TV review: Spaced

The adventures of Tim and Daisy who have to pretend to be a couple to get a flat.

Among the fandom Spaced is incredibly famous, Tarantino is a big fan for example, but like a lot of similar things it doesn’t have to same mind space among the general public and that is really a shame.

From the same team that would go on to make “Shaun of the dead” and “Hot fuzz” we get a quirky and surreal sit-com where is easy to see the seeds of those great movie. We have the same style of humor and, broadly speaking, the same concepts. Staples of American cinema are translated and transformed in to a low key British setting. The protagonists are also genre savvy, they often realize that they are living something straight out of Hollywood and react accordingly.

If there is one problem it’s that maybe it’s not the easiest thing to get it. On one side it’s all very British and so it doesn’t translate smoothly to other cultures. On the other side you get the most out of it if you are a geek, if your level of fandom is not really that advanced you are bound to lose many of the references. It’s obvious for us that Tim get really angry when somebody speaks about Jar Jar Binks but outside our little world it can certainly be puzzling.

Having said that it remains a very funny sitcom with the first outings together of Pegg and Frost, directed by Edgar Wright, so in my book it’s still a must see, even if you are not a geek. Eventually you need to start with something so why not start with something really funny and interesting?

TV review: Fringe season 3

The Fringe team battles the menace from the alternate reality.

In retrospect is not rocket science but after the dismal failure that has been Lost ending, Fringe philosophy is noteworthy. On one side they slowly advance the various character arcs while on the other side they feed us the “Monster of the week”. Every couple of episodes they reveal a little bit more of the back-story of the world. It all works like a well oiled machine.

The main theme is the alternate reality which becomes so much of a focus that we have many episodes entirely settled there with alternate version of the entire main cast. This trick rejuvenates a serial that in the second season was becoming too formulaic. Of course it also means that it’s a little bit less newbie friendly but it’s still a far far cry from the byzantine non sense of lost. Speaking of that I can report that, standing the ending of season three; We are steadily getting answers to our questions, those answers makes sense, new question are arising from the show in a steady but not overwhelming number, those questions are interesting, the overall world building is top notch, we want to know about these places.

As far as characters go this is the season where Anna Torv proved to everybody that she is a great actress and that actually is Olivia, her role in the serial, that it’s a bit boring. Not only she managed to develop a believable Alt Olivia, she even had a couple of episodes of fun playing Leonard Nimoy in her body, don’t ask you don’t want to be spoiled.

John Noble of course still plays the archetypical mad scientist Walter Bishop to a pitch perfect level. In the more dramatic episodes he can get a bit annoying with his grief but in the end he’s wonderfully “out there”.

Mid season there is a moment of slow down with sup par writing and a couple of aborted plots, clearly filler material. If only they axed some episodes we would have ended with a masterpiece, as it is it’s just good fun.

TV review: The thick of it season 1

The inner workings of the fictional ministry of social affairs.

After watching “in the loop” I went back and recovered the original series that sparked the movie.

As a first impression I must say that the camera is really awkward, they are clearly aiming for that fake documentary feeling that it’s all the rage lately but honestly the camera jerks around Blair Witch style and so it can be really uncomfortable for some viewers.

Also the production values are really low, it’s clear that they were still testing the waters and that the BBC didn’t invest too much money in it.

Luckily they got the wonderfully foul mouthed Malcolm Tucker from the beginning and so we really didn’t care about that stuff. Up the certain extent it flows even better than the movie because the tone is all even, there is no style clash between the UK part and the USA part. Moreover this kind of stuff works better in 30 minutes episodes, the plot is still not really that important and so when is taken in such small bits is more like a starting point from where all the various characters can go on a tangent.

In the end I can’t help but wonder if our government really works this way….

Tv review: the wire season 5

With a new focus on the media system we get to the end of the story.

This is the last season of the show and it’s kinda difficult to review it. I don’t know if it’s the best TV ever but certainly I never saw a show with better writing.

This last season manages to keep the extremely high quality established in the rest of the series while driving all the main plot lines to conclusion. It’s very good stuff under any conceivable point of view.

As a whole this serial managed to tell a bunch of very interesting stories while at the same time it painted what is the more comprehensive and realistic portrait of a city. Maybe is a bit depressing considering how virtually every character get morally compromised one way or another but it never indulges too much in it.

The closures are all rightly handled and for the first time I’m left with the impression of having just watched a 60 part movie, there is no filling, no throwaway stuff, everything flows nicely from the beginning till the very end. Sadly this is what denied “The wire” the success it deserved, as wonderful as this serial is when played on the PS3 it’s not advisable to watch it on TV, maybe after having missed a couple of episodes, the plot is so thick and complex that it can easily overwhelm.

One advice, watch it, now.

Tv review: true blood season 3

More kinky sex, more wacky storylines, more bizarre supernatural randomness!

When at the end of a season we wonder out loud why we did watch something it’s a clear sign that things aren’t going into the right direction.

