The Following is possibly the MOST ridiculous show that I’ve seen this year, and I watch a lot of ridiculous shows. It’s even more ridiculous than Grey’s Anatomy’s “we own the hospital” storyline! When I watched The Following’s pilot I likened it to Criminal Minds, but it turned out to be the subject matter and brutality of Criminal Minds, applied to the kind of extreme villain and over the top plots more usually found in episodes of Scooby Doo.
I tried to sum up the plot but I found I really couldn’t do any better than Richard Vine’s Guardian piece that perfectly captures the utter insanity that the first season has been (spoilers in that piece for everything but the final episode). What I particularly love about Vine’s writing is that it exactly captures my attitude toward the series – weary eye rolling on one hand, but joyful abandon on the other.
The Following is just utterly ridiculous. It’s riddled with plot holes, character and institutional idiocy and an abundance of repetitive tropes – oh no, someone’s been captured again! Now someone’s escaped! But somehow rather than making the show frustrating and dull, it all combines into something that I really looked forward to each week. By being so ludicrous, it was also completely unpredictable, each episode had surprises and twists, killing off characters at a phenomenal rate and charging along with gleeful abandon.
How season 2 will work is anyone’s guess. I won’t spoil it, but elements of the final episode really did seem to close things off. I’m a little worried that this will turn into something that I’ll end up wishing had actually only been a one season wonder. But for that one season, what an absurdly enjoyable ride it has been.
All overthe place people have jumped upon the fact that Broadchuch owes a debt to Scandinavian dramas like The Killing and The Bridge because it comprises just one case which is gradually developed over the space of several hours. But the similarity which really jumped out to me was not the structure, but the fact that like those shows it relied very heavily on red herrings, stupid characters, sudden turnarounds and unlikely coincidences.
I don’t know what a real police investigation would be like, but in order to control the pace of the show this one clearly relied on police asking not quite the right questions and witnesses/suspects wanting to keep secrets rather than truly help with the investigation. For the most part it comes across as characters being dim, rather than writers being stuck for ideas, but it is a very fine line sometimes. As it turned out the journey was also far better than the destination, while I guessed the who (partially), the motive came out of absolute nowhere and felt very weakly explained.
But for all my that, I thoroughly enjoyed Broadchurch, and that’s down to three factors. The first is that it was proper ‘water cooler television’. I could sit and chat about the show with friends over a cup of tea, not just to chuckle over the dialogue or tut over the problems, but to discuss the plot twists and turns and make predictions. The frustration that many of the answers were completely unguessable never overwhelmed the shared experience of making them.
The other two elements that made the show a joy were David Tennant and Olivia Colman who lit up the screen and brought spark to even the flattest of dialogue. Their relationship didn’t fall into any of the usual clichés and they genuinely just felt like a normal couple of people thrown together. The acting through the rest of the cast was a bit more hit and miss, the lovely Arthur Darvill can do no wrong in my book, but Pauline Quirk was laying it on with a shovel.
I’m a bit uncertain as to whether I’d describe Broadchurch as ‘good’, but I have no hesitation in recommending it as enjoyable. There are lines of dialogue that absolutely cracked me up, and moments of silence that had me welling up. But alongside those were moments that had me cringing and an eventual reveal that just left me flat. I’m not sure how a second season will work, but if it allows me to spend more time with Olivia Coleman and David Tennant, than I’ll be there.
It’s important that I explain why I was watching this series. You see, thanks to an abundance of free time at the moment I actually find myself running a little short on things to watch. I’ve also just got a new book of Killer Sodukus and need something fairly innocuous to put on while I’m working my way through that . One evening, after clearing off my Sky+ backlog, I went rummaging around on the Lovefilm Instant service to see what I can find and stumbled over Body of Proof. I went back and had a look at my pilot review and noted that although I wasn’t enthused enough to seek it out at the time, I thought it might be ok. On top of all that, the first season is only 9 episodes long, so it wasn’t exactly a huge commitment.
That’s a pretty lengthy insight into my unexciting life, but it’s important that you understand that. Because even given those low ambition reasons for watching, and the fact that my brain was half occupied with soduku… it’s impressive that Body of Proof was still so deeply unsatisfying.
