Change Your Image
BarnabusRex
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Burnside: Trial by Fire: Part 1 (2000)
Great Story
Burnside the series was a failure for a number of reasons which have been dealt with in other reviews and Christopher Ellison himself has made his own criticisms of the show. It is a real shame that the show couldn't either carry over some of the flavour of The Bill or forge it's own path more successfully because Burnside is one of the great characters of British TV.
Episodes 5 and 6 of Burnside constitute Story 3 of the series. Story 1 was meh, story 2 was a disaster which spent too much time over Zoe Eeles, as Burnside put it, 'shaving her fanny' in order to tempt a serial killer with the end result being a complete embarrassment for all involved.
Story 3 however is a bit of a minor masterpiece. Burnside had some really good casting, after the main trio, Tony Selby, Paul Nicholas and Shane Ritchie are all class acts and elevated the material. But what makes this particular story is a real powerhouse performance by Christian Solimeno as Dale Vickers, a smiling wideboy gangster with epilepsy. Solimeno is all over the screen and at first it feels like he is overacting his socks off, but the character coalesces like a pearl and by the end you realise the performance is a real thing of beauty, even to the point of stealing the show from Ellison and Justin Pierre who, as Sergeant Summers, carries most of the police side of things this time. The story has other flaws, the writing takes convenient shortcuts at times, but it's definitely an enjoyable watch and Solimeno's performance is outstanding.
Frasier (2023)
It's good
It's not surprising to see many low rated reviews for the return of Frasier. Even after just the first couple of episodes. The original run of Frasier is one of the best conceived, best scripted, best cast, best performed comedies ever made. It is beloved by many.
So when all of those elements are stripped away, many are of course going to immediately turn away. But let's look at what is actually happening.
Firstly, we are in the age or reboots and remakes and sequels, and almost all of them are not just garbage, but highly insulting to the originals, the talented creatives behind the originals and the audience who loved the originals. I lasted ten minutes into the Saved by the Bell sequel. Star Trek is a dumpster fire. I could fill the entire review talking about many awful shows there are. So does Frasier fall into the same traps they do? No. It just jumps straight back into the late nineties era as if it had never left. And that's absolutely all that is needed. There are plenty of nods to the old show that feel proper, within universe and not overdone.
Secondly. Frasier isn't just one of the greatest comedies of all time, it can lay claim to being one of the best tv shows of all time. Twenty years on and there are still episodes I can quote by heart. Can the new show capture the lightning twice?
Well no. Not a chance. Trying to recapture greatness is to invite failure. It shouldn't try. Frasier 2023 needs to be as different to Frasier 1993 as 1993 was to Cheers. If Frasier 2023 fails, it will be because it is trying too hard to be 1993.
So the opening episode shows us our clear parallels. 1993's first episode was entitled The Good Son. 2023's first episode is entitled The Good Father and while John Mahoney is absent, his spirit is inherent in the production as both Frasier and Freddie deal with Martin's absence. Frasier 1993 was about learning to be a good son, 2023 will have Frasier learning to be a good father. A natural progression of the character but only time will tell if it is a natural progression of the show.
Now I am seeing reviews saying that 2023 is not funny. I think people forget that The Good Son wasn't particularly funny either. No The Good Father is not smack you in the face funny, but it does have a good few chuckles while it establishes the characters if you are willing to indulge it.
Now, the new characters and actors. This is going to be sore. The cast for 1993 was stellar. 2023... is not.
But, I'm being facetious. 1993's cast is stellar in hindsight. Apart from Grammar, none of them were household names. What was astounding was that they all had instant chemistry with each other. In 2023, despite most of the cast having much more experience, the chemistry is missing. Hopefully this is something that will grow throughout the season, but right now the show rests on Kelsey Grammar's shoulders. Fortunately Grammar's shoulders are extremely broad and he holds the show together effortlessly.
What's wrong with the cast? Nothing really, none of them are bad actors, just none of them feel right just yet. More importantly, none of them grabbed the bull by the horns the way David Hyde Pierce and Jane Leeves did in their first episode going way above and beyond just what was on the page. Compare 1993 Frasier with something like Newhart. I would happily watch an episode centered around Marty or Niles, or Daphne or Roz or even Bulldog, but I wouldn't watch a Newhart episode centered around Larry and Darryl and Darryl because their only function was to orbit around Bob Newhart. 1993 was a true ensemble comedy where every character could hold their own both dramatically and comedically and even in tragedy if need be. A very, very rare occurrence in sitcom land. In 2023, the other characters are so far only orbiting around Kelsey Grammar. Making this the Kelsey Grammar show.
