TV Culture - It's February Already!

Yes, there be spoilers...

No Doris Day

A review blog wouldn't be a review blog without me having a pop at The Guardian newspaper. The Nu Right leaning rag has the dodgiest record of reviews known to man, most recently demonstrated by its gushing and fawning reviews of the revamped and new Mrs & Mrs Smith TV series, where it gave it 5 stars in the main newspaper and 4 stars in The Observer, plus extra column inches telling everyone how Donald Glover and Maya Erskine have more chemistry than BASF. Yet, within 24 hours of the release of the entire series IMDB's user rating had it at 6.1... So bearing this in mind, when it gave Domino Day a 4 star review any enthusiasm I had was instantly washed away...

Despite claiming this new BBC3 series to be 'Buffy for the 21st Century' (BtVS actually finished in 2003...) we still watched the first two episodes and we are going to watch the remaining four - not because it's "4-star" telly, but because it isn't shite. However, let's get a couple of things straight - this isn't Buffy for a multitude of reasons and I haven't seen a half decent witch-based TV series, ever. Willow was excellent in Buffy, but she was the exception to the rule and with witches seemingly big in 2024 there might be more nonsense on the horizon... Anyhow, Domino Day is a bit of a mess - plot and story wise - but there's something half decent hiding in here, at the moment, despite being slightly hindered by the poor acting.

Siena Kelly is Day, a modern-day witch with a sketchy history in a world that appears to value order and transparency. How she came into being hasn't yet been explained but it's clear that she was in a relationship with a male witch that went catastrophically wrong and unleased a power inside of her that has not been seen for a long time. As a result, she prowls Tinder for arseholes and then sucks the life out of them - a sort of vigilante psychic vampire targeting the worst kind of men - but she's been noticed by a coven, who answer to a group called the Elders, who are likely to kill Domino if they discover her existence and that is more likely to happen because she's getting greedy and careless. So far so reasonable idea (even if I've skirted over some of the subplots)...

However, there's things about it that seem half-baked, a sense of making it up as they go along and far too many skeletons in characters' closets that given we're a third of the way through seem unlikely to be addressed given the nature of how the first 90 minutes has gone. I feel slightly uncomfortable about the overtly sexy nature of the show - and this isn't me talking about my prudishness, more the feeling that the makers are exploiting Siena Kelly's sexuality and quite fabulous body; plus there's this suggestion that most men are pigs - which might be right in 2024 - so that even decent guys get stitched up or fucked over. In the end, thanks to some questionable magic by the coven leader, we discover that Domino is a Lamia - a monster who, in this instance, devours the life forces of men and leaves them ill, even possibly dead. 

The thing is Domino is just looking for real love and her appetite is a metaphor for addiction, but she's not a bad person, even if she does some bad things. I've always liked the idea of massively powerful human 'creatures' in the real world, probably more than anything other monstrous characters, which is why we're going to stick with this until the end of season one, at least.

Into the Andes

The second episode of the Simon Reeve: Wilderness series was in Patagonia, in a proper wilderness, in a place where there were very few people per thousand square mile. There was plenty of rocks and ice and an injured cameraman - the same one who got a worm in his leg last week, yet I still got the sense that this is actually more of a travelogue than a documentary series. 

In the past, Reeve has travelled the world and dealt with issues that have been ignored by other journalists; he's uncovered stuff that others haven't wanted to touch and he's talked to people who maybe never have people talk to them; but this wilderness series seems to be about climate change and while that is an important thing and should get as much exposure as possible, chatting to gauchos or rangers and guides about how the landscape has changed over the last 25 years feels a little like bandwagon jumping, and I really don't want to sound like I'm dissing climate change or the need for it being talked about, but the weird sense of jeopardy has diminished in this series, despite the places he's visiting being as dangerous as skirting round the edges of drug cartels or dealing with fascist militants.

This week he trekked up to an ice field in Patagonia and then back again; spent a couple of nights with two gauchos and then wandered around south eastern Chile with a man who gave up a comfortable life to watch pumas in the wild and at no point in the hour did Simon seem particularly comfortable; in fact he seemed to struggle for a lot of it, yet I spent more time looking at the clock waiting for his second 'bloody hell' and the chance to win this week's competition - I went for two, the wife went for three and he ended up saying it just once. So far, two episodes in and the score is still 0-0; next week could be decisive. 

The Mourning Show

One thing about the remainder of the first season of The Morning Show that hit home really hard is just how self-serving most of the long-time serving members of the Morning Show team were. The decent people on this fictional show are actually fucked up because of the narcissists and the power plays taking place - Jennifer Aniston's Alex Levy is chief narcissist - but studio head Fred Micklen, the kind of man who is sure he's bet on the right horse and then watches it come in last, is really the enabler here. But these are just two self-serving egotists in a huge playing field made up largely of people intent on fucking or fucking over whoever gets in their way. 

