TV Culture - Whatever You Want

New Year new look! I decided that I needed to split TV and films up this year. I watch more TV than film, so a weekly (or thereabouts) TV column is quite easy to achieve, but 'padding' it out with whatever movies we've watched almost seems a bit misplaced. So while my TV ramblings will continue in the regular blog spot, the film one will probably be on an as and when schedule, especially if there's not a lot of new films to be reviewed. It will also give me the chance to dig deeper into specific TV series rather than just a general review...

Rock the Ballet

The fact that Martin and Gary Kemp will allow themselves to be parodied - yet again - by the extremely talented Rhys Thomas says a lot about the two brothers. The Kemps: All Gold is the follow-up to the 2020 mockumentary The Kemps: All True where the two brothers and founder members of the 80s New Romantic/pop band Spandau Ballet sent themselves up and now three years later they're back to do it all again. 

This time it's all about making some money for Martin and returning to a life of being respected for Gary, but naturally this is never going to be the case. Martin is separated from his wives - Pepsi & Shirley and their 12 children - while Gary lives in a sprawling mansion in Norfolk that might be haunted. Along for the ride is their long lost brother Ross (not that one) and their manager, the brilliant Michael Kitchen playing John Farrow, who you might remember is also the manager of Thotch - another of Rhys Thomas's spoof subjects. He suggests to the boys that they make a biopic - with Adil Ray as Tony Hadley - which completely rewrites their history and bombs at the box office. They then team up with the last surviving member of Status Quo - Francis Rossi - to form Spandau Quo to perform at midnight on NYE for the BBC.

It's very funny for the first half, but struggles to sustain the laughs when Christopher Ecclestone - as their former producer - suggests they break into a warehouse to steal their own original recordings, which they allegedly sold. From this point on it descends into farce rather than surreal lunacy; it's like once the slightly bonkers set up is exhausted there is no real money shot and it struggles for a proper climax. I seem to recall the original mockumentary had a similar problem and this would have worked if it had just been a diary of one thing after another going wrong, without having to have set pieces that struggled to improve it. It still garnered lots of LOLs in the opening 30 minutes which more than made up for the lack of them in the later half. Perhaps it would be advisable not to have a third part for this.

Analysis of Evil

Now we're up to date with Evil, I thought it might be good to share some ideas with you, especially if you've been watching it. I touched on this last time out that perhaps the reason nothing seems to conclude is because they might all be in purgatory, but there was a sublime nod of the head towards this theory in the season finale of series three as there was a conclusion to one of the plot lines and something happened that will surely have repercussions when season four hits the screens later in 2024, because if it doesn't then the fans are going to think they're involved in some kind of a con.

Obviously, most regular viewers of this will have seen the return of Andy after his four daughters blew Leland's scheme wide open using a poke facility on a video game and will also have wondered how Sheryl will manage to avoid the coming split with her own daughter now Kristen knows that her mother is working for DF and is still associated to Leland; who is also the father of a surrogate child using the egg that Kristen has had stolen. The questions this throws up only further make me think that Evil either takes place in a purgatory or at some point the writers and show runners are going to have to admit that Leland Townsend, Kristen's mother and their associates need to be exposed in some way for doing the illegal things that never seem to come back and haunt them.

It is possible that because these modern day demons have influence all over the world they can avoid any form of real scrutiny, but surely their plan for one of the Bouchard children is going to be smashed to pieces now that Kristen knows not to allow her own mother any access to any of her children. I mean, Kristen's been possessed once so they're not likely to go down that route again and short of killing her - unlikely - the evil doers are going to have to either get pretty public or there's got to be some seismic shift in the next series, otherwise the viewers patience is going to be sorely tested. Plus, how come the kids' exposing Leland - yet again - didn't have more made of it? The amount of stuff Townsend has been involved in during the three seasons so far is remarkable, yet, like the snake he is, he manages to slither out of it in almost all the cases.

One of this show's biggest problems is the tendency to avoid moving forward with plots, especially ones that seem to have reached a natural conclusion only to be conveniently ignored until the show runners can be arsed to return to it; such as a few of Ben's subplots and the fact that the Bouchard family and what has happened to them over the last three years never seems to be addressed the way it would be if this was taking place in an actual real world setting - yet this programme has made a big deal about seemingly taking a real life approach to a fantastically grisly premise. We've reached a point where none of Father David Acosta's subplots hold any real interest because we're invested in the Bouchards and to a lesser extent Ben's life, because both of these are far more interesting than the trials and tribulations of a newly ordained priest or the highly morally questionable Roman Catholic church. It might be a largely anti-Catholic series, but I think the least interesting aspect of it is now the reason it exists in the first place. There has been far too much obfuscation and lack of common sense displayed by the priests and Catholic church in this series for them to even be taken seriously; in fact while Leland and his demons are almost a comedy side line, the church runs them a close second. 

