TV Culture - Desperate Measures

Spoilers, potentially 

Ice Ages

We gave up with True Detective about halfway through season two, mainly because it wasn't a patch on the brilliant first series and we never watched the third series probably because it slipped under the radar. However, there has been so much written about season four, subtitled Night Country that we decided to give it a go. One of the places that was raving about it was our old friend The Guardian that managed to give it a 5 star rating based on just one episode.

I checked their review of this and came to the conclusion that they did indeed base their five stars on one single episode, which, while very good, probably didn't warrant top marks - thus making me wonder (yet again) if they get paid to praise things. This is about a small town in northern Alaska that is  just entering a period where the sun never comes up - think 30 Days of Night, except in reality it's about two weeks. A delivery driver arrives at a research facility manned, usually, by six men but the place is empty and has a Marie Celeste vibe going on, apart from a severed woman's tongue on the floor. Enter the chief of police, played by Jodie Foster and pretty much the rest of the episode was spent introducing us to the complicated relationships and characters that make up the town of Ennis. In fact, so much time is spent on the people connected to chief Liz Danvers and her former detective, now a State Trooper, Evangeline Navarro - played by Kali Reis - that you almost forget about the six missing men until a dead man shows a woman where their bodies are at the end of the first episode.

This is very much feeling like a supernatural murder mystery rather than a crime that needs solving from the first hour and there is going to be so many important peripheral characters and stories it's going to probably need a score card to keep up, but it is intriguing, especially as Navarro is hurting about the death of an Inuit woman from five years earlier that has never been solved and believes that what has happened at the research station might be related to it - why isn't explained, yet, but it certainly seems that the woman's tongue is a link to this unsolved mothballed case. One thing this new story does do well is paint a picture of how dysfunctional and potentially awful it is living inside the Arctic Circle in Alaska during a bleak winter. I expect this will become must see viewing over the coming weeks and a welcome addition to the empty schedules.

More Detective Shenanigans

It seems that the theme for new TV in January 2024 is detectives - perhaps the trend over the last couple of years for true crime podcasts and the like has given people the idea that detective TV is in vogue again, when really it's never ever gone away. This time around is Death and Other Details, which I thought started intriguingly, but it appears the wife found it tough going and almost fell asleep. Maybe I need to watch things on my own at times...

To be fair, I didn't really know what to make of it. it's set in contemporary times but on board a cruise liner with a pre-1950s feel. Mandy Patinkin plays a world famous (English?) detective who has been on the slide and Violett Beane as the girl who he failed to help 18 years earlier but is now, seemingly, back in her life not only to solve a murder on the ship but also to find out who blew her mother to bits. This has the feel of a kind of Agatha Christie mystery, but with much more sex and swearing than you'd ever imagine; in fact within ten minutes there's a cunnilingus scene that I expect no one saw, erm, coming, which firmly placed the series on a different footing than maybe it looked like it was heading. I was quite impressed with the premise and the fact that there doesn't appear to be anyone on this ship without some kind of a mystery or a skeleton in their closet - but then again, none of these things ever have 'innocents' in them, they're always packed to the rafters with potential victims and villains. The wife said she'd give the second episode a try, I suppose it's the most I can expect...

So... we watched the second episode and we both agreed when it had finished that we wouldn't bother with a third. It's not often I agree with IMDB on things, but this was an 8.5 when I downloaded it and was 6.8 when we started watching it and I think that's a fair estimation and I expect it will sink lower. It's another one of those 'I don't give a shit about any of the characters and their rich privileged lifestyles'. I disagree with the critics opinion of Mandy Patinkin's English accent; it does sound very English, it just doesn't have an accent; it's just how you'd imagine a Englishman to speak if you didn't come from England. 

