Tag Archives: series

Series premiere: Bluff City Law

The PolyBlog
September 25 2019

I want to see the words “Jimmy Smits” and “successful show” in the same sentence, and not have it be historical flashback. I really do. I like him. I would love for him to find a show where he is actually fighting for something without seeming like a patronizing, sanctimonious do-gooder. I want to see some edge and maybe a little bit of hunger in his character.  And when I saw that he was going to be in a law show, I had hopes, but no, he’s the successful boss and it is about him convincing his daughter to come back to the firm and work with him again, three years after she left. My reaction was the same one I’ve had to most of his outings — I predicted cancellation.

Then the hype machine broke in. NBC has been hyping this show out the wazoo. Bluff City Law. Jimmy’s a lawyer! Wow! And he has a lawyer daughter! Wow! And they’re going to fight for their clients against big companies! Wow! Umm, no. In fact, I have often somewhat cynically predicted and been proven right that the more the show is hyped, the worse it is. Bluff City Law doesn’t break that trend.

Seven minutes. Seven whole minutes, with credits, for the show to start, introduce the daughter as a successful defender of corporate America, show she’s ruthless, show she doesn’t get along with her father, kill off the mother to a stroke, reunite the family for a house wake/eulogy, and convince the daughter to rejoin the firm. SEVEN MINUTES. And it wasn’t even a GOOD seven minutes. It pretty much sucked eggs. Every cliché in the book. I swear someone said “make sure the cast is diverse” and they went to town on it like there’s no tomorrow. Somewhere in minute 9 they introduced a woman who works at the law firm and then subtly (i.e., like a sledgehammer) asked her a bad segue question about her AND HER WIFE. Yep, we GET IT. You have a diverse cast to make up for a lead actress who looks like a pale daughter of Casper the Friendly Ghost, not a former Latino hunk du jour. And let’s just skip over the HUGE RIFT between daughter and father that has kept them separated for a whopping THREE YEARS. That’s not a rift, it’s like they’re on a break. 

So let’s break it down. The three options to make this show work are:

A. Interesting cases — the first case is about a chemical company selling a product that causes cancer. Wow, that’s literally the case of the week on 100s of shows. And they LEAD with that? Okaaaay. Let’s see, where’s the “hidden scientist”? Oh, there they are. Right on cue. The only thing that was interesting was the question in the court room when the hidden scientist testified. It was pretty good. One line in 42 minutes.

B. Tension — Dad and Daughter? Can barely see it. It certainly isn’t believable, mostly because the daughter isn’t believable. Add in tension with coworkers that GOES nowhere, including other lawyers who are displaced by the daughter’s arrival, and you still have nothing. Ex-husband is around too. Yawn. The ONLY thing that works is a sub-plot where another lawyer is delving into a criminal case that seems to have some interesting bits to it. But there’s no tension with it.

C. Acting — Jimmy’s good, but he’s playing the same character he’s tried repeatedly before with little success. There’s no hunger in his character. The last time he delivered a punchy performance was in the last season of West Wing where he was broke, the campaign was faltering, and he went to a TV station to record an advertising spot, which he did off the cuff, and it was raw, and intense, and powerful. I didn’t think Jimmy had it in him, but he did. Nothing even close to that here.

Caitlin McGee plays the daughter, and while I’ve seen her in some small roles, I mostly have seen her in ADs this summer for the show. And there is no fire within. I was bored the whole time.

Hard to know which of the other characters are going to be worth knowing, except the one lawyer, played by Barry Sloane. I kept wondering where I had seen him before, and I *never* would have come up with Revenge. I don’t know if his character will go anywhere.

But it all doesn’t matter because I won’t be watching. And I’m betting nobody else will be either. CANCELLATION, joining all the other shows about lawyers coming back to their hometown to fight for the little guy.

Series premiere: Pennyworth

The PolyBlog
September 23 2019

The various Batman series, film or TV, have rarely given his butler, Alfred Pennyworth much to do. He occasionally has a fun presence, but rarely do you see him in any action role. The series Gotham changed that considerably, with the character helping teach Bruce to fight as well as getting in numerous scraps and fisticuffs himself, building up his backstory of being a former soldier, etc. So it was perhaps almost inevitable that someone would eventually want to build that story up even more.

And yet would anyone really care? The backstory for someone destined to be a secondary or tertiary character in a larger story arc? When I saw the premise for the show, my thought was “pffft” and I predicted cancellation. Now that I’ve seen the opening episode, I am not so sure. 

The premise is that Alfred Pennyworth, former SAS officer who is newly released from service to the Queen, has started his own security company, wanting to be his own man. It’s “early days” in his business so far, so he’s working as a bouncer at a club that looks a lot like an old-fashioned speak-easy. He intervenes to help a patron one night, and it turns out the patron is one Thomas Wayne. Yep, Bruce’s father, long before Bruce is a gleam in the eye. Thomas is working as a supposed forensic accountant, but it’s more light cover than convincing. Apparently, something is happening in British politics, someone told Thomas, and the people involved want to stop Thomas from stopping them. They attempt to kill Wayne, and in the surviving wreckage, they find Pennyworth’s business card. One thing leads to another, and several kidnappings later, Pennyworth is set on a collision course with the Raven Society who are trying to overthrow the government in the name of the Queen, whether she agrees or not.

