’t hysterical or in need of calming. There’s also a great moment with a gun, that for a second looked like it was going to mirror his father’s bowing out at the beginning of the second series.

Speaking of which, absolutely brilliant to see Chris Morris reprise the role for this episode. I love that guy!

I’m not too worried about this slightly flat episode, though. Traditionally the ratio in an “IT Crowd” series is around four outstanding episodes to two average ones, and an average Lineham is still pretty good TV. At the very least, it’s good to have them all back!

Batman – Brave & The Bold Season 1: 01 – The Rise Of The Blue Beetle

This new series came a little out of the blue, and was an absolute shock to the system! It’s based on the old comic series, “Brave & The Bold”, which month on month teamed Batman with a different superhero from the DC universe.

This is one of those shows that works because of the talent and care that has gone into making it, because if someone described it to me before I saw it, I’d have thought it was the worst idea in the world. It takes Batman back to the 60s (70s?) Adam West version of the character, which I’m preconditioned to loathe by twenty years of having my favourite medium openly mocked.
But what this show is, first and foremost, is the most fun one can have with a television.

I just don’t know what Warner Bros are up to. There are two marketing peculiarities about the release of this show.
For a start, it comes on the back of the singularly most grim version of the Batman since “The Dark Knight Returns” with Nolan’s movie, and couldn’t be a more different take on the character.
And the first character that they have paired the grinning Batman up with is one whose monthly book has just been cancelled – the Blue Beetle.
While the show is a delight, as a cross-marketing exercise, it seems mistimed!

The production design is lovely, with slick, contemporary animation that manages to evoke the smooth and cinematic style of the Bruce Timm series, as well as having the look and feel of a neat mix of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko comic art.

And the humour is great, with a lovely light touch that belies the randomness of the plot. There’s plenty of stuff to love in here – there’s even a wonderful homage to the old TV show, with Batman walking up the outside of a building with a rope. If you can get past the breakneck pace at which the show unfolds, there’s plenty of sharp writing and little details for an adult to play around with.

This is not the grim and posturing Batman that we’ve got so used to over the years, but, you know, we’re grown ups – we should be able to reconcile the different versions of the character in our heads.
The fact is that kids are certainly going to. All this talk of continuity, consistency and canon is entirely an adult’s need to quantify and control narrative – children don’t need that. If something doesn’t make sense to a child – and let’s face it, most things don’t, because kids are retarded – they’ll just reshuffle it around in their heads and invent stuff until it does.
And a child that can’t do that kind of inventing is one that needs to have their imagination stimulated, which shows like this will be great for. God, I actually can’t wait for the next episode. That’s silly, isn’t it?

Criminal Minds Season 1: 01-02

From the first scene, the show has a great use of camera angles and music to build a sense of threat and tension.

Mandy Patinkin totally owns in this show.

Because of this, at least in the pilot, all of the supporting characters, while useful, are almost interchangeable.

At this point, the show shows wonderful restraint, in that it doesn’t revel in it’s own gimmicks like some procedurals do early on.

It runs at a different pace than the other commercial procedurals, and comes across as altogether more thoughtful or intelligent.

The Office Season 3: 07-08

Interesting seeing the dynamics of the two offices as they meet each other.

Michael is always much, much more embarassing to watch when characters from outside the office are exposed to him. Which almost means that his employees are accepting of his excesses.

The Jim/Pam awkwardness, now that they’re back in the same office together, is deliciously hellish and beautifully played, especially now that Jim has a new girl!

Jim: “Say what you want about Michael Scott, but he would never do that.”

Andy Bernard and Dwight’s powerplays against each other are brilliant and cringeworthy, especially when it turns out that they’re futile, because Jim is actually second in command. Dwight knows everything about films. He has seen two hundred and forty.

CSI Season 9: 02-05

Great, cinematic filming and production values, this season, so far.

Well-delivered dramatic storylines, with Grissom and the team coming to terms with Warick’s death, and Sarah’s leaving again at the forefront.

New girl is great, and Lady Heather turns up in Ep. 5. Yay! I love Melinda Clarke!

In a continuation of my one major issue with the last couple of seasons, the forensic examination in these episodes is almost non-existent – the crimes are all solved through data-mining, interrogation and happenstance. What always made this show different was the “science!”, and I miss it. It was pretty.

Odd as it may sound, the corpses this season are all out of wack. In 0902 – The Happy Place, the main body of the day is a woman whose bones apparently liquefied when she leapt from a very tall building onto a bus, and they made a “thing” about her limbs being rubbery and floppy, but in every episode since, the dead limbs have seemed to bend in the same fake looking way. Whereas their eyes have had a lot of attention paid to them. This is a step in the wrong direction – the bodies in CSI have always been getting progressively more awesome, and are what gives the show’s forensic bits a lot of their credibility.

