The Bridge: Season 1

BBC 4 does like to burn through these shows, airing two episodes at a time means that it’s only been 5 weeks since I was a bit apathetic about the pilot, and here I am being a bit apathetic about the rest of the series. Spoilers ahoy.

It turns out the show wasn’t really about what I thought it was, and I remained disappointed for quite a while about that. The whole Denmark/Sweden thing was never really more than the tiniest of sub-plots, not developing into the interesting social/political commentary that I thought was going to be the point of the whole thing. Instead the series was just about a couple of misfit cops chasing a serial killer, that’s not a bad concept for a series at all, I just hoped for something a bit chewier. The border issues turned out to be no more than a plot device to heighten tension, leaving cops without guns in particular situations. Oh, and a very cinematic bridge.

I had a similar disappointment with the motivation of the killer himself. What started out looking like a political activist, highlighting the great imbalances in society and challenging the way that people think about justice and fairness… turned out to be a guy who was bitter because his wife left him and then died in a car crash with their son. After the build up, that reveal just felt a bit “oh, is that it?”. Obviously losing your family is devastating, but turning a previously mostly stable police officer into someone who spends five years planning a series of ridiculously complex murders, all culminating in a single act of revenge against his wife’s lover… just didn’t feel quite as satisfyingly concrete as I might have hoped.

In the end, I’m not convinced that the story actually all held together. If I start to think about it too hard I start coming up with dozens of little questions – how does anyone build a wall that fast? How did a dead officer get a police car without anyone noticing? They may all have answers, and even if they don’t each one is relatively minor, but they combine to a general sense of unease about the solidity of the plot. The way the story developed was reasonably well structured though, the gradual building of the five planned situations, followed by the extended fall out and investigation built up well with a great balance of shock, tension and action. The only real frustration came from the early episodes’ tendencies to spend a disproportionate amounts of time on relatively minor characters (the bloody 70′s porn star social worker I could definitely have lived without).

So I wasn’t completely sold on the destination, but the journey for the most part was entertaining and the company grew on me along the way. Martin and Saga form an entertaining partnership, neither really having the faintest clue what the other one is thinking or doing, but forming a weird trust nevertheless. The problem is that neither character actually should be likeable. Martin is definitely a cheating slimeball, yet somehow manages to come across as more of a loveable rogue. Saga meanwhile struggles back and forth between entertainingly quirky and annoyingly weird. I suspect there’s an element of great actors managing to drag their characters up above some mediocre writing. Saga’s personality in particular seemed to fluctuate depending on whether the writers needed her to be a brilliant detective profiling serial killers motives or a comedy character unable to understand the simplest human needs.

The Bridge may not be the best thing since The Killing, but that’s ok, because it was still sufficiently entertaining. It still looked amazing with plenty of artistic framing and lighting of the grittily dingy Sweden and Denmark (can’t help but think the tourist boards weren’t overly thrilled with the production designers). And the best thing, at 10 episodes, it didn’t outstay its welcome and paced itself well so that stuff happened each week, things were revealed and introduced so everything kept moving quite merrily along. Well, not merrily obviously, because I haven’t really mentioned the fact that’s it’s all a bit bleak and depressing, but if you like that sort of thing, it’s a pretty good way to spend ten hours.

The whole first season is available on iPlayer at time of writing or on bluray or dvd.
A second season will broadcast late in 2013 according to wikipedia.

2012
05/23
CATEGORY
11-12 Season
British TV
Crime Procedural
Drama
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The Upfronts – The CW

After a brief delay I finally get to the last of the channels to announce their line up – The CW. The network continues to fill it’s schedule with teen-friendly monsters, superheroes and teenage angst. I’m not judging mind you, I’m quite partial to those genres.

What’s out
Another clean sweep of cancellations of things I don’t watch. One Tree Hill bowed out after nine seasons, while H8R, Ringer and Secret Circle didn’t make it to season 2. I thought Secret Circle looked ok for the teenage witchy thing that it was, but Ringer’s pilot at least was so badly written and cheaply produced that even Sarah Michelle Gellar couldn’t make me give the show a chance.

