TV or not TV

New Site

2012-07-19T12:50:00.000+01:00

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now as there’s been no new content uploaded here since last year and it never ceases to amaze me just how many visitors the site continues to get.

As regular readers will know, in addition to TV I also have an unhealthy interest in Horse Racing and it got to a point where I felt I wasn’t doing myself justice with my TV work, because as someone who doesn’t download shows I was always behind with reviews etc., so I decided to focus more on the Racing side of things.

As a result, the new site Talking Horses was launched at the start of the year, where you can follow my ramblings on the Sport of the Kings if you feel so inclined.

The old TV content isn’t going anywhere though so feel free to enjoy the archives whilst you’re here and I many still post on here from time to time. For now though, Racing is definitely the main focus and you can visit the new site by following the link below:

Talking Horses

Top 5 Denman Races

2011-12-15T15:46:00.001+00:00

There’s nothing sadder than realising that the immortal are just as fallible as the rest of us, and last week Horse Racing was forced into that uncomfortable realisation.

One of the kings of a golden era of staying chasers, the mighty Denman, was unfortunately pushed in to early retirement by injury and with that news came the horrible reality check that we would never again get to see ‘The Tank’ relentlessly galloping his rivals in to the ground.

Denman’s rapid rise to the upper echelons of jump racing coincided almost completely in sync with my ever increasing interest in the sport of Kings and along with his majestic stable mate and great rival (and friend) Kauto Star, he helped to ensure that I fell completely in love not only with these two beautiful equine creatures but also the sport that I now call a very healthy obsession.

With Denman now competitively off the track for good we’ll not have the opportunity to see him blaze any new trails round the great race courses of the UK & Ireland, but we all still have our memories, and Denman is certainly responsible for his fair share of unforgettable moments over the last half a decade.

His 2007 RSA Chase victory at the Cheltenham Festival heralded not only his arrival as a major force in the 3m chasing division but also an incredible run of Festival appearances that saw him win one Gold Cup and finish 2nd in a further three. Interspersed with those incredible efforts at Prestbury Park were equally as impressive exploits on both sides of the Irish Sea, including several Herculean efforts in a race that will forever be associated with this monster of a race horse – the Hennessy Gold Cup.

Denman’s influence on National Hunt racing and the horse racing world in general has been colossal, so to celebrate what will hopefully be a long and happy retirement for the old war horse I wanted to remember his five greatest races from a career overflowing with them.

5. Cheltenham Gold Cup 2009 - 2nd

It may seem somewhat odd that for a horse who won 14 of his 24 starts some of his greatest efforts have come in defeat, but for me, and I know a lot of others as well, a large part of what made Denman such a giant of the turf was his never say die attitude.

He was as gallant in defeat as he was in victory, if not more so, and the 2009 Gold Cup is the most wonderful example of that incredible characteristic.

A year earlier Denman had firmly cemented himself as the undisputed champion of the division by putting every one of his rivals, including Kauto, to the sword in an unrelenting display scarcely seen in the sport when winning the Gold Cup.

Twelve months on it was a different story though and having missed the Hennessy earlier in the season after being diagnosed with a defibrillating heart condition Denman had flopped spectacularly on his return and seasonal bow being beaten by an almost embarrassing distance by the useful-on-his-day-but-hardly-in-Denman’s-league Madison Du Berlais in the Aon Chase at Newbury.

Denman it seemed was a shadow of his former dominant self and was sent off at almost insulting odds as he bid to retain his crown.

Always prominent but never getting into that unstoppable rhythm he had 365 days earlier Denman looked good if not spectacular as the race reached its business end. Turning for home it was Denman and his old adversary Kauto Star that kicked clear of the remainder of the field and went on.

In the end it was Kauto Star who cemented himself into the Gold Cup record books by becoming the first horse to lose and then regain a Gold Cup but Denman gave every fibre of his being chasing home his stable mate for what must be one of the great comebacks of the game.

This would not be the last time Denman would find only one horse too good in a Gold Cup, going on to incredibly finish second for the next two years as well, grabbing the Ditcheat bragging rights back again in the process.

Cheltenham Gold Cup 2009 - Video

4. Hennessy Gold Cup 2007 – 1st

If Denman’s RSA victory in 2007 fired a warning shot that he was on his way to shake things up in the stayers division then his 2007 Hennessy win was the equivalent to laying an all out assault on the established order.

Never once looking anything less than the winner, Denman lumped top weight round Newbury and truly pulverised the opposition. Looking back it might not have been a vintage renewal (Dream Alliance was second) but winning the Hennessy under top weight is an impressive achievement by any standard and when it’s done with such power you just couldn’t help but feel you were watching a very special race horse indeed.

The race was put to bed a long way from home as Denman cruised round the turn with almost everything behind him off the bridle and struggling to just stay in The Tank’s slipstream. Sam Thomas had a couple of cheeky glances through his legs to see if there were any dangers but there were no challengers this day to even make the run in even slightly competitive.

2007 was by all accounts Denman’s least emotional Hennessy performance when compared to what would come later, but visually it was by far his most impressive.

3. Hennessy Gold Cup 2010 - 3rd

It’s almost unthinkable that a third place performance could possibly be considered greater than a veritable smorgasbord of victories or even at a push second place finishes in the sports blue ribbon race, but last year Denman managed to make coming third a more impressive performance than the one by the poor horse that actually won the race.

You’ve got to feel for Diamond Harry, the horse had just won the biggest race of his career yet in the winner’s enclosure the spot where the third horse would take up position was packed out.

After his awe-inspiring 2009 performance, Denman returned to Newbury in 2010 after yet another Gold Cup second to once again attempt the seemingly impossible and lug a welter burden round the Berkshire course for a third record-breaking time.

This time though his challenge was even more unimaginable than the previous two attempts as his presence in the race alone had effectively destroyed the handicap meaning that all but a few of his rivals weren’t running off their true marks.

Giving weight away in the Hennessy had become Denman’s speciality but giving a full 2 stone away to some talented unexposed up and coming chasers was in most people’s eyes a step too far for The Tank.

For a while it looked like Denman would prove them all wrong though as he vied for the lead but as the race got serious the young legs free of any sort of weight on their back got the better of the champ and Denman finished a well beaten third behind two very good horses in Burton Port and Diamond Harry (both on 10st).

Let’s not forget the horses that still were left trailing in his wake though, all getting lumps of weight from him – even in defeat Denman still destroyed most of his rivals and I have to say the emotional satisfaction I got from seeing him still plug on for a place has rarely been rivalled.

It would have been nice for his last Hennessy attempt to have ended in victory but somehow defeat only served to increase Denman’s popularity amongst his legions of fans.

Hennessy Gold Cup 2010 - Video

2. Cheltenham Gold Cup 2008 - 1st

Some will no doubt argue that this was Denman’s greatest performance and it’s hard to argue with that sentiment, for me though an afternoon at Newbury in November 2009 remains not only my fondest memory of Denman but also of this great sport to date.

That is a matter of personal preference though and no one can deny that on Gold Cup day in 2008 Denman delivered a devastating performance that you rarely see in such a competitive and gruelling race.

Some say he broke Kauto Star’s heart that day but one thing is for sure, he annihilated those that he left toiling away behind him up Cheltenham’s famous hill, including his illustrious stable mate, and I dare say there isn’t a horse in the annuls of history that would have beat him that day.

On this day he was just that good – unrelenting, unstoppable, uncatchable – Denman took up the running on the second circuit and from that point it was almost cruel to watch him gallop the opposition in to submission.

Kauto would get his revenge one year later but it was nowhere near as emphatic as Denman’s toppling of the then reigning king in 2008, in spite of what the distances may show, in fact I don’t think I’ve seen a more out and out rout of the field in a Gold Cup as I saw in the 2008 renewal.

We may have been robbed of ever getting the rematch in which both horses arrived at the bout in their peak form, but this race was the Ali-Frazier showdown some of their other encounters were later billed as and it was Denman that landed one devastating knockout blow to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had the class to match that unparalleled power and uncanny ability to carry weight and demolish handicap fields.

Cheltenham Gold Cup 2008 - Video

1. Hennessy Gold Cup 2009 - 1st

No other horse race continues to electrify and give me goosebumps like this one – Kauto Star’s recent master class at Haydock came damn close, but Denman’s roaring success in 2009’s Hennessy remains my favourite horse race of all time and it will take something pretty special to ever dethrone it from that position.

Denman arrived for his second attempt at slogging round Newbury under 11st12 having looked almost back to somewhere near his best following all manner of health issues following a remarkable second in the Gold Cup earlier that year.

Still the naysayers threw cold water on his chances though and few truly believed he could emulate some of the greats – Mandarin & Arkle and win a second Hennessy.

Not only did he do it though, as Simon Holt said on the Channel 4 Racing commentary it was “another demolition job from Denman”.

Rousted along at the start by Ruby Walsh so as to get a position at the head of affairs, Denman tanked along just off the lead throughout, taking up the race in front of the stands in a manner that almost suggested he knew how to get the crowd roaring him on – it was incredible to hear a horse being cheered like that so far from home but Denman was certainly good for their support.

With every imperious leap on that second circuit he took another length out of his opponents – no slouches in their own right and one by one they fell away unable to mix it with The Tank. The only one to put up any sort of resistance to him was stable mate What A Friend, ironically ridden by Sam Thomas on this occasion with Ruby on board Denman. Once the Sir Alex Ferguson-owned horse got level with him and Denman caught sight of him it only spurred the big horse on even more though, pulling out more and leaving the toiling What A Friend trailing in a soundly beaten and uncomfortable-looking second.

The atmosphere at Newbury that day and around TV screens across the UK was electric, Holt’s commentary for Channel 4 that day is etched in my memory and when he suggested that “you won’t see scenes like this at Newbury for quite some time” he was right. No horse, with the possible exception of Kauto Star, from this generation of jumpers could possibly have even come close to lighting up a track like Denman did back in 2009.

For the purists yes his Gold Cup was the standard by which all his and his peers’ performances must be measured, but for the sentimental amongst us, no one could failed to have been moved by this display of heart, courage and raw power that Denman became synonymous with and will always continue to be remembered for.

Hennessy Gold Cup 2009 - Video

Glee 3.6 'Mash Off'

2011-11-18T17:57:00.000+00:00

“You’re skinny, like all the crops failed on your family’s farm” - Rory

Mash Off managed to showcase both everything that is wrong with Glee and everything that is right with the show in one overloaded, disjointed episode.

The aforementioned good is that the episode focussed most of its attention on the best characters, Puck, Santana, Brittany and Sue all got to reel off some great one-liners with some even getting the sort of attention usually only reserved for Kurt and Rachel.

The bad however was that the episode felt like every currently running storyline had been thrown into a centrifuge and amalgamated in to one overblown mash-up, as the show itself would no doubt label it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first to complain when one week a storyline that was heavily focussed on the previous week is dropped completely and not even referenced – like Puck and Shelby’s kiss was last week – but there is a balance to find between continuing to address all of the ongoing threads each week without giving each so much attention in one turbo-charged week that you don’t know where to look.

Mash Off also marked a return to the ridiculous Mash ups that the show seems obsessed with. Although I don’t see the need for merging two songs together in this way other than to no doubt flog a load more downloads, I did kind of enjoy the cheesy element to the Hall and Oates mash up and the girls did give a rousing rendition of Adele’s ‘Rumour Has It’ and ‘Someone Like You’ to close the show.

After a strong build, at least by Glee standards, Santana’s outing felt kind of thrown out there though unfortunately, especially when compared with the way Kurt’s own coming out was handled so delicately way back when.

Sure they’d built her up prior to Finn outing her as being even meaner than usual, so it would almost kind of justify what Finn did, but he still came over as being way out of line for his reaction when compared to what she had actually been saying to him and his new protégé Rory.

However, as much as I like Santana she was being nothing more than a bully to Finn and Rory, yet by having Finn out her and the way it all subsequently played out the sympathy immediately shifted to Santana in spite of all her previous indiscretions.

That’s always been a problem I’ve had with Glee, as much good as its portrayal of gay relationships and issues must do, the way in which the gay characters almost get away scott free with bad behaviour just because they’re gay is pretty shocking and to me almost undoes all the good the show does by sending out such a negative message.

They did it with Kurt back when he manipulated all around him to get Finn close to him as he had a crush on him, and then they turned Finn into a villain when he had the outburst in which he used the term “faggy”, and now I feel they’re going down the same route here, making Finn look like a bad guy when he had been pushed as far as someone can be pushed before snapping, admittedly in an unpleasant way – but everyone has their limits.