Absolutely French

The BBC special Dawn French is a Huge Twat was an entertaining 75 minutes of comedy as one half of the funniest female double act on TV regaled us with stories of when she's been a massive twat. That was essentially the premise of this special - stories of Dawn French when she did things she was embarrassed about and as a concept it was quite funny; not riotously, but funny enough to illicit a few chuckles and LOL moments. The thing about French is that she comes across as the kind of person who would do something twattish but never in a deliberate way, probably because she does seem to be a very honest person, especially about her own shortcomings. This is, after all, a woman who has never shied away from her size or struggles with her weight. As a TV special at Christmas it was entertaining, but I can't help thinking I would have needed to have been a ... ahem... huge fan of hers to have paid money to see her doing this one-woman show live, because while it was fun it wasn't brilliant fun.

Um... Er... Nope...

Over in the film blog, I spend a little bit of time berating the Guardian newspaper for spending an entire column shitting and stamping in it because people dared to like a film it slagged off with a passion - you can read that later when I publish it. I also spend some time pointing out that The Guardian has an absolutely shitty track record at reviewing things and I believe firmly that the people the paper employs to review films and TV (and possibly music and books) are probably wankers with no taste or hacks who cobble together reviews based on a few things they've read from people they like or follow. There is also my theory that the paper has been trying to appeal to a demographic that doesn't read it; this might be a webpage only thing, in the anticipation that younger middle class people will look at the Guardian web pages rather than whatever young middle class kids actually look at, but in reality it comes across like a middle aged pervert trying to impress teenagers at a family wedding.

One of the paper's 'TV Shows of the Year' was the BBC3 comedy Such Brave Girls, which it gave a four star review to and claimed was "properly brutal and properly funny". The reviewer was Lucy Mangan, who I mention in my film review piece as being the woman who reviewed a TV show based on her dislike of the main star and didn't bother watching it. Well all I can think is she wrote this review based on what someone said on TikTok because we sat through the entire first episode, where the characters mumbled, talked about suicide, mental health, sex and numerous other [tasteless] subjects and failed to say anything remotely funny. It was in my words, 'a stinky pile of unfunny bollocks' and it isn't big or clever to use emotive subjects for alleged humorous subjects. I'll just reiterate what I say in the film blog - don't watch anything The Guardian recommends and be curious about things it hates. 

More Non-Starters

2024 isn't getting off to the best of starts as far as TV is concerned. I revamp the TV blog and all I have to show for it is disappointment and disillusionment... So I noticed two new TV shows that debuted this week and thought, 'We'll give them a go.' ...

#1 - Sanctuary (A Witch's Tale) is a bit like Doctors, you know the afternoon BBC soap opera that's on after the news, at 1.45pm, most weekdays but is finishing soon. The reason I liken it to this is because it's badly acted, feels utterly scripted, is insincere and I'll be fucked if I watch any of it ever again. We managed 17 minutes and 33 seconds before I paused it and said to the wife that I didn't want to watch any more of it. It was awful, felt like something ITV would have done in the 1990s and I wasn't alone; the wife had the same feelings as me and was amazed I managed to get as far as I did without calling it to a halt... It's about a Cornish town called Sanctuary that is inhabited by witches and they all have brattish children and there's some mystery to solve and it was like watching an am-dram production of some play written by the local wannabe whose claim to fame was getting a blow job from an extra on Corrie while wearing a duck outfit - which sounds considerably more interesting...

#2 - The Brothers Sun was considerably better but failed to make us want to watch anything more than the opening episode. This eight-part Netflix series might be really good but I expect it will be eight episodes of people trying to kill the three main protagonists in various ways while the younger, inept, member of the trio learns how to defend himself with help from his older, wiser and deadlier brother. Essentially the leading Triad gang in Taiwan is being attacked by a mysterious assailant that leaves the top man in hospital and his son on a mission to protect his mother and brother, living in anonymity in LA. It has lots of martial arts in it, a lot of criminals, the usual slow motion fight scenes and not really enough comedy - for which it is supposed to be - to keep either of us amused or entertained. It might prove to be a great little series, but it failed to impress us, so we decided not to invest any more time on it.

Monster World Revisited

The most puzzling thing about this penultimate episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters was the fact that more things happened in it than in probably most of the previous eight episodes. Or at least it gave the impression of having more in it. We had the mystery of Leland Shaw's longevity solved and one of the longest lasting dangling subplots resolved, in what was likely to have been seen coming from several miles away on a foggy day...

The flashbacks kind of suggested we were going to see some kind of resolution as we time jumped back to 1962 and Bill Randa was now Hiroshi's adopted father and Leland was off on a mission that wouldn't see him return for 20 years, suggesting that if the situation with Cate, Mae and Leland isn't solved quickly then the same thing is going to happen all over again, but I'm erring towards that happening anyhow because I'm convinced this is a lead-in to the new Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire film which seems to be more focused on the Hollow Earth side of the titans universe than ever before. 