What’s Back
The only show I actually watch on the CW is Supernatural, which is renewed for its 8th season, but to be honest, I haven’t actually watched much of season 7 yet due to the somewhat relentless misery of it. Gossip Girl is also renewed for its 6th and final season (the first couple of series were a guilty pleasure, but I didn’t go back to it). The Vampire Diaries is another massive hit for the channel, but I didn’t get past the worse-than-Twilight pilot. Nikita is also renewed, which I didn’t watch because I felt I’d probably be better off watching Alias if I was going to watch something like this.

Also renewed are the new version of 90210 (if it doesn’t have Luke Perry in it, it’s not worth watching) and Hart of Dixie, which I thought was awful. Left hanging a bit longer is The LA Complex which I haven’t seen yet.

What’s New
Arrow – Based on DC Comics’ Green Arrow series, the trailer looks to be doing exactly what it needs to be doing, a reasonably dark and gritty “Batman light” type superhero seeking vengeance thing. Just with a bow and arrow. I’m not exactly excited about it, but I am intrigued.

Beauty and the Beast – Beauty is a detective, Beast is a doctor with Hulk tendencies. there’s not much to go on in the trailer, the only opinion I can really have at this point is that it overuses power ballads.

Emily Owens, M.D. – Mamie Gummer (Meryl Streep’s daughter – a label I’m sure she never gets tired of) stars as a slightly quirky new doctor. I like the actress a lot (she’s been in The Good Wife and short lived Off the Map) but I think the internal monologue voiceover and perky backing music may be more than I can take.

Cult – people are becoming obsessed with a TV show, and the show now seems to be spilling over into the real world. The synopsis is mind twisting but original and interesting, the trailer (this poor quality one is the only one I could find and it may not stay around long) looks weird, creepy and intriguing. This is definitely one of the shows I’m most curious about for the new season.

The Carrie Diaries – a prequel to Sex and the City, describing Carrie’s transition from suburbia to Manhattan. No trailer is available in the UK, so I’ve no idea about this. But not being a fan of Sex and the City or of anything set in the 80s, I’m not optimistic.

Links
The Futon Critic
Wikipedia
The CW official site
TV Addict – Snap Judgements

2012
05/19
CATEGORY
12-13 Season
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The Upfronts 2012 – CBS

The last of the big four networks is CBS, who frankly have such a huge number of massively successful shows that it’s a wonder they find any space for new things.

What’s out
Good news for me – I don’t watch a single show that CBS cancelled! The only particularly notable series disappearing is CSI Miami, which took the hit as the first CSI cancelled due to dwindling ratings. Almost every freshman series got canned as CBS tries and fails to find the next great procedural – A Gifted Man was fine but I didn’t like it, Unforgettable writes its own puns and I never even got round to watching NYC 22. How to Be a Gentleman was sufficiently unfunny that it was canned after just two episodes.

What’s Back
While they may not be great at finding new things, CBS’s stable of procedurals is still well populated and massively successful. CSI and CSI:NY survive their middle sibling, NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles and Hawaii Five-0 form a massively popular little family of their own, although frankly NCIS has maybe outlasted its welcome. With The Good Wife, Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods, and The Mentalist (in descending order of quality from brilliant to mediocre) it’s a wonder that there’s any space left on the schedules at all, but somehow they found a space for the somewhat ridiculous Person of Interest snuck in.

Oh, and there’s also the bundle of comedies – the astronomically successful Big Bang Theory, the increasingly irritating How I Met Your Mother, the new 2 Broke Grils, Two and a Half Men which survived the Charlie Sheen debacle and Mike and Molly which I’ve never seen, and .

What’s New
Elementary – Sherlock Holmes goes to New York and Watson has a sex change. Nothing against Jonny Lee Miller or Lucy Lu, but I have no expectations of this being anywhere near as good as the BBC’s Sherlock. It’ll just be on more often.

Made in Jersey – a girl from New Jersey joins a top flight New York law firm. Too obviously trying to ride on The Good Wife’s coat tails in my opinion, and it just didn’t have the spark.