Let's talk about the other star. Nicholas Lyndhurst. Lyndhurst is... difficult to watch because he is perhaps the ultimate typecast actor. Although he's been in loads of sitcoms over the years, it's almost impossible to watch him because that long lanky frame and hangdog face is and always will be Rodney Trotter. Lyndhurst does do a great job as Alan and his more advanced age does help him, it's just that the audience has to work overtime to accept him in this or any other role. However the character may be a misstep as he is both obviously not Niles, being the opposite of Niles in many ways and yet an obvious Niles surrogate.
As for the rest of the characters, both writers and actors will need to step up their game. They certainly aren't bad, but neither are they vital. After The Good Son episode; Marty, Niles and Daphne are essential characters. After The Good Father episode, any of those secondary characters could disappear and I probably wouldn't notice or care too much. It's cruel to say this as this is Anders Keith's first ever tv role, but compare David Hyde Pierce as Niles, or Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper, to Keith as David Crane. While Keith is appropriately 'out there', he's currently too timid. He can, and hopefully will, do better. That said, I point to Mila Kunis in That Seventies Show. The first season (having lied about her age to audition), Mila could not act to save her life. But you can see her watching her co stars and absorbing everything. By episode 14 or 15, she finally gets her comic timing down and she never looks back. Young actors need time. That's not an excuse that Jack Cutmore-Scott, Jess Salgueiro or Toks Olagundoye can rely on though as they all have plenty of experience.
So to sum up. Do I recommend Frasier 2023. Yes, without a shadow of a doubt. It's not insulting. It respects the audience and the past and if you're willing to be lenient with it, it is plenty funny. For the current time period it's much better than anything else out there, Is it as good as 1993 Frasier? No. But I doubt anything could be, especially straight off the bat. If it never rises above being The Kelsey Grammar Show, then it's still worth your time as Grammar is one of the great American actors (Go watch Boss if you haven't already).
Does it have the potential to grow? Yes. I already hear episode 2 is much better than episode 1. The more it succeeds, the more time it has to reach its full potential. So long as it realises that its full potential does not lie in emulating 1993, it deserves every chance to get there.
Nighty Night (2004)
Fails where The Office succeeded
Nighty Night is a sitcom in the style of The Office. A laughter track free zone where the fun and cringe comes from watching a group of utterly grotesque characters interact in what is otherwise a hyper-real world. The Office succeeds not because Ricky Gervais is a brilliant actor playing a magnificently conceived nightmare in David Brent, but because every other character in The Office can see Brent exactly for who he is. Even in more stylised sitcoms such as Fawlty Towers or Red Dwarf, Basil and Rimmer are regularly called out on their insanity, or found out by humorous consequences.
Nighty Night has one nightmare character in Jill. Jill has no redeeming features whatsoever. She is a lying adulteress, selfish to the point of evil and by the end of series 1 she appears to have murdered half the rest of the cast.
Nothing wrong with that, she joins a long line of great grotesques from Blackadder to Edie and Patsy.
The trouble is pairing this particular grotesque with hyper-reality like The Office. In order for the character of Jill to succeed in her antics, every other character has to be thicker than mince. The Office's supporting characters are bored and uninterested, but they aren't stupid. In Nighty Night, not a single other character appears to have more than a single brain cell while Jill runs rings round them by, for example, asking them to knowingly eat poison or obviously photoshopping a nose to look too big because the woman she is about to perform plastic surgery on has never seen a photo of herself before.
In a hyper-real world the supporting characters have to be hyper-real, or it just doesn't work. The only believable supporting character is Rebecca Front as Cath who does a great job with a character who sees what is going on but is too much of a jelly to deal with it.
You can go traditional sitcom style where Blackadder is supported by idiots such as Baldrick, George, Percy and Melchitt, or you can go hyper-real, but then you have to give the supporting characters some form of reality. Otherwise it's playing against itself.
Hyper-real isn't my kind of humour, but I was able to appreciate The Office as excellent craftsmanship. Nighty Night tries to emulate it, but doesn't quite understand what made The Office work and so it starts fighting against itself. It's not confident enough to back its own play. At the end of series 1, half the cast has been killed off - except Terry is revealed to be still alive post credits and then in series 2 the vicar and Glen are revealed to still be alive. So they've already run away from the darkest parts of Jill. It just doesn't have the courage of its convictions.
I struggled through the first series, but series 2 is where the wheels really come off. Series 2 has two major problems. The first is that it is now aware that its premise and its style are at odds, so it drops into straight up sitcom territory with Jill running around randomly performing medical operations/murder and sneaking into empty operating theatres where a patient is prepped for operation, in order to steal that person's sperm, and doing so to a comedy soundtrack. In a sitcom world where nothing matters and hospitals are randomly left empty so anybody can wander in, that's fine. But in a hyper-real world, it's not. Which is it? Is it ok to laugh at this character like Rimmer and Blackadder now? But the success of Jill as a character depends on her being a real person we might, god forbid, meet in real life. We're a long way from real life by the time we get to series 2.
