TV Culture - Blowing Hot & Cold

The spoilers are thick in this one!

The Equaliser

With ten minutes left of the entire series and the wife opting for two bloody hells and me for just the single solitary one, Simon Reeve uttered his final bloody hell of this series and allowed me to draw this series 1-1. It means next time I get to go first, but knowing my luck instead of it being called something like Wilderness with Simon Reeve it will be called Simon Reeve's Oh Bloody Hell. Getting that equaliser was a high point in what was essentially one of the most dull episodes...

It seems strange to suggest that an episode with elephants, lions, aardwolves, kudus, giraffes, hyenas, hippos and many other fabulous wild animals should be a little on the boring side, but sadly it was. We got the message; wildernesses are in danger, there's a real threat to the ones that are left and if it isn't from climate change it's from man just fucking things up, but this time round we spent 35 minutes of the hour wandering around the Kalahari with members of an indigenous tribe hunting a bison that eventually eluded them. it was hot and sunny, but Reeve didn't wear a hat and while he's a terrifically affable bloke who seems to bond with everyone he meets, this second African excursion felt almost like a bit of a barrel scraping exercise. A series that promised much but somehow fell well short and felt a little more like a reward for years of unwavering service than anything else. Hopefully next time he'll go back to the style that has made him such essential and infectious viewing.

Frosty Vibes

The penultimate episode of True Detective: Night Country was just as dull as the previous three - only that first episode had any real impact and the rest of them have meandered around being as dull as dishwater trying to tell different stories in such an oblique way that at one point about 55 minutes into this penultimate part, the wife asked me if I had any idea what was going on and what they were discussing had to do with the six dead bodies found out on the ice, so long ago...

The episode kicked off with Kali Reis's Evangeline collecting the ashes of her dead sister and just wandered around touching on the subjects that seem to have been put there to obfuscate the story - the indigenous Native Alaskans, the mining company, the newly introduced drug addict, Danvers' step daughter, who we've never really understood how and why there's even a relationship there because all we know is Danvers is a bit of a bike and has been involved with most of the men in Ennis.

Then there's the disparity of the bits filmed in Iceland and the bits filmed in Alaska, which once you notice them start to grate like nails down a blackboard and the only saving grace is that you know there's only one part left and this fifth episode arrived early because of the Superb Owl or whatever it's called. And then just as we're losing the will to live a couple of things happen; the cops find a link between the mining company and the research station; they then discover that where Annie was filmed - possibly killed - is on mining company land and then that Chris Ecclestone's chief of police and the mining CEO - Dervla Kirwan might be in cohorts with each other as the murder investigation is shelved and the mining CEO is allowed to question Jodie Foster like she's the DA or something. Kirwan then turns up with Prior's father basically ordering him to kill the drug addict at all costs.

Yet it's the final five minutes that has more things happen in it than the previous four episodes as Prior's dad follows Danvers home to do his job and everything goes to hell in the proverbial handbasket - there's an actual action scene, with guns and exploding brains and all kinds of mayhem and it happens just at the point when I wanted to say, "Do you know, I don't give a flying fuck who did what or why, I'm done with this." As it is, next Monday we'll have a conclusion, which I still believe will implicate the dead bodies from the first episode with the death of Annie and the bonkers surviving scientist who we haven't seen since the opening five minutes of the first part. This has been a truly dreadful detective series with few redeeming features.

TV Lives Matter

Halfway into the third series of The Morning Show and it feels as though the show has... not lost its way but has shifted its focus away from Alex and Bradley and onto other characters. That's not to say Alex and Bradley aren't in it, but this new series appears to be more about Corrie and Stella's attempts to save the network; new face Chris Hunter (Nicole Beharie - she off the once fab Sleepy Hollow) and John Hamm, as a kind of billionaire who appears to be a thoroughly decent chap rather than an uber-rich piece of shit... Or is he? 

This season has a more episodic feel and the main characters seem to be sitting on the edge looking in a lot of the time, although Alex Levy is never too far away from the centre of this. It starts with a trip into space - which Alex manages to avoid - because Corrie is serenading a billionaire to buy the network; it wanders into Black Lives Matter as Sybil the head of the board makes a racist joke at the expense of new co-anchor Chris; touches on the Ukraine war, while dealing with a hack that unleashes so much personal information that the entire production team are in danger of walking out. The thing is though, there doesn't appear to be a real firm focus - is it the billionaire? Is it the hack? Is it the financial crisis facing UBA? Is it something that hasn't even happened yet? We're two years on from the end of season two and a lot has happened, much of which has been hinted at, but little has been revealed...