Partners – two childhood friends are now business partners, one has a girlfriend, one has a boyfriend. I have a weird amount of goodwill towards this, I like Michael Urie (Ugly Betty) and David Krumholtz (Numbers) a lot and it’s created by the people that made Will & Grace. The trailer didn’t really make me laugh out loud, but I did smile indulgently at it.

Vegas – 1960s Las Vegas, the glitz, glamour and gangsters. The cast on this is astonishing (Dennis Quaid, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jason O’Mara, Michael Chiklis) and it looks beautifully shot but the trailer left me a bit cold, probably because I’m not really that into mob stuff (despite every network seemingly having one on offer this year) or cowboys.

The midseason shows don’t seem to have trailers available.
Friend Me – comedy about two guys who move to LA to work for Groupon. Genuinely, that’s what the press release says. That and it stars a bunch of people I haven’t heard of and will involve the pair video chatting with their friends back home in Indiana. Sounds awful.

Golden Boy – a uniform cop’s meteoric rise to police commissioner. Stars Theo James whose credits thus far include Underworld Awakening and the god awful Sky series Bedlam which doesn’t really fill one with confidence.

Links
The Futon Critic
Wikipedia
CBS Website
The Guardian

2012
05/17
CATEGORY
12-13 Season
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The Upfronts 2012 – ABC

The halfway mark of the Upfronts sees ABC announcing its new line up. Housewives swap for Mistresses, Shonda Rhimes continues to rule and I think a submarine has found itself on the wrong network.

What’s out
Just like House for Fox, ABC retired one of the shows that’s defined its character for a long time – Desperate Housewives. I gave up on the series after only a couple of seasons and from what I’ve heard the quality continued to gradually die away, so no one was that devastated when it drew to a close. Sadly for ABC they don’t really have much going on to replace it, GCB seemed to be trying to find the same magic and I didn’t hate the pilot as much as I wanted to, but the ratings just didn’t work out for it.

Another freshman show that failed to take off was Pan Am (pun intended) – “all a bit Barbie and Ken, pretty and plastic, all having their little melodramas with perfect hair.” Although at least it was more watchable than the utterly dire Charlie’s Angels. The River was a horror/mystery thing that I haven’t actually watched the pilot of yet and saw almost no critical comment on. Even that though is better than Missing which I’d never even heard of until I saw it on the cancelled list. ABC did manage to win the prize for most offensively awful comedy with Work It which was not so much cancelled as obliterated to the atomic level.

What’s Back
While ABC might be losing the housewives they’ve still got plenty of cheesy emotional melodrama for their schedules, with Grey’s Anatomy (which I can’t help loving), Private Practice (which I avoided getting hooked on), Revenge (which I didn’t like at all) and Once Upon a Time (which I liked the pilot of but haven’t got round to watching further). Easy going procedurals Body of Proof and Castle are also renewed alongside the new Shonda Rhimes series Scandal (which has a pretty good pilot, although I haven’t reviewed it here yet).

Freshman comedies Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23, Suburgatory and Last Man Standing are all renewed alongside The Middle, Modern Family and Happy Endings. Cougar Town meanwhile managed to be both cancelled and renewed – it will air on cable channel TBS instead.

What’s New
666 Park Avenue – a nice couple move into an apartment building that may be built on the Hellmouth, or some such. Terry O’Quinn (Lost) stars which is always a good start and it looks deliciously creepy.

The Family Tools (mid season) – the least handy son in history returns to town to take over the family handyman business, hilarity with nail guns ensues. What is Adam Arkin doing in this crap?

How to Live With Your Parents for the Rest of Your Life (midseason) – Sarah Chalke (Scrubs) moves back in with her parents, who are sort of horrific. I chuckled. I kind of hate myself but I did chuckle. What’s with the ridiculously long title though?!

Last Resort – A US nuclear submarine goes rogue, or was it the US government that went rogue and the submarine actually stayed true? I’m really not sure whether this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen or the most intriguing. It’s created by Shawn Ryan (The Unit, The Shield) though so it’s got a good pedigree.