The second big problem with series 2 is Reggie Perrin syndrome. The first series was a coherent story designed to wrap up all the characters with a big bow and end all their storylines at the conclusion. But, as with Reggie Perrin, the success demanded that a new series came about that has to undo the bow, including undoing character deaths, and then figure out how to do new things with the characters that ends up dumping them in situations that just don't work with how they were conceived meaning that either the characters, or the situation, or both; fall apart. In Nighty Night, it's both, hence the dissolve into more obvious sitcom world while only semi adapting its style. In short, it's a disaster.
As a result, I struggled to buy into Nighty Night because it undermines its own premise. I didn't laugh once and by the middle of series 2 I had given up and simply wasn't interested in investing my time any more.
That said, some of the performances are excellent, especially Rebecca Front and Julia Davis. Angus Deayton plays Angus Deayton. Kevin Eldon is a much better actor than he has ever been given the opportunity to play, and this applies here. The character of Terry could have been played by a particularly stupid dog. I groaned when Mark Gatiss' Glen Bulb appeared. The League of Gentlemen are all very accomplished grotesque actors, however all of them had used up their stock of grotesques by the end of League of Gentlemen. While the other two have some excellent writing and occasionally find new ways to approach acting in Inside No.9, I do feel that Gatiss has stagnated. Gatiss brought nothing new to the character.
Series 1 is worth a watch, but the whole thing feels overrated.
The Witcher (2019)
Writers without a braincell
I've just started The Witcher. I'm aware that Seasons 1 and 2 are rated great and good respectively and then the quality of Season 3 falls off a cliff. So I was prepared to give the first couple of seasons their due.
Boy oh boy. If the writing in the very first episode is what is called 'great' then someone is having a laugh.
So in episode 1 we have two storylines. The Witcher doing Witchery things and a Lord and Lady and their daughter in a castle, about to be invaded.
The Witcher bit is fine, but let's look at this Lord and Lady. Who are in a castle. When their land is invaded, what is the first thing they do? That's right. Ride their army out into open land and get slaughtered.
Yes. Instead of remaining in the great big fortress made of brick and stone that is specifically designed to keep invading armies out, in which they could have held out for months, picking off the invaders through crenelations and murder holes and various other castley things specifically designed to hold off and murder the enemy without while protecting the defending force within, they stuck the entire army out in an open battle they could never hope to win, and saw it all wiped out in minutes.
So within half an hour of this show starting, the writers have not only voided themselves of all logic, common sense and intelligence, they haven't even taken it upon themselves to research basic medieval military strategy.
It gets better. The Lord and Lady have a Wizard on hand. A Wizard who could use magic to turn the tide of battle. So what do they do with him? Yes, they leave him at home to babysit the daughter. They say 'protect' but it's the Wizard and the girl sitting in a room in a freaking castle doing nothing for a few hours when he could have been out throwing fireballs at the enemy.
So not only have we now abandoned our best defence, we've also left our best offence at home in literally the least useful application of his skills it is possible to imagine.
But wait, cos there's more. The Lord is killed and the Lady returns home mortally wounded. The invading army breach the castle gates - because there's no army left to hold the gates. They are now at the Keep and the Wizard puts up an invisible wall to prevent them breaking through. We switch back to the Witcher for a fireside chat and then back to the castle where it is now night and the invisible wall has collapsed because the Wizard has exhausted his power, although at no point do we actually see him exhausted, he's walking round just fine. So we've had a time jump of about six to eight hours, where these folk were sitting in the Keep, knowing it was only a matter of time before they army broke through and they all die.
Now if you or I were in that position, we would spend that six to eight hours putting in place plans for either escape or surrender or to go down fighting as heroically as possible.
Not these folks though. No, they've just sat around for the day and when their last line of defence broke, now is the time to start asking 'What do we do now?'
I've had to break off the episode at this point just to come here and say 'The Stupid. It Burns!' I can't really blame the actors and I know Cavill was forever picking the writers up on their rubbish, but what the hell are the rest of the writers and directors and producers doing not pointing out the massive gaping holes in this script that leave supposedly intelligent characters acting as dumb as a Sesame Street muppet discovering the number 3? Was there anyone on the production staff actually capable of doing their job to a standard higher than the stories they turned into their teacher during their first year of Kindergarten?
This is half an hour into season 1, episode 1, and we're only going downhill from here.