Sure it was wrong for him to do what he did, and in they way he did it, but Santana is hardly blameless in all this, yet by the end of the episode you felt nothing but Santana’s pain and all the pain she’s caused others in the past was practically forgotten.

All that said however, Naya Rivera sold the hell out of Santana’s torment, first when it seemed that world stood still around her when Finn said what he said, even though no one really heard – or so it seemed. Then her breakdown when she was shown she’s been used in a smear campaign against Sue by one of her opponents and finally the pain on her face as she performed that Adele number all the while looking longingly at Brittany.

And of course there was the show closing slap which played up Santana’s own inner insecurities spectacularly. I personally thought that slapping Finn was a bit of an under-reaction given that Finn basically outed Santana to the world, but the way in which everyone reacted and the fact it was used as the cliff hanging moment would seem to indicate the slap was a bigger deal in the world of Glee than it probably should be. Knowing Glee we’ll probably have Santana being charged with assault next week or something as equally inexplicable.

It is great though how far the show has brought along former supporting players like Santana and Brittany because they are far more interesting than obnoxious featured players like Kurt and Rachel. When asked to shine these often underused actors certainly do, it’s just a shame that after a sterling effort like this by a Naya Rivera or a Mark Salling that next week they’ll no doubt be ignored in favour of more Rachel guff.

In addition to the Santana storyline and the mash offs the main focus of this episode was the belated follow up to Puck and Shelby’s kiss.

As the episode began it looked as though they were going to play the whole incident off as a bit of a joke and have Puck just lusting after Shelby in some sort of school-boy crush. First we had him perform Van Halen’s ‘Hot For Teacher’ which whilst extremely corny was one of the more enjoyable performances on the show for a while. Then we had him flirting outrageously with Shelby which whilst planting the seeds for a potential relationship between the two that just can’t happen in my mind, as much as I’d kind of like to see it, also came across as played for laughs.

Later though we got to see the two of them together with Beth and it was quite a sweet, albeit dysfunctional, family dynamic. Although given how almost forceful Puck had been earlier it seemed odd that a) Shelby would even allow him back into her apartment and b) that there was no further tease of sexual tension between them.

As with Naya Rivera, Mark Salling has been so criminally underused on Glee up until now that it really is quite satisfying to see him really thriving given a greater share of the spotlight and hopefully he’ll continue to be featured on a more regular basis in to the future.

Other noteworthy moments in Mash Off included Rachel withdrawing from the student president election, supposedly for Kurt’s benefit but surely she could have done it in a way that put less focus on her self. At least she did have the self-awareness that she was a drama Queen to the end, it still makes her no less an appalling human being though.

Speaking of Kurt’s campaign, he bizarrely decided to run on a platform of banning dodgeball which he likened to the modern equivalent of “stoning” and associated the sport with bullying because of course Kurt is ever the victim.

Finally, the episode was frequently broken up by Sue’s ridiculously slanderous ad campaigns accusing Burt of having a baboon heart and marrying a donkey amongst other outlandish claims.

I’ve already discussed how this came back to bite her in the ass in a way as Santana became the unwitting focus of a rival ad but these ads, whilst funny in a non-sequitar Glee sort of way, just felt too out there to even be taken seriously.

Given the current Republican nomination race going on in the US, I’d guess that this was Glee’s attempt at lampooning the ludicrous and at times out and out nasty campaign ads and videos that one increasingly comes across in modern politics. That sentiment is fine and Glee deserves praise for trying it, but the execution was way off in my book, in spite of the throwaway comment that polls showed certain Lima residents believed some of Sue’s blatant lies about Burt, are we really supposed to believe anyone is stupid enough to buy in to Burt marrying a donkey, no matter how much a of a backwards place they paint Lima.

Much like the majority of the songs performed in the episode Mash Off ultimately became a mash up of the two sides of Glee and although the good was quite pleasing the bad was too much of an obstacle to overcome and ultimately left Mash Off feeling like one of the unchecked clusterfuck episodes that populated season two.

As much as I loathe how the groundswell of characters introduced to the show has bloated Glee to levels that make it almost impossible to give each character a fair crack of the whip each week, when they attempt to do just that, like they did here with Mash Off, it just all becomes structurally corrupt and damn near impossible to watch like one would a regular TV show.

At times like this Glee becomes akin to a child with attention deficit disorder –jumping around from play thing to play thing without ever really exploring each in enough detail to appreciate what they actually have with each unique individual element.

A Hail of Bullets:

- I’d certainly vote for Rick the Stick.

- The political ads were all ridiculous but I did find it funny that the Reggie ‘The Sauce’ Salazar’s ad which made Santana collateral damage had the number for his pizza joint and ‘free delivery’ written in the bottom corner. Nice to see where his priorities lie.

- Speaking of the campaigns, does anyone else find it odd that Burt couldn’t find anyone more qualified than Will to be his campaign manager? I fail to believe that a high school Spanish teacher is really the best option to run a political campaign.

- The ‘Hot For Teacher’ performance offered us a chance to see that rare Glee sighting – the kids in an actual lesson. It’s good to know that even though they might be imagining having sex with the teacher that the kids at McKinley High actually do attend lessons from time to time and don’t just do glee and the school musical.

- We get it, Rory’s Irish. Enough already.

- Since when has dodgeball been used to settle arguments?

- I might’ve known Rachel Berry would still be on Myspace.

- ‘Hot For Teacher’ was great but I can’t help but feel they missed a trick here by not having Puck perform the Busted, ahem, ‘classic’ ‘What I Go To School For’, the video for which, if you cast your mind back, featured perhaps the most unappealing teacher ever as the object of Charlie Simpson et al’s affections.

- Puck in the Hall and Oates wig was a nice sight gag, and of course any excuse to embed this video…

Community on Hiatus

2011-11-15T19:11:00.000+00:00

The critically-adored (and rightly so) Community has been put on hiatus by NBC in the last twenty-four hours as the network announced its mid-season schedule.

The show, one of the best comedies around at the moment (although I’m still currently working my way through the season two DVD I got from the US) has been on a hiding to nothing this season unfortunately, tangling with the likes of the bombproof Big Bang Theory and American Idol/X Factor on Fox.

Community looks seriously in danger now of becoming this decade’s Arrested Development, a critically beloved show with a small but rabid fan base that ultimately just doesn’t pull in enough viewers to viably be kept on the air.

Make no mistake, the show, only a handful of episodes into its third season, isn’t cancelled – well not yet anyway – and will be back at some point for a bunch of episodes.

It certainly is ominous foreshadowing of what lies ahead for Community though and I for one will now be very surprised to see the comedy get a fourth season.

Stranger things have happened though, and there is precedence at NBC for doing a u-turn with veteran shows when a debutant bombs, but I’d be very reluctant to put any money on Greendale opening its doors again when this current term comes to an end at this stage.

How I Met Your Mother 7.1 'The Best Man'

2011-11-04T18:45:00.000+00:00

“Get ready Cleveland, the last man to screw you this hard then disappear was LeBron James” – Barney

I appreciate that the nature of How I Met Your Mother is the slow reveal of facts and information that lead to the big teases that have been dropped as the show has progressed.

The use of ellipses allows the writers to keep the viewer hanging with revelations from the future, but after six seasons the lack of any sort of any real progression is starting to get frustrating.

I know that the whole notion of the ‘mother’ mystery is nothing more than a MacGuffin to allow the telling of these tales but it does feel more and more as though the writers are taking the Lost approach and rather than building up to the big reveal as the show, inevitably, starts to wind up they are giving us more questions than answers.

The season seven opener ‘The Best Man’ was another example of this technique.

After ending season six on the somewhat of a cliffhanger that Barney gets married at some point in the future – not that much of a cliffhanger when you really think about it – the season seven premiere picked right back up there only to then jump back to the present day and almost entirely ignore the big cliffhanger.

I’m not interested at all, at this point, in who Barney marries unless it’s Robin, as much like Ted’s eventual wife we have no reason to care about whoever it is, should it be someone as yet unseen.

I personally felt though that the scene at the end of the episode with the bride at Barney’s wedding asking to see Ted was the strongest indication yet that the bride was Robin.

It seemed odd that the bride would want to see Ted unless it was one of his best friends. I could of course be way off with that theory, and that could be a trap they wanted viewers to fall in to, as given the time between where we are in the present with the series and the point at which the wedding occurs down the timeline, Ted could very well have become close with the bride. It might even simply be an innocuous meeting as she needs to get a message to Barney but isn’t able to see him.

The amount I’m reading in to that shows how fans of the show will dissect even the smallest line of dialogue so I guess in that sense the show is still doing what it does well.

It doesn’t make the lack of answers any less frustrating however and if I am right about Barney and Robin then putting Barney and Nora together now is just a stalling tactic to maybe pad out the season a bit more.

Given how short Barney and Robin’s previous relationship was there is a lot that could be done with the two of them together so I don’t personally believe that they now need to be kept apart with the end for the show surely looming on the horizon.

‘The Best Man’ did a good job in other quarters of seemingly setting up the season’s main elements – Ted’s increased frustration with being unlucky in love, Robin’s unrequited feelings for Barney and Marshall & Lily’s pregnancy.

For the most part it was a pretty unspectacular episode of How I Met Your Mother. As one would expect, Barney got several decent one liners including the one above about LeBron James, which whilst clichéd was still very funny, and drunk Marshall making an appearance is always welcome.

Other individual moments that I thought worked well were Barney and Robin’s dance number to Deee-Lite’s early 90s classic ‘Groove Is In The Heart’, which was fun, even if it does seem like more and more comedies are calling on elaborate dance sequences for laughs these days.

The teases of how Marshall ruined the wedding were also well done, even if they did make the way he actually ruined it seem kind of lame in comparison.

And I Liked Ted and Robin’s heart to heart on the balcony outside the wedding, as it reminded me of several similar instances from the show’s history, including the wedding at which they ended their relationship at the end of season two.

As I’ve said, ‘The Best Man’ did its job in setting up the general direction of season seven and in doing so provided us with an episode that wasn’t necessarily big on laughs but featured a great deal of the heart and soul that has always been at the core of the show.

Although the more human element underpinning a lot of the ridiculousness on the show stands How I Met Your Mother apart from a lot of other shows of this ilk, with the likes of Happy Endings, which is going from strength and is undisputedly the best new comedy out there, snapping at its heels I certainly feel that Carter Bays and Craig Thomas need to up their game.

That said, even in its less fine hours How I Met Your Mother is still one of the best comedies on TV and I’m glad to have new episodes back on our screens after E4 decided to turn it in to the new Friends by bombarding us with repeats.

A Hail of Bullets:

- Barney’s ‘plays’ in this episode were ridiculous, even by his standards. At least some of the stuff he’s pulled in the past had a modicum of believability, but in what world would “patient zero” or “the escaped manslaughterer” work?

- I mentioned above that the wedding scenes on the balcony had an air of familiarity to them, that’s because it’s the same set right?

- It felt a little shoehorned in, because surely Ted’s wedding breakdowns would have been big news within the gang as well, but did the auto-tune remix of Ted’s breakdowns fail to make anyone laugh? Hats off to Punchy, who’d have thought he had such a creative streak?

How I Met Your Mother Season Seven continues in the UK Thursday @ 9pm on E4

Californication 4.4 'Monkey Business'

2011-10-29T12:24:00.000+01:00

“Dead monkeys and auto-erotic asphyxiation, that’s my cue.” – Stu

I’m a little torn over ‘Monkey Business’, on the one hand it had some of the biggest laughs of this season so far, mined a really dark brand of comedy – which I dug – and had some genuinely great little moments.

On the other hand though, a large section of the episode was devoted to gags derived from an obscene monkey, which firstly felt distinctly cliché and secondly straight out of someone like The Farrelly Brothers playbook.

Californication should be, and is, capable of much better than cheap laughs from Charlie (who else?) getting monkey faeces thrown at him.

The majority of the episode was spent with Hank, Charlie and Stu at the Fucking and Punching movie’s sugar daddy Zig’s house. Zig of course was about the most off the wall character the show’s ever depicted and was no doubt a swipe at Hollywood big wigs that live these abnormal lifestyles.

After a meeting at a bar where we got a flavour of Zig’s eccentricities – “I haven’t had an erection in the past decade but that’s another story” – it was back to his mansion for a reading. Cue surreal humour, a barrage of one liners and an asphyxi-wank death.

The banter at the mansion and the dark, surreal laughs drawn from Zig’s lifestyle and unfortunate demise were the episode’s best bits and anything away from there felt decidedly weak, even if both major storylines away from the party actually advanced the season considerably.