The biggest problem with the whole thing is the quality of the mysteries. The most basic requirement of a procedural show is that the cases make sense. Yes, to be successful you need characters and originality etc, but if your cases are stupid, you are sunk before you even start. It’s not like I even need the cases to be memorable (god knows I watch enough CSI and NCIS), but the ones on Body of Proof are just plain shabby. Aside from the phenomenal reliance on our hero spotting a microscopic clue, or each victim or accused having some obscurely specific medical complaint, almost every episode had a gaping error in it. One case was immediately ruled a murder rather than a suicide because the victim had been shot in the head twice (admittedly tricky to do yourself) and then utterly failed to have that happen in the eventual flashback to the murder. Barely an episode went by when something wasn’t either dropped in the middle, or introduced unexpectedly.
Everything was just so frustratingly fake. The female medical examiners are always in form fitting designer dresses and ludicrously high heals, no matter where the body is. One of the flunkies is a borderline offensive parody of a self-righteous black woman (although he’s male) doing the whole “oh no you di’nt just go there!”, while the other is the usual tedious caricature geek with glasses and awkwardness. The detectives are two good actors (Sonja Sohn of The Wire and John Carroll Lynch of ‘you’ll know him when you see him’) doing their best with the clichés they’ve been given, but even their attempts to deliver subtlety and humour with body language and delivery cannot completely overcome the terrible dialogue.
I guess I should comment on Dana Delany as it’s really her show, but I don’t really know what to say, because talented though she is, she can’t fight her way through the fact that this show just isn’t very good. I came to like the stuff with her daughter and when she got a chance to play human, but the rest of the time the character she was too much of a superhero, a medical examiner who can see the tiniest details and identify fungus at just a single glance.
Even as something that I only wanted to pay attention to with half my brain, it still managed to be unsatisfying. The actors deserve better. My soduku book deserved better. It will take a special kind of boredom to make me watch season 2.
Body of Proof is available on Lovefilm Instant (give me a shout if you’d like a free trial link) and probably other on demand services too, or on dvd
8 years ago serial killer Joe Carroll was caught by FBI agent Ryan Hardy. Now Carroll has escaped prison and inspired a group of serial killers to follow him.
Fans of Criminal Minds will be familiar with this much more brutal format, these murderers aren’t like the ones on CSI, they’re vicious and messy, people suffer and there’s not always a satisfyingly neat resolution for the story. For some reason Criminal Minds has never really taken off in the UK (despite ranking highly in the US, in 2010/11 it was the 10th most popular show, the only dramas rated higher were the two NCIS and The Mentalist). The Following clearly owes a lot to Criminal Minds in tone and subject, but it actually feels like it’s an evolution of that show, rather than just a shameless copy.
The set up scene at the end (which I won’t spoil) promises a fascinating and elegant set up for the structure of the series, both for episodic “serial killer of the week” and an overarching storyline to embed them in. I found myself grinning along as the details were revealed, as it all became clear how elegant the set up was. Shows like Criminal Minds and CSIs struggle at times due to the episodic nature of their “case of the week” which leaves little for an audience to get really engrossed in. If the writers of The Following play it right, they could have a multi-year show that actually encourages people to watch every week.
The performances are absolutely superb, and you expect nothing less from the type of names they’ve got, who would normally be grabbing major roles in movies. Kevin Bacon may have turned himself into a bit of a joke thanks to some miserable adverts for a phone network where he fundamentally misunderstands how his own eponymous game works, but this will remind you why he was in so many movies in the first place. Opposite him is James Purefoy, always go to the British guy who did Shakespeare for charming and chilling evildoers. Purefoy’s calculating glee opposite Bacon’s gritty angst is going to be brilliant fun to watch every week. Shawn Ashmore provides a bit of lightness and energy to the supporting cast, instantly falling into a more constructive relationship with Bacon to balance the destructiveness.
I’d been really starting to despair about this year’s new shows, nothing had grabbed my attention and many were causing me outright horror at the shoddy quality. The Following however manages to hit all the right notes, it’s got a great concept with enough material to sustain it and a great cast. It’s far from perfect, the practicalities of the set up start to look dodgy if you look too closely and the characters are pretty cliché in places, but the writers are smart enough to actually acknowledge this and that sort of self-awareness is very promising. The pilot is one of the best I’ve seen in a very long time and could easily have been a pretty decent film and I can’t wait to see how the series develops.