Now I sat through every episode of The Starlost, notoriously one of the worst tv shows of all time. Yet for all its faults, its characters made consistent logical decisions that made sense given their circumstances. If you can't even maintain that standard, then you really shouldn't be entitled to call yourself a writer. You're a monkey with a typewriter.
Hotel Impossible (2012)
Truly excellent
To review Hotel Impossible, you have to go back to the beginning of this type of reality show. And that is Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares.
Kitchen Nightmares started off in the UK. Gordon would arrive at a failing restaurant, spot the failings in the business and do his best to turn it around. But Gordon being Gordon, he would often end up confrontational, shouting and swearing. A lot of restaurant owners bounced off of him not because of his knowledge and experience but because of how he conducted himself.
Then Kitchen Nightmares transferred to the US. The producers of US KN decided that what made good television was not the redemption arc of struggling small business owners finding new life, but watching Gordon lose his temper. The shows became shallow, identikit and edited to within an inch of their lives with Gordon seeming to go out of his way to antagonise people who were already at their limits. After show stories revealed that Gordon barely even bothered to turn up except to do the introduction, shout at people and do the final reveal where a lot of sponsorship names were highly emphasised. KN went from an enjoyable and homely business show with an irascible host to watching a highly sponsored and ego driven professional angry person shouting at other angry people at the end of their tether.
But KN was very successful, was part of the original reality tv boom and lots of similar shows popped up in its wake. Hotel Impossible is one of them.
Hotel Impossible succeeds impressively where US KN massively fails. First and foremost the host. Anthony Melchiorri is a hotel professional to his core. He is not Gordon Ramsey whose tv stardom has inflated his ego to the point he can't fit his head through a door. Anthony is a natural on camera but what shines through every episode is Anthony's professionalism, his depth of knowledge and understanding of business, his genuine desire to help and his love of his job and the people he meets. There are times when he comes on a little too strong and upsets people and he goes out of his way to rebuild those relationships. He actively says to them that while drama and shouting might make good tv, that's not what he is there for. In the Hurricane Sandy episodes, the owners of one Hotel practically run him off the property with threats and yet at the end he still comes back and donates thousands of dollars worth of furniture to them to make amends.
It is very clear that although the TV show makes Anthony's hotel consultancy business viable, because the hotels themselves certainly aren't paying him - he would be doing this job even without cameras. Moreover, it feels like he would be doing this had KN never existed. He's not afraid to jump in and do the menial jobs just in order to help out when an unexpected wedding turns up and even the production team will do so if there's a deadline approaching.
The stories involved are all very human. Yes there are Hoteliers who have jumped into the business without knowing what they were doing, but there are just as many family breakdowns or people trying to honour the wishes of a deceased family member which is dragging the business down. One episode features two brothers who are severe hoarders. One family has a hotel which has no hope of survival and Anthony helps them to draw a plan to sell it.
Are there manufactured parts of the show? Yes. The editing certainly tightens up after season 1 with a few fakeouts over possible drama and you can see Anthony go from trying to coach hoteliers in business meetings with tourist destinations, to instead having lots of fun experiencing the tourist destinations, and possibly his banter with his designers which is always very cute. But that said these don't affect the enjoyment of the show at all. Unlike KN which became formulaic because there's only so much that can go wrong with a restaurant, HI always runs into new situations. HI brings a successful formula but avoids becoming formulaic.
Special mention must go to the designers who do incredible jobs in a short amount of time. Blanche Garcia and Casey Noble get the most episodes and are just wonderful.
For my sins I bingewatched all of KN, UK and US. It was compulsive TV, but the US version was hollow and empty and I couldn't tell you a single memorable episode that stands out apart from Amy's Bakery. I wouldn't ever want to watch any of it again. Ironically for Gordon, his TV show is the quality of a MacDonald's meal.
Hotel Impossible on the other hand, is closer to proper fine dining. There are episodes here I could revisit again and again for the real human stories in the company of an excellent host.
Colosseum (2022)
Really excellent
I'll preface my review by saying that I ploughed through Mike Duncan's The History of Rome podcast which is several hundreds of hours long and insanely in depth. Colosseum contained eight compelling stories which were entirely new to me, not having been covered in the podcast or my other studies on Rome, and did them really well.
Now, that doesn't mean that it covers them in depth at 40 minutes an episode, but the story choices are well chosen and the show is well conceived, well executed and well told.
Colosseum is part documentary, part dramatisation. A narrator covers the vast majority of what is going on, backed up by talking head experts and with important scenes acted out. Generally this works really well.
The narration is excellent. Robert Cargill strikes the perfect note in his speech. The script is good and covers the important notes of giant books of history in a swift manner. It leans more towards getting the story of the individuals across and that's fine because the stories are powerful.