It feels similar to season two, but that ratcheted up the stakes big time in its second half and there were always hints that would happen; this time around nothing particularly looks or sounds like it will have the same impact; not even the putting a freelancer's life at risk tease. Then we get an entire episode dedicated to filling in the blanks of the two year gap and an explanation to something that is exquisitely teased into making us think was about something more salacious - 'That thing that happened between us last year...' Is not what anyone watching thought it was - far from it. That flashback episode actually is the catalyst for the rest of the series; I just can't help thinking it should have arrived earlier in the schedule. 

The last few episodes though tie everything together - the events on January 6; the hack and why it happened, the little things that you thought inconsequential that suddenly looked very choreographed and done for nefarious reasons and Corrie takes centre stage as the takeover gets into full swing. The doubts thrown into the mix as truths are uncovered and conspiracies are revealed and we begin to realise that nothing is what it seems. It's a bit contrived in places; one of the big giveaways is really a stupid move especially by a character who wouldn't be where they are by making silly mistakes and there's the weird situation where one of the most desperate and loved-up characters does a very odd about face, based on an integrity they had never shown before. The finale is really the most cliffhanger-y ending so far without even feeling remotely like a cliffhanger. However when this series comes back you have no idea if it will even look the same, because those cliffhanger events are that important.

This series concluded less than four months ago and it will be at least 18 months before season four hits our screens. It has been such a fixture in this house for the last month and a bit, it's going to feel very strange not having The Morning Show to tune into, but this series seemed to have very little to do with TMS and a lot to do with UBA and everything taking place around it, one wonders if the title is the only thing that ties it to the original idea now... It's back in 2025; that seems like a long wait. Watch it if you can, it's dynamite TV.

What the Who?

I watched something today - quite out of I know not why - I haven't seen for over 50 years and did so purely out of ancient curiosity. While the wife was doing chores that didn't require my help, I watched the first four-part Jon Pertwee Doctor Who episodes - Spearhead from Space.

I couldn't believe how camp it felt or how ridiculous some of the exposition was, or even how silly it felt. Pertwee was my Doctor, the one I was introduced to - mainly because I lived in Canada during the first two - and while I must have seen this - because I remembered the Autons and the weird plastic meteorites - the rest of it seemed contrived and riddled with more conspiracies than you can shake a stick at. Pertwee looked very young (despite the grey hair); Liz Shaw, his assistant for this short series, was quite dreadful and Lethbridge-Stewart had the feel of a camp pantomime Brigadier about him. It was cutting edge stuff for 1970; in 2024 it felt ancient and like it was made by the local amateur dramatic society as an homage.

Q Hi

The funniest episode of the QI U series landed - the poor general quality was sure to end and it was with Ufology that it did. Guests Cally Beaton, Nish Kumar and Tom Ward joined Sandi and Alan to talk about UFOs and space, except UFOs were a bit on the light side as it skirted around the issue and dealt with space in general, but it didn't matter because it did something that hasn't happened much in this series so far - and we're seven episodes in all ready. It was funny; very funny, with a lot of LOL moments with both Beaton and Ward knocking the ball out of the universe. Kumar was his usual GVFM, even if he always sounds like a funny kid at the back of the class who is never quite sure if he's making people laugh or being laughed at.

Ward proved he's a good impersonator - I've seen him before, but I'm not sure where, but his humour was just the right side of observational surreal, while Beaton, making her third or fourth appearance, is very good at self-deprecating humour as well as being just the correct side of being filthy. One of the weirdest points of the show was Sandi Toksvig admitting that she found Bill Clinton surprisingly attractive because of his charisma and ability to seemingly charm his way into the pants of women. Her utterance of 'I would have' was probably the oddest thing she's said since publicly coming out of the closet 30 odd years ago. It was more like what you'd expect from this dinosaur of a quiz show and proves that with the right mix of guests and a subject that allows improvisation this show can still hit the heights. 