The thing about this series is there just seems to be too much padding, too much trying to be clever and too much unnecessary sex in it - I used to like shows with too much unnecessary sex in them, but now it just feels like a way to get people watching; I find it exploitative. The main problem with the story is like all detective stories everyone either has a motive or a reason for the murder of Imogene's mother and the murder of the man on the boat and I'd like some twists on old stereotypes, this doesn't have it. I don't think it has any staying power which is why we're not staying with it...

First Time Out

For a bit of added nostalgia we watched the very first episode of QI, from 22 years ago, it had Danny Baker (now disgraced), John Sessions (dead), Hugh Laurie (massively huge in a famous kind of way) and a very youthful and squeaky Allan Davies, all overseen by a thin and equally youthful Stephen Fry. It was all very mannered with no screens and a distinctly Ask the Family vibe, oh and you understood the scoring. Baker was annoyingly clever; Sessions knew far too much and should have won, Laurie was surprisingly reticent and Davies was... well, Davies but squeakier. It probably took a few years to forge the madness that made it such a popular series for so long. It was fun watching it though and we're going to watch the rest of the A series because it's been so long since we saw it we cant remember anything at all.

Sheer Heart Attack

Our dip into the BBC archives continues with the fabulous 1994 series Cardiac Arrest, which while a wee bit dated still packs a punch and makes you realise that not a lot has changed in the NHS in 30 years, 18 of them under Tory rule. We polished off the first series in two sittings.

Starring - among others - Andrew Lancel, Helen Baxendale and Ace Bhatti, it essentially follows the misadventures of various doctors from junior to consultant and the various stages of arsehole they become. It is hard-hitting, funny and extremely realistic - a kind of Carry On Doctor for the age. It was TV-meister Jed Mercurio's first TV series and if you didn't know he was a doctor before becoming a TV script writer you do now. This is a rude and no holds barred TV show that shocked a lot of people back in the 1990s but also attracted a large following, making it one of the most respected medical dramas the Corporation ever did. I expect things haven't changed for many doctors in 2024 and you quickly decide who you like, who you hate and who you'd like to see get punched by the poor bastards on the end of their arseholery. Classic stuff.

Bloody Hell

He's back! The nicest man on TV is travelling the world again for our entertainment. Wilderness with Simon Reeve is a new four-part documentary series with the fantastic Reeve venturing into some of the remotest parts of the planet in search of stories that no one else bothers with. 

This first episode he's in the Congo Basin, the vast, second largest rain forest on the planet and a place that, oddly enough, I was only thinking a few weeks ago appears to be one of those places that no one visits and good old Simon pops up there. However, instead of his usual cutting edge reporting, this was more about crossing one of the most inhospitable jungles on the planet and meeting some indigenous tribes that frankly deserve to live on earth a lot more than probably anyone else and, of course, Simon is just so bloody nice that everyone wants to mother him.

If I've never told you this before, the wife and I have a competition with Reeve's programmes, it's called The Bloody Hell Count, because Simon says 'bloody hell' an awful lot, so each new episode we watch, we both have a guess to how many bloody hells he'll say with whoever gets it right winning and getting to guess first next week; if neither of us get it right then whoever guessed first guesses second next. Don't tell me no one else does this? I just won't believe you. This week: I guessed One bloody hell, the wife guessed two bloody hells and there was a total of three bloody hells (not including any bloody hells that are said in the preamble before each episode starts, because there's one in that). We both know that next week's episode, in the Andes, already has one bloody hell in it, so I'm guessing first and I'm stuck with thinking that might be the only one or could there be more. I mean, if there was three this week there's a good chance he won't want to use up his quota of bloody hells or equally if everyone does the Bloody Hell game he might try to equal his record of four or even go for five or more... Honestly, his shows are bloody brilliant and if you don't watch them you bloody well should!

Next Time...

You can probably work most of it out for yourself - what we are carrying on watching plus whatever happens along to fill the voids, which, as I said last week, isn't looking too full a schedule. I'm sure many of you would have no problem with a streamlined TV review blog for a few weeks/months, especially how bloated they became at times last year.