This wasn't a bad episode and oddly enough there were a few monsters on show and an actual followable story/explanation of the up-in-the-air bollocks we've had to suffer for the last few weeks. One thing about the Hollow Earth that is a spoiler but I'm going to spill - time passes at a different rate there and that wasn't even touched upon in the recent King Kong Vs Godzilla film, so in many ways this TV series is either adding to that cannon or it's just doing its own thing.

Our Pillock in Italy

One of the treats of 2020 was the James May series set in Japan. The former Top Gear presenter is, by far, the most entertaining of that 'classic' trio and his Our Man in Japan was an excellent travelogue with added 'man out of his comfort zone'. We had no idea there was a James May: Our Man in Italy until the third season set in India dropped this week. I surprise myself at how stuff sneaks under my radar and it's probably one of the reasons I do this blog because it gives me an opportunity to look back on older blogs to jolt my memory about things I'd forgotten we'd watched...

The second series, as mentioned, set in Italy kicked off in Sicily and focused most of its attention on Palermo, Mount Etna and May getting forced into doing things that were well out of his comfort zone. I know when the Guardian reviewed it - Lucy bloody Mangan again - she disliked the fact he had banter with his film crew all the way through, but it works with May because he's not your average TV presenter/TV Chef/TV travel journalist; he treats it like you'd expect a man entering his 60s would, with a little irreverence and a lot of cynicism when he's forced away from doing the things he wants and has to do the things the producer wants. Yes, it's the gimmick for the series, but May pulls it off with a certain aplomb that others probably wouldn't attempt. Plus, we found his six-part Japanese sojourn great fun because he approached it like someone who had never been there before; we're both big fans of Italy - not least because of Stanley Tucci's fabulous in Search of Italy - and it's still on our bucket list to go to one day (which is why we're also looking forward to season three and India because... that as well...). An entertaining programme without being too earnest or up itself.

General Ingorance

QIXL continues to be an entertaining show even if, like I said before, it feels like it is coming to the end of it usefulness. The format is growing stale, the jokes tend to be versions of the same jokes made for the last 18 years and there's not really a lot you can do to reinvigorate it because it is a formulaic quiz show. The U series continues with an Upside Down theme that naturally only really touches on the actual upside down for a couple of questions before artistic licence allows it to wander off in strange vaguely related directions. Aisling Bee won this week not because she knew the most but because she said the least wrong things, plus there was a montage of her when she did win - on the screens behind - and two of them didn't feature in the 45 minute extended edition, suggesting to me that maybe watching this get made live might be more fun than watching the actual TV show.

Things Fall Apart

One thing you can say for sure about For All Mankind is there's never a happy ending guaranteed; there's usually some unexpected death or tumultuous event that has a catastrophic effect on subsequent happenings and this penultimate episode not only delivered that it also set us up for possibly the most tragic finale in the history of this superb series.

It's tough to say anything without ruining it for people who watch or people who might watch but it really does look like everything everyone has been working towards is in danger of falling apart. Ed and Dev's decidedly risky plan has been uncovered, except it's been interpreted as a potential terrorist act. Margo's warning from Sergei takes on a tragic turn of events and the reason for North Korea's involvement in this series at all is finally revealed. This episode feels like one of those TV series where in the penultimate episode everything turns to shit and it looks like all bets are not only off but also going to go south faster than a rocket launch, which usually means the good guys will out and everyone will live happily ever after... Except this is For All Mankind and there's no such thing as a happy ending in this star-spanning epic TV show. My gut says what is trying to be achieved will succeed but it's going to cost far more than we invested viewers want, but my head and heart is saying 'fuck that, this show doesn't do things that way and it's not about to start.'

The important factor at play here is this season the Moon has literally been mentioned so briefly and is now just a thing so far in the background it's less than an afterthought, Gordo gets mentioned more than the moon does. If Dev and Ed's plan fails, Mars will become as redundant as the moon and the likelihood will be if Goldilocks is anchored outside the earth's atmosphere, the money it would create would put an end to space travel for longer than this series plans to carry on for. 

Whatever happens, I'm not frightened about a next season without Joel Kinnaman, Krys Marshall or Wren Schmidt in it, we have Coral Pena, Toby Kebble and Cynthi Wu to carry the torches and take the legacy even further. I want the treasures that Goldilocks gives to finance not only more asteroid mining and less poverty and inequality on the planet, I also want to see this series go to the next logical place in their quest for the stars - Jupiter and its moons. I want 2013 to be more like how we once dreamed 2050 would look; more Star Trek: Next Generation and less Planet of the Apes...

Next Time...

The finales of Monarch and For All Mankind. I might have a look at Silo which is also from Apple TV and seems to be much better than it appears on paper. We have stuff on iPlayer and the Flash Drive of Doom to dip into - this includes re-watching season one of Legion and the two series we didn't bother with (not because we didn't enjoy it, but because there was so much time between them). The wife is desperate for me to watch Guilt and there's usually something new that pops up on one network or another every week. Obviously there will be the usual stuff that I slag off in inventive ways.

The movie blog will follow this - maybe later today, maybe next week. We'll see how that all goes and whether this division of things works or not.