Malibu Country – three generations of Tennessee women head to California and the middle one tries to launch a country music career. it’s hard to get past how awful the narration and the laughter track are on this, but if you fight through it you’ll eventually uncover something desperately unfunny.

Nashville – the cut-throat Country Music business. Nothing in the description appeals to me but the trailer really works, Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights) and Hayden Panettier (Heroes) have a great spark and at least it’s something different.

The Neighbours – a family moves to the suburbs and turns out the neighbours are not just quirky, they’re also aliens. I don’t mind the aliens bit, it’s the quirky I couldn’t stand.

Zero Hour – Life’s gone downhill for Anthony Edwards, he used to be Mark Greene, hero of the ER now he’s stuck in this rubbish. it’s like Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code, there’s Nazis and conspiracies and secrets and clocks and a lot of running around and peering at things. It looks terrible!

Mistresses – having just dispatched of a gaggle of desperate housewives, the next step I guess is desperate mistresses. There’s only a poor quality trailer which didn’t do a very good job of establishing characters but it seems to be a bunch of people cheating on their spouses. That doesn’t really chime with the ‘inspiring tale of life and love’ type thing the music and voiceover is telling me about.

Red Widow – like NBC’s The Mob Doctor this is another story of a woman being pulled into a ‘family business’ that she doesn’t want to be in. Being ABC though, there’s a lot more sobbing. I was just left completely meh from the trailer (which again is poor quality, because ABC region lock their trailers).

Links:
The Futon Critic
Wikipedia
ABC’s website
The Guardian (I promise I wrote all the above before reading this, we’re so in synch it’s a bit scary!

2012
05/16
CATEGORY
12-13 Season
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The Upfronts 2012 – Fox

Thanks to the schedulers who doubled up Fox and NBC on day one of the Upfronts, I’m already a day behind!

What’s out
The biggest news from Fox this year was that House would be coming to a close after 8 seasons. It’s a shame that out of 176 episodes there were 150 utterly mediocre ones that broke up the 20 odd breathtaking ones. I’ve come very close to giving up on this series several times so I can’t say I was that disappointed to see it brought to a managed close.

I was more disappointed by the cancellation of Terra Nova which I actually really enjoyed, but its audiences were nowhere near big enough for its giant costs, so it was slightly doomed from the start. The Finder was an utterly unremarkable spin-off of Bones and I never bothered with it beyond the backdoor pilot in the previous season of Bones. I meant to watch Alcatraz, but I couldn’t fit it into my schedule and now it’s been cancelled I’m not sure I’ll bother. Breaking In was a Christian Slater vehicle which completely passed me by somehow and seems to have been cancelled before its second season even aired which was a little harsh. Also cancelled without me, or anyone else, noticing their existence were the animation Allen Gregory and the ‘comedy’ I Hate My Teenage Daughter.

What’s back
Possibly the biggest surprise of all the pickups was that Fox, with its reputation for hating genre stuff, renewed Fringe. All credit to the network they’ve given this superb show a home and a chance to finish off its storylines (albeit in a half season) despite terrible ratings. I’m still not forgiving them for Firefly though.

No-shit-sherlock pickups went to Glee (even if it has been rubbish this year) and Bones (which was surprisingly good). Touch, the Kiefer Sutherland thingy was a bit more surprising (pilot was resoundingly meh and I didn’t bother with it), but he’s been good for the network in the past. The New Girl apparently found enough viewers who weren’t driven insane by Zooey Deschanel and got a renewal alongside Raising Hope and the collection of animations including the unkillable Simpsons (this will be its 24th season and it just passed episode 500).

What’s new
The Mob Doctor – I’ll be honest, I didn’t really follow the trailer. I’m never a big fan of gangster stuff, all that posturing and mumbling just doesn’t do it for me. My housemate also requests I point out the unrealistic screwdriver incident.

Ben and Kate – bad news, the trailer is nearly 5 minutes long. I’m assuming that’s most of the actual episode and it really isn’t funny, unless the second half is hilarious because I gave up at the 2 minute mark. I have no idea who bothers paying for this stuff.