The talking heads are the weakest part of the production, and not because of who they are or what they have to say, but because the interviews are clipped into two or three sentence soundbites and sprinkled throughout the episode. It does work within the context of the show, but the soundbites do leave you wanting to hear a bit more from the historians.
The dramatisations are excellent - if you ignore the clearly limited budget. You are not getting big budget cgi here or Hollywood choreographed fights. However, the Director and Editor are on the ball, the CGI has been stylised so that once you buy into the non photorealistic style, it works perfectly well. The Gladiatorial fights are edited well enough to hide the fact that there wasn't the budget to take things to a higher level safely and that's absolutely fine. You'll also spot occasional continuity errors or reused shots, but none of this takes away from the production. Because what shines in the production is the actors. The actors in each story have just three or four scenes and not much more than a few lines in which to establish a historical character in a way that can sustain the episode. As a former actor myself, I know that this is a tough ask because characters are created from their dialogue and actions. The less you have to go on, the more has to be made up and the more of a sketch or caricature the character can fall into. I have to say that each and every one of the main actors in these stories brings in a complete and compelling character that could sustain an entire season, not just a few scenes in a single episode. Excellent work by all involved.
And of course this is a History Channel production. It is an excellent presentation of History, taught me plenty that I didn't already know and was highly enjoyable. More like this please.
The Best of the Worst (2006)
Four smug BBC comedians sit around and make fun of a woman mauled by a bear.
At one point the BBC had hundreds of mediocre comedians sitting round doing nothing but panel show after panel show after panel show. Eventually they ran out of ideas for panel shows and then they made this.
It is summed up in episode one by third rate comedians desperately trying to make jokes while watching an internet viral video of a bear mauling a woman to the clear shock of the audience and the scream of Jayne Middlemiss because of how savage the attack is. Apparently this is funny because it was a worse event for the woman than a streaker getting rugby tackled.
Every single person involved in this, except perhaps Middlemiss who, to her credit is genuinely horrified, should have been fired immediately and never allowed anywhere near a tv studio ever again. I'm not entirely sure whether it could be considered the nadir of BBC output, because that's a deep well to plumb and has a lot of Jimmy Saville in it, but it's certainly some of the most callous and plain nasty things ever broadcast.
Black Friday (2021)
The Trailer was the best part of the movie
Remember Dawn of the Dead? A movie with very little budget or known actors yet managed to be one of the greatest and most important horror movies and social commentaries of all time because of the talent, passion and belief of George Romero, the writer and director.
Yea. Do yourself a favour and go watch that instead.
Con Passionate (2005)
PLEASE PUT THIS ON DVD
I saw one episode of Con Passionate on broadcast fifteen years ago.
It was one of the most brilliant tv shows I had ever seen. Unfortunately I was only in Wales for a short time and had no access to S4C when I returned home.
By all other accounts, Con Passionate was truly excellent. It won a Rose D'or.
And it hasn't been seen since original broadcast. This show needs to come to DVD or streaming to find the audience it deserves.
The Odyssey (1997)
Ambitious
I could make many easy criticisms of The Odyssey, but those criticisms would certainly feel unfair. What this production achieves is to give you full respect for what is being attempted here, and that if it fails to fully realise the story of Odysseus, it is not for want of trying but technological, budget and time restrictions.
Let me put those criticisms nevertheless, because you do want to know what you are getting into. Firstly, it's extremely condensed. The decade long Trojan War, the recruitment of Odysseus, the deaths of Hector and Achilles, the Trojan Horse - are all wrapped up in under 30 minutes in what isn't much more than a montage. Now - this is absolutely necessary in a 3 hour mini series but it does feel like opening the first Rocky movie with the training montage. You don't get to meet the characters as they start their journey - you just have to jump on board as they gallop towards the middle.
Additionally this means that many of the actors simply don't have time to build their characters, Odysseus' men are just a rowdy crowd of exchangeable faces with zero distinction between them except one plays the flute, one is fat, one is brave but foolhardy, one has a beard etc. It's a tough criticism because it's no one's fault without tripling the runtime, but unfortunately, watching them get picked off one by one leaves you feeling nothing. Both Odysseus and Penelope suffer as characters in the same way, even though they obviously get the most screentime, but it is absolute credit to Armand Assante and Greta Scacchi that with such threadbare time for character work until at least the final third of the film, they nevertheless create compelling and powerful performances. Other big name actors acquit themselves well. Some of the direction is contrived rather than natural for the same reason. The need to get across an idea in the time allowed, rather than to grow a scene naturally.