As always, your comments are welcome!

Buffy Season 4: 11

0411 – A New Man: This episode finally addresses the role that Giles has in the new order of things, when Buffy’s preoccupation with Riley and The Initiative means that she totally ignores his warnings of an approaching evil.

It turns out that the evil Giles is worried about isn’t quite what he’s expecting, as old rival Ethan Rayne – always a fun guest appearance – enters the scene. Rayne tricks Giles and transforms him into a demon which can’t make himself understood by anybody except Spike, but of course, with Buffy and The Initiative on his trail, the demon Giles needs to find a solution quickly.

This is another of the character-based episodes that dilute this whole season, but that doesn’t make it a bad one. Head plays Giles’ despondence perfectly, and there is a great uncomfortable scene when he meets, and finds an instant antipathy for, Professor Maggie Walsh.

The interaction between Giles and Spike, paired up in as unlikely a team as is possible, is great, too, and makes for the real core of this episode, despite efforts to make it about Buffy’s relationship with Giles.

The problem with this leg of the season persists, though – it continues to be more about how seperate the team is now than about the moments when they’re together. As an outsider coming into this group, Spike continues to be the best thing about the season, now that Oz is gone.

Bones Season 4: 04

0404 – The Perfect Pieces In The Purple Pond: You know, they’ve done such a good job on the characters in this show that when the plot of a particular episode is a little contrived or daft to the service of great character moments, you don’t even mind all that much.

The body and investigation in this episode is interesting enough, but it pretty much takes a backseat to the team’s reunion with Zach. To try and make Zach feel better, Hodgins leaves case files with him, which prompt him to escape from the asylum where he is being detained to return to the lab and help out.

It’s an interesting plot device, in that it is almost entirely arbitrary – the members of the team who aren’t under psychiatric observation for being the protege of a serial killer would almost certainly have been capable of solving this crime without him, and it’s an odd move to blow the quite major plot-twist of having Zach be able to return at will on such a minor story.

There’s also something a little bit worrying about the moves made in this episode to soften the impact that Zach’s actions in the season 3 finale may have on his character’s possible future – work is done here to lessen the consequences of both the damage that he deliberately did to his own hands, and his confession of guilt from that episode.

Getting rid of Zach was a brave and huge decision, and as much as I miss the character, I personally reckon that that’s one area where the status quo shouldn’t – and in fact can’t – be regained. I’m a little concerned that the negative reaction that fans seem to have had to his removal, or some ludicrous neurotic brain-fart on the part of the showrunners, might prompt exactly that outcome.

But anyway, it’s still a really fun episode, and despite the silliness of the character’s return, it’s dealt with in a characteristically funny and consistent way. The requisite musical montage sequence at the end is the episode’s only odd point – the new intern is given a reflective moment that seems out of step with the amount of importance his role has in the show at this point.

CSI Season 9: 01

0901 – For Warrick: This episode was just heartbreaking.

At the end of last season, Warrick Brown was fatally shot, and though that fact wasn’t much of a surprise, the twist that his killer was under-sheriff McKeen came a little out of the blue – especially considering that that character had always been shown as a sympathetic character before.

Still, it seemed to be setting up a major subplot for the ninth season – although of course, it was obvious that the first episode would deal primarily with Warrick’s death and the effect that it had on his colleagues and friends.

So, anyway, this episode takes up seconds after that one left us – and starts plucking at the viewer’s emotions from the start, by having Grissom get to Warrick before he has drawn his last breath. Grissom, normally so thoughtful, isn’t considering the possibility that he might disturb evidence – he is the most emotional we have ever seen him. Petersen plays it perfectly, and as the other team-members – including a returning Sarah Sidle – react to the murder, the order of the day is a level of restraint in the writing which we don’t normally see on this show.

In fact, for the most part, we don’t really see actual reactions, we just see the aftermath – Nick Stokes standing, looking on, in shock – Greg Sanders lost and looking for anything to occupy himself – and the team back in the lab responding in a number of different, convincing ways. Hodges doesn’t say anything – an out-of-character response that brings greater weight to the event – and the normally pragmatic Dr Robbins, in an underplayed and at the same time utterly right moment, simply says that he won’t be doing the autopsy, he has asked to be replaced for it.