Residual Craplien

It dawned on me about an hour after watching the first episode in the third season of Resident Alien that I said I probably wasn't going to bother with watching it again. I suppose we watched it because we forgot how absolutely shit its season two turned out to be and how an excellent first season just jumped a dozen sharks and turned into a really fucking dull and unfunny series.

Alan Tudyk is a great comedic actor, his Harry Vanderspeigle in season one was funny, sinister and very very alien, but by the time season two came around he had become something of a parody of himself and by the end of this first episode of season three he's just pathetic and actually more annoying than he got last year. Whoever writes this now obviously lost the plot. Also to be just a little more sexist than usual, Sarah Tomko's Asta is now a fucking man mountain of an arse - it's even bigger now than I thought it would ever get (and not in a good way) and Alice Wetterlund's D'Arcy Bloom just looks old, washed out and used. The kids have aged significantly given just a couple of weeks have past since the alleged end of season two and the once brilliant Corey Reynolds as Sheriff Mike Thompson is no longer funny, he's just really fucking stupid.

Harry is now working for the US government with their alien tracking division under Linda Hamilton's General McCallister and is helping them stop the Greys from destroying the planet, which Harry's race of aliens wanted to do but have now changed their minds. Harry's feelings for Asta are compromised when Enver Gjokaj's Joe Rainier - a Grey/Human hybrid - starts dating her and the only person in the show that seems to have any common sense is Elizabeth Bowen's Deputy Baker and even she seems to have lost it a little now. The mayor and his wife have both been abducted and probed, they've also got an owl problem which the Native Americans see as a sign of imminent death and honestly this is a load of shit that I wish I'd stuck to my guns and remembered that I wasn't going to watch it any more because, as I said earlier in this sentence, it's a load of shit. I hope this really isn't what my old mate Pete Hogan's comic book version was like and I also hope he collects a nice cheque and doesn't watch this load of shite because, you know, it might upset any writer worth his salt seeing your baby being dissected and probed by shit aliens. I have a week to try and persuade the wife that we shouldn't watch this any more, but you know, I need something to be horrible about...

Truth or Colloquial Bullshit?

We finally got around to starting to watch the 2022 Apple TV mini-series The Essex Serpent and it is as slow and meandering as reviews said it was; but that isn't to say its not an intriguing thing. With a cast including Clare Danes (doing a very good English accent), Tom Hiddleston, Clemence Poesy, Frank Dillane and Hayley Squires it's got some class stamped on it, but the opening two episodes were slower than a neap tide (look it up).

There is an intriguing idea going on here, even if it makes little or no real sense. Danes' Cora is a recent widow, the wife of who appears to be a cruel and nasty man who dies from some kind of suffocating illness that could have been cured by late 1890s medicine but he refused. Cora starts to have a kind of relationship with the family doctor who is also an innovative surgeon with new ideas that are pushing medicine forward, and she is also a budding woman of science, interested in archaeology and evolution. She reads about a mythical serpent that allegedly has appeared on the Essex coast and feels drawn to go and investigate it herself. This is where she meets local vicar and serpent denier Hiddleston - as Will Ransome - and then somehow upsets the applecart by helping to find the dead body of the daughter of a local fisherman who believed his daughter had travelled to Malden to sell some silk. 

This is a contemplation of religion over science, but is littered with local superstition and mass hysteria that is driving a wedge through the community with the deeply religious belief this is a punishment from the devil - the spiritual denying the existence and science wanting to see if it can be proved. Atmospherically it is wonderous to look at and the Essex landscapes are fabulous; it genuinely makes you feel as though this is 1898, but it creeps along like ivy on a wall and you get the feeling that this is not about a mythical serpent and more about the manipulation of a largely ignorant group of locals with a teacher who is rooted in fire and brimstone rather than logic. There is also an intriguing subplot involving Cora's doctor/surgeon friend, London slums and her assistant Martha, a socialist trying to improve the lives of migrant workers treated like slaves. Perhaps these things will come together, but at the moment it all feels a little disjointed and disparate.