The Following is on Sky Atlantic on Tuesdays, Criminal Minds season 8 starts on Sky Living on Monday.
Other Reviews Huffington Post – Ultimately, my dislike for “The Following” has less to do with its gore factor than with its essential laziness, silliness and pretentiousness.
TV Fanatic – It was an intense hour of television, one that moved at a brisk pace and featured more violence and gore than we’ve ever witnessed on network television. I loved every second of it.
Slouching Towards TV – The Following has lots of potential but it needs to prove that it can build on its premise and deliver something genuinely different without relying on the trappings of its horror origins.
The Killing is one of the more intense shows out there and every season I get completely hooked, cleaving out two hours each week in my usual multi-tasking schedule to just sit and focus on the subtitles. Unfortunately, that level of intensity is particularly susceptible to frustrations, and this season I found myself irritated more often than not.
I spent a large amount of each episode shouting at characters, desperately wanting them to stop rushing about and instead talk and listen to each other. I realise that this kind of show requires some internal conflict to boost the drama and intensity, but too much of it this season was manufactured by having people not say the things any normal person would say, which in turn just made them all look stupid and bad at their jobs. Every episode someone went off to investigate a lead without telling anyone where they were going or why, often making for a dramatic cliff hanger reveal, but also undermining their position and leaving everyone open to challenge. Mind you the senior police officers once again seemed to spontaneously lose all confidence in their employees and cheerfully compromise their own investigations just to keep the politicians happy.
Why the politicians were involved in the first place was almost as big a mystery as the criminal cases. I’m pretty scared for the fate of Danish politics if the outcome of their election and forging of coalitions really was completely dependent on one police investigation, rather than on the economy or something of actual national importance. The level of involvement in the case never really made sense to me, the apparent psychic hotline enabling the political aides to update the prime minister (and the audience) the instant everything happened, and the withholding of evidence by both individuals and the entirety of special branch just seemed ridiculous.
On the plus side though, the case was a lot more interesting than that of season 2, a lot more focussed and, thanks to the significant presence of the family of the kidnapped girl, it never lost the connection to the victims and the emotional impact of the crime. When I wasn’t frustrated with the characters, I was completely engrossed in the twists and turns of the case and the way the present kidnapping case intertwined with the older murder case. The series continues to be elegantly shot and the location work was particularly beautiful and the cast all do a phenomenal job adding depth to the frustrating script.
The Killing is a great thriller, but unfortunately it has drifted rather too far into the land of contrivance to be a truly intelligent thriller – you can’t watch it without switching off a bit of your brain. The ending was pretty depressing, leaving me rather despondent for politics, the police, big business and the mental health of pretty much everyone everywhere. If this truly is the final season, I can’t say that I’m massively disappointed. It’s had a good run, but I think it has fallen down a rabbit hole.
Sherlock Holmes in modern day New York. Holmes is a recovering drug addict, Watson is a girl.
It’s impossible to write a review of this without tripping over comparisons to the BBC’s Sherlock. I tried very hard to review it in isolation, but every attempt left me frustrated. The more I thought about it though, the more I realised that it wasn’t entirely unfair of me, if the producers wanted their show to be judged on its own merits, then they should have given their lead characters different names. After all, once you’ve changed the histories of characters, moved them to a different time period and a different continent, and even changed their gender… is there anything that’s really Sherlock Holmes about it beyond the name? The “Holmes Method” has been used in plenty of other shows (House and The Mentalist off the top of my head) and they could very easily have made a procedural about a hyper-observant, socially awkward genius and his unlikely companion solving crime without incurring any of the fuss. So given that the producers have chosen not to avoid the comparison, I don’t see why I shouldn’t either.
That said, it turns out it doesn’t really matter, because even without comparison to Sherlock, I don’t think Elementary is particularly good. It’s not as offensively bad as many pilots are, but there’s just nothing special about it, and a few too many frustrations to make me want to tune in each week.
