Film on TV - Misfits

British television shows tend to suck. The main reason behind this suckiness has got nothing to do with the talent involved - the British talent export more than often outshine the competition. So much so that the lines tend to get blurred, especially in North America.

The material is also not an issue - on more than one occasion British shows were remade elsewhere in the world, with varying success. Even if the material is not adapted to the local market, on their own some British television shows will compete and kick others' backsides, hands down.

This is especially true when it comes to comedy: "Fawlty Towers", "Only Fools and Horses", "Spaced", "Father Ted" ... the list goes on.

But the aforementioned classics are just drops in a massive ocean of unwatchable dung.

The problem in most cases is not the material, but the moolah.

Film on TV - The Untimely Death of Terriers

Today FX cancelled Terriers, a whip smart Private Eye show executive produced by Shawn Ryan, the guy who brought FX The Shield, and successfully raised them from the second-run movie channel graveyard. But in TV, loyalty is a fickle thing, for executives and audiences alike.

Film On TV: Sifting Through Fall's New Shows, Part 2

Reading Ken Tucker’s piece about the failure of Fall TV in new show form got me thinking – this is the largest premiere season ever, and I haven’t been hooked by one new network show. There isn’t a single new show I’m excited to come home to, or read about the next day. There isn’t one serial, one single sitcom, that resembles anything more than passable entertainment. It’s been one, giant, collective strikeout.

Still there’s some potential. Some shows waiting to be seen, and others still worthy of a second shot. But with so many sophomore and veteran efforts still demanding my time, it seems unlikely that many (if any) of these shows will break through.

Film On TV: Sifting Through Fall's New Shows, Part 1

Every year around this time my DVR fills up with new shows fighting for attention, rookies looking to break into the Must See TV lexicon. And each year the Movie Gal and I sift through the batch, selecting a few special shows to share couch time with on exhausted week nights.

We watch too much TV, and me more than her. So over the past few years we’ve tried to curb our addiction, allowing only a few new Fall shows to remain in our lineup – since 2008, Community, Fringe, Modern Family, Sons of Anarchy, The Good Wife, The League and The Vampire Diaries (can you guess who watches what?).

I know. That seems like a lot. And it is. But the average American watches around 5 hours of TV a day (*Nielsen), and those shows add up to about that much spread out over the course of a week, so I think we’re doing okay.

There’s a plethora of new network and cable shows this year, the largest number in recent memory. Here’s a rundown of what we’ve seen so far…

Film on TV: Rubicon

You’re all alone on a rainy Tuesday night in NYC. It’s your birthday, but you’d forgotten that until your secretary reminded you that morning at work. She wanted to take you out to lunch. She probably wants more than lunch. But you’re too swamped in your secretive government work identifying and sorting through information to take time off for lunch. And you’re still too hung up on your dead wife and daughter to take time off for her.

So you’re alone on your birthday on a rainy New York night, isolated and removed from the city teeming around you, the places, people and things you study everyday from afar. But then you get a call from your father-in-law / super-secretive government boss, the closest thing you have to family in your life. He’s left a motorcycle for you, parked outside your apartment. He tells you he wants you to get on that motorcycle and fly away from here. Start over someplace new. He wants you to start LIVING. But you have no idea what that means...

Film on TV: 24, Scrubs, American Idol, and the End of an Era

Allow me to emote.


It’s taken me a little while to digest last week’s 1-2 double whammy of Sayonara Jack – with all the buzz and backlash surrounding the end of LOST, the pseudo-demise of 24 went almost entirely overlooked. But it did indeed happen – 24’s clock clicked its final television tick last Monday, announcing the end of a decade long drama. And in its absence, I feel an intense and foreboding communal loss.

Film on TV: Lost's End

You still have questions. We all do. Why couldn’t Aaron be raised by “an-other”? What makes Desmond so different from everybody else? What would have happened if Jack hadn’t re-corked the Island? Would all of humanity been “lost”? And just what the hell IS this damned Island anyway?

In “The End” we received none of those answers, and very few in general…and yet the finale felt wholly and completely final. Because more than anything else – more than the questions and the weird and the references and the hidden easter eggs suggestively placed to tingle and torment LOST diehards – the ground-breaking, soul-shaking show that was, is and always will be LOST is about the people…the characters, their humanities and their community...

WWDMCD: LOST's Final Countdown

LOST has been limping towards the finish line these last couple weeks, speeding along in a bizarre three-legged race of island mythology, castaway survival games and Sideways World drama. Its final season has been intriguing, invigorating and occasionally frustrating, and no two-episode span better captured that than this latest one-two punch of “Across the Sea” and “What They Died For”.

As the penultimate episode in a historic series, “What They Died For” gave us some serious answers and did some serious setup. But I’d also argue they made some serious mistakes. As LOST winds down, I can’t help but feel that the great and formidable minds behind it are moving to the wrong beats. There isn’t enough time. There isn’t enough pull in the story. And when we DO get the motivated drama the final countdown calls for, it just doesn’t seem to hit right.

Film on TV: LOST's "Across the Sea"

Dear LOST,


What the fuck was that? How drunk on self-importance and religion wine were you when you put this mottled excuse for an Island origin story together? You managed to say everything and nothing at the exact same time, withholding information in typical LOST form while atypically failing to tell a compelling, invigorating story. You told us there was a light beneath the island, a source for everything life and death. Great. What the hell does that mean? Are you going to add any clarification in the next three hours, or are you just going to continue talking in broad, comfortably undefined terms?

Film on TV: Fringe's "Man from the Other Side"

Last night’s episode of FRINGE, titled “The Man from the Other Side”, was one of the most important and singularly impactful episodes we’ve seen in a series now fully developed and comfortable in it’s bizarre but engaging serialized existence. It was powerful. It was peculiar. And it was damn near perfectly FRINGE. But I can’t help but feeling they missed their mark by just a little bit…

Film on TV - Damages Third (and Final?) Season Finale

The third and possibly final season of Damages came to a brutal end last night, almost quintessential in the knowledge that these might be its final moments. As an expensive, award winning series with a dismal viewership and little chance of returning (unless the fine folks of DirectTV come through with a last minute save, as they did with Friday Night Lights), the future of one of televisions most interesting and accomplished dramas looks bleak. But for a show defined by the dark and dreary elements of desperate people living desperate lives, what outlook could be more appropriate?

Indeed, the death rattle of Damages’ 13th Season 3 episode, “The Next One’s Gonna Go In Your Throat”, shook strong last night as the series moved in for the kill shot. Three years worth of storylines were wrapped up, in a tightly maniacal puzzle pieced together as only Damages knows how. Characters were nudged to the brink of hell, then pushed over with a shrug, as if their demise was written in destiny. Because it was.

Film On TV: There Is No Box

We all know TV was invented by the advertising agencies, designed as elongated commercials for lifestyle and family products. Its evolved over the years, becoming more entertainment-focused, and in the process has morphed into a bigger, darker pop-culture influence. You could probably argue that – web aside – it’s THE most influential piece of that particularly obsessive puzzle. But even as network TV degrades otherwise quality programming with blatant commercialization for products from Apple and whatever auto dealer produces the highest bid (I’m looking at you, The Office and Modern Family) an uprising has boiled and stirred in the nether regions of TV programming. It’s the rebellion to the Big Network Empire, the shiny white “good” resisting the darker side of The Force. It’s called cable, and it wants to show you a better way...