Reviews

In their desperation to jump on the Scandi-Noir bandwagon, many producers forget a simple fact: That the genre's best shows are based on books written by real writers. Not a gaggle of beleaguered scriptwriters, incapable of anything but tortuous, hackneyed, and unrealistic plots.

But even those can be saved by strong lead characters; Actors with charisma, good acting, Intelligence. All of which exist in abundance among the ranks of North European actors.

Season 1 of Darkness seriously lost out on all counts.

A slow-witted detective, and (quite possibly) the most incompetent psychologist in all European cinema, hammer the last nails into the Darkness coffin. Whether they are bad actors or were hamstrung by a bad director, the end effect is the same.

Which is a shame. This could easily have been the show that they wanted to make. Or thought they were making.

There should be a competition for the most irritating and unrealistic pairings on TV. This show would be in the leading group. I look at the IMDB rating and wonder how our standards could have fallen so low. I've lasted two episodes because I was hoping the evil pair would find the good pair and dispatch them with that giant gun they seem to carry around everywhere. Please look after your intellect and don't waste your time here. My rating is overly generous.

And my frustration is that the premise has great potential.

Sure, this isn't a new genre: A couple thrown together and running from baddies who just might be operating out of the highest levels of the government. But when done well, with good actors and realistic action, it's a sure-fire winner.

This one is not well done, it's seriously overcooked.

I had binged through the first few seasons (on Amazon Prime) of the episodes made at King's and rated it an emphatic ten. The production was pitch-perfect: Continuity, the cases they picked, the engaging focus on nurses, doctors and staff. Waiting room conversations, patients and relatives. Wuth perfect timing, it was just right, amazing camerawork (with one excellent must-see behind the scenes episode).

A few days ago I caught an episode of what appeared to be a different show, 24 hours in Emergency, on free to air. At a different hospital, King George. And slowly realized with great disappointment that most of the things that I loved had dropped away. Summarized in one term: production values. Gone was the focus on the doctors, nurses and emergency teams at work, replaced with long and interminable patient and relative interviews, ruined by bad editing.

Editing which was suddenly like a bad music video, a mashup of disconnected shots every few minutes. Always a sign of desperation at knowing the quality is sliding. And an across-the-board mess-up of just about every aspect if the early eps. But so uniform that it gets hard to find a clear reason. It just went bad.

I hate that this has happened to a brilliant series, and I would still exhort people to watch it.

And stop when they switch hospitals - or a bit before, because I think the slide started before the switch. Maybe budget, maybe production team changes.

A damned shame.

I actually liked this show. Like I would a local theatre group production of a stereotypical crime storyline. The actors, the music, the cinematography... everything... descends into melodrama every little while. I'd probably have given it a higher rating if the main actors had something going for them. Better acting, likeable persona, less cheesy lines. But that's a big no. Did they focus-group test this on a bunch of people who have never seen decent crime series?

Or maybe Mare just spoiled me rotten.

Some up-side: Icelandic noir can only get better (one hopes) And.. you can catch up with your email on the side while watching this. Predictability can sometimes be a good thing. Right?

It has taken me seven episodes to write my first review of this series.

"First", because I know I'll come back sometime and add to the thoughts here.

And the first *has* to be around the soundtrack.

UA had drifted across my radar few times, but I've been feeling superhero burnout for a while. And I gave it a purposeful pass-by.

Then I saw the reviews here about the music, the soundtrack, and I thought I needed to check. - I walk around with music sound-tracking every mental process, so soundtracks are everything to me.

I watched. And listened. And watched. And listened.

And grabbed by superlative cinematography, a script that drags you to various boundaries but never tips you over the edges into Inanity or Maudlin... and THE MUSIC.... Here I am.

S1E7: Sort of binge-watched till here - and then they play Radiohead's "Exit Music for a Film", with the perfect juxtaposition that has been shown right through and I knew I had to sit and pen this review.

Exquisite soundtrack, perfect song selection where needed - and no fear of using classical when appropriate. Masterly!

I'm loving this.

Finely crafted, the storyline so far has held together, an almost impossible feat when palying with time travel in an allegedly superhero film.

I'd rather call this sci-fi than superhero. Less compartmentalisation. And hopefully more people with see it that way, and enjoy it like I am.

And the next time I come back here, more on the quirky and likeable siblings of the Umbrella Academy.

I'm a fan of the genre - but I do need intelligence and competence in the protagonists. And I *am* trusting, so I always start with a 10 and work back from there.

There's much that looks right about this series, but I've dropped off before the finishing line of the first episode.

The cast are a personable lot, the typical any-noir small town police squad with - in this case - an awkward (but clever) visiting district attorney dropped into the mix.

And so on.

But as other (more generous souls than I ) have remarked, the competence and procedures of these cops leave a bit too much to be desired. I fell by the wayside when the main female cop (the calm and competent one, allegedly) pulled a dying person out of a car and started to slap and shake and shout at him rather than trying some very basic first-aid.

The problem is that a secne like that is so egregiously silly and wrong that you then start to notice all the other irrational or just plain dumb behaviour. And suddenly you have a just-too unbelievable police show.

And there's too many others around for me to waste my time on this one..

Your mileage may vary/. I'm outta here (sadly... because I really thought I could enjoy this)

Of this quality. Essentially, I love shows about good people. And a good hospital show about good people? What's not to love? Maybe it's because there's a book giving this show its foundation. It just seems to have so much more substance, heart, spirit and flesh (of course!) than any that I've seen in a long time. It pushes all my buttons in a positive and uplifting (ok, there. I said it) way. I was holding off writing this - though really wanting to - because I'd seen only two episodes. Now I've sat up with my sick doggie for the past two nights and binge watched my way through many more episodes. And love it even more. The actors are well cast, the production values are wonderful., the music... perfect. There are many actors in this show (a big hospital, whaddya expect?) but it feels like a tight ensemble piece because the main group play their parts welly. I haven't seen Ryan Eggold before but he made me like this show in all of three minutes. And I agree with the reviewer who praised the focus on psych.

