TV Culture - Compact and Bijou?

Another short one with just four things reviewed this week (we watched a lot of films) and there's likely to be some spoilers, so tread carefully...

A Scandi Fling

I suppose the first thing you can ask about Martin Compston's Norwegian Fling is why Phil MacHugh doesn't get equal billing? I know he's not as well known as the Line of Duty star but he is just as much the equal star of this show as he was when they did the Scottish Fling in 2022. 

It's a fun series, with two very amiable (and Scottish) presenters obviously having a great time in a land that is similar but very different from Scotland. There's an honesty about both men that makes you realise that there's no acting or pretending here, especially when they're facing something out of their comfort zone - such as eating a sheep's head, being kissed by wolves or going through oil rig training, or in MacHugh's case, anything that's about about six feet off the ground - he's a wee bit afeard of heights. One observation though, it's clear that there's some judicious editing taking place and things that happen in each 30 minute episode were not chronologically filmed, so what you're left with is a series that seems to meander back and forth in the opening episodes. The aim is to get to the furthest northern most point in Europe and there they discover that summer usually lasts about TWO days a year, which sounds tragic, especially considering the sun doesn't set for nearly a month! 

It's surprisingly camp and the two lads' affection to Euro-pop and rave music is even more obvious in this series than it was in the last and when Phil meets Dagne - Norway's pop superstar you worry about the state of his underpants he gets soooo excited. It's all very entertaining even if, sadly, it's a wee bit superficial at times - that's not to say it should be cutting edge, because it isn't that kind of show, but like so many of these travelogues there probably could have been so much more they could have seen. 

A Dud But Not Crap

We found something from Apple TV+ that we decided wasn't for us, so much so we switched off before the 25 minute mark deciding it was simply too twee and ridiculous to be able to take seriously...

Home Before Dark is an intriguing premise; a nine-year-old investigative journalist with a nose for true crime, but, you know... utter bollocks in almost every other conceivable way. It's not badly made, in fact it has all the hallmarks of an Apple TV show, but how do you take something seriously when your main protagonist is nine and unlikely to be taken seriously? The answer is simple, you can't unless you live in American TV land. Yes, her father is or was a good journalist, but he got fired, either for something he did wrong or being surplus to demands, in which case he couldn't have been that good. What I did learn from the half of an episode we watched is that the child doesn't trust anything; she has a suspicious nature that reads mystery into everything she sees and I don't mean in a Sherlock Holmesian way, but in a paranoid way and for a nine-year-old this is a worry. It might float your boat, it didn't float ours.

Grow Your Potential

I'd never heard of the newish Chris O'Dowd 'comedy' The Big Door Prize until I was searching for Apple TV shows I'd not heard about and while I wasn't particularly enamoured by premise - a mysterious machine suddenly appears in the hardware store that tells people what they should be in life - I decided that ATV comedies have been good so far so it would be worth our while checking it out.

O'Dowd plays Dusty, an Irish-born schoolteacher who it appears is well loved by the entire town of Deerfield where he lives with his wife and daughter. It's his 40th birthday and he is about to venture into the biggest midlife existential crisis of them all...

The arrival of the new 'machine' has a totally unexpected effect on the town and everyone is talking about it and it is causing a profound change in the population. Add to this the subplots - the main one being the death of O'Dowd's daughter's boyfriend and the suspicion that his death was caused by his own brother; but there's also the decision by Dusty's parents to happily divorce, or his wife being told by the machine that she is Royalty! It's most definitely an 18-rated comedy and there are your usual annoying USA people in it, but it could easily have been set anywhere in the world. I don't know if I'd call it a comedy because there isn't any particular laugh out loud moments, but it is light hearted with a dark undertone and O'Dowd - who relocated to the USA a few years ago - makes a genial lead. His own crisis begins when the machine tells him what his true potential is and then the intrigue begins. We're sticking with this one, probably to see how dark and tragic it can get. 

Almost Done?

"Well, I suppose it was a bit better this week." These were the words uttered by the wife after the third episode of the third season of Resident Alien finished. There were some more amusing bits in it - provided mainly by Liv - and it showed its ability to deal with tragedy and the nastiness of humanity, something it's been loathe to do for a long time.

The problem, however, is whether or not we're going to stick with it. The wife also said, "It's better than Monarch: Legacy of Monsters," which left me asking how she could say such a thing. It turns out her main problem with that Godzilla-themed mini-series was the actual lack of monsters in it and boring story line. From my perspective, I think Resident Alien is a load of shite; it isn't without its charms, but they are so few and far between now I'm desperately hoping for some sign those charms are going to reappear. My gut feeling is it has outgrown (or maybe shrunk) its welcome and we need to leave it alone and move into and onto other things. It is unlikely to jump the shark and get better. Watch this space.

Criminal Minds?

There isn't much doubt that the newly finished Apple TV show Criminal Record is about black and white policing - literally and metaphorically. Peter Capaldi plays a Detective Chief Inspector and was the lead officer on a murder case from 2011 - one that seemed cut and dried but has since had certain events bring it back into the minds of the police and the campaigners for justice. Cush Jumbo plays a Detective Sargent who is given a simple domestic violence case to deal with that opens up a proper can of worms for her.

What is black and white about this is the murder from 2011. it's clear that Capaldi's character Hegarty is trying to cover his arse about something, while Jumbo's Lenker is doing something she really needs to back away from - ruffling the feathers of powerful colleagues. As a result there is an awful lot of deceit, lies and double crossing going on in the opening two episodes, as Lenker goes down what she feels is a new path for an old crime and doesn't realise she's been set up, big time, by the powerful Hegarty, who already has the police's Internal Affairs department on her back, not least because she's been doing some dodgy police work to try and placate her seriously paranoid and elderly mother. One thing is clear though, the man who has been jailed and initially admitted to killing his partner in 2011 probably isn't guilty, but the powerful policemen are going to ensure that this conviction is safe because if there is a doubt about it, it could be far worse than we, the viewer, thinks it is - shows like this rarely deal in simplistic stories. However, what you think is going to be a police procedural with a few twists and turns gets very weird, especially when it becomes clear this is going to be a stand up fist fight between Capaldi and Jumbo.

Next Week...

The conclusion of Criminal Record, which I expect will be straightforward because nothing else in this series has been. The secret of whether we've given up on Resident Alien will be revealed (my guess is we won't have) and the conclusion of The Big Door Prize, which I am finding very good. Whatever else floats our collective boats, but I do feel we're being short changed by TV at the moment - that's us personally, I can't speak for everyone else, because everyone else tends to have dreadful taste and likes stuff we wouldn't shit on from a great height.

I have to be honest, since changing the style and look of these blogs, it does feel like a chore trying to juggle the two rather than an opportunity, so the biggest decision this week might be the one where I decide to bring back the old style blog. I mean, we've actually watched more films this week than TV, some weeks there's more TV than film and the film blog has become erratic because I want there to be a reasonable amount of content. It's just another immaterial existential crisis I don't need...