Thursday 28 July 2011

TV

Grand Designs Australia
1x03 Southport Heritage House
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

No Ordinary Family
1x13 No Ordinary Detention
Or No Ordinary Bottle Episode, as this is essentially three contrived-single-location stories smudged into one episode. Still, by NOF standards it was quite good. Shame they let British Villain Lady escape though.
(Technically it's not really a bottle episode -- plenty of guest actors and a couple of non-standard sets -- but, y'know, near enough.)

Single-Handed
2x02 The Lost Boys Part 2
Even better second half. Glad to see having to do three stories at once (the previous three were produced over several years) hasn't diminished the quality (yet, anyway).
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Torchwood: Miracle Day
4x03 Dead of Night
"It's fizzy in the UK and flat in the US." "Just about sums it up." A metaphor for the series itself, one wonders?
Ironically, those lines come in what I felt was the best episode of the season so far. Not close to Children of Earth level, true, but it's steadily improving.
The much-discussed sex scene cuts were unnoticeable, of course, but even more importantly, having seen the uncut version I can say we weren't missing anything; we still get everything that was going on -- the very definition of a pointless/gratuitous scene.
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

The Tudors
4x09 Secrets of the Heart
What the hell just happened -- suddenly everyone looks about 20 years older! Well, most people -- they haven't bothered with some. Clearly time has jumped forward -- there's no mention of Henry's collapse last time, they've all decamped somewhere else -- but not by that much. And most of the aged make-up isn't that good anyway. I can only assume they ran out of money by this point.
Or maybe they were just too busy rushing through the story. After wasting so much time treading water or seen-it-before storylines in the first half of this final season, it's a shame they've had to speed through some decent plots as it draws to a close. Ah well, almost the whole thing's been a missed opportunity anyway.