To my mind, the biggest problem is the sound design. It's one of those movies where it sounds like much of the location audio has been studio dubbed, whether it actually has been or not. It's really obvious when the scene switches from Calypso's island, back to Penelope and Telemachus. The sound for the latter picks up the atmosphere and acoustics of the location, whereas the former, the sound is overlaid and flat, with no feel for the location. It's really noticeable and is probably the biggest criticism that I would lay at the feet of the production as opposed to a constraint of the medium in which they are working.
The special effects are - of their time. And that time being when computer graphics were a tool rather than an art.
But I did get to a point where none of this mattered. What does matter is the ambition of the piece. It successfully manages to convey the epic nature of Odysseus' journey. You must approach it with the same attitude as you would with the book, with your imagination open and willing to use it to expand on what you are watching. It does as much justice to the epic as was likely possible at the time and is well worth seeking out.
The Ex-PM (2015)
Very, very funny
Let me start with a comment on other reviews. I think Aussies went into this looking for a comedy that speared their politicians and are disappointed that this (as dar as I can tell) doesn't do that. In common with the other Brits reviewing this however, any comments about Aussie politics are relatively moot anyway and we get to focus on the characters.
And if you come in with the understanding that this is not stinging political satire as Yes (Prime) Minister was, but a jet black farce propelled by grotesque characters with few to none redeeming features, then you can relax and enjoy the ensuing ridiculousness on display without caring whether it scores political hits or not or approaches any kind of realism.
It is very funny. It does take a while to build into it with the first half of the first season being much more subtle and refined, it raises a smile and some titters, but as the show goes on, the humour broadens out and many of the episodes leave me very merry.
It's not perfect - there's a big shift, not just in tone, but also in concept between series 1 and 2 as the Ex-Pm returns to the hustings in an attempt to be more on the nose. Although series 2 takes the farce to even greater heights, it does kind of defeat the point of calling the show The Ex-PM. Also a couple of the characters just don't make the jump. Both Ellen and Rita may as well be entirely different characters between Series 1 and 2, through no fault of the actors involved.
Does it matter? Not really. The show more than earns its way. There are lots and lots of sitcoms out there that don't. Well worth a watch.
Lucifer: A Lot Dirtier Than That (2021)
Hideous
Lucifer was one of the best shows on TV. Corny, but so much fun for five seasons.
And now we get to season 6. The whole season so far has been pointless with Lucifer finding one excuse after another not to do the thing that should have ended Season 5. And doing it with added unnecessary goth teenage angst that adds nothing.
Now that right there is bad enough, but then we get to this abomination of an episode which manages to sink the entire season right here and frankly makes me want to abandon the entire show.
Get Woke. Go Broke.
Utter garbage, the plot makes zero sense, main characters are abandoned for random cardboard caricature inserts we care nothing about who make ludicrous and illogical decisions. This is literally unwatchable.
A Very British Coup (1988)
Rooting for the bad guys
The source material for this drama is a novel written by a socialist Labour politician.
So I sat there in utter disbelief as an avowed Marxist became Prime Minister of Britain, a man supposedly with no flaws, who then proceeds to bankrupt the country, but saves the economy by selling out to the central bank of Moscow. This was filmed shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 - from bankruptcy. I was supposed to be for this person? He withdraws from NATO, disarms the UK and shoos the Americans from our shores all to the background of operatic music highly reminiscent of Zadok the Priest, which is reserved for the coronation of a monarch.
Yes, only on TV can you enact policies designed to turn a country into a bankrupt, communist hellhole, where all dissent is controlled by malign forces, have zero negative consequences except to be conspired against by those malign forces which is nothing but the 'aristocratic classes' and the Americans and walk out a winner. This is nothing but pure and open commie propaganda.
That said, the acting and directing and music are really rather good, which just goes to show how propaganda works, if the acting, directing and music had been terrible, no one would have paid this any notice. But frankly anyone who took part in this, and that includes some of my favourite actors, should be ashamed of themselves.
Pioneer One (2010)
Worth the time for hard sci fi fans
I just got finished watching Marvel's Inhumans, reputedly the highest budgeted TV series ever. It had possibly the worst script, worst editing, worst characterisation, worst sets and worst costumes I've ever seen alongside some pretty awful acting, a completely nonsensical storyline and Science Fiction concepts straight out of an Irwin Allen series.
I mention this because the first thing to say about Pioneer One is that it was crowd funded and clearly produced on practically zero budget. And yet, in practically every single way, it succeeds in ways that Inhumans didn't. In fact, in many ways the lack of budget actually adds to what is here.
That said, it's not for everyone. It clearly never got to a second series and there's zero action. This is hard sci fi, parleyed mainly by people standing around in non-descript offices having scientific conversations about things that have happened off screen. It therefore relies on three things. Concept, Dialogue and Acting.