Charlie 'Chip' Black (Mark Duplass) is so erratic it makes you wonder how he became executive producer, while Bradley Jackson (Reece Witherspoon) and Corrie Ellison (Billy Crudup) are both doing proper journalism but for differing reasons. Towering over this entire mess is Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) who spends the first nine episodes of the debut season in complete denial that he's a predatory, manipulative bastard and then tries to use his 'popularity' to win what is essentially a popularity contest in his head. He is, without a doubt a person who was loved by his co-workers, but now he's in Harvey Weinstein's league and facing ruin because every single one of the Morning Show's team - all with their own agendas - are no longer interested in helping him and, frankly, why should they? The decent ones won't and the Machiavellian ones don't give a shit. The finale is as brilliant as the entire first season with twists and turns you really don't see coming and a closing section that is one of the most riveting scenes I've seen on a TV in years... I've heard that season two loses its way a little; there's only really one way to find out... We're going straight back in!

Season two - of which we're a third of the way through, at time of writing - takes place nine months+ after the tumultuous season one finale and whereas the first outing was all about #MeToo and whether Mitch Kessler was really a monster, this one is dealing with two issues quite clearly: the advent of Covid and whether Bradley Jackson's ego is bigger than her worth - maybe she's turning into a different kind of monster... It hasn't got that WOW Factor it did have, but it does have enough to keep us deeply involved.

Mystery on Ice

The plot thickens, but the mystery remains the same and I'm still fully committed to my theory that the Tsalaal Research Station men had something to do with Annie's death six years earlier and someone - probably the surviving member of that team and Annie's secret boyfriend - has made them pay for it in a truly horrible way.

I'm firmly in the camp of this is going to be a simple story that's being wrapped up in mystic bollocks and arctic Indian campaigning; there's a lot of dressing on this but it's essentially going to be a case of brewing revenge that finally got enacted when guilt overcame those with something to hide.

Probably the other main issue here is how the Ennis PD can be so... well, shit. This series has done extremely well in painting a picture of a disparate and dysfunctional Alaskan township with a mix of indigenous natives and racist Americans, but we're also talking off the scale levels of fuckwittery and borderline vigilantism - led by one of Danvers' (Jodie Foster) own men, who seems to think that being a policeman comes in about fifth or sixth on his list of priorities. Danvers has so many sexual skeletons in her closet she seems incapable of dealing with anything apart from insisting this case stays in her jurisdiction; but what we're really talking here is fluff and padding because I'm convinced this is going to be something simplistic, despite the ghosts and messages from beyond the grave and whatever else the writer/director wants to throw in to obfuscate and keep the viewer off the trail. It's excellent TV but I'm not really sure I'm enjoying it. 

Quite American

The latest QI is essentially a battle between the United Kingdom and the United States - as part of the U season - and the overarching thing I took from it was the underlying contempt David Mitchell appears to have for the Americans. He seemed hell bent on lecturing Alex Edelman of the USA team about how wrong he was about anything he didn't like about the UK. There were times Mitchell seemed like he was going to walk round the front of the set and lamp the American.

The other American guest - Kemah Bob recently caused a bit of a hoo-hah on the internet because of her unusual voice and diction. I got the impression she spent much of her time trying to be as diplomatic as possible, but she has lived in the UK for six years. To be controversial for a second, while I found her voice a bit odd, which is fine as it's her actual voice, the fact that people were horrid to her on social media just about sums up what is wrong with both the UK and the USA, with opinionated arseholes being fucking nasty for the sake of it. If I want to be equally nasty, there's a UK comedian who is disabled and, in my never humble opinion, is not funny and spends most of her time talking about other women she'd like to shag; she's also a regular on QI and I can't understand 90% of what she says and I never see anything on social media about her, so maybe the attacks on Kemah is nothing to do with her distinct voice and more to do with the fact she's black?

In other news, this wasn't a particularly funny episode, but that's probably down to the fact that I find the USA a spectacular country full of tedious bores and fascist loving racists. I also expect you're going to be thinking, 'Why is he still watching this if all he can do is criticise it every week?' Well, it's probably to do with history and habit, also the hope that an episode will come along and make me remember why this was one of the best panel shows ever created. 

Connections

Another series of Only Connect bites the dust. This is a quiz show that's on for more than half a year from start to finish and is still possibly the most fiendishly difficult thing on TV. This year The Thrifters won it on the very last question beating the Also Rans by a single point and while we wanted the losers to win, we weren't that bothered because both teams said 'horned viper' rather than 'hor-Ned viper,' which is something that gets on both of our nerves. I know many people who find Victoria Coren-Mitchell loathsome but as a quiz show host she's always been good enough for me and she's married to David Mitchell and he won extra brownies points this week for being passively aggressive towards Americans. I will say that she is beginning to look her age - she's 51 - and (to be outrageously sexist for a second) her good points are probably heading due south now... Unlike something like QI, which changed hosts without any real jolt to the system, Only Connect just wouldn't be the same if it lost its slightly - at times - surreal host. Anyhow, we get 22 weeks off before it starts all over again... 

Next Week...

I'm loathe to say 'more of the same' but that's likely to be the case. We haven't watched the most recent George Clarke offering, it's been on the hard drive for a week now and the wife was more keen to watch something else, so she might be starting to get Clarke fatigue as well - there could be a return to that next week, but I somehow don't expect that to be the reason whoever reads this will rush to come back. We do have the start of Masters of the Air to watch, but despite great reviews, I have this 'problem' with Austin Butler, so we've been putting that off. There's stuff on the Flash Drive of Doom to catch up on and there's usually something new or returning that jumps up on me, so you'll just have to wait and see what happens next...