First the worst kept secret in TV land, Marcy’s blatant pregnancy, was finally confirmed and then we had Karen meeting a brooding love interest in Michael Ealy’s Ben – the father of one of Becca’s band mates.

Events at Zig’s mansion did also serve a purpose to advance the most predictable storyline in TV land as lady-lawyer Abi seemed to be warming up to Hank’s charms considerably. She appears to have a begrudging respect for Hank’s life as well as a morbid curiosity in to how one man can fuck up so much.

For such a raucous episode it all ended quite sombrely though with Hank driving off in to the night after spotting Karen getting flirty with Ben.

I almost feel bad for being negative about an episode I genuinely laughed quite hard at but my expectations for my favourite shows are often far too great.

For one reason or another, season four hasn’t quite clicked for me just yet in the way that season three did almost instantly.

A Hail of Bullets:

- At first I thought that they could have got someone bigger to play the role of Zig, a name actor who could have really sent themselves up and chewed the scenery. However when I saw his death and the fact his corpse remained hung on the back of a bathroom door for so long it became apparent why the role might not have been that appealing.

Kudos to Fisher Stevens though for really attacking the role with such vigour, he really was fantastic. Stevens is probably best known to audiences for playing George Minkowski on Lost but he also won an OSCAR in 2010 for his documentary The Cove.

I did at one point feel that Zig may have been a Charlie Sheen parody with his two woman-servants but this episode would have aired in the US just before Sheenmania kicked off earlier this year. Still Zig had most of the episodes best lines, asking Hank “You’re quite the cocksman no?” and then hilariously telling one of his “sister wives” “you give lousy head, you’re timid and you lack focus, we gotta get you some Ritalin”.

- Charlie also got a great line in this episode, remarking “that monkey was a deviant and a cockblocker”.

- Other nice moments/lines included the monkey raising his hand along with everyone else when the group was asked “who wants to get baked?” and the ‘sister wife’ Charlie tried to have his way with telling him that the monkey “tried to finger my friend Jess one time”.

I also loved the whole scene in which Hank found Zig’s body, first him singing “eat my peach baby blow on my dice” which was a nice call back to last season. Then his understatement of the year telling Charlie “we’ve got a bit of a predicament in here” and finally his good advice that you should “always use the buddy system” when attempting a “choke and stroke”.

- Bizarrely Zig appeared to have a penchant for 80s UK electro music with Soft Cell’s ‘Tainted Love’ & Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Relax’ soundtracking the weirdness at the mansion.

- Anyone else think Hank probably shouldn’t have been driving his car after telling Abi that he was “significantly” high?

Californication Season 4 continues in the UK Thursday @ 10pm on 5*

The Walking Dead 2.1 'What Lies Ahead'

2011-10-25T18:55:00.000+01:00

“It’s all about slim chances now.” – Rick

Zombie epic The Walking Dead’s TV return has been one of the most hotly anticipated events of the year, and not just amongst fellow geeks – the series really seems to have captured the imaginations and attentions of the wider public in a way I personally would have never expected.

A lot of that has to come down to the fact that this isn’t just a show about a zombie apocalypse, in the same way Lost was much more than a show about some plane crash survivors on a mysterious island, this is a character piece seasoned with a variety of social, psychological and spiritual themes.

Of course we can never totally relate to what these people are going through, but everyone knows how they would deal with adversity and the side of them that brings out – some lead, some follow and some go through a crisis of the soul that changes them for either the better, or tragically the worst.

The characters in The Walking Dead are facing an impossible situation but they are all real people and even those who may seem the strongest are struggling to come to terms with a world that no longer resembles anything even remotely like what they are used to.

The first season of the show was at times slow but for the most part having only a six episode season pushed things along at a quicker pace than perhaps the writers would have liked. It certainly would have satisfied action-junkies’ appetites, but as a result there felt like a lot of dead weight being dragged around by the surviving group in terms of character development – a lot of that got trimmed as the season progressed but many characters outside the main family dynamic felt under-developed.

‘What Lies Ahead’, like it’s season one counterpart, premiered at a feature length running time but felt decidedly less epic in scale than the series premiere but that wasn’t a bad thing necessarily.

The slow pacing of ‘What Lies Ahead’ allowed several characters to really get some spotlight and served to only exacerbate the tensions within this motley crew.

The pacing may have felt more pronounced in this season-opener but at no point did the episode feel like it was dragging and there was certainly enough of what makes the show popular to appease both fans of character and gore.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t highlight just what an exceptional scene that entire highway encounter with the walkers was, from the moment Dale spotted that first walker through his binoculars the entire scene was a master class in tension.

I did, if I’m being completely honest, take issue with some of the logic and continuity in that scene however. First of all I’m pretty sure it was established in the first season that the zombies weren’t capable of much more than shuffling along, yet here we saw them opening a door and crouching down to look under the car.

If I was being cynical I’d say this was just down to continuity errors in the writing, which would be understandable given all the behind the scenes turmoil the show went through during its hiatus, but instead I’m going to sum this up by theorising that the walkers are actually evolving, which if correct can only be a bad thing for our merry band of survivors.

The same can’t be said for the fact that they didn’t detect most of the group when they were hiding. The episode ‘Guts’ in season one was almost entirely centred around Rick and Glenn having to coat themselves in the remains of dead walkers to blend in with the pack as they could smell humans.

Even here we saw Daryl hiding himself and T-Dog under bodies, yet the majority of the group just hiding under cars went undetected, until those final moments of course when Sophia was discovered and ran off in to the woods.

Little pedantic issues such as the above aside, that highway scene was one hell of a set piece.

As good as that stretch was it was the character work that really jumped out of the screen at me in ‘What Lies Ahead’ though.

Andrew Lincoln has always been one of Britain’s finest young actors and he was great as Rick last year, but here he seemed to bring a whole new level of fatigue to this man who is clearly a born leader. The burden of being the man everyone looks to in a world so far beyond his control is now visible not just in Rick’s increasingly questionable choices but also written all over Lincoln’s face, in much the same way that another talented British actor Charlie Hunnam etched Jax’s grief over his missing son all over his face in season three of Sons of Anarchy.

Rick’s increasing sense of desperation and that feeling of being lost were never more evident than at the church – in the past we’ve seen Rick talk to ‘Morgan’ in that walkie-talkie almost like a God-type figure but here we saw him clearly asking the big man upstairs for help and admitting it was something he’d never done before.

Shane meanwhile continues to effectively be devil’s advocate, the ying to Rick’s yang. It’s a tough call to really make the case for whether he’s doing this out of friendship, and trying to help his best friend make the right choices or just to undermine Rick out of spite due to resentment.

Shane is clearly a man who resents Rick uncontrollably but there has also been enough evidence for me that the bonds of friendship still remain strong in spite of what has happened.

Shane’s love for Lori and Carl is still a major element of his current mindset, as evidenced in his chats with Lori in which he revealed he was going to leave the group just to get away from having to see the woman he’s fallen for with his best friend.

Another character broken by a recent loss, Andrea, overheard the second pow-wow between Shane and Lori and now too wants out of the group that is increasingly fracturing further and further apart.

Andrea calling Dale out on his on holier than thou attitude was a tough watch, poor Dale was in his mind, and probably a lot of other people’s minds, only trying to look out for Andrea but his almost dictator-like actions at times are only ever going to cause dissension in the ranks.

The friction between these two characters is fascinating stuff but a little sad all the same as, although Andrea was quick to dismiss it here, they did have a father-daughter dynamic going on for a lot of last season.

Another character getting a bit of a more developed identity is Daryl, who although they appear to be softening him up a little already this season, is still my favourite character on the show.

Bringing us back to those questionable decisions Rick was making that I talked about before, letting Carl even be out there in the woods with them was a big one, but then allowing him to stay on with Shane and he was a sign that this man’s danger-compass is way out of sync at the moment.

Carl taking a stray bullet, from someone we can only speculate is a hunter at this stage, was the ultimate punishment for letting his normally steadfast discipline slip but it will no doubt serve as a reminder to Rick that the world they occupy is now fraught with danger at every possible turn.

The idea of that deer in the woods sums up the new world so beautifully it was almost too perfect a symbol – any fleeting moment of beauty in this apocalyptic world is now almost universally immediately followed by a harrowing moment of grim reality to bring you right back in to the hell on earth you are now calling your life.

I guess the question now for all our survivors is whether Rick is still the man to lead this group after not only overseeing the loss of Sophia but also his own son taking a bullet. Lori was vocally supportive of her husband but will she still feel the same way about Rick as she did in that speech when she finds out Carl was shot?

A Hail of Bullets:

- In case anyone had forgot that tease of Jenner whispering something to Rick before they left the CDC at the end of the season one finale there was a reminder in that pre-credits Rick monologue that whatever it was certainly carried quite a bit of weight.

- The shots of the abandoned highways never cease to amaze, that one of the outskirts of Atlanta as the group headed away from the city was incredible.

- The Walking Dead is a show, quite rightly, that is low on laughs but there were a couple of moments that had me chuckling in ‘What Lies Ahead’. First Glenn’s face, when he was assigned his weapon from that butcher kit Carl found, which was pricelessly like a child on Christmas morning.

And then Daryl, who usually gets most of the best one-liners, remarking to the crucifix statue at the church: “…Yo JC, you taking requests…?”

- Speaking of the church, having some walkers sat there certainly opened up a new can of worms about the mental faculties of these creatures – do they still have some recollection deep down of their former life? Why else would they be sat there in a church rather than out shuffling around looking for another woodchuck to devour?

- Rick and Daryl’s autopsy was perhaps the episode’s most stomach-churning moment (sorry couldn’t resist) but there were plenty of other gruesome shock-value moments, Andrea’s screwdriver through the eye and Rick’s rock to the head the two that immediately spring to mind.

It says a lot about the way in which these walkers have been created that I almost don’t even flinch now when I see something like a screwdriver being repeatedly jabbed through an eye socket – had that been on a living person I dare say we’d have all been wincing a lot more than we were.

The Walking Dead Season 2 continues in the UK on Friday @ 10pm on FX HD

Curb Your Enthusiasm 8.6 'The Hero'

2011-10-25T15:15:00.000+01:00

“I wonder what Sully would have done if he was in my shoes…” – Larry

The subject of far more hype and advertising than Curb usually gets on these shores due to the Ricky Gervais guest appearance, ‘The Hero’ was probably the most anticipated episode of Curb’s eighth season on both sides of the pond, and it certainly didn’t disappoint.

The episode kicked off where we left off at the end of last week’s episode, with Larry on the plane opposite Jeff and Susie shovelling fro-yo in to his mouth. Predictably, at least in the post divorce era, for Curb who should end up sat next to Larry but an attractive woman who, again predictably, he didn’t exactly hit it off with straight away.

I love the fact that even when presented with a beautiful woman, Larry won’t let something as trivial as her drink being on his half of the arm rest slide.

Coupled with his ice-breaking discussion about his long shoe laces, Larry wasn’t exactly winning over his glamorous seat neighbour; that is until he went to the toilet and ended up inadvertently tackling an abusive drunken passenger.

How else would Larry end up doing something that heroic other than by tripping over his aforementioned shoe laces? Of course Larry was then revered by the passengers and the stewardess as a hero and as one would expect, he milked it for all it’s worth.

Donna, his seat neighbour suddenly found Larry a lot more appealing and once they touched down in New York they began seeing each other. It’s kind of wrongly appropriate that Larry was being hailed a hero in the city that has seen thousands of them.

The remainder of the episode was filled with Larry clashing with Ricky Gervais, playing an even more pretentious version of himself than the one he often portrays during interviews and the like.

Jeff was keen to sign Gervais but Larry and then Susie managed to conspire to ruin his courtship with a little help from a nosy waiter played by ex-Daily Show correspondent Dan Bakkedahl.

The scenes with Larry and Gervais were just great and the instant spark in their verbal jousting was a joy to watch. Of course everyone knows that Gervais holds Larry David as one of his all time heroes so hearing him call Seinfeld “broad comedy” was very funny.

Gervais appeared to be channelling a bit of David Brent as he and Larry constantly clashed over money, with Gervais brilliantly telling Larry at one point “you gave me wine, I gave you art” after Gervais made Larry pay for his ticket to the play he was in.

As soon as the waiter appeared next to Larry and Jeff as they talked about disturbing Gervais during his play it was obvious it would be him who informed Ricky and scuppered Jeff’s chances, but although that felt like the end the actual end was one of those surreal moments of genius that make Larry David the comedy God that he is.

