TV-tastic!
May 12, 2005 · 4 minute readI will fight anybody who thinks The Fast Show was lazy comedy. Anybody who includes a Ken Morse joke that is on screen for less than five seconds had to be paying some attention to what they were writing…
Anyway, thoughts on some TV shows! (yes, exciting, I know. If you’re American, most of this will make no sense. If you’re British, then you’ll just be bored. Hey, there’s a Cliff Richard track on here if you get really desperate)Doctor Who
Okay, we’re now over half-way through this series, so I’m now seeing some of the flaws. I’m still enjoying it, but a few things are starting to annoy me just a little. Firstly, I think the lack of cliffhangers hurts the series more than I originally imagined. There’s no room in the single episodes - they either concentrate on the plot and have the characters run through the required machinations, or they’re heavy characterisation pieces with a wafer-thin story. Secondly, the Doctor doesn’t really do very much, does he? In every episode bar one, the day has been saved by somebody else, perhaps with his cajoling, but in a passive role. I’d prefer a much more active Doctor. And finally, for all the talk of the Rose/Doctor Companion relationship being the most sophisticated portrayal yet, every time it comes up in the script, it’s handled embarrassingly badly (Russell Davies is actually the worst for this, although none of the writers have handled it all that well).
Dead Like Me
I do want to like this series. And I do, a little. But the relentless death and misery gets to you after a while. Yes, it’s about a group of Grim Reapers, so I should expect death to come up a little, and it is really funny in places. But the sun is shining and I want something with a little more joy.
FAQ-U
Haha. Just kidding. I saw the adverts, and realised that it was a delicious attempt to make The 11o’clock Show seem like a work of staggering genius. Does anybody else remember the real Channel 4? That was quite good from time to time?
Smallville
No longer watching! Hurrah! No longer do I despair at the horrible writing, the idiotic plotting, the COMPLETELY INSANE IDEA OF HAVING LOIS LANE MEETING KENT BEFORE HE BECOMES A JOURNALIST, and, if I EVER, EVER see a piece of red kryptonite again, it will be too song (sue me, I’m something of a Superman fanboy. Catch my rant about how Tarantino is COMPLETELY wrong in Kill Bill, and you’ll hear my use of capital letters).
The Wire
Sadly finished now (at least in the UK), but quite possibly the 2nd best police procedural TV series I’ve ever seen. I’m sure Baltimore is a nice place really…
Law & Order
I’ve talked about this before, but it’s still brilliant, despite clinging to the formula like something brown and sticky (unlike many, I have never grown out of the stick joke. I apologise). Jack McCoy is a total monster, a D.A. that will bend (and break) all the rules to send somebody to prison. And if he can’t get the right verdict, he’ll either force a mistrial, or find some arcane bit of law that manages to get the last laugh. The show is a little let down at the moment by Elizabeth Röhm, who has less emotion and stage-presence than a Cyberman, but it’s good fun nonetheless.
House
This is vicodin. It’s mine and you can’t have any.
Hugh Laurie as an American doctor who hates patients and is smarter than everybody else in the room. And he knows it. Again, there’s a rigid formula in this show (patient comes in with disease, staff try different treatments to cure him or her, getting it wrong, but then finding the right one by the 35-minute mark), but Laurie makes every minute worth watching; snarling, bitterly sarcastic, and hobbling through the hospital, trying to find a big enough TV to watch General Hospital on.