If there’s anything that isn’t quite right about the episode, it’s that the storyline – that seemed to be leading to a longer investigation about police corruption at the highest levels this season – is brought to a conclusion – albeit a satisfying enough one – before the end of this episode.

It’s the one thing that doesn’t ring quite true about it all. When shooting Warrick, it’s clear that McKeen is doing it to avoid Warrick continuing the investigation that will eventually lead to his capture. Up till now, the man has done a fine job of keeping himself at a distance from any trail of evidence, and in fact Warrick doesn’t even consider that he is in danger when McKeen approaches his car, so beyond suspicion is the man.

That McKeen chose to kill Warrick himself isn’t so difficult to believe – he’s in a position to get close to him, and he already has a solid plan, to frame the man that Warrick has built a case against in that last episode. His motivation is sound up till that point.

What doesn’t make sense narratively is that instead of making himself scarce – something that would be easy to do because there are no witnesses, and the location of the shoot means it will probably go undetected for a few minutes at least – he sticks around to verbally establish the frame of his patsy, rather than allowing the obviously rattled CSIs to work it out for themselves with the physical evidence that he’s planted. Effectively, he puts himself in their field of vision, for no apparent reason. And then behaves erratically enough throughout the episode that he does nothing to stop the story’s climax, which has him caught.

It’s a silly thing to have spoil an otherwise great episode. The investigation of the team is sound, and it’s easy to see how, if McKeen had to be caught this early in the season, it could have been pulled off. Instead, a man who has apparently made a long career out of corruption and getting away with murder seems to manage to dispose of the only person who might be a threat to him, and then forget everything he knew about staying out of sight.

Warrick’s funeral, though, makes you forget all that. If you’ve spent eight years watching this show, it’s probably impossible to be unmoved by the way that this episode deals with the aftermath of the murder of one of it’s founding regular cast-members. There are a couple of trite moments, but they’re nothing like what you’d expect from a show like this, and for the most part they’ve allowed the emotional aspect of the death to come from the event rather than from any awkward scripting or badly conceived musical montages.

It should be interesting to see where this season goes from here. We already know that Petersen will be replaced at some point by Laurence Fishburne, and that should spell a lot of change over the next few months.

The Unit Season 2: 04-07

It’s been a while since we watched any episodes of “The Unit”. It wasn’t for lack of enjoyment – despite it’s tendency towards jingoism, and sometimes heavy-handed moralising, it’s always entertaining. It has just the right balance of great action that is downplayed enough to almost feel authentic, and human drama back at home with the wives.

If nothing else, until “24″ is back in the new year, it’s the best dose of shootin’ and torturin’ terrorists available.

0204 – Manhunt: The team operate on US soil, tracking down a terrorist before he can carry out a potentially devastating attack. This part of the story is handled pretty well – with flesh-crawlingly mean support from the wonderful Jim Beaver as a downhome racist called Lloyd Cole.

On the home front, there’s what looks like it’s going to be a “child safety” story, that ends up being a “the ends justify the means” parable, with Kim Brown at it’s centre. Of the wives, she’s the most complicated to get my head round – I find her pretty attractive, but what I think is supposed to be her headstrong and admirable attitude often comes off as a little too impulsive and self-righteous.

However, she gets a great scene with Robert Patrick as Colonel Tom Ryan. Patrick handles this role consistently well, doing a fine job of balancing the Colonel’s humanity with his authority and military rationale.

0205 – Force Majeure: This was clearly the show’s Hurricane Katrina story. It’s set in a North Carolina hospital buffetted and flooding from an ongoing hurricane – the team’s concern here is the rescue and return to his country of a military dictator that they know is guilty of some terrible, genocidal activities.

When one of the team discovers a group of old and infirm patients left behind by the evacuating hospital staff, and the only helicopter available to rescue them has some severe weight requirements, a hard conflict between duty and morality ensues.

The show does a great job with it’s TV budget, and as viewers we didn’t feel short-changed by the external scenes of hellish conditions, or the main set used throughout the episode. The morality play as well is executed solidly, with believable but not obvious responses from the characters.

It’s an odd assignment for the team, with lots of problem-solving and not much combat potential, so resident killer Mack is back home for the “b” story, which is a bit fluffy and daft, but perfectly offsets the fraught nightmare back in the hurricane.

0206 – Old Home Week: This is another odd episode – the bulk of which is focused back on-base with another human interest story led by the wives. It’s a bit of a soap-opera, it’s core the search for the wife of a long-dead soldier whose undelivered love-letter is the lynch-pin of an effort to raise money at a charity event. The process of investigation as they look for the woman is pretty interesting, actually, which is good…

Because the other story, involving the ins and outs of an assassination of a terrorist by the team, was a little confusing. The standard narrative trick that the show uses of dumping you in mid-operation prevails, here, but where normally the mission either comes together in a way that explains the events leading up to it’s objective, or there’s some stealthy exposition, both of these things are entirely absent in this episode.