Jack Bannon plays Pennyworth, and while I haven’t seen him in anything before, he has really strong presence. Despite the fact that he looks like he should be in a boy band. There are two or three scenes where you see his body and face shift from normal mode to action, and it is fascinating to see it click in. One scene in particular, he’s talking to a couple of guys in a club, one is being a bit rude and insulting, and Pennyworth switches to action mode. His line is simple, “Don’t do that”, but it drops like ice. Awesome job, and gave me real love for the episode. I don’t know that the character has anything to do with Batman’s Alfred, but if you just took him as a soldier newly released, the story works fine.

Ben Aldridge plays Thomas Wayne, and I haven’t seen him in much before. He was in Stan Lee’s Lucky Man but not a role I particularly remember. But he has a lively spirit that is fun to see. Youthful, softer than Alfred, seems almost naive at times. Good balance between the two.

Pennyworth starts dating a woman named Esme from the club, and he’s definitely smitten. Esme is played by Emma Corrin, and while a relatively new face, she is going to break big this year. She has amazing presence in the pilot…she reminds me a bit of Jodie Foster in some ways, and even Franka Potente, which is a weird mix, I assure you. Definite presence, far more so in a couple of early scenes and then at the end. She’s also set to play Princess Diana in The Crown, and I think she’s going to rock it.

After those three, there are various sundry characters — two soldier mates of Alfred’s, his parents, miscellaneous bad guys, but it is those three that will make or break the series.

It has a bit of James Bond qualities in it, maybe a touch of Kingsman. But does it have enough to keep it alive? I’m going to keep the same prediction — cancellation. Which is unfortunate for me, as I really liked the premiere.

Series premiere: The Widow

The PolyBlog
July 29 2019

I knew very little about the Amazon Prime show called The Widow, other than that it starred Kate Beckinsale, and involved her being the widow of someone killed in a plane crash. Based on that premise, even with Beckinsale in it, it sounded like a show ripe for cancellation after Season 1. It needed a hook.

It was really weird watching this right after watching When Heroes Fly, because there is a similar premise. In WHF, nine years after a girl is killed in a car accident in Bogota, someone sees her picture in a newspaper and they have to investigate if their friend is still alive. In this case, the Widow has lost her husband in a plane crash in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but catches a glimpse of someone that looks a lot like her dead husband on news footage of an attack in Kinshasa. She too is drawn to investigate.

The show opens really oddly, with an almost Public Service Announcement scene about child soldiers…you see a young girl climbing way up in a tree to look out over the forest while an even younger boy worries about her safety. After she climbs down, they go over to a nearby tree, pick up their rifles, and join the other soldiers hiking through the jungle. Then you jump-cut to a mountain range where a woman hiking falls and scrapes her knee, and has to walk to the nearest town for medical attention (later you realize this is the widow, if you didn’t already recognize Beckinsale). She sees the footage on the news and starts freaking out. And finally, you see a jump-cut to a man in a medical office having his eyes checked for a potential surgery, as he’s blind. What do all three of these people have in common? Absolutely no clue for quite some time. The kids are in the DRC, so there’s that; the Widow goes to the DRC to find her missing husband, so there’s that link; and it turns out that the blind guy was the sole survivor of the plane crash. Except he’s sitting having a drink with another blind woman, totally having nothing to do with the rest of the story yet.

Beckinsale is good as the Widow, looking way older than 46 years. Not as compelling as in Underworld though. 🙂 She can hold her own, so there’s no worry there on the acting front. Alex Kingston plays a friend / coworker of the dead husband (I’m not entirely clear on the relationship there, feel like I missed something), and she’s decent. Kingston is a hit and miss for me — I loved her in Discovery of Witches, and generally hated her in Arrow. That’s more about the characters probably though than her. Here she is closer to the DoW character, which is a better fit. Continuing on the “good side”, Jackie Ido plays a journalist whose pregnant wife was on the plane and is helping the Widow look for the husband, Will. I had trouble placing him, but he was the driver in Taxi Brooklyn, where I really liked him. He’s good here too, but the first episode has him a bit inconsistent for his character. Matthew Le Nevez plays presumed dead Will, but you don’t see enough of him to get a feel one way or another.

For other supporting cast, I almost got Charles Dance and Bart Fouche confused as it shows time jumps from the days after the plane crash and the current time, I thought they were the same character. Dance has been in tons of stuff over the years, and I liked him as the Judge in the mini-series And Then There Were None, as he often plays someone a bit shady. Here he is, I think, a parent figure although again, the references were a bit oblique at times to the past, and as I said, I got confused as to who he was. By contrast, Bart Fouche is clearly the “bad guy”, but with no real presence, just a lead for them to investigate.