Spotting Gervais out with Donna, Larry followed them clutching the Italian bread that everyone, especially Gervais, had previously mocked at Susie’s dinner party. Upon seeing them being mugged what else could Larry possibly have used as a weapon to fend off the mugger than the hard bread?

It would have been wrong for any episode of Curb to end with Larry getting the last laugh though so as he stood proud talking down to a cowering Gervais it felt kind of poetic that his shoelace was caught in the subway car door.

‘The Hero’ was another fantastic episode from a season Curb that has largely been nigh on perfect.

Ricky Gervais was a brilliant guest star, throwing himself in to the role of the accentuated version of himself with great gusto and really proving a worthy adversary to Larry.

It’s good to finally see Larry in New York, and with regular characters like Jeff and Susie also there, having pretty much destroyed LA over the previous seven and a half seasons there are surely a plethora of new people for him to offend in the Big Apple.

If episode one of the Curb New York run is anything to go by then this relocation for Larry David could incredibly make season eight even better than it already is.

A Hail of Bullets:

- A lot of people would have obviously been excited to see Ricky Gervais in this episode, and great as he was, I was actually more excited to see Chris Parnell show up.

Unfortunately though Parnell was given very little to do and I felt more could’ve been built on his and Larry’s interaction at the dinner party other than having his wife yell at Larry for his inappropriate questions.

- In addition to Gervais, Parnell and Dan Bakkedahl, other notable guest stars in this episode were Michael Mulheren who used to play the chief on Rescue Me and Samantha Mathis as Donna who was in Broken Arrow and played Princess Daisy in the dire Mario Bros. big screen adaptation.

- Larry’s social rule enforcement wasn’t that strong in this episode really. I appreciated his correction of the location of Donna’s drink when she “encroached” on to his side of the arm rest and he was right to pick holes in the logic of Susie’s pretentious dinner party but beyond that it was really only his battle of wits with Gervais that occupied his time.

As covered above, Gervais was the perfect foil for Larry and Curb excels when everyone on the show can’t see Larry’s problem with something but as an audience we can. Gervais was clearly in the wrong socially right from the start, but as the antagonist he has to be; Larry being right but unable to convince everyone else of it is the comedy utopia the show strives for and it works so well when they get it right.

- How awesome was that view of New York’s famous skyline from Larry’s bedroom window? That’s a view I dream of having from my property one day.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8 continues in the UK Sunday @ 11.05pm on More4

30 Rock Season 5 on Comedy Central

2011-10-24T18:02:00.000+01:00

There are a lot of fans of the brilliant 30 Rock in the UK, in spite of the abhorrent treatment the show has received from UK broadcasters thus far.

To be fair to current broadcaster Comedy Central, since they picked up the show they’ve actually showcased the show in a fashion befitting a show of such quality, which is something Channel 5 never did when they had the rights.

That’s why it was so disappointing when part way through its airing of season 5 of 30 Rock, Comedy Central suddenly pulled the plug with barely an explanation as to why.

It later became apparent that the flawed logic behind this move was that as season six had been delayed in the US due to Tina Fey’s pregnancy, that Comedy Central had decided that rather than have a gargantuan gap between seasons five and six, they would break up season five into two parts thus closing the gap between the end of season five and the start of season six. Somewhere, to someone, that logic does actually make a modicum of sense.

All that is ancient history now however, as Comedy Central have finally announced a return date for the second part of season five of 30 Rock and it’s as close as next week! Rejoice!

30 Rock Season Five will return on Friday 4th November 2011 on Comedy Central UK.

Alphas 1.1 'Pilot'

2011-10-20T20:58:00.000+01:00

“Like a Peyton Manning, with a gun…?” – Bill

Given the subject matter, fairly or unfairly, Alphas was always going to draw comparisons to Heroes.

With Tim Kring’s show losing its way so spectacularly in later seasons, it doesn’t feel like we’ve been over-saturated by a ‘people with abilities’ show, so there is still a lot to be explored in this genre, hence why I had high hopes for Alphas.

Alphas feels more like a TV X-Men though than Heroes, with an older scientist (Dr. Rosen) helping a young group of people with abilities to harness their power in the best way and also discover themselves along the way. Of course being a TV show there is the obvious air of Heroes about Alphas, but it’s X-Men that I would really draw the most comparisons too.

The problem with being so derivative of other high profile series’ is that Alphas comes across as a cheap knock-off, if Heroes was a blockbuster then Alphas feels like the B-movie rip-off.

The cynic in me can’t get past the fact that the heroes on Alphas all have abilities that don’t really look that visually impressive, as opposed to say flying or shape-shifting, which means they can be filmed cheaply.

Coming from a smaller network like Sy-Fy it’s hard to shake the feeling that had this show been made by a Fox or an NBC that maybe the Alphas would have had far more impressive-looking abilities than the power of suggestion and enhanced senses.

In case it hadn’t become clear by now I was left feeling quite disappointed after watching the show and I had been really excited for it, even going as far as to flag it up last week right here on TV or not TV.

You know I don’t like to be negative for the sake of being negative though so what worked in this extended pilot?

Well I particularly enjoyed the opening as Hicks was influenced to kill the prisoner with everyone on the street seemingly telling him to “kill” and “pull the trigger”.

The reveal of how he managed to kill the prisoner and the visual of the shot hitting him from inside a sealed room was also pretty cool, even if that section did feel a little like CSI: Superhero.

The file graphics that accompanied the introduction of each Alpha were also a really nice expositional tool, as it quickly and clearly established not only who each character is, but also what they can do and why. Too often on Heroes I thought it was unclear what abilities certain people had and why, and they seemed to just change their minds about characters and their abilities on a seasonal basis, I’m hoping Alphas will have a more rigid structure on that front.

David Strathairn as expected is fantastic in the Professor X role and is by far the best thing on the show, pretty much acting everyone around him off the screen, though I do feel the Oscar-nominee deserves a bit better than this really.

I also liked the end of the episode as ‘the ghost’ seemed to blur the lines between good and evil with his dying words by telling Hicks he’s “on the wrong side of this”. It’d pretty much been taken as a given, at least by me, during the episode that the Alphas were helping the good guys by siding with the Feds but, as both X-Men and Heroes have done in the past, there seemed to be the indication that maybe Red Flag aren’t all bad. This may again be a derivative angle to explore – the war between ‘specials’ and humans – but it at least gives the show an added depth that for the large majority of what preceded that tease was sorely missing.

Sadly though there was a lot that didn’t work and by the time a ‘standard’ episode would have concluded I was actually willing the show to wrap things up.

In addition to the bigger problems facing the show such as the cheap knock-off feel and the plodding nature of the pilot (hopefully fixable once the show reverts to standard running time) there were also a number of smaller individual problems that conspired to leave me feeling somewhat apathetic to Alphas.

It must’ve been clear during production that inevitable comparisons were going to be drawn between the show and other productions within this genre, Heroes being the most prominent, so in that case you would think the writers would go to great lengths to differentiate the show from its peers.

Yet a lot of the abilities displayed in the Alphas pilot are lifted straight from Heroes – super-strength, the ability to influence other’s thoughts and the ability to control others to name but a few. I appreciate there are only so many abilities a show can work with and at its worst Heroes had some pretty shoddy abilities but I’d have expected Alphas to have been a little more creative on that front.

Then we have the characters themselves, of course everything David Strathairn does as Rosen is great and carries a degree of gravitas, but his underlings left a lot to be desired which is surprising given that the extended length of the pilot felt like it was being justified by through some early character development.

Gary the young autistic lad is supremely annoying and brought practically nothing to the table and actually felt like the most clichéd character – hasn’t the autistic child prodigy been done to death in TV and film by now?

I really wanted to like Malik Yoba as Bill going in and early on it looked like he’d be the character you gravitate to most, he’s the group’s de facto leader as he’s former FBI and the others don’t have his discipline and sense of danger which is quite an interesting way to approach things, with him teaching the inexperienced members of the team how to perform in the ‘field’.

Yet as the episode progressed for some reason he was made to look cartoonishly piggish, intentionally winding up the autistic Gary and then being overly rude to Rachel; it seemed like a bizarre tangent to take him down and just didn’t work for me.

Overall Alphas certainly has a lot of promise and there’s so much room for the show to grow but vast improvement is definitely needed to keep the show around for any sort of extended period and if I’m honest to also keep me tuning in for the remainder of this season.

A Hail of Bullets:

- One other positive in the pilot was the great music on show. First T-Rex’s 20th Century Boy and then David Bowie’s The Jean Genie, it also looked like they were giving Rosen a ‘cool’ edge with his taste in music, hopefully that will be a running theme throughout the show.

- Callum Keith Rennie was great as always as the group’s FBI patron Don Wilson. Obviously as the guy’s biggest fan I’m a little biased, but the show would certainly benefit from his charisma on a regular basis. The verbal jousting between Rennie and Strathairn was also one of the best things on show in this pilot episode.

- This pilot was directed by veteran Lost director Jack Bender (snigger) and there were certainly some nice shots and moments in there that you could tell had come from a TV director of his stature.

Alphas continues Tuesday @ 10pm on 5* in the UK.

Justified Season 3 Casting News

2011-10-19T13:17:00.000+01:00

The casting news for Justified’s impending third season has been coming thick and fast in the last week, and from what we know thus far it should ensure the show has a great chance to build on the success of its break out, Emmy-nominated, second season.

Last week we learnt that Boomtown alumni Neal McDonough and Mykelti Williamson had joined the show to play season three’s antagonists, who I’m sure everyone will admit have a less than enviable job trying to follow in Margo Martindale’s footsteps.

Both actors have good resumes though and should bring a different kind of opponent to the table for Raylan this season.

McDonough is probably better known for his film work, which includes Minority Report, Walking Tall and most recently Captain America; but he has also starred in a recurring role on Desperate Housewives.

McDonough will play Quarles, a mobster who comes to Harlan with bad intentions, his acting style should ensure that Quarles is a more cool and collected enemy than Raylan is used to doing battle with in Kentucky.

Williamson who will undoubtedly be known to most as Bubba from Forest Gump, has also starred in Con Air, Heat and Three Kings on the big screen; whilst his small screen credits include CSI: NY and the final season of 24, in which he played CTU director Brian Hastings.

Williamson will play a character called Limehouse on Justified who sounds more akin to the sort of criminal Raylan is used to on the show, though he could be one to blur the lines between right and wrong a little.

The latest announcement is perhaps the most exciting though, as Carla Gugino, currently being seen in the UK as Hank’s lawyer on season four of Californication, has now been added to the cast for season three as Karen Goodall a D.C.-based assistant director of the Marshals Service who used to work with Raylan back in Miami.

Goodall reportedly comes to Kentucky to help keep hidden witnesses safe who have become endangered after the murder of a U.S. Marshal.

Obviously there will be history between Raylan and Goodall and given Gugino’s looks one would assume she could be the source of numerous headaches for Raylan with the women in his life.

As well as Californication, Gugino has also recently been seen in Entourage, and has previously starred on Sin City as well as playing the titular character in the Karen Sisco TV series, coincidentally also based on an Elmore Leonard character. Whilst on the big screen she’s been in everything from Sin City to the Spy Kids movies.

Gugino is not only sexy but she always plays strong women who usually give the men in their life more than as good as they get, so she should be a perfect sparring partner for Raylan Givens.

In terms of returning characters, Dickie Bennett (Jeremy Davies) last seen being hauled off by the Marshals after the deaths of his mother and brothers at the end of season two, will be back for season three, although he will remain behind bars.

Justified’s third season is expected in early 2012 on FX in the US and hopefully not much later on FIVE USA in the UK if history is anything to go by.

Curb Your Enthusiasm 8.5 'Vow of Silence'

2011-10-18T15:31:00.000+01:00

“…This is chaos, society can’t function like this…” – Larry

It’s taken half the season but finally it looks as though Larry is off to New York in the much anticipated move a lot of this season’s hype centred around.

And in typical Larry David fashion his trip to New York is born entirely out of a lie and his attempt to avoid a charity event, so instead of giving up one afternoon of his time he’s having to alter three months worth of plans and relocate – that’s our Larry.

Larry’s willingness to take his lie to the extent he did may seem unreasonable but for the most part during the rest of the episode Larry made a lot of sense.

His frustration at a driver parking over two spaces I think everyone can empathise with as that is also a pet hate of mine. His analysis of a woman performing a “cut and chat” at a buffet line was spot on and evoked brilliant memories of the “stop and chat” Larry coined back in the show’s infancy; and his irritation with Lewis for insisting on a confirmation even though they’d made plans seemed completely justified.