Maybe if Sherlock didn’t exist (or for that matter the Robert Downie Jr films), Johnny Lee Miller’s take on Holmes would be more interesting, but as it was he was just a bit unremarkable, a bit… safe. He didn’t have the spark of unpredictable danger, or even the humour that Downie had, or the curiosity or otherworldliness of Cumberbatch. He just felt like a bit of a weak impression of someone else’s character. However he wasn’t anywhere near as disappointing as Lucy Liu as Watson. I know there’s been comment on Watson being a woman, or being a struck-off doctor, but either of those would have been ok if the character was actually likeable. I’ve never really been a fan of Lucy Liu, her characters are always a bit emotionless, distant and aloof, making them extremely hard to engage with. With that flatness the relationship element also fails to work, I just didn’t feel there was much of a click between Watson and Holmes. Martin Freeman set a very high benchmark for Watson and there’s just no comparison here.
So the characters are a bit of a letdown, and sadly the plot was as well, it just felt like a perfectly ordinary murder with some clumsy contrivances added over the top just to make it seem more interesting than it was. I can come up with at least a dozen ways the murderer could have got rid of his victim more simply. Meanwhile the clues that Holmes uncovered through his miraculous intelligence were ridiculously telegraphed leaving their eventual reveal rather anti-climactic.
The biggest difference between Elementary and Sherlock however is in the pure quality of the production. Every frame of Sherlock is absolutely gorgeous, everything is framed creatively, every transition carefully plotted out, the lighting is incredible, and every episode is littered with little tricks and motifs that leave the whole thing seemingly effortlessly oozing style. Comparatively Elementary is just dull. There’s some nice usage of the New York location, and I liked the use of music (both popular songs and original violin pieces) but there’s no design to it, it looks like every other procedural in the world.
Of course this highlights one of the reasons that it’s not fair to compare the two. Sherlock is just 3 episodes every year or so, while Elementary will (they hope) be a 20+ episode season. The amount of time and attention that can be slathered on every second of Sherlock will be an order of magnitude greater than that of Elementary. That too is why comparison of the two is pointless. You don’t have to pick one show or the other, there won’t be any more episodes of Sherlock until well after the season of Elementary has finished. Given that my biggest complaint about Sherlock is that there isn’t enough of it, maybe Elementary can fill the gap. In that regards, the pilot was sufficient, but I can’t really claim that “good enough to tide you over if you’re desperate” is a ringing endorsement.
Elementary starts on Sky Living on Tuesday 23rd October.
Other Reviews Guardian – Elementary does Sherlock right as series surprises as one of the best on TV. The set-up and the cast had me fearing the show would be wholly annoying, but this Sherlock revamp somehow works
CliqueClack – I wanted to like CBS’ “Elementary,” really I did. But, it’s pure and utter tripe. It has the framework of the Sherlock Holmes novels, but the acting and speedball pacing of a high-energy sugar addict.
Huffington Post – the two leads lack any kind of chemistry, platonic or otherwise, and the storytelling lacks the smarts and insight of one of TV’s best Sherlockian creations, “House.”
While I enjoyed the first season of this show, I was more than aware that it had still had a lot of problems, unfortunately the second season has not only failed to fix those issues, but actually gone in completely the opposite direction and made them worse!
The biggest problem with the series is something that I’m beginning to see as a problem at the heart of British television – the season was too short. For US series twenty plus episodes is pretty much the norm, which often leaves the production and creative teams overstretched resulting in too many filler episodes, however it also gives plenty of time for subtle character and story development, room to breathe as it were. UK shows have traditionally had much shorter seasons of six to a dozen episodes making the seasons more focussed, more intense and more consistent in distribution of quality and ideas. But recent series such as Luther and Sherlock have taken that to extremes and I’m getting frustrated by it.
Luther’s second series was just 4 episodes long, and with each case taking up two episodes, really it could be considered as just two movie length episodes with one element of the story running over the two. I like films, I watch loads of them and really appreciate the good ones that manage to tell a compelling story and introduce, develop and resolve characters within just a couple of hours. However I want something different from television – time and subtlety to really appreciate the complexity of people and situations.