At least this time the main villain is not kinky sex personified, actually the main villain is the only thing that has been done mainly right in the whole season. Russel Edgington is a very fun and interesting character and brings back vampirism to the center stage. There are very fun interaction between him and Eric Northman, who continue to be the show stealer.

Sadly the rest is descending into a complete mess.

Lafayette, the other breakthrough character is badly shoehorned by the screenwriters into plot lines that deprive him of his more interesting feature. See while they did the right call by not killing him at the end of season one they clearly don’t know what to do with him, they can’t go to the books, where (spoiler alert) he’s been long dead, and so they put him into more serious and depressing storylines making him increasingly somber. This is an obvious mistake, we liked him because he was fun and flamboyant, we don’t want another Tara.

Speaking of which the amount of bad and crazy stuff that keeps piling on her is absurd. She was already a morose and annoying person even when she didn’t have all those reason to whine; now she is unbearable.

This is probably the main problem of this serial, beyond all the kinky sex and storylines so absurd that they leave our mouths gaping open, nobody is really likable, they are all different shades of terrible.

Pile on it a supernatural quotient that is spiraling out of control with five different types of supernatural creatures living near this tiny hamlet and you get a train wreck.

TV review: The wire season 4

With a new crime lord in town and the Election Day for the mayor of Baltimore approaching we follow the lives of a group of school kids.

I had my reservation at the end of season 3 but I must say that I was wrong, the creators of this incredible series were merely laying the groundwork for this season, in my opinion the best one and certainly one of the best things that I had the pleasure of seeing on my TV.

As is customary for the wire there is a new setting, the school system, with a bunch of new characters, a gang of school kids. This makes everything that happens on the screen so much more harrowing because beforehand even with relatively sympathetic criminals they were still people who choose the wrong side of the law, instead here we literally see the enormous pressures that drive so many kids to criminal life. Watching the fall from grace of not one but many boys who, in a different setting, would have been perfectly normal people made our viewing really intense.

A lot could be said on how there is a complex system that creates monsters and what could be done to correct it.

The creators again with the character of Bunny Colvin point the finger at the hypocrisies of the school system while proposing solutions that not everyone will like but that are anchored in real life.

As I said in the beginning I thought that the creators where unsuccessful in tackling the dark side of politics, I was really glaringly wrong. It was simply the start of a multi season arc and here we start to see that even electing the right person for the job is only the beginning.

Is difficult to say more without spoilering it, suffice to say that this season is a masterpiece on every level.

Tv review: True Blood season 2

Our heroes face an anti vampire group and a new supernatural menace.

I really wonder hoe watches this series. Clearly the producers think that the viewers are all into this “random ridiculous sex scenes put everywhere” thing because now instead of one per episode we have at least two, if not three. Even the big bad of the season get his power almost literally from kinky sex.

Maybe somebody somewhere find all this exciting but, for me, it’s still all incredibly campy even if even I must concede that they somehow corrected their aim and that there are at least a couple of nice ideas in there.

The pacing is still terrible, the first half of the season is nigh unwatchable with the main plotlines advancing at a sluggish rate. Thankfully al the buildup leads somewhere and the final showdown is actually engaging and fast paced.

I still don’t understand the role of many characters, we spent an incredible amount of time following Jason Stackhouse around and his plot goes literally nowhere.

At least they understood which are the breakout characters so we get more of the flamboyant Lafayette, even if he is much toned down, and much more of Eric Northman who is wonderfully amoral and inhuman.

 Still not recommended viewing but is getting better.

TV review: The Wire season 3

The target of the investigations is again the Barksdale organization while the shadowy world of local politics is introduced.

Notionally this season should be about politics but I must say that here they didn’t achieve the amazing results of the first two season, we don’t really understand what it’s all about apart from a generic impression of “It’s complicated” and “They’ll try to swindle you”. The writing is still amazing of course; it just does a worse job at explaining the subject.

Spiritually this is more a sequel to the first season, we go back to drug trafficking and the Barksdale whose plotlines come to a thunderous conclusion.

Overall the show is still very realistic and maybe a bit bleak, the effort to diminish the crime and help the underclass are actively sabotaged and stopped by the higher ups in the system. Even the cop hero, McNulty, is actually a moron ready to work behind his colleagues backs to get what he wants. This is noteworthy; here we have peoples, real human beings who do things, who make mistakes, dictated not by plot necessity like in so many other shows. Their mistakes are dictated by their nature, by what they are.

This is also an extremely cinematic show, there are thousands of moments where the storytelling is so elegant, so sophisticated.

This is really must see TV, for the first time I feel like I’m watching a 60 hour long movie and not the usual stuff stitched together just to get to the end of the season.

TV review: The wire season 2

The gang of maverick detectives is back but now they are tackling a new case on the docks of Baltimore.

The show runners of this series certainly got a lot of courage. They already got a very big cast and complex plotting but instead of backpedalling they add an entirely new layer to their construction.