Of course there was also his inappropriate line of questioning to Jeff’s vet’s wife, the fact he and Jeff made Jeff’s poor dog Oscar miss his last meal and ultimately driving Vance to break his vow of silence, so I guess these things kind of balance out in the end.

Everything came together spectacularly in those final few moments yet again as every one of the episode’s threads knotted together and really elicited a big laugh which made the episode end on a high that it never really got close to previously.

We’ve been spoiled so far with a couple of outstanding episodes such as ‘Palestinian Chicken’ and last week’s ‘The Smiley Face’ but ‘Vow of Silence’ was quite low on the laughs for the most part until those closing scenes.

Maybe that’s because the episode did have a job to do, unlike most Curb episodes, as circumstances had to conspire to get Larry on that plane to New York with Jeff and Susie and perhaps mapping that progression out took away a few opportunities for jokes and punch-lines.

When a show has maintained a level of consistency like Curb has for so many years your expectations are obviously sky high every week but it also means you can also forgive the odd blip, such as a largely laughless episode like this.

Given the episode’s title and the time spent establishing his vow of silence it was clear Vance would be integral to the episode in someway as it reached its climax and it didn’t disappoint. I would’ve never pegged him as the offending parker but it all tied together beautifully as he took great delight in breaking his vow to grass up Larry and Jeff for eating Oscar’s last meal.

All of which was followed by a great cut from Susie expressing her relief that moving to New York would mean no Larry for three months to Jeff and Susie on the plane with Larry – eating another tub of Oscar’s beloved Pinkberry no less – sat directly across from them.

As if that wasn’t enough the final shot of the episode was Richard Lewis sat alone in the restaurant stood up by Larry after being promised of Larry’s attendance.

New York next week then, it may have taken a while but surely Larry’s return to the Big Apple will be worth the wait.

A Hail of Bullets:

- Always great to see the legend that is Michael McKean in anything but it’s especially great when it’s something as fantastic as Curb.

I like it how they brought back the Tessler character without bothering to dole out loads of exposition to remind you who he was, it felt like a nice way to reward long term fans of the show.

It certainly felt like Tessler knew Larry was lying to him and was intentionally sticking it to him by renting Renny Harlin’s apartment to him for his stay in ‘New York’, which is not only a satisfyingly karmic way of getting Larry to NYC, but a nice nod to the show’s long history as well.

- Also guest-starring in ‘Vow of Silence’ was Rich ‘Harry Crane from Mad Men’ Sommer, although he didn’t really have that big of a role in the episode which surprised me. The way he was introduced seemed to suggest that he’d be a big part of the episode but ultimately didn’t appear much at all.

- I’m going to have to agree with Larry in questioning how Sammi managed to get in to Juilliard – I certainly haven’t forgotten that performance in season seven’s ‘The Hot Towel’.

- No Leon again in this episode and he didn’t appear to be on the plane with Larry at the end of the episode – I certainly hope that doesn’t mean we’ve seen the last of him this season.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8 continues in the UK Sunday @ 11.05pm on More4.

FX Renews Sons of Anarchy for Season 5

2011-10-17T20:00:00.000+01:00

I don’t think it was really ever in doubt, but FX has just announced that Sons of Anarchy will be back for a fifth season next year.
Season four of the biker drama is currently airing in the US and season three has just finished its run in the UK.

Sons continues to be a huge ratings winner for FX and remains the channel's highest-rated series, thus far season 4 is averaging 5.8 million viewers.

FX president John Landgraf said in a statement following the announcement: “Everyone at FX is very grateful to Kurt Sutter, his many writing, directing and producing collaborators and his masterful cast for making such a compelling and beautifully crafted show… It is no small challenge to bring the themes of a great, ancient play like 'Hamlet' into a wholly original television setting and to tell this complex story in a way that is both riveting and accessible to a broad audience. The fans know how beautifully 'SOA' meets this challenge, and we thank them for their loyal and passionate viewership.”

Kurt Sutter has previously stated that he has envisioned a seven season run for the show and one would assume that is very likely to happen at this point with Sons of Anarchy remaining as popular and brilliant as always.

Californication 4.2 'Suicide Solution'

2011-10-15T12:45:00.001+01:00

“...I saw a girl I defecated on in Palm Springs once. I should go apologize.” –Eddie Nero

I was a rather vocal fan of Kathleen Turner’s stellar contribution to Californication’s third season. As Sue Collini, Charlie’s randy boss, Turner practically stole every scene she was in and chewed the scenery like nobody’s business every chance she got.

I had hoped Turner would return for season four, but as yet there’s been no indication she’ll be back, which makes Rob Lowe’s debut as actor Eddie Nero all the more fantastic.

There wasn’t much else to dissect in ‘Suicide Solution’ that wasn’t covered in my review of the premiere last week, but Lowe’s incredible performance as Nero guaranteed this was a great episode of Californication.

Every moment of that scene with Charlie and Hank at the bar was brilliant and every line of dialogue out of Nero’s mouth was borderline genius. Lowe is clearly having the time of his life playing the ridiculous Nero but it works in an even more spectacular way than Turner did as the sex mad Collini last season.

Judging from this episode’s title it would seem that Hank’s booze and prescription meds binge that ended with him passing out is going to be viewed as a desperate cry for help by those closest to him.

I can’t say I’m really digging that as an idea though because although Hank is one of the most tortured souls on television he doesn’t strike me as the sort who would even consider suicide, and you would think his nearest and dearest would also feel that way too.

Obviously the writers have painted themselves in to a corner with Karen and Becca’s resentment towards Hank meaning they want nothing to do with him. The show is always at its most heartfelt when Hank is dealing with the two women that mean more to him than anything in the world, so with them unwilling to do anything other than show him how much he’s hurt them the show is suffering.

It would be unrealistic for them both to suddenly forgive him though, so a suicide attempt is an event that could feasibly make them warm to him again and get the show back to it’s more touching side.

David Duchovny was on directorial duty in this episode as well and really put together some nice moments between Hank and his family. That shot of Karen and Hank leaning against the wall so far apart was really great and the whole end scene with Hank typing a letter to Becca – no doubt to be viewed as a suicide note – and his dream-like visions of a young Becca was quite haunting. That final moment as the waves crashed over Hank’s body on the beach causing him to disappear was quite a strong visual representation of the internal trauma this man is suffering.

Beyond the Hank downward spiral there wasn’t anything new that warrants in depth study going on in ‘Suicide Solution’ so anything else of note will be covered below in my ‘hail of bullets’ section.

As always though a highly quotable and ultimately enjoyable episode of Californication, though I am conscious that as yet season four has yet to grace the heights achieved by season three, which was almost universally fantastic, but there’s still plenty of time yet.

A Hail of Bullets:

- Marcy is quite blatantly pregnant, the question there I guess is whether or not the baby is Charlie’s.

- Charlie didn’t really have much of a storyline in this episode but his seasonal arc of trying to boost the number of notches on his bedpost got a little air time as Hank looked in to his room and Charlie indicated “fifteen” to his friend whilst having sex.

- Sasha’s depiction as “America’s sweetheart” last week continues to seem utterly ridiculous as she continues to behave like a sex-mad nympho, once again inexplicably throwing herself at Hank whilst wearing little to no clothes. I appreciate looks can be deceiving and you never quite know what’s going behind closed doors but I doubt one of America’s actual sweethearts like say, Reese Witherspoon (I don’t actually know if she’s ever been referred to as such, but you get my point) behaves like that at home.

- Is anyone in any doubt that Hank and “lady-lawyer” will be doing the no pants dance within a few episodes?

- Hank’s card being declined at the guitar store meaning he couldn’t even buy Becca off without embarrassing her was a cruel blow to not only Hank’s ego but to his almost non-existent relationship with his daughter. I love Hank-Becca interaction though so I do hope that they can go someway to reconciling soon, I can’t imagine a season devoid of the witty repartee they have going being much fun at all.

Californication Season 4 continues in the UK Thursday @ 10pm on 5*

Sons of Anarchy 3.13 'Ns'

2011-10-13T19:19:00.000+01:00

“…There’s no trust… something will go wrong… somebody will get hurt… I promise you, it’ll end badly.” - Gemma

Where do you start with what can only be described as a near perfect episode of television?

Sons of Anarchy’s third season may have been the show’s most divisive yet, but even the show’s harshest critics surely had to acknowledge that ‘Ns’ was just superb from start to finish.

Book-ending the season perfectly with the premiere ‘So’ (‘So’‘Ns’), ‘Ns’ felt like a natural ending, not just to the season but also to this chapter in the show and its history and mythology.

The only reason I’m not giving this episode my first ever five star rating is because of the fact that the big twist didn’t catch me by surprise.

It may be unfair of me to try and blame that on the writing and the acting because given how far behind we are in the UK compared to the US, the ending of season three had already been sort of spoiled for me.

I know that Jax is still with the club in season four, so not for one minute did I believe that the club were going to want him dead for making a deal with Stahl.

I actually really loved the ‘long-con’ aspect of the Jax-Stahl machinations, but even had I not known the outcome in advance, I still don’t think I’d have fallen for the rest of the club’s poor acting when Stahl proudly announced she’d been getting intel from Jax.

Had the club really been surprised by that revelation the reaction would have been far more vehement and possibly violent than it was, and it’s kind of hard to believe that Stahl, knowing all we do about her would have bought it either.

You could argue she was blinded by her success in finally being the one to bag Jimmy-O and that she was so pleased with her self for sticking it to the club and Jax that she let her guard down. Given how paranoid she’s been and the extent to which she’s covered her own ass to this point though it just seemed she was duped a little too easily here. As I said though, it’s easy for me to say that knowing what I knew going in to the episode.

Given how many of the club were privy to this whole scheme it does seem odd that they would keep Gemma and Tara in the dark, the former especially. She’s not been well anyway and has also suffered the trauma of her grandson being kidnapped and putting her father in a home.

She was so concerned for Jax’s well-being that she was willing to go to some pretty extreme lengths, so I can’t believe it didn’t get to a stage where they felt they needed to bring her in to the loop, at least when you consider that less prominent members of the club such as Happy and Juice seemed to be in on it.

With my one criticism of ‘Ns’ out of the way I can now wax lyrical about the myriad of greatness that was on display throughout the rest of this delicious televisual feast.

We all know that Kurt Sutter and Sons of Anarchy love a good montage, and although I’ve never quite been able to look at a montage the same since Team America’s song of the same name, Sutter is a maestro at doing both touching and dramatic ones that are equally emotive and visceral.

Virtually everything in those last ten minutes of ‘Ns’ was brilliant, I particularly loved the voiceovers from Jax and John in the two letters and the merging of the two, showing the difference between these two Teller men now, the next shot as Jax and Clay’s eyes met in the police van seemingly indicating that Jax had now fully embraced Clay’s rule and abandoned his father’s ideals.

All these wide-ranging emotions and ideas were presented with little to no actual properly spoken dialogue and it’s a huge credit to Sutter and his crew that they were able to do so much with so little.

Of course there is a very large elephant in the room now though to possibly disrupt Clay and Jax’s new found harmony because John’s letters are now in Tara’s possession and they seem to hint very strongly that Clay, and possibly Gemma, were complicit in his death in some way.

Whether it was always the intention or whether the writing just ended up setting it up that way, it was kind of poetic which members of SAMCRO ended up not going to jail.

If anyone was ever going to kill Jimmy it had to be Chibs and the same goes for Stahl and Opie.

Both Tommy Flanagan and Ryan Hurst haven’t had much to do this season but in one scene the two of them gave us enough emotion and catharsis to last a season.

First as a brief aside, how awesome was Chibs drinking a juice box on the school bus on the way to intercept Stahl and Jimmy!? There was something so very wrong, but so very right about that shot.

Chibs returning the favour and slashing Jimmy’s face before he killed him was brutal but there was a brief moment between the two men when Jimmy told Chibs to take care of their girls that felt begrudgingly respectful.

Jimmy seemed resigned to his fate from the moment he was handed over by the Russians and at least took his death like a man, going out with a quiet dignity.

It must have been emotional for Tommy Flanagan to do that scene given what he has been through himself receiving similar injuries and he sure as hell sold the shit out of it.

If Jimmy went out true to character: calm and collected even when staring death in the face, then so did Stahl – begging, pleading and desperately trying to survive.

Ryan Hurst was very prominent in both season one and two but sadly has been reduced to the background for quite a lot of season three, however with just a few lines of dialogue he delivered one of the most memorable moments of the show so far.