Still, the climax of the mission is carried out entertainingly enough, and there are enough nice elements introduced here, such as the debate between Tiffy and a peace protester, and a revelation of one of the Unit’s deepest secrets, to make it a perfectly good episode.

0207 – Off The Meter: This is one of the most nerve-wracking episodes we’ve seen so far – which is odd when you consider that the story it deals with is much more personal than the freedom-threatening big-scale stories the cast normally have to deal with.

Jonas and Bob are asked to do a personal favour for a friend – a simple enough rescue of a girl from a cult leader. The job goes south, though, when they get tied up in a murder, and what with it being an unsanctioned mission, and one on the ground in a US town, their training and military status is no use to them.

At the same time, a more domestic but just as worrying plot is brewing, as Tiffy takes responsibility for a minor traffic incident to help out a debilitated friend, but finds the situation getting quickly more complicated when the police take her in for questioning in relation to a much more serious crime. Questions of loyalty and duty abound, and before long the mess has put her husband Mac in a difficult position with Colonel Ryan.

It’s a strong episode, despite the lack of a military assignment – in fact, probably because of that. In most “The Unit” stories, the question isn’t whether or not the characters can get out of a situation – we already know that they have the skill, the firepower, and the suction to get through almost anything – it’s about how they’ll decide to get out of it. But there are a couple of points in this one where the guys in the field seem to have over-extended themselves, and the situation at home is still unresolved and looming by the end of the running time.

Leverage: Pilot Episode

Warren Ellis mentioned this new show by a guy that he worked with on the enjoyable but abortive “Global Frequency” pilot, so I thought I’d have a look.

The premise of the show runs thus: Timothy Hutton is Nate Ford, an insurance investigator on the outs with his former employer, who finds himself emotionally blackmailed into helping an aerospace executive retrieve some apparently stolen designs from a rival. The payback for Ford is that his old employer is the rival’s insurer, and will end up paying out on the loss.

Ford is the “one honest man” that the exec needs to keep his team of thieves in line – and he is already familiar with all of them. They successfully steal the plans…

… Only to find that they are actually on the receiving end of a double-cross, and the exec plans to repay the team’s services with a fiery death.

It’s probably pretty predictable and linear stuff – and obviously this episode is all intended to set the scene for an ongoing series, so there’s a very definite endpoint that the story has to reach, which you can sometimes see telegraphed a little. It’s also got a lot stylistically and conceptually in common with the UK show “Hustle”.

But none of that really matters, because it’s quite a fun piece of TV. The cast, thrust together and not entirely trusting of one another, held together with the unrepentantly cynical and unsatisfied Ford, do a great job, and the script cracks along well enough that you don’t always notice if things get a little clunky.

It’s good to see Christian Kane in a show that makes good use of his flexible look and confident delivery, and I’ve enjoyed watching Hutton in pretty much anything since the lovely and underrated “Beautiful Girls”. Aldis Hodge is a fun face that’s new to me, and Gina Bellman surprised me – mainly because I really didn’t enjoy most “Coupling” episodes I saw.

And, uh, I kind of fell for Beth Riesgraf a little, so I can’t really talk objectively about her performance, beyond that it was a Whedonesque mixture of homicidal, kooky and sweet.

Production-wise, the episode was slick, with a couple of lovely visual motifs, and some only-slightly familiar bits of physical action in the heist/scam segments. But the real strength here is in the way that the characters riff off each other.

What might be tough is sustaining that throughout a series. There’s a lot of stuff in the backstorys of these characters, and plenty of potential jobs for them to pull, with each player having a very definite role to take in any future stories. But with the lack of any real risk – because each member of the team is, at this stage, oh-so-good at what they do, and the tone of the show is pretty light and tongue in cheek – any drama or tension really comes from the bristling mistrust and hostility between the members of the group.

As I said before, by episode’s end Ford still holds a little animosity toward his team – after all, he is the “honest man” that chased thieves like them for years – but he is still de facto leader of the group. And the other members are already showing a grudging admiration for him, and each other, when the final credits roll.

So it remains to be seen what legs that aspect of the show might have, and tension may need to be introduced somewhere else. Still, it was a nice slick ride, and I had to have a giggle at the way that the final scene, with it’s strong taste of “A Team”/”The Equalizer” mash-up, played out.