The Mindy Project – Mindy Kaling (The Office) created and stars in some sort of Bridget Jones style thing. At one point the voiceover says “there’s no one like Mindy”. We can but hope.

The Following – Kevin Bacon stars as an FBI agent chasing serial killers who have been trained by a serial killer. This looks pretty good actually, a nice concept, an excellent star and a dark and grim tone that (possibly disturbingly) I quite like.

The Goodwin Games – From the people behind How I Met Your Mother, a comedy about estranged siblings forced to reunite to inherit a fortune. Stars Becki Newton (Ugly Betty) and Scott Foley (The Unit). I actually chuckled at this one. It got sappy which was a downer and a bit stupid which was frustrating, but I didn’t immediately despise it which is about as good as it gets for comedies.

Links:
The Futon Critic
Wikipedia
NBC’s website

2012
05/15
CATEGORY
12-13 Season
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The Upfronts 2012 – NBC

It’s upfronts time again, each of the five major networks confirm what they’ve cancelled and what they’ve renewed and introduce what they hope will be the next hottest thing. First up, NBC.

What’s out
NBC had a collection of fairly interesting new drama series this year, but sadly most of the ones I liked didn’t stay around very long. Awake, Playboy Club and Prime Suspect all had promising starts I thought, although I have to confess that I haven’t watched beyond the pilots (Awake is sitting on my Sky box at the moment). I didn’t even get round to watching the pilot of The Firm before it was cancelled. Also cancelled are a couple of comedies that no one laughed at – Are You There, Chelsea and Free Agents. No one cares.

I was surprised last year when Harry’s Law was given a second season as I had barely seen a single word about the series, if possible it got even less press this year so its cancellation is no surprise. Also no surprise was the end of Chuck, it lasted far longer than its ratings ever warranted and I know it had a die-hard following, but I never watched it so won’t miss it.

What’s back
Only three new series survived the cull. Grimm has apparently been pretty well received, although I thought the pilot was poor and didn’t bother with it. Smash was one of those shows that was almost too hyped up to be allowed to fail, it is however only coming back mid-season, which doesn’t indicate a massive amount of confidence (again, I haven’t watched beyond the pilot, the rest is slowly building up on my PVR). The third pickup was Whitney, but it’s a half hour comedy so I don’t care.

NBC is packed full of comedies that I don’t get, but others love. Community and Parks and Recreation, Up All Night and The Office are all back, and 30 Rock is getting a reduced season to bring itself to a graceful close. Also renewed are the last Law & Order standing – Special Victims Unit and Parenthood, which I keep meaning to catch up on and never quite get round to.

What’s new
Revolution is a ‘top pick’ for the season, a post apocalyptic affair created by Eric Kripke (Supernatural) and J.J. Abrams (Lost, Fringe etc). The concept and names attached are interesting, but the trailer left me a little meh.

Chicago Fire – fire-fighters make a change from police at least. The trailer contains all the angst, fire and terstosterone you’d expect.

Go On – a comedy about a therapy group for people dealing with life change. I laughed at the funny bits of the trailer but was dumbstruck by the massively abrupt tone changes

The New Normal – gay couple hire a surrogate, she has a quirky daughter and an offensive grandmother, they have a loud obnoxious assistant and a lack of chemistry. Not great.

Do No Harm – A neurosurgeon with a Jeckyl and Hyde thing going on. No trailer, just some uninspiring clips.

Animal Practice – awful comedy about an over the top animal hospital and it’s insane staff. There’s also a monkey.

Guys with Kids – “This is the story of three guys. Three guys that make fatherhood fun”. They do not. It’s awful. And that’s a hexagon not an octagon. Not funny and bad at maths.

1600 Penn – a dysfunctional family in the White House. No trailer, just an awful clip.

Hannibal – Bryan Fuller best known for quirky, light hearted froth like Pushing Daisies and Wonderfalls takes a run at Hannibal Lector. The fact they haven’t cast Lector yet is a bit of a worry (mid-season).