Making Stahl sit in the driver’s seat of the car and shooting her in the back of the head with a machine gun to make her feel “what she felt” was so tragic yet satisfying and Stahl’s reference to him having had mercy before was a nice call-back to Opie’s “the outlaw had mercy” from a while back. Opie’s response “now I don’t” was one of those wow moments you so rarely get from TV and Ryan Hurst cemented himself as one of my favourite actors in the world in that moment.

Opie may now been engaged again but Donna’s death and Stahl’s role in that are undoubtedly going to haunt him forever, finally seeing Stahl brought to the ultimate justice has to go someway to helping him get a degree of closure though.

‘Ns’ was a nice showcase for so many of the show’s characters – Chucky, Otto, the prospects (more on most of those later) and Unser in particular got a chance to shine a little.

Unser’s relationship with the club has always been quite sweet really, almost like he would have rather gone down that route than that of law enforcement. He has obviously seen Stahl’s dark side first hand, so blatantly had no quibbles helping them finally take her out, and doing so without his badge and gun seemed to signify that his reign as chief has now finally come to an end.

With the majority of the club off to jail for a reduced fourteen months and big changes afoot in Charming, the Sons of Anarchy we’ll return to for season four will be taking place across a very different landscape.

As long as the show remains at this kind of level though we will be in for another season of some of the best drama on television.

The Irish stuff this season might not have worked entirely but with these last two episodes Sons of Anarchy has reminded all of the doubters just why our expectations for the show were so high in the first place.

If it’s possible for a finale to make a season then ‘Ns’ might have done just that.

A Hail of Bullets:

- Who didn’t get a kick out of seeing poor Chucky finally getting to be a hero!? Why he hadn’t spoken up sooner I don’t know, but that was a nice moment as Tig celebrated with him offering to lend him his hand and Chucky got to trot out his trademark “I accept that” catchphrase.

- It’s always great to see Otto (Kurt Sutter) in an episode and for once he wasn’t getting dumped on from a great height. His comment about being on death row soon though seemed to indicate he may not be around much longer.

- As always there were some really fantastic shots in this episode, the camera whipping round Jax & Stahl as they talked after the Jimmy exchange was really nice and the ‘ns’ ring on John’s grave next to Jax’s ‘so’ one – a call back to the pilot – was a great mirror not only of the two titles but also of that same scene in the premiere.

- Again as always great music throughout, with both montages soundtracked by very fitting songs - Battleme's cover of Neil Young's “Hey Hey My My” hauntingly brilliant over the closing scenes and the more upbeat “This Charming Life” by Joan Armatrading over that opening ‘happy’ montage to name just two.

- One last thing, Sons has always struck me as quite a gritty and ‘real’ show but that first post-recap shot of Jax in bed with Tara showed them sleeping mere centimetres from each other. That’s about the most unrealistic thing I’ve ever seen – no one sleeps that close together in real life!

Hell on Wheels Preview

2011-10-12T19:21:00.000+01:00

The hype machine for the return of AMC’s zombie epic The Walking Dead is rightly in overdrive at the moment (not least here at TV or not TV).

With so much focus on The Walking Dead at present though it’s easy to forget that just a few weeks later a brand new original series will also debut on the channel that is also responsible for two of the most critically acclaimed drama series of all time – Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

The immense looking Hell on Wheels will depict the construction of the transcontinental rail road in the 1860s; the title refers to the lawless ‘moving town’ that followed the rail road as it was built.

Hell on Wheels will premiere on AMC on 6th November 2011 in the US, and although no official word has yet been spoken on its UK home (if it will even get one) with Endemol being heavily involved in the show’s development one would assume that given their relationship with Channel 4 it could end up on More4, or even the main channel should it perform well in the US.

Anson Mount, doing a good job of making amends for co-starring in the God awful Britney Spears movie Crossroads once of a day, will play the lead character Cullen Bohannon.

Mount will get stellar support from the likes of Common and Brit Colm Meaney – who now, in spite of his body of work, I can only picture as Aldous Snow’s Dad in Get Him to the Greek.

A two minute teaser trailer for Hell on Wheels is embedded below, and although the quality is more Zapruder than high definition, it still gives you an idea of the epic scale on which this show looks set to operate.

Having missed Deadwood first time around, I for one cannot wait to have a western to follow from the beginning and coming from AMC this can’t be anything other than superb… Can it!?

Glee Adoption Storyline Controversy

2011-10-12T12:45:00.000+01:00

In its three seasons to date Glee has tackled a number of serious issues, ranging from homophobia to racism, and has been applauded by most for the way in which it has handled them and for bringing them to the attention of a mass audience.

There’s one issue the show has recently been catching flak for though and that is its unrealistic depiction of adoption.

Since Quinn told Puck that she intended to get daughter Beth “back” from adoptive parent Shelby in the ‘I Am Unicorn’ episode over a thousand people and counting have signed this online petition which respectfully asks show creator Ryan Murphy to produce an adoption public service announcement to balance out the way in which the show "perpetuates myths about adoption that harm adopted children, adoptive parents, and birth parents alike."

The petition, created by Amber Austin, states that “In real, legitimate adoptions, a birth mother cannot simply take a child away from their family or pop back into a child's life, however this is one of most pervasive and harmful myths about adoption. Furthermore, most adoptions in the US are open to some extent, so these dramatic scenes with birthmothers never take place because a relationship exists from the start. For adopted children, the show raises the fear that they may be taken away from their adopted families. And for adoptive parents and birth mothers, the show creates confusion about the nature of adoption - confusion and mistruths that proponents of adoption constantly work to dispel. And for young women facing unplanned pregnancies, many of whom are in Glee's target demographic, the show may give the inaccurate impression that adoption is a temporary solution, not a permanent one.”

Ryan Murphy has reportedly not yet responded to the petition, but judging from this promo for the first episode back after the show’s current break, this storyline doesn’t look like getting any better any time soon...

Curb Your Enthusiasm 8.4 'The Smiley Face'

2011-10-11T15:33:00.000+01:00

“I will shit where I eat… Or eat where I shat.” – Larry

After a few episodes without the usual colliding storylines, ‘The Smiley Face’ saw Curb revert back to classic Larry David influenced writing, with several threads all intertwining for maximum David destruction.

Larry was like an octopus of chaos in this episode, with his numerous tentacles reaching out and damaging several innocent people’s lives, in other words exactly what we’ve all come to expect, and love, about the Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The several threads in this episode all frayed off Larry with him locking horns with his new office neighbour over their shared kitchen, inadvertently causing long-suffering assistant Antoinette to not be at her father’s death bed, insisting his new girlfriend Heidi not use the titular emoticon in text messages, slandering a dermatologist, causing friends to suspect Jeff was having an affair and remaining determined to, as the opening quote suggests, return to the restaurant Heidi works at after the inevitable break-up.

Not bad for one episode really is it? It’d take most men a lifetime to create so much turmoil, but not Larry. I genuinely think Larry David should be incorporated in to chaos theory and the infamous ‘butterfly effect’ somehow, if a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a tornado somewhere else in the world then imagine what Larry just opening his mouth can do…

Larry’s determination, even before things started to go wrong with Heidi, to “shit where he eats” and then “eat where he shat” had all the hallmarks of a Larry David social experiment. As beautiful, sexy and way out of his league as Heidi was I genuinely wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that the whole relationship had just been Larry testing whether he could in fact “shit where he eats” and get away with it.

There seemed to be no real affection for Heidi and, although we know the most minor of offenses can cause Larry to make a snap decision about someone, the smiley face did seem like a very minor irritant to let set the wheels in motion for the end of the relationship, even by Larry David standards.

At least Larry clearly had the self-awareness that the relationship would end, most likely at his own hands, and quite humorously seemed already prepared for it – what a great way to live.

As someone who for years was staunchly anti-emoticons, but has recently fallen in to the habit of using them, I really enjoyed Larry’s indignation at someone using them. After now falling in to a bracket of people that Larry David considers to be “idiots” I don’t think I’ll be using an emoticon again now for quite some time, especially a smiley face.

I’ve often thought of Larry as something of a kindred spirit, albeit a rather extreme one, and I usually agree with all of his little social rules, so to find myself having done something that irks him so much was slightly disheartening!

It was blatantly obvious a mile away that poor Antoinette’s father would die the moment Larry guilted her in to returning to work for the day, and although his feud with ‘dog’ in the office next door was probably the weakest of the storylines it ended on such a great punch-line that all that went before it was easily forgivable.

One of the things that make Curb great is that usually the people with whom Larry is having a dispute have done something so minor it’s almost hard to empathise with Larry’s passion for proving them wrong, almost.

Here though, Dog was so blatantly in the wrong with how he took over the kitchen there was no moral or social analysis needed and Larry’s suffering felt unwarranted which isn’t what we want from Curb.

Of course you could argue that this inconvenience was karma for the ways in which he upset people throughout the rest of the episode but this storyline still felt too one-sided.

Having Susie mistake Antoinette’s mother as the woman Jeff was supposedly having an affair with though and that ultimate pay-off was worth the somewhat predictable way that we reached that point and all the disappointing Dog business before it… I bet Susie has a hell of a punch on her.

Elsewhere, Larry’s lie about the dermatologist and how that spiralled out of his control you could again see coming a mile away but it was very funny in it’s execution, as anything with Richard Lewis involved usually is.

Lewis seemed to instantly suspect Larry was lying, the running gag about the use of high-pitched inflection to the voice when lying making its first appearance of the episode, so it did seem slightly unbelievable that Lewis, without any evidence other than the word of a renowned liar, would go round town badmouthing the poor Doctor.

Larry having to sneak out in the middle of the funeral and then causing the Doctor to miss playing ‘Danny Boy’ on his flute as Antoinette’s father was buried were both really nice moments though.

All in all, although the pacing and the structure of ‘The Smiley Face’ were probably an improvement on last week’s episode, ultimately I don’t think this episode quite achieved the same level of greatness that last week’s season high ‘The Palestinian Chicken’ did, but when the show as a whole remains this damn good that’s a very minor gripe indeed.

A Hail of Bullets:

- Boy, that smiley face Heidi drew on Larry’s head with the sun cream was pristine wasn’t it?

- There were a number of notable guest stars in this episode, at least to me anyway.

First off we had Rebecca Creskoff, last seen as the manipulative coal mining company representative on Justified’s brilliant second season, as Heidi; the second sexy woman in as many episodes to be on Larry’s arm. Is this David sowing some long standing wild oats in the wake of his both on and off screen divorce?

Then we had Patrick Fischler from Lost and Mad Men as the annoying and overly huggy Stu, who read too much in to the high inflection in Larry’s voice and there was also Michael Gross of Family Ties fame as the poor dermatologist whose business Larry seemingly ruined, Gross may be more familiar to people these days for playing Ted’s dad on How I Met Your Mother.

- I had a feeling that the scene with Heidi’s niece was setting something up for later and that she would somehow gain revenge on Larry for his rudeness, but surprisingly there was no follow up – it’s unlike Curb to not have every scene and interaction Larry has be important later on.

- I loved Larry’s explanation of the smiley face on his head at the funeral – “I believe they refer to that as a smiley face, they’re frequently used by idiots at the end of emails and text messages, such as ‘I miss you, smiley face’” and the fact that he wouldn’t wear a Dodgers hat to cover it up because he “hate[s] the Dodgers”.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8 continues in the UK Sunday @ 11.05pm on More4

The Walking Dead Season 2 UK Air Date

2011-10-10T18:11:00.001+01:00

It’s nearly that time of year again when the streets are filled with people dressed as flesh-hungry zombies – No, I’m not talking about what will no doubt be everyone’s Halloween costume this year, I’m talking about the much anticipated return of the smash hit The Walking Dead to TV screens across the globe.

Season 2 of the zombie apocalypse show begins in the US this Sunday, 16th October 2011 and it will debut in the UK the same week on Friday 21st October at 10pm on FX.

Season 2 will air for, in what is more akin to a ‘regular’ US drama series season run, thirteen episodes as opposed to the six-episode debut season we got last year.

I’ve already written quite extensively about some of the news about season 2 of The Walking Dead here but since that post further nuggets of information about the new season have been doled out.

Most excitingly for me is the news that Rescue Me’s Michael Zegen has been cast in a recurring role as a new character called Randall. Zegen was great as Damien on the fire-fighting drama and was often the source of some hilarious moments, I doubt The Walking Dead will give him the same opportunities Rescue Me did to flex his comedic muscles but he’s a great young actor and I’m looking forward to seeing him in such a huge show.