The part that REALLY confuses me is Ólafur Darri Ólafsson as the blind survivor of the plane crash. He’s also in NOS4A2 that I’ve started watching, and he’s really solid. A definite presence, I just have no idea how he connects. He’s just sitting waiting for possible surgery, and talking to another blind woman, played by Louise Brealey. Since she played the duplicitous Gillian in Discovery of Witches, and Molly Hooper in Sherlock, I think I assumed in watching her that she has some sort of hidden role/agenda. Maybe she does, maybe not, but she’s far easier to watch here than in DoW, but again, that might be more the character than the actress.

And the mystery is compelling…what DID happen? I want to know what happened to Will, what’s happened in the last three years, why does it look like Beckinsale might have tried suicide at some point, how did she get saved, who are the DRC child soldiers, and WHO THE HECK IS THE BLIND GUY???? So I’m going to be watching. Even if I have to regrettably predict CANCELLATION…I just don’t see what the hook would be for season 2.

Series premiere: When Heroes Fly (Israeli version)

The PolyBlog
July 28 2019

There is a bit of confusion about the show When Heroes Fly, at least in terms of how it made it to my premiere list to try. The show is originally a hit Israeli TV show that was flagged as worthy of an US re-development deal for American TV. When the show hit Netflix, it seemed like the American version. It isn’t. It’s the original Israeli version. However, despite being in Hebrew and some Spanish, I found a version online to watch for the first episode called Resurrection.

The premise is a group of five men in the same unit in the war with Lebanon. They are on their last mission, and are marching five kilometres to their exit point, and in 24 hours they are all going to be back home. Their tour is done. And like every cliché ever written or produced about last missions, it goes to hell. En route, they are supposed to meet up with a larger company, but the company has been re-routed to retrieve some radio equipment. Which leaves them relatively alone. They’re about to dig in to wait, when they notice one of their tanks sitting by itself. They radio it in, discover it’s about to be destroyed to eliminate all the intel in it, and then suddenly see that the gun turret is moving — someone is still inside. They call off the air strike, get the guys from the tank out, and then the enemy attacks in force. It’s a giant shit-storm firefight, and the air strike to take out the tank is back on. The guy in charge, Azoulay (Dan Mor) is mortally wounded but still alive, unable to be transported away but the air strike is coming. So the rest of the squad has to retreat, leaving him behind. There’s an enquiry, the guy who made the decision to leave is trashed, but they are back home and messed up. But that’s not what the story is about, not really.

One of the guys is dating the sister of one of the other men, but since he comes back messed up, the relationship fails, and she takes off for South America on a trip. There’s a giant accident, and she’s killed. Fast-forward 9 more years, and one of the guys is living in Bogota. In the paper, he sees a ghost — there is a picture of the girl. Still alive. He emails back home, and the ex-boyfriend starts freaking out. Is she alive? Did her brother see a body? It looks like her in the photo, and so the guy in Bogota gets another photo from the photographer to confirm…it is clearly her. What the hell is going on? The guys have to band together and go to Bogota to find out.

I was watching with English subtitles, so it drags in a couple of places, but it is flat out awesome. I’m tempted to keep watching it with the subtitles version, it is THAT good. I know some of the future story from reading about it, and it might end up going sideways into tripe later on, or in an American version that might act more like Chuck Norris remakes than Band of Brothers, but I’m hopeful. I saw a reference to some online dubbing versions possibly, but that doesn’t really interest me. The subtitled version is awesome for the intensity of the original actors.

Fantastic show, already renewed. Not really part of my predictions though because it is the foreign version, not the Americanized version I was expecting. I’ll save my predictions if it ever makes it off the ground (still listed as “in development” on IMDB).

Series premiere: What We Do In The Shadows

The PolyBlog
July 25 2019

The premise of What We Do In The Shadows is a mockumentary of three vampires living in Staten Island. In the opening, a vampire bigwig is coming for a visit.

The lead vampire, Nandor, is played by Kayvan Novak, and based mainly on his voice and mannerisms, I thought he was Bronson Pinchot from his Beverly Hills Cop character. He’s okay, but the whole show is ridiculous, so of course he’s got to be weak and ineffectual. Pathetic really, not the least bit intimidating. Another vampire, Laszlo, is played by Matt Berry, and while he is a bit more “with it”, it’s not much of a baseline. And the third vampire, a woman, Nadja, is played by Natasia Demetriou. She has some past comedy chops, but none of the three are familiar to me. They’re okay, but, well, they’re playing vampires worthy of mocking.

Speaking of familiars, a familiar for Nandor named Guillermo is played by Harvey Guillén. Again, never seen him before, but he does an awesome job as a toady nerdy who wants to become a vampire. And he wants to be a real vampire — not an energy vampire like the fourth vampire in the house, Colin, played by Mark Proksch. I don’t know if he’ll have much of a role, he’s more of a one-trick pony — an energy vampire that bores people to death and steals their energy. Looking totally like an office nerd (which he is) who stops by your office until you want to slit your wrists. He’s the one true source of mild amusement in the episode.

Based on what I saw, I would have to predict CANCELLATION, although I think it has already been renewed. I have no idea who will be watching, but it won’t be me.