Links:
The Futon Critic
Wikipedia
NBC’s website

2012
05/14
CATEGORY
12-13 Season
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Homeland: Season 1

Season 1 of Homeland has been a real roller-coaster, I fell in and out of love with it pretty much every couple of episodes, swinging wildly between nearly giving up on it in frustration, and counting the hours until the next episode was on.

My attitude towards the series moved pretty much in time with the central question of whether Carrie was paranoid in her obsession with Brody and Abu Nazir or whether she was brilliantly perceptive. Of course the answer all along is really that she’s both – just because you’re paranoid doesn’t actually mean they’re not out to get you and just because you’re brilliant doesn’t mean you’re always right. The frustration is that in almost every situation she makes the wrong decision and takes the wrong action – she doesn’t follow protocol, and the further she strays from accepted behaviour (which is already a pretty long way from ‘normal’ for the CIA anyway) the harder it is for her to return. That’s where most of my frustration came, watching her make increasingly stupid and desperate mistakes that endanger the very things that she’s so desperate to protect – her job and her country.

The CIA doesn’t come across particularly well here and I can understand Carrie’s frustrations, she has a mental illness to excuse her eccentricities, but her superiors’ attitudes towards her blow hot and cold without apparent reason. You wouldn’t have thought there was much point in having a highly trained intelligence officer with ridiculous security clearance and then telling her off for being too suspicious! Or is that all part of someone’s plan? There are so many levels of subterfuge and pretence going on it’s hard to not be paranoid!

Meanwhile, round and round throughout the season, is the big question – is Brody a good guy or a bad guy? As I said in my pilot review, the genius of the show is that it doesn’t actually matter whether the answer is yes or no because he’s such a fascinating character. His interactions with his family and the difficult process of settling back into a life he’d been so far away from is fascinating. I was a bit dubious after the pilot whether the story was sustainable, half the fun of the pilot was the question of whether Brody had turned and I thought that had been answered, then a few episodes later I thought it had been answered again, the opposite way, and so it proceeded for the whole run. Even now I’m not entirely certain. The zigging and zagging of the story, and Carrie’s increasingly desperate attempts to keep up were engrossing. The complexity of the characters and the quality of the acting, particularly Clare Danes and Damian Lewis are absolutely astonishing, I’d been impressed throughout, but the final couple of episodes were incredible.

As the story developed it got bigger, reaching out beyond the key characters until it becomes entwined with the highest levels of politics and the military. That makes me a little nervous for season 2, I’m far more interested in watching the characters than I am in following the complex issues of terrorism and politics and I hope that the series doesn’t get too big in that sense. Season 1 was completely engrossing because it never lost sight of the individuals and how they were feeling and understanding their motivations.

While there was a little bit of a lull in the middle of the season, the last few episodes ratcheted the tension and the action up to proper edge-of-your-seat levels. The way they managed to pull everything together for the finale was artful, answering questions in a way that felt satisfying and yet also opened up plenty of new questions. A show this smart and compelling is rare and I’m very glad I stuck with it.

Homeland season 1 is available on dvd

2012
05/07
CATEGORY
11-12 Season
Drama
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The Big C: Season 2

The Big C is a show that really does defy convention. Each episode is only half an hour long so I automatically tagged it as a comedy, and while it certainly has a good number of laughs in it, there was always far more going on than your average sitcom. A good sitcom will have a layer of humour over a layer of realistic life stuff, usually something work or relationship based. The Big C does that layer of humour and the day to day life layer, but then underneath that is a foundation of terminal cancer. It’s no easy thing to make all three of those levels work and interact, never losing sight of either the humour or the seriousness, but The Big C manages it admirably.

Season 1 was about Cathy herself dealing with her diagnosis, no one else knew and she focussed on trying to cram as much life as possible into her remaining time. But in season 2 everyone knows about her cancer and reacts in a different way, Cathy’s forced to deal with all those reactions rather than just focussing on herself. That in itself makes season 2 a lot less fun than the 1st, Cathy can no longer act selfishly, saying and doing absolutely anything she wants to do.