Concept. Absolutely fantastic. A satellite has come down in Canada and released dangerous radiation. The US is investigating. The human pilot of the satellite is dying. Is this a Russian satellite? A piece of secret tech? Or is it something from much further away? All the evidence suggests it has come from Mars. But that's impossible right?
Not only do we have the sci fi concept, but our small team of intrepid heroes, are completely rooted in the real world. Bureaucrats trying to deal with the diplomatic repercussions of p*ssing off the Canadians and Russians, trying to do the right thing but shut down by their bosses at every opportunity, scientists randomly pinched from around the US, having their whole worldview validated and then running into the brick wall of bureaucracy. Young agents finding themselves having to explain to the white house why their boss isn't at the computer 24/7. Everyone waiting on someone else to finish their job before they can begin theirs. Everything is rooted in the real world, or at least as real as possible. It even references and builds on real scientific discoveries of the past decade prior to filming and that makes it feel really special.
Dialog. This could all easily come crashing down around our ears. Hard science + bureaucracy? Boringest show ever. But the script traces a very fine line between maintaining the seriousness of the situation and injecting it with some of the driest humour ever as people simply try and rub along with other people they don't especially like, and try to do their jobs when their bosses shut off every avenue of doing them. With many tv shows it's easy to watch and end up shouting at the tv when it's clear what course of action a hero should take and they don't, or they throw in a side quest to pad the running time (or like Inhumans, the entire eight hours). In Pioneer One, the genius is that at no point is there any clear course of action for anyone. Everyone is just trying to muddle through as best they can, just like in real life. The end of episode one contains the best line of script I have ever heard, it's just so true to life. This will by no means be for everyone, but I am loving every minute of this.
Acting. I'm not going to claim that this show has the greatest performances you will ever see. But the performances are certainly not below par and there's no dud performances here. The actors are solid and enjoyable to watch. And because it's slow paced and mostly dialogue, you can really understand the frustrations these characters go through.
Highly enjoyable for Hard Sci Fi fans and people who value thought and ideas over budget and don't mind the shortcomings. Not for people looking for action and superpowers and who aren't prepared to listen to the nuances of every word. It won't be easy to get a copy of this little gem, but it'll be worth it.
Warrior Queen (1978)
Utterly Dreadful
I think the previous reviewers may have been watching this with half an eye on half faded memories. It feels entirely unfair to review a 40 year old zero budget production badly, but the fact is this is both truly horrible and unintentionally hilarious in equal measure.
I have no problem with a zero budget production per se. And the BBC was churning them out successfully at the time, but to succeed at that level you need three things to overcome the lack of budget. An exceptional script, exceptional actors and an exceptional director. Even one of these factors can raise the bar. Warrior Queen has none, and for good measure has atrocious props, costume and sets as well. The Roman Helmets are clearly plastic and the outdoor scenes are clearly taking place in a damp field in Essex. You half expect Sid James and Barbara Windsor in half a bikini to wander on.
And yes, I did just say that actors the calibre of Nigel Hawthorne and Sian Phillips were not exceptional. Both have done wonders elsewhere but Sian Phillips is given literally nothing to do. There are no rabble rousing speeches, because they could only afford eight extras for the rabble. Nigel Hawthorne meanwhile is trying his darling best to inject some comedy into the po faced script, but he comes across as having wandered over from the filming of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, while the other actors react to him as if he's wandered in from the set of ET.
The script is dreadful. At one point the Roman General character describes the upcoming battle with the Celts as being 'a joyride'. I know we can't have everything in actual Latin, but there's such a thing as the writer making an effort. Said battle, between six thousand Celts and several hundred Romans, is portrayed by 8 extras waving swords in the general direction of an opponent, and a particularly constipated Roman Soldier extra witnessing the 'battle' before falling over. Dead, it would appear, from standing in a damp field in Essex.
Yes it feels unfair that I'm being so cruel. The Director has tried his best, when asked to portray a massing of six thousand celts in the wilds of Northern Britain during the 3rd century and given just 8 extras, plastic props and a damp field in Essex, he has done his job and diligently cut the film to ribbons in order to try and pretend that there's something going on. He's failed, but he did try. I'll give him points for that.
No doubt in 1978 people were glad for as much drama as they could get. But the sad fact is, that even in the standards of the time, this is laughable. Compared to the drama of today, it might as well have been made in the 2nd century as the 20th. I've giggled my way through it. and it is worth a watch for the hilarity of Boudicca starting the rebellion of the Brits by slowly (so as not to hurt him) and clumsily, throwing Nigel Hawthorne off a horse. (Russel Crowe, eat your heart out).