Luther’s first season (six episodes) already had some problems with developing the supporting characters and of the three that were established, the two best ones weren’t featured for the second season. By losing the dramatically contrasting two female characters who best understood Luther it’s almost like starting from scratch again. Adding insult to injury the new characters didn’t get much beyond outlines – the new cop who doesn’t trust him and the young prostitute who needs him to be a hero. They get the job done, but it’s blunt and cliché.
Idris Elba as the titular detective is still superb, he has a unique and entertaining style to him that makes him burst from the screen. Every intonation, mannerism and word he says is fascinating and unexpected. I never knew what to expect of him, yet everything he did made perfect sense.
The stories and crimes are brutal and chilling but just edged over into the territory of ‘ridiculous’. While the ‘good guys’ seemed extreme but credible, the ‘bad guys’ were too much. That’s where more episodes and time would have been best spent, grounding the series in some more realistic criminals rather than movie style super-villains. It really conflicted with the otherwise beautifully shot vision of London.
I’m disappointed that this show wasn’t better. There are clearly great writers, the direction and photography is innovative and beautiful, and the actors are superb. But the series needs more time if it’s going to be a television series. Maybe, like Sherlock, it’s a victim of its own success with a star now too in demand to commit to more than a few episodes a year. With Sherlock that just about manages to still work on the ‘better than nothing’ front, but for Luther, it undermined the whole thing and left me massively disappointed.
The BBC has commissioned a third season, but at time of writing there’s no announced broadcast date. Seasons 1 and 2 of Luther are available on dvd at Amazon
It seems at the end of season 7 I proclaimed that I wouldn’t be returning to CSI:NY, that I’d grown too tired of the flip-flopping character development, the gratuitous ratings grabbing stunt casting, the financially obvious product placement and the utterly unremarkable storylines. Apparently I forgot all that and watched season 8 regardless.
The good news for you is that I’m not going to bother writing yet another version of the rant that I’ve produced reviewing the last two seasons. The bad news is that’s not because anything’s improved in CSI:NY, it’s just because I seem to care less and can’t really be bothered.
CSI:NY sits alongside NCIS as my choice of watching to accompany other tasks that only require half a brain – ironing, tidying, filing, accounting… I just watched the last episode of the season while kneading some bread dough. Both shows are good for this because not only do they not need concentration, but they actively discourage it. If you focus on the plot too much you might spot that it’s dumb. Instead if you just dial up your attention for the witty banter and dial it back down again for the exposition, you’re sufficiently amused and not too irritated.
CSI:NY ranks above its naval colleague simply because in comparison its characters are an exercise in careful development and subtle traits and emotions. I actually like most of the CSIs when they’re just chatting and doing their jobs, they all of course become epically irritating when they go off on some sort of self-righteous rant about justice or honour or professionalism or whatever, but most of the time they’re a fun bunch who have interesting (and consistent) relationships and who I would actually trust to investigate a crime without running the risk of screwing it up.
The plots remain dubious in the extreme, always relying on extraordinarily unlikely connections and minute traces of stuff . “I found this tiny flake of soil in the carpet, it’s possible it came in on the boots of the 15 police officers, but as it happens it’s found at only 1 specific place in the city where the person who appeared to be only tangentially connected to the case, but is coincidentally played by a big name guest star happened to mention visiting last month.”
Beyond all expectations, CSI:NY will be back for season 9, with 18 episodes to take it up to 200 episodes in total. I don’t think anyone anticipates it being renewed for season 10, but you never know. I’ll continue to watch it as long as I have ironing that needs doing.
It’s been a tumultuous couple of seasons for CSI with major cast changes leaving the line-up almost unrecognisable. I’m broadly in favour of that, new characters bring new life to the show which would otherwise surely be pretty stale by now. Unfortunately there’s also been some wild variation in the quality of the writing and storylines. While I praised season 10 and the introduction of Laurence Fishburne to the cast, I was critical of season 11 because the destroyed his character by giving him some kind of hammy arch-nemesis like a melodramatic comic book. So he’s out for season 12, Catherine is demoted and Ted Danson is brought in to lead the ship.