In my season 1 review I said “The show isn’t about death, it’s about life. It sounds very trite, but it is really, really true. Cathy has accepted her diagnosis and taken it as a kick in the arse to her seemingly unremarkable life”. This season however really is more about death, and the practicalities like how to pay for treatment and discrimination at work. To be honest, it’s vastly more depressing than the first season. There’s still plenty of humour from the dialogue and performances, but somehow the topic of fighting cancer and living day-to-day life is more depressing than just accepting a terminal diagnosis.

This refocusing somewhat unbalances the show. When it was more clearly a comedy it was easy to overlook the unrealistic elements such as the fact that all the characters around Cathy are ridiculously over-the-top caricatures, albeit very well acted ones, but the most useless bunch of people you’d ever meet. More frustrating is that Cathy’s cancer is one of those magic TV diseases that while extremely serious has no notable symptoms beyond those that can occasionally drive a plot. The prime example of that being the occasional hallucinations of dead people, a tried and tested cheat that is only forgiveable here because of the absolutely sublime way it plays out in the final episode of the season.

I saved the series up and watched the thirteen episodes over just a couple of weeks. By the end of the season I felt rather like I’d been hit by a truck. The last few episodes are intense and actually pretty devastating. They are also superbly put together and absolutely brilliant television. The fact that it’s difficult to understand whether it’s a comedy or a drama, that it bounces between surreal and brutal realism, actually is a positive. It’s a show that defies convention or label and that in itself makes it fascinating.

2012
04/28
CATEGORY
11-12 Season
Comedy
Drama
Families
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The Bridge: Pilot review

I think at this point I may watch more Scandinavian television series than I do British ones. I think my fondness for them is at least partly related to the fact that the subtitles override my natural tendency towards a short attention span, there’s no such thing as ‘half watching’ because without being completely focussed you miss all the dialogue. Many shows (independent of production location) don’t stand up to that level of scrutiny, but given how much I enjoyed The Killing and Borgen I’m now far more likely to give a subtitled BBC 4 show a chance than I am anything on the main channels. It also helps that at 10 episodes long, The bridge isn’t too large a commitment and two episodes a week keeps things moving along (although this review is written after watching just the first episode).

The Bridge is a joint production between the Danish and Swedish public broadcasters, and that theme runs through absolutely everything the show does, from the title card which gives the series name in both languages through to the details of the case. A body is found in the middle of the bridge between Copenhagen and Malmo, and the Danish and Swedish police have to work together on the case which very rapidly turns into something a great deal more complex than just a ‘simple’ murder.

The set-up alone is enough reason to watch. I was instantly intrigued to find out more about how two countries so physically close might be the same or different in process and culture. The fact that I know very little about either country makes it even more interesting. Investigating that issue through the kind of complex murder mystery that I enjoy unravelling just puts the icing on the cake really.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the reality of the first episode as a whole quite delivers to the same level as the concept. One issue was that the characters seem pretty unimaginative at the moment, just taken from the various ranks of police drama archetypes. The lead Danish detective appears to be good natured, rather shabby womaniser with an aura of laid back experience. The lead Swedish detective meanwhile is the ‘kooky’ loner who’s a good investigator but has terrible people skills. It’s a classic case of unlikely partners being thrown together against their will.

There are a few more tedious characters, mostly in the random subplots that currently have no connection to the main plot at all. There’s one involving a successful business man suffering heart failure who’s overbearing wife will do anything money can buy to get her husband a new heart. Then there’s a weird storyline that sees a bloke with unclear motives who looks like he walked straight out of the 70s take pity on the beaten wife of a thug. I assume all these storylines will come together at some point, but in the pilot they were just a somewhat dull distraction.

The production was beautiful, as I’ve come to expect following The Killing and Borgen, every shot beautifully framed and lit. The only thing that let the production down I felt was the subtitling. I think I was missing out on a lot, the subtitles never seemed long enough to correspond to the actual dialogue. Also I think there was a lot of subtlety in language that’s missing; I was frustrated to not know who was speaking in what language for example. I’d hoped for a little more help from the writing and subtitles to highlight the cultural differences etc, but I had enough trouble just keeping track of which country we were in. I realise that this will be more obvious for the ‘home’ audiences of the show and it’s not really fair of me to expect them to cater for overseas viewers, but it did impact my enjoyment of the show.