This layer is the dock area with his workers, led by Dockers union leader Frank Sobotka, and a scary smuggling organization. They don’t’ forget the Barskdale drug dealing organization, not at all, we continue to follow the events in the “pit”, in the local prison and everywhere they unfold.

This is brilliant stuff. They highlight the interconnections of all the various vices of a big city, how they are all complex problems that eschew simple solutions.

On the other side I’m watching this stuff all in a row; I can’t imagine how hard it can be for the average viewer who sees only one episode per week. I find it hard to keep track of two dozen main characters so it doesn’t surprise me that the wire never got better rating. This is not serial TV; this is a twelve part movie.

I still don’t k now if this is the best serial ever but certainly it got the best writing.

TV review: The wire season 1

A police operation against drug trade with all his implications.

This is supposed to be the best series ever. I don’t know yet but after one season I can attest that is extremely good stuff.

Basically is one long story that last 13 episodes. It kinda makes sense, if we think about it for a moment in real life nobody solves a murder in 45 minutes.

Realism is the key, gone are the super sexy policemen of NCIS with their infinite resources, in are real life detectives who are still waiting for a computer and must fight a whole system that doesn’t want them to succeed. On the other side there is an honest depiction of drug trafficking that instead of setting everything in black and white actually manages to convey the humanity of all the characters.

This succeeds thanks to a incredible good writing, I still can’t say if it’s the best one but certainly is the best written. The creators, David Simon and Ed Burns, are an ex crime journalist and an ex Homicide detective and bring an unprecedented level of realism. Later in the series they even recruited famous crime novelists like for example Dennis Lehane.

Lately I’ve been watching some episodes of CSI and, boy, does it look old and silly in comparison to this one. Is like watching real life unfold.

The only caveat against it is that being a whole long story is not good for casual viewing, you should start from the beginning and never miss an episode, even better, rent the DVD, you’ll thank me.

TV review: House season 7

The continuing adventures of a mad doctor.

House is a wonderful and very important series. It actually created a trend in TV and film writing, without him no mentalist, no lie to me, not even Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes.

The problem lies in the fact that the same characteristics that made him so endearing make him incredibly difficult to manage in the long run.

House at his heart is power trip for all us viewers. He knows everything but we never see him studying, he basically does and says whatever he wants and at his workplaces he only works when he is in the mood for it, hint very rarely. The problem lies in the fact that the keep us viewers entertained they had to up the ante all the time.

So House, with the passing of the seasons, became increasingly more childish and petty doing flamboyant and extravagant things just for the sake of it. While this is certainly fun it strains our suspension of disbelief to the breaking point, see if I received from somebody just a tenth of what the so called house “friends” received from him I would have in the least punched him and probably called the police.

Honestly I think that the producers of the show realize this but they are literally between a rock and a hard place. House by itself must be a terribly difficult series to write, burning ideas at an alarming rate, 23 episodes this year. This year they also had to face some executive meddling, they planned a multi episodes arc with House on the road which should have at least provided us with something different but Fox axed it and so they had to go back to the drawing board.

This season they actually tried a step in the right direction with a romance between House and Cuddy. The idea was certainly nice, even if the execution was still lacking because as usual nobody had the guts to slap House out of his childish antics. Sadly here they faced the large side of their viewership that regrets any hint of House “going soft” and so went back to the old “Vicodin fueled” status quo.

The ending went beyond silly. I don’t want to spoiler things too much, let’s just say that it didn’t make any sense and that house went beyond crazy all the way to criminal.

Is still entertaining but if it’s true that it’ll end next year I must say that it’s certainly the right moment.

TV review: True Blood season 1

Near future, vampires had made their presence known to society and a young girl starts a relationship with one of them.

Certainly there must be a space for an adult version of Twilight. The problem is how to distinguish it from the young girl’s favorite movie when the base love story is factually identical. Of course you could employs good writers and simply do a compelling and realistic story but why bother with all of that when you are HBO and so you can simply add tons of steamy sex.

In every single episode there is some sex, and I’m not taking about your simple missionary position style, here we go from S & M moments with chains and handcuffs all the way to virtual sex while high after a dose of vampire blood, V.

Now I imagine that the creators of this stuff wanted it to be edgy but after the first moments, when is slightly off putting, it becomes terribly fun in a campy sort of way. Like when David Caruso on CSI Miami takes off his sunglasses while pretending to be really cool but in reality he is so so terrible.

The sex aside this series is actually fairly interesting. The setting, rural Louisiana is a breath of fresh air compared to the countless times that we saw Los Angeles and his ilk.

The only stand out character is the flamboyant homosexual Lafayette while the rest of the cast is either too bland or simply unlikable. For something about vampires we really don’t see a lot about their world, a part from a very good sequence at the vampire tribunal. Actually the whole season looks like a long introduction, with a lot of plot lines that meander without really going anywhere.

At least is entertaining, we’ll see how the second season will shape up.