I found it interesting that Fishbourne despite being the top billed actor, and the oldest character he was a relatively junior CSI, but I’m not sure it really worked long term, too quickly the other more experienced characters deferred to him. Danson however can lead both the cast and the characters and just fits in more naturally to the structure. His quirkiness never overwhelmed his competence and he was a nice balance of new and commanding, while respectful and supporting. Being a laid back family guy made a really nice change to the mostly career obsessed, highly strung characters. I was dubious at first, but I actually liked him a lot and he felt like a better replacement for Grissom.
His character however didn’t leave much space for Catherine, and it wasn’t long before she started the drawn out process of leaving. I’ve never particularly warmed to Catherine as a character, I found her too quick with emotional reactions and too hypocritically critical of others. So I can’t say I was particularly fussed about her leaving, or really missed her after she was gone. Morgan on the other hand made a nice addition to the cast, bringing a bit of youthful enthusiasm back that has been missing since Greg became a boring grown up. Being the estranged daughter of Ecklie also brought that character more into the fold after a dozen seasons loitering on the periphery. She even managed to humanise the otherwise stunningly irritating Hodges a little bit. I’m still on the fence about the other new character – Finlay, thus far she’s just come across as a bit of a thoughtless loose cannon, but again, she at least brings some new energy to the series.
After the disastrous drawn out storyline of Nate Haskell from the last two seasons it was rather a relief that there was no ongoing storyline this year. With all the character changes that was enough to tie the season together. The cases were the usual collection of unremarkable murders interspersed with looks into unusual communities or lifestyles, nothing particularly remarkable, but generally entertaining.
I said about season 10 that it felt like everything was coming together, but then it all fell apart in season 11. That leaves me pretty nervous about saying that season 12 felt pretty good and seemed to be setting up the new generation of the series. Thanks to the cast changes the series doesn’t feel old at all (comparing for something like NCIS which has barely changed the main cast at all and so feels ancient and repetitive at ‘just’ 9 seasons). CSI continues to be a show that’s reliable entertainment, but is unlikely to ever clamber back to the top of either the ratings or anyone’s favourite shows list. Still, as NCIS proved by contrast, even just being ‘reliable entertainment’ is nothing to be sniffed at.
Criminal Minds has had a couple of seasons of cast shake-ups, but season 7 was all about getting the band back together and returning both Prentiss and JJ to the fold. On the plus side it’s like very little ever changed. On the downside… it’s like very little ever changed. This isn’t going to be a particularly long review!
My resounding feeling at the end of the season was that it was… fine. The characters are now well established and generally pretty consistent. JJ was the only one that bucked the trend, she seems to have come back from her year with the Pentagon something of a super agent, not just now as good a profiler as everyone else, but also a bit of a kick ass action hero. Prentiss on the other hand came back from the grave pretty much unchanged which meant her sudden decision at the end of the season to leave the team again came a bit out of left field.
As per usual with Criminal Minds the attempts to do larger stories around the characters’ personal lives feel somewhat out of place. We’re introduced to Rossi’s ex-wife only to have her die of a terminal illness a couple of episodes later. It feels rather like cheating to introduce a never before seen character just to kill them off to see the effect on a central character. There was a similar problem with bringing JJ’s boyfriend in for the final episodes just so he could be held hostage and upset JJ. The more gradually introduced character of Hotch’s new girlfriend was handled a lot more smoothly and therefore had more long term impact.
The weekly cases were all variously bleak, depressing, gory, creepy and occasionally downright disturbing. I didn’t really remember any of them as particularly outstanding, and there didn’t seem to be as many high profile guest stars as previous seasons. I might have liked a little bit more in the way of long term storylines, but I did enjoy watching each episode so maybe I shouldn’t push my luck.
I genuinely can’t think of anything else to write about the season. Criminal Minds is an absolutely reliable series, always entertaining and interesting, but rarely particularly innovative. However compared to some of the other shows out there, reliable and competent is apparently more challenging than it may seem.
The Following is possibly the MOST ridiculous show that I’ve seen this year, and I watch a lot of ridiculous shows. It’s even more ridiculous than Grey’s Anatomy’s “we own the hospital” storyline! When I watched The Following’s pilot I likened it to Criminal Minds, but it turned out to be the subject matter and brutality of Criminal Minds, applied to the kind of extreme villain and over the top plots more usually found in episodes of Scooby Doo. 