I do appreciate Network bringing back old TV on DVD. They have returned some gems. But I think those surviving cast and crew from this production would, on balance, have much preferred it to have stayed dead and buried in the seventies, where it belongs, and a half distant memory in certain viewers minds.
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
A Herd of Camels!
Driving on a totally flat, totally straight road in the middle of a desert with miles and miles of visibility, empty of all other traffic, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has to swerve his car violently to avoid driving in to a herd of camels walking alone the road in a neat formation that he hadn't been able to see for the past five minutes until he was literally tailgating them.
One can draw one of several conclusions from this: a: Ethan Hunt is registered blind. This would normally be a disadvantage for a super spy, but we live in an age of equality, so hey, who needs 20/20 vision? b: Logic doesn't exist in the Mission Impossible Universe. In MI1, they flew a helicopter into the Channel Tunnel. In MI2, Ethan Hunt kept a pair of nesting doves in both of his shoes. In MI3 something happened that involved Philip Seymour Hoffman being a douche and a McGuffin called the Rabbit's Foot that was so McGuffin that they never even made an attempt to explain it on screen. In MI4 they turned Simon Pegg into an IMF field agent. Alright, James Bond has lapses in logic too, but at least they haven't cast Simon Pegg yet. c: The MI series doesn't care about your intelligence. It just wants to take your money, wham bam, thank you mam and get rid of you, you might have a smile on your face for two minutes, but ultimately you'll be left unfulfilled, depressed and addicted to narcotics as your life slowly gurgles down the drain of the plughole of life as you return again and again to these crappy movies, hoping against hope to even get that two minute smile back, but knowing that each visit just makes you unhappier, lonelier and more abused by cinematic franchises that don't love you and only care about your wallet. While you lose your capability for social interaction and sit there, slack jawed, dribbling to yourself.
Go back to the sixties with Jim, Rollin, Cinnamon, Barney and Willie. Not only will it make you a better, happier, more productive person, but it will also improve your sex life, make the sun shine and boil the kettle for you when you get home from work.
The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm (2014)
Disappointing
I adore Professor Branestawm. One of my favourite books as a kid.
So when I heard Harry Hill was to play the professor I had huge doubts. I've never found Hill funny, even though I appreciate his talents. He's just not my style of humorist. I thought he'd be too broad and overplay the character, like his comic persona.
I couldn't have been more wrong. Hill is excellent. He's not necessarily playing the character in the books, but brings his own slant which is rounded, believable, funny and entertaining.
Just a damn shame about everyone else involved in the production.
With the exception of Ben Miller and the young girl, everyone else is overacting. Even David Mitchell, who should know better. Adrian Scarborough pulling silly faces as the vicar when the role was screaming for Mark Williams to offer some nuanced comedy.
Ben Miller does of course require special praise. The man is not only one of the funniest actors in Britain, he's one of the finest full stop and if he moved into drama, he could play any role with distinction. Worth the entrance fee alone. Just watch the town hall scene. He's the only one to get any traction out of the munitions factory joke and does so without even trying.
So unfortunately, much of this is sub panto mugging to a rather smug script (The Tardis? Really?), the kind that the BBC does insufferably well nowadays. There are gems and laughs to be had from some of the performers but really it's only half way to the Professor Branestawm I hoped for and wanted.
Silent Movie (1976)
Terrible
I'm half way through this, and it's awful. What was Brooks thinking? The silent comics had grown up making slapstick on stage and on film. Laurel and Hardy were both in their thirties with dozens of two reelers each before they were teamed up. Buster Keaton had been doing slapstick since the age of 3.
I can say this because I'm currently in the middle of watching a whole load of silents from L&H, Keaton, Charlie Chase, Harold Lloyd and so on. Those two reelers work because they only have 20 minutes to tell a full story. Scenes are either full on slapstick or 10 seconds long to move the story on. Moreover slapstick is the comedy of pain and embarrassment and to make it work you have to sell that - through overacting if need be.
Brooks completely fails to understand this. About 15 minutes into the film, Dom Deluise has a door slammed on his foot. Although the joke is blatantly set up, at first I didn't even realise that the slam had occurred. Deluise barely reacts. All I can think about is how Oliver Hardy would have sold the same gag - as I've literally just watched him do it several times over. Compare the two. No contest.
Mel Brooks has written a completely normal film and then simply taken all the sound out and replaced it with captions.
The only reason to watch this is for the cameos. Paul Newman, James Caan, Burt Reynolds, Liza Minelli, Marcel Marceau and Anne Bancroft gamely send themselves up. Paul Newman in his racing wheelchair is clearly enjoying himself and gives the best scene of the movie. As for the rest, Marty Feldman acts everyone else off the screen - when he's actually given something to do that is - thanks to his British physical comedy training.