The Bland Tour

I think I'm getting to the stage in my life where I'm finding well established things have pretty much run their course - imagine my oft used Genesis theory, where I essentially went off of the prog band around 1979 but continued to buy their albums for another 13 years under the misguided belief that they'd suddenly start producing great albums again. There were moments during that period of time, but largely I've listened to albums from Duke to whatever the last proper one was called for about five hours of the last 45 years. I feel very much the same about old favourite TV shows; I watch them in the hope that they'll rediscover that oomph that got me hooked as a fan the first time around. The Grand Tour is very much one of those things.

I enjoyed Top Gear when these three - Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond - presented it and while I know people thought them boorish and a bit right wing, it was all just an act most of the time. When they brought this current incarnation to Amazon about seven years ago, it was all right, but it wasn't a patch on some of the best Top Gears and only rarely did it really hit those heights again. Since then The Grand Tour has changed to a three/four specials a season format and there has been something a bit 'special' about them; but they do have a formula that has become a little like something that has become funny purely through repetition - the telegraphed joke/stunt that you know will happen, its just a matter of  timing.

This most recent instalment has Clarkson, May and Hammond crossing the Sahara from the Northern most part of Mauritania, driving due south until they reach Senegal to finish their tour in Dakar. There is some suspect geography taking place to start with that takes them into the disputed Western Sahara region, but essentially this is three elderly gentlemen in pimped expensive vehicles travelling across a desert for no other reason than because it is there. Mauritania has issued 58 filming permits since 1960 - it is pretty much an unknown quantity for just about everyone outside of the country - a former French colony, mainly Muslim and completely dry - literally and metaphorically; you cannot get an alcoholic drink there for love or money. It is also the toilet of Africa; it appears to be the place where all of the world's plastic, mainly bottles, end up. It is the waste plastic capital of the world and everywhere the three men drove it was littered with rubbish - the country is a tip with a lot of sand and is very, very hot - between 45 and 50 degrees centigrade every day.

We had the usual stunts - usually aimed at James May. We had the usual car trouble - usually happening to Hammond and we had the usual boorish Englander abroad spiel from Clarkson - who looks like he's carrying someone's baby (and for much longer than just nine months) and frankly it was two hours and 14 minutes of not fucking much - sand, some stunts, some rocks, dodgy roads and it wasn't even very pretty. In fact, when Clarkson and May find an actual oasis they spent so little time there all we got to see were Clarkson's budding varicose veins. It obviously had a number of LOL moments, most of their get togethers do, but they're also telling the same joke so often now that even familiarity is breeding a sort of contempt. They obviously had a good time because, as Clarkson says, it's the first proper Grand Tour they've had for four years, but it felt old and tired - a little like the presenters. James May's travelogues and cooking show are more entertaining; Hammond has found a niche with big buildings and how to fix things, while Clarkson's Farm is actually a lot of fun, despite what the Guardian says; the wife is one of many who watch Millionaire with him presenting it. It might be time, if rumours are to be believed, that Amazon pulls the plug on this and allows these old gits some dignity to waste the rest of their lives doing stuff that suits them and us. 

Next Week...

The last Night Country will answer all the questions I've raised or will it just be a load of shite? We'll watch some more Essex Serpent or maybe we'll just forget about it. Are we ever going back to Domino Day? Will we try some of the other Apple TV+ things I've obtained? Am I going to subject myself to more Resident Alien? Or am I going to dig into the archives and find something old to watch rather than new stuff? What about Mr & Mrs Smith? I've promised my mate I'll give it a go, but I'm seeing as many really poor reviews as I am really good ones and I can't persuade the wife to commit. We do seem to be leaving things half finished or just not bothering with any more episodes if we haven't been hooked by a couple. I'm tempted by Criminal Record, which concludes this coming week and which I will have all eight parts - it's highly rated, but what does that really mean now?

I could list all of the things that might be on the cards, but that's the equivalent of televisual cock teasing because I might not bother with any of them and just carry on reviewing the shite so I can try and make a comedy column out of insulting them. It might be because I'm living in a building site, at the moment, but even the good things feel as though I'm missing something. Our old friend The Guardian ran an article this week suggesting 2024 could be the greatest year for TV ever, but this is a neo-liberal rag that also dances to the tune of whatever their advertisers tell them to. If 2024 is the best TV year ever, I'm going to donate one of my five penises to science...

In the end, you'll just have to tune in to see...