Wednesday 13 August 2008

TV

Damages
1x09 Do You Regret What We Did? [2nd watch]
1x10 Sort of Like a Family [2nd watch]

Tin Man
Part 2 Search for the Emerald
An improvement on the first part, as it breaks away from slavishly re-imagining the original story, but it still suffers from a cookie-cutter fantasy plot, low production values, a turgid pace and hammy acting.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's nothing necessarily wrong with a standard "cookie-cutter" plot though, really, modern tv with it's "everything must have a twist!!!!111 twist omg!!!!" attitude means that people now expect shocking twists, and thus predict them, rendering them less than shocking.

But anyway, my point is that a nice straightforward good vs evil fantasy plot where everything is obvious can be good, in a refeshing way. Provided of course that it is well executed. Which sadly this one wasn't, for the reasons you gave. Production values, pacing, etc etc.

Since you haven't anywhere relevant for me to mention this, I'll mention it here. Will you be watching the spinoff "Spooks: Juniors" when you get back home? Did you set the recorder?

Frankly it isn't very good, it's like Spooks meets Skins (or at least how I imagine Skins to be, never having actually watched it). Nevertheless, it seems very Skins/Nearly Famous/Other E4 Emo Teen Drama to me. And even the senior officers appear to be in their mid-20s.

Frankly, all I could think through the first two episodes was "I wish Harry would turn up and kick all their asses."

badblokebob said...

All plots are similar to an extent, especially in fantasy really, but I just felt like I'd seen this exact one a bit too often. Perhaps it's cos I only watched The 10th Kingdom earlier this year, which has a startlingly high number of the same plot points (it's about 8 years old though).

I'm intending to watch the new Spooksy thingamibob, but I'll have to get round to downloading it. Is it at all like Spooks, or does it just have the word stuck on the front cos it's about spies & to make sure people watch?

badblokebob said...

P.S. rofl @ cleavage monkey.

Anonymous said...

It doesn't strike me as being at all like Spooks, although admittedly I haven't seen the later series of Spooks, which according to you is less realistic. So perhaps it does have some similarities with those later series.

But really, when they called it "Code 9", I didn't realise that was the average age of the cast... the "spies", the "terrorist", they're all ridiculously young. With those annoying haircuts and speech patterns.

badblokebob said...

Where, like, everything's a question? And they don't, like, realise it's, like, a question? But it is? Cos everything they say goes up? Y'know, like, at the end? God knows why, but it does? Like their hair at the front? Or that silly side swooping fringe thing they do? It's just silly? Y'know? And it's all BBC Three's fault?

Bloody kids these days. Including people older than me.