Suffice to say the season two premiere of The Walking Dead is probably one of the year’s most eagerly awaited TV events the world over.

The Walking Dead Season 2 UK Premiere – Friday 21st October 2011 @ 10pm on FX UK.

Whilst on the subject of TV premieres in the next two weeks, I also just wanted to give a bit of promotion to a show called Alphas that will be premiering on 5* next week as well.

The show, billed as the next Heroes, centres on a group of people with special abilities and stars the brilliant David Strathairn as well as a recurring guest role for one of my favourite TV actors Callum Keith Rennie.

The show has already been renewed for a second season in the US so one would assume Alphas is actually half decent. It’s never going to attract the sort of fanfare and media attention that The Walking Dead will but it certainly sounds on paper like a show worth checking out, you can view a trailer for the show below…

Alphas Premieres in the UK on Tuesday 18th October 2011 @ 10pm on 5*

Californication 4.1 'Exile on Main St.'

2011-10-08T17:11:00.000+01:00

“…You smell like you’ve just walked out of a fisting contest.” – Abby

It was kind of hard to believe when Hank sauntered out of jail at the start of ‘Exile on Main St.’ that only seventy-hours had passed since those gut-wrenching events at the end of the season three premiere.

It’s been over a year since UK viewers last saw Hank Moody, and with so little time having passed on the show in the break between seasons, the lengthy ‘previously on Californication…’ montage at the start was a welcome, and probably necessary, inclusion.

Much like the finale that preceded it, ‘Exile on Main St.’ – the show’s fourth season premiere, began with no title sequence, hinting that perhaps what was to follow was going to be more serious in tone than we’ve come to expect from the show.

Unlike last season’s finale, that didn’t transpire to be the case though and although Hank had some serious music-facing to do in this episode, there was still some of Californication’s hilarious bawdy humour and one-liners on display throughout.

‘Exile on Main St.’ began with Hank being released from jail following his assault on Mia’s scumbag manager/lover at the end of last season.

It had been unclear when season three ended whether the cops who Hank ended up brawling with were coming for him because of the assault or because his tryst with an underage Mia had finally become public knowledge.

I’d speculated at the time that it seemed too soon for anything to have happened over the statutory rape so it seemed likely they were only there due to the brawl and thus Hank would no doubt be out soon and that was exactly what happened.

As Charlie greeted Hank outside the jail, it was made to look like Hank had been inside years, so when the revelation he’d only done a weekend inside came out it seemed a bit surprising. This is coming from someone who has never been in jail though, and has no intention of going, because if I did I’d probably last all of five minutes.

Hank being Hank of course wanted to go home and face Becca and Karen but Charlie was under strict instructions not to take him home, under duress though Runkle crumbled like we all knew he would, but not before showing Hank that the word was well and truly out now about who really wrote ‘Fucking & Punching’ – “a lot can change in a weekend”.

Karen predictably wanted nothing to do with Hank and insisted he leave before Becca got back. Marcy immediately warming back up to Hank after he turned on the charm seemed to suggest that the world hasn’t completely turned on him in light of these unsavoury revelations though.

However Hank’s next stop on his post-jail tour proved that quite a few people do think he’s a “piece of shit” as his sexy (what else?) lawyer Abby put it.

Abby apparently had no time for Hank’s witticisms and juvenile behaviour – even enquiring whether he was “retarded” at one point, which clearly means that by mid-way through the season she’ll be sleeping with him.

Abby is played by the impossibly sexy Carla Gugino, who just gets better with age and she’s going to be a very welcome addition to the cast this season.

With Hank effectively now homeless, his day was spent being dragged round with Charlie – who next had a meeting with a team about production of a ‘Fucking & Punching’ movie.

The whole meeting scene was great, if a little ridiculous, and ended with Hank being coerced into rewriting the script that had already been doing the rounds that “America’s sweetheart” actress Sasha Bingham wanted to make but only with Hank’s stamp on the script.

Bingham as a character was somewhat of a contradiction, in the one breath we’re being told how popular she is with the general public and that she won’t be doing any “gratuitous nudity” and the next minute she’s whacking her “bodacious ta-tas” out at the table.

Of course this inevitably meant Hank ended up sleeping with her within a couple of hours, in spite of her early protestations. There’s got to come a point where Hank isn’t able to literally seduce everyone woman that he even looks at. Yes, that is part of Californication’s charm but in the state he was in it’s too unbelievable that a sexy young actress like Sasha would be unable to resist a man that as Abby fantastically summarised smelt like he’d “just walked out of a fisting contest”.

Addison Timlin who plays Sasha is no doubt going to be this season’s Eva Amurri – a gorgeous young actress who consistently ends up naked, not that I’m complaining but part of me wonders how much of her casting was down to her looks rather than her talents.

Hank and Sasha spent the night re-enacting that infamous night with Mia in Sasha’s hotel room, with Hank clearly subjecting himself to punishment on purpose as he feels he deserves it.

He had such a tortured look on his face as he insisted Sasha punch him harder whilst they had sex it was quite tough to watch, as this young girl clearly seemed oblivious to the internal struggle this man was going through.

Bodacious ta-tas aside, it was probably the most powerful scene of the episode.

The episode ended with Hank getting the good news that the assault charges had been dropped, only to then get the cuffs slapped on him as he was being prosecuted for statutory rape. To paraphrase Abby in that moment, things are about to get “a lot more interesting” for Hank Moody.

A Hail of Bullets:

- Any hope of Charlie getting a half-serious arc this season has now been dashed by his decision to pursue triple digit figures in his list of women with whom he has slept.

Given that he’s currently only on eleven (twelve by the episode’s close) I’m guessing this will mean that we are going to witness him in several embarrassing sex scenes as has become the norm for poor Evan Handler.

- Stephen Tobolowsky didn’t get much to say during that meeting about the ‘Fucking & Punching’ movie but hopefully he’ll be more prominent as the project develops and we’ll get to see proper use made of the great man.

- Hank’s dream scene in which he imagined Karen & Becca reacting to his misdemeanours wasn’t quite as creepy as some of last season’s eerie dream sequences but was still pretty heart-breaking stuff.

Obviously it wasn’t actually happening, but just the fact that Hank’s subconscious can craft such an accurate depiction of how he makes his family feel is sad, because he not only knows deep down how awful his actions make his loved ones feel but he seems incapable of stopping it and has to live with that burden.

Californication Season 4 continues in the UK Thursday @ 10pm on 5*

Touch Trailer

2011-10-07T21:10:00.000+01:00

Fox have finally released the first trailer for the upcoming drama Touch from Heroes creator Tim Kring which will star the mighty Kiefer Sutherland in his first post-Jack Bauer TV role.

No specific air date has been confirmed for Touch yet but it is widely expected to air in Spring, probably March and speculation suggests it will fill 24’s old slot of Monday at 9pm on Fox

Sutherland will play a widower whose mute 11-year-old son has the ability to detect patterns that connect seemingly unrelated events.

The trailer, which makes the show look pretty awesome, is embedded below

Glee 3.3 'Asian F'

2011-10-07T19:03:00.000+01:00

“And yeah, Kurt looks like Jimmy Fallon’s butch daughter…” – Santana

Well spank my ass and call me Charlie, an honest to goodness decent episode of Glee.

I’m not quite prepared to hail ‘Asian F’ as the show’s second coming as some people have, but there was certainly more good than bad in this episode, and it was quite a drastic improvement from a show that had lost its way quite spectacularly.

Back story, character development and plot progression – you’d have been forgiven for thinking you were watching another show when watching ‘Asian F’ but no you weren’t mistaken, this was actually an episode of Glee.

Just in case anyone wasn’t sure, writer Ian Brennan quickly reminded everyone it was Glee we were watching by completely ignoring nearly all last week’s big storylines. There was no follow up on Puck & Quinn’s baby situation with Shelby, nothing further on Sue’s congress bid and who Will had in mind to oppose her and little to no fallout from Blaine impressing more for the lead in Westside Story than Kurt.

‘Asian F’ must’ve been good then because none of that bothered me too much – I accepted a long time ago that with the bloated size of the Glee cast now we should just be grateful for any screen time that any of the less prominent characters get, as hoping for them to be heavily featured week in, week out is just a recipe for disappointment.

And if you can get to a place of tranquillity like that, where you just enjoy those rare moments that the more interesting, and likeable, characters get some spotlight over the likes of Rachel, then Glee gets a whole lot less frustrating as a viewing experience.

And when that spotlight on the underused characters shines as brightly as it did in ‘Asian F’ then that’s when the show itself really shines to, hence the numerous plaudits being hurled at this episode.

The title of the episode refers to the A- that dance-master Mike Chang got in chemistry – apparently an A- is an Asian F in one of those casually racist stereotypes that Glee seems to be able to get away with relatively scot-free.

His cartoonishly disciplinarian Father insisted that his sudden school failings were due to the amount of time he spends in the glee club and helping Mr. Schuester teach his booty camp.

If I was Mike Chang’s Father, the impossibility of that statement aside, I’d just be pleased he’d maintained such high grades this long, given that we’ve never seen him in a lesson and teaching seems to be secondary to extra-curricular activities at that school.

I had to laugh as Rachel desperately searched for something to make her stand out from the crowd on her college applications, when little to no mention has been made of whether any of these kids have good enough grades to even get in to their chosen schools.

But that’s Glee for you, what subject does Mr. Schuester teach again…?

At least Mike Chang’s ‘Asian F’ indicated that Glee isn’t a universe where grades don’t matter and no matter how small it might have been it was a nice, and necessary, acknowledgement of how almost implausible the kids on this show’s schedules are. This might not matter to the more rabid gleeks out there, but to pedants like me it at least gives the show that little bit of realism that keeps it at least partly orbiting in the same atmosphere as we do.

Mike Chang has been royally underused on the show up until now, unless dancing was called for of course, so Asian F was a nice look at both his family life and gave his relationship with Tina some actual substance rather than just being a slightly racist running gag.

His casting in Westside Story fit in nicely with the show’s follow your dreams and be what you want to be not what others want mantra, although it did feel a bit convenient that his Mother had given up on a dream of being a dancer in a past life.

I just have to point out as well that had I ever given my Mother a dancing lesson in a classroom at my school with the door open that I’d have probably gone home wearing my lunch as a hat, yet on Glee no-one bats an eyelid. Maybe that says more about my school than anything else though…

Moving on, something that didn’t quite fit in with the show’s usual be who you are manifesto was Will singing, and ruining I might add, Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’ to Emma.

I get the OCD is an illness but rather than just embracing who Emma is, the song almost made it feel like Will has taken it upon himself to change Emma, which is at odds with almost everything else in this episode tonally.

Her parents being “ginger supremacists” was good for a cheap laugh but did feel a bit of a silly way to get to quite a serious moment, and did anyone really believe for a moment that Will was so insecure that he thought Emma was embarrassed of him?

After two and a bit years of seeing Emma’s OCD, the reveal of how she became that way kind of came out of nowhere and didn’t feel as emotional as it could have done with the right exposition.

Rachel meanwhile was as obnoxiously selfish as always, first assuming she had the lead role in the musical locked up and then, without even hearing the casting, deciding to run for student president against her new BFF Kurt to beef up that college application.

I honestly can’t believe how awful they write this girl when she’s supposed to be the show’s leading lady and an example and role model to millions of young girls across the world. If my, as yet unborn, daughter ever grew up to behave like that I’d punch her in the face.

The episode’s other big positive, in addition to Mike Chang getting some actual character development, was Mercedes returning to prominence after being nothing more than an after thought for pretty much all of the last season and a half.

Her new boyfriend may look closer to 40 than 14 but his motivational speeches to her lit a fire under her that she took too far, but allowed her to be the voice of many by drawing attention to how unfairly the spotlight is shared on the show in favour of Rachel.

The Dreamgirls performance kind of went over my head a little having not seen the film, but I kind of dug seeing all the cast involved in it and her performance of Jennifer Hudson’s ‘Spotlight’ wasn’t just a great performance but very, very apt not only in the context of the episode but the show as a whole.

It’s these kinds of songs that enhance the show rather than take you out of the moment, last year had too much of the latter but this year they’ve really stepped up their game with the former. Even though I hated Will’s performance of ‘Fix You’ it didn’t feel out of place given what had just preceded it.

Some of you may think that only giving ‘Asian F’ three stars seems harsh given how much more positive I’ve been about this episode than the previous two but I have to grade shows on a universal scale not one for each show.

In terms of the usual Glee output this was probably closer to five stars, but I recently reviewed an episode of Sons of Anarchy that I only gave three and a half stars and that was infinitely better than ‘Asian F’.