So.. it has some fierce and savage detractors who you will find up front in Googledom. Oddly enaough, many of them right-wing. Or maybe not oddly enough. Ripping into NA with blunter instruments than scalpels. That's ok. I'm not watching this as research on the Real Medical People of NY, to write a paper on "What ails the US medical system?"... and so on I loved West Wing. I hated House of Cards. I love fiction. I love diversity. I love New Amsterdam Quite simply, It makes me feel good..

I'm loving this as a break from ... dark.. and gritty ... and hard-to-watch. My litmus test for TV shows is: If I were reading this as a book, how am I reacting? Do I like where it's taking me? Is this a road I enjoy walking - however much I've walked it before? Do I like the proponents? And would I carry this book around with me to read in the gaps of my day? You get the idea... And the answer with Next is absolutely: Yes. To all. So I love sci-fi, love the dystopian/big brother/them against us -or even better IT against us,( pun intended). And the word I apply to Next is "Enjoyable". I am a John Slattery fan, I regard my Google and Amazon devices with amused, suspicious acceptance, I think it's pretty well edited. And it mostly keeps moving along. Predictable - maybe. Plot holes - of course, this is sci-fi. You want scientific fact - go watch Discovery Science. Boring? - no. I agree with the others here who say you should give it a chance. It's pointless elaborating on the plot because the few sentences of the summary say it all: AI trying to stop the humans trying to stop it. It's only up to Ep 2 here in Australia, so this road may change a lot - but I doubt it - and that's what I'm liking. A lot.

I've become a big fan of the "broken woman" genre of TV shows. Some are police procedurals like Marcella or The Fall, some superheroes (like Jessica Jones), ...

I agree that Marcella began with a lot of promise in S1. And keeps the pretty high standard of production values these days. My issue is that as the show goes on, the central character becomes gradually more dislikeable. Broken women heroines always walk a tightrope. The character usually has an emotional or psychological issue that stops her from achieving her "superpowers". And we have to love the good side and ignore the bad. And the production has to help us do this. Well, Marcella seriously falls down in this task. Three episodes into S2, I'm starting to feel sorry for all the people around this woman. Especially her children. I will end up watching the whole series because it is well made. And I get easily hooked. But if you haven't yet started watching Marcella, I believe you can do better. I usually agree with the IMDB ratings. Sometimes not so much...

Here's the thing: I prefer my surrealism to fall out of a book. I'd argue that my brain finds more imagery floating out of Hesse or Barth sentences than it ever will with the extended Cirque du Soleil video-clips in this film. OK, I'm being harsh. The fantasy sequences are stunning, beautifully rendered, exquisite. In spite of the soundtrack. BUT...you know, nothing looks different on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th....(repeat)...viewings. The floating giants still float exactly the same. C'mon...try the book thing if you want imagery, let your mind go. Every viewing guaranteed to be different. I promise. So then.....what's the point here, exactly? It started off with a really nice premise: an intelligent looking girl, teenage angst, a sick mother, a circus..whoa! great ingredients!...then it was taken over by aforementioned interminable surrealist sequence. Rework suggestion: 1) Pull out the middle bit - all 90% of it. Speed it up about 100 times. Sell it to Sony-BMG as a video-clip for their next big thing. 2) Get a real storyteller. I'd love to know what happened to that charismatic girl and her family. My 5/10 = 10/10 for visuals, 0/10 for everything else.

Hey, I love disaster movies. But 10 minutes into this I've turned it off...It is just too unrealistic. These people look like they're filming a video clip. Makeup just right, hair perfect, neat little scars - they've just come out of a plane crash? Does anyone know what high-impact landings in broken bits of airliner do to you? But hey, that's just me....go ahead and enjoy it. It'll make the next inane reality TV production that much easier to take. The only problem is that I heard this howling and now in the best Hammer film tradition I want to see the Wolfman stagger out and eat all the worst actors. Do we ever get to see what it is? (I was watching something called Episode Pilot 1...)

Happily, the screens - small and large - have (mostly) been kind to H G Wells. I'm a fan so I attribute it to the charming quality of "human-ness" and compassion that ran through his writing (and not just his sci-fi either). I'll keep clear of the Time Machine remake and the tragedy of casting Guy Pearce in the lead. What's intriguing is that H G Wells himself has often been written into period pieces as a character - always a sensitive new-age kinda guy - and why not?- he really was years ahead of the time he lived in. And "Infinite Worlds" does it well. The screenwriters do not let Wells' short stories down as they weave a gentle romance and equally gentle humour in with stories like The Stolen Bacillus, The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes and others. The period style is light and the well-directed cast play their parts with none of the embarrassment that often dogs smaller productions. Add a soundtrack that matches the mood of "Infinite Worlds" and you've got a warm evening's viewing (or two - the version I saw was in three parts on cable and even without the ads it was a few enjoyable hours worth).

I do start off with a bias - I like Danny DeVito. Not in the much announced movies like Twins, but in those that really give hime elbow room - and those that have him behind the camera. Ruthless People, War of the Roses, Madeline. And that's what happens in Jack the Bear. It's a low-key film with warm camera work that isn't afraid of shots that linger on the actors, letting their expressions speak rather than filling the space with words. I didn't go out of my way to see this movie - caught it by accident when it was on cable, but it's the best thing I've seen during my Christmas break. The more dramatic moments may a bit unreal, the characters may not be developed as much as some would like - but overall, a little gem.