I will stick with the show, cliché characters are hardly the biggest crime a pilot episode has ever committed, and there’s still plenty of time for development to round them out. I also rather enjoy the process of watching a show like this, discussing it with friends and colleagues and seeing it develop and resolve within a nicely manageable time span. It may not be the breathless praise I heaped on The Killing or Borgen, but it’s not a bad start, and now that I’ve written this, I can finally go and watch the second episode.

The Bridge is broadcast on BBC4 on Saturday evenings and is available on iplayer.

Other reviews:
The Huffington Post – How wonderful – Saturday night, 9pm, BBC4 and another Nordic thriller. We’ve had The Killing, then a burst of coalition politics in Borgen, what could The Bridge do?

It could take everything The Killing did so well, and expand on it, that’s what.
The Guardian – It wasn’t as gripping as The Killing, but it was handsomely mounted, well acted and reassuringly deprived of natural light and colour.
The Guardian also do a weekly recap and analysis for obsessives.

2012
04/22
CATEGORY
11-12 Season
Drama
Pilot Reviews
TAGS
4 comments

Luck: Season 1

I did something quite unusual with Luck, despite heavily criticising the pilot, I trusted another reviewer and kept watching. Maureen Ryan recommended watching the first four episodes before making a decision, and although I still didn’t get on with it, I stuck it out for another 5 to get to the end of the single season series.

While I’m not sure I’d ever have fallen in love with this series, I do feel frustrated by the fact that there were so many minor changes that could have been made by the producers that would have helped me enjoy the show a lot more. Fundamentally it should not be so extraordinarily hard to understand what your characters are saying! I would rewind scenes over and over, because I knew I was missing vital plot developments and character insights but between impenetrable accents, droning mumbling and an over-abundance of jargon, I just couldn’t work it out. Almost every scene either had a character that was incomprehensible or a string of racing or betting parlance with no effort made to explain what was going on.

It just feels like such a waste, the series was beautifully shot, I’ve never seen such incredible footage of horses racing. It really was breathtaking watching the close-ups and slow motion tracking shots of these incredible animals. You got such a sense of their power and intelligence it was truly moving. As the characters rode them, or watched them from afar you could perfectly comprehend why they loved their horses so much, I found myself simultaneously on the edge of my seat and moved to tears.

What little I could understand of the plot was interesting. The interweaving of so many different perspectives of the horses and racetrack was fascinating. So many points of view were included and yet it never felt particularly jumbled or rushed. Despite the big star name, I actually found Dustin Hoffman’s storyline the weakest; although the relationship with Gus was interesting I struggled to care about his revenge plot and certainly never worked out what he was doing (it’s a measure of how much I struggled that I don’t know if I didn’t understand the explanation, or if it was never actually explained). Everyone else had interesting things going on – the vet, the trainers, the jockeys, the gamblers, the agents – I just wish I could work out what they were saying.

I was tempted to write this review without comment about the fact that there will be no more episodes – despite being renewed for a second series, it was cancelled when a horse died during filming of the early episodes, the third animal to die during the series. No creature should be endangered for the purposes of entertainment. I don’t know the circumstances of the deaths, if they were accidents (avoidable or otherwise) or natural causes, but I’m impressed at the responsibility of the production team that called a halt to a success show which they clearly put a great deal of care into. However, two horses died at this year’s Grand National and two horses died at last year’s Grand National too. If horse racing is dangerous, it should not be allowed, whether it’s for a television series or for ‘sport’. The television producers should feel very proud of the fact that they hold themselves to a higher standard than those that organise and participate in the Grand National.

I would likely not have watched a second season of the show, in fact if I hadn’t known I could ‘complete’ the series with only a few episodes, I may not even have made it to the end of the season. I think that’s a great shame because there was so much potential there and it was thrown away for something as trivial as not toning down some accents and taking time with the exposition. A real waste.

2012
04/17
CATEGORY
11-12 Season
Drama
TAGS
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