The content and nature of Glee will probably never allow it to get to the upper echelons of my star ratings, but in terms of where Glee sits on the TV show spectrum, ‘Asian F’ might just be about as good as it gets for this show.

A Hail of Bullets:

- Santana back in the glee club with no real fallout from her having left the week before last is indicative of the show’s lack of long term storytelling. The way in which she was unceremoniously booted out in the premiere looked to have set up something juicy down the line but no here she is back two weeks later with only one throwaway line of exposition to explain her sudden return.

- I wrote last week about how season three thus far had featured more show tunes than chart songs, well ‘Asian F’ certainly readdressed that balance. With the Westside Story arc being so prominent this season show tunes are obviously always going to be frequently performed but in this episode alone we also had covers of Coldplay, Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce and I’d dare to venture that downloads also went up in the week following this episode when compared to last week.

- Speaking of Beyonce, Brittany’s flash mob performance of ‘Girls (Run The World)’ more than made up for a lack of Brittany one-liners this week as Heather Morris looked exceptionally hot in that scene and male cheerleading fantasies aside, boy can that girl move. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, every episode should feature at least one Brittany dance number.

- At the inception of Shelby’s rival glee club last week I wrote that it undoubtedly set the stage for defections between the two clubs, but that I hoped it wasn’t done gratuitously. Here we are one week later though and one of New Directions’ main voices has already defected, though under the circumstances I’m kind of okay with it, and in fact I hope it allows Mercedes to shine more than she clearly ever could in Rachel’s irritating shadow. I just hope that every other week they won’t be trying to wring some cheap drama out of ‘will they/won’t they’ defections.

- With a surprising lack of Brittany one-liners in this episode it was left to Santana with that brilliant opening quote and Bieste to get the best lines this week.

Bieste’s “ I kicked a fire hydrant when I found out Ace of Cakes was cancelled” and “It’s one of the hardest decisions of my life and that includes when I had to sell one of my prize donkeys to pay my gas bill… I sold Kim, but I kept Khloe” were very funny, especially once I realised her prize donkeys were named after two of the Kardashian sisters.

- My lovely other half Tanya commented during this episode that Harry Shum Jr. (Mike Chang) would have been a good candidate to appear in the gash-looking Footloose remake about to pollute cinemas world wide.

She must have some sort of E.S.P. because within seconds, Chang was having an angry ‘punch dance’ trying to forget his troubles which is lifted straight out of Footloose, but was also spoofed in several moments of unparalleled genius within the magnificent film Hot Rod…

Any excuse to post this clip really…

Strike Back Renewed

2011-10-06T19:43:00.000+01:00

It’s been announced that, the far better than I think anyone expected, Strike Back will be returning for another season.

I say another season because depending on how you look at it, the new season could be classed as either season two or season three.

In its current incarnation this would be the second season of the show, but Strike Back did originally exist with Richard Armitage in the lead role as a lone Sky production in the UK, technically making a new season the show’s third.

Confused? I thought so.

Strike Back (or Strike Back: Project Dawn as it’s known in the UK), currently airing on both sides of the Atlantic – Cinemax in the US and Sky1 in the UK – is a joint production between Cinemax/HBO and Sky/Left Bank.

Continuity-wise nothing much changed in the UK with Project Dawn, Armitage’s John Porter returned for the first episode only to be unceremoniously executed in the first fifteen minutes and a new cast of characters were quickly ushered in.

Cinemax, or ‘Skinemax’ as it had previously been dubbed for its high proportion of sex and nudity (Strike Back doesn’t really do that reputation any favours though to be fair) aired ‘Project Dawn’ as a stand alone season as its first primetime drama.

The show has far exceeded expectations and has received wide-spread praise from a lot of influential critics for its brash, take-no-prisoners nature.

Another ten episodes is the order for the new season and filming will begin early next year.

Interestingly for fans of the show, Cinemax has declined to announce the cast for the new season, in a press release which does name several other crew members for the season, apparently “due to plot spoilers in upcoming episodes”.

From this one would assume that means there are some big deaths coming up in the final episodes of this season and whilst I’d be disappointed to see either lead actor - Sullivan Stapleton and Philip Winchester - killed off, given the show’s track record thus far I wouldn’t be surprised if one or both ended up dead before the final credits roll.

If you haven’t already checked in on the show, the season thus far has tended to be two-parters that work both as standalone episodes but also advance the season’s long-running arc of the search for terrorist mastermind Latif played somewhat inexplicably by Jimi Mistry, a guy who twelve months ago was on prime time TV in a very different capacity – dancing the Cha Cha Cha wearing a sequined shirt.

The show has really been a revelation, and whilst there isn’t much to delve in to in terms of reviewing each episode, it’s a hell of an entertaining ride each week and I’m genuinely thrilled we’ll be getting more of the same next year.

Sons of Anarchy 3.12 'June Wedding'

2011-10-06T19:02:00.000+01:00

“I’m a Puerto Rican from Queens… I speak better Yiddish.” – Juice

‘June Wedding’ didn’t quite have the epic feel of a season finale, but it almost felt like a finale in many other ways.

A lot of loose threads were tied up in this episode and having the Sons back in Charming certainly made me realise how much the Irish detour outstayed its welcome this season.

With the whole club, and most importantly baby Abel, now back on US soil, Jax wasn’t able to relax just yet as Tara was still being held hostage by the worst criminal ever Hector Salazar. A pre-credits tease that maybe Salazar had killed Tara failed to convince, and well before the end credits rolled Tara was safe and Salazar was dead.

Salazar in his most boneheaded move yet holed up at Hale’s offices and added Jacob to his collection of hostages. Cementing his reputation as a complete waste of space Salazar was undone by Hale stabbing a pen in to his leg before Jax, in an incredibly pig-headed and selfish move, stabbed the unarmed Salazar to death with his own knife.

There wasn’t really any justification for why Jax felt so strongly that Salazar had to die, unless it was just simply the fact the man had kidnapped his old lady and unborn child. But after being warned of the consequences for Charming PD, were they not able to prove Hale was dirty, it seemed like the sort of impulsive, short-sighted move that it had appeared Jax had grown out of. The repercussions of Jax’s actions here will no doubt be felt by the club for some time to come and the VP will have brought it all on himself.

I’ve always found Jax to be quite a sympathetic character in spite of all the horrible things he’s done, but as much as I loathed Salazar as a character this needless murder really made me lose a lot of respect for Jax.

Away from the Tara rescue, the episode mostly focused on the long-running Stahl issue. Stahl became such an extreme caricature of a human being a long time ago that anything she does now fails to surprise me, but killing her own partner - and lover – just to save her career seemed ridiculous even by her own unhinged standards.

The whole Stahl character is just so insane now it doesn’t really feel based in any sort of reality – at what point do the ATF stop and think “everything this woman gets involved in ends in bloodshed” and look in to her doings a little more closely?

Of course the positive here in terms of building a long term story is that when Stahl does eventually get her comeuppance, one would assume at the hands of the Sons, it will be very sweet for viewers after seeing this twisted woman ruining countless lives for nothing more than a career bump.

The episode was peppered with a few sweet moments to counteract the deaths of two of the season’s recurring characters and the tone and balance of the show as a whole felt a lot more well-rounded than any of the episodes in Ireland.

I didn’t hate Ireland as it sometimes may seem in these reviews, it’s just that Charming is such a vibrant place full of a plethora of potential irritants for the Sons that taking them out of this environment in to the big wide world, so to speak, made the show lose a little of the appeal that drew me to it originally.

I love shows that create their own world, and although Ireland helped expand the mythology of the show, Charming is as much a character in this show as Jax, Clay or anyone else for that matter and Sons of Anarchy as a whole suffered when one of its best characters was absent for such a large chunk of the season.

You only have to look at Unser’s emotional breakdown in that quite touching scene with Gemma to see how much Charming means to so many of these people.

‘June Wedding’ was definitely the strongest episode for a number of weeks from this season and not just because of the return to Charming.

I don’t quite know how the season will end now with a lot of big arcs wrapped up or clearly teed up for season four, but one would assume that with the over-focus on Jimmy pretty much doing nothing of merit in this episode, that his escape to South America won’t quite go as planned in the finale.

A Hail of Bullets:

- I really loved Titus Welliver’s work as Jimmy last season but in spite of appearing more this season he’s not really had that much to get stuck in to. If next week is his last appearance on the show I hope he gets to go out chewing the scenery like we all know he can.

- The Tig & Kozik saga rumbles on and although it was nice to see them seemingly getting along for a while, Tig once again refused to vote Kozik in.

The revelation later that their beef was over a dog rather than a woman, as we’d been led to believe, should have made the whole feud seem stupid and cheapened our investment in it but somehow I actually thought it worked.

Although we don’t know too much about Kozik, we know Tig well enough now to know that he really would take something so trivial to heart.

- Opie & Gemma’s little chat about his future with Lyla was another of a cluster of touching little moments in the episode – further proof that Gemma isn’t just the matriarch of her family but also the club.

Never one to mince her words, her matter of fact analysis of Lyla’s profession - “she earns her living catching cum in her mouth” was just great.

Sons of Anarchy Season 3 concludes in the UK Wednesday @ 10pm on FIVE USA

Curb Your Enthusiasm 8.3 'The Palestinian Chicken'

2011-10-05T18:15:00.000+01:00

“...Get the fuck out of my driveway you bald prick” – Sammi

‘The Palestinian Chicken’ was probably my favourite episode of this so far sublime season of Curb; it really had me laughing from start to finish.

The individual stories didn’t quite collide in the clever way that they normally do on Curb, but given that they were all quite closely linked anyway that’s understandable.

I’m actually a little surprised it’s taken them this long to specifically point out Larry’s knack for being “a social assassin” as Jeff puts it, but it worked well even if his actual assassination attempts were quite tame given his track record.

One thing that does frustrate me sometimes with Curb is that we are quite often introduced to new characters just for one episode who are supposedly great friends with Jeff & Larry, such as Larry Miller’s character Eddie here.

You’d think that given Larry & Jeff’s love of golf that we would have seen the other members of their team before. Miller in particular was great in this episode but I’ll be surprised if we see him again and thus a lot of what happened, whilst very funny, didn’t quite mean that much as we didn’t really know anything about any of the characters involved other than the regulars.

The affair would have meant a lot more had we discovered it was someone we know well such as Funkhouser that was stepping out – obviously Funkhouser is a bad example though as he’s just left his wife. Maybe that’s why they had to bring in new characters though, as all the Curb men are now either single or cheat that often (Jeff) that we’ve become desensitised to it.

The whole Israel-Palestine metaphor of the chicken place and the Deli was a very nice way of adding some very mild political commentary to the show and that final shot of Larry stood in the middle of the two warring factions was a great little moment.

I did think that the episode would end with him joining the Palestinians and choosing sex over his religious ties, but the ambiguity kind of worked well and didn’t make him look a complete pig by turning his back on Susie and the reformed Funkhouser.

The Funk man had some great moments in this episode, in particular his reaction to hearing Larry having sex with Shara and her anti-Semitic dirty talk – “fuck me like Israel fucked my country”.

Having so much Funkhouser almost made up for no Leon this week… almost.

There were so many great moments in this episode it really was Curb at its wonderfully uncompromising best.

I feel as though the season has gradually improved with each episode so far, so if the trend continues, by the end of the season we could be looking back on a run that manages to top the previous Seinfeld reunion season.

In the early days Curb seemed to be more about the everyday irritants that everybody could relate to, and whilst these days the storylines are more cartoonish and unlikely to affect ‘normal’ people, David does such a great job with them that it’s hard not to call Curb the best comedy on TV.

A Hail of Bullets:

- Oh… My… God! It was great seeing Maggie Wheeler a.k.a. Janice from Friends back in a big comedy role even if her “LOL” was nowhere near on a par with some of Janice’s annoying habits.

Wheeler always amazes me when I see her, as she doesn’t seem to have aged a day from her debut on Friends, if anything she looks better now than she did back then.

- On the other hand, how quickly has Sammi grown up!? Although I loved her channelling her inner-Susie with that opening quote, it did feel a little out of nowhere that she would suddenly go from sweet little girl to blackmailing Larry.

Speaking of which, it did feel a little silly given all of Susie’s annoying habits that they would invent one specifically for this episode for Sammi to take umbrage with. We could have all empathised with her plight a lot more had it been her vicious temper and profane vocabulary that embarrassed her daughter so much.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season continues in the UK on Sunday @ 11.10pm on More4