'Tis the Season

Since the new television season officially kicks off tonight it seems like the appropriate time to take a quick look at the new shows on the horizon, with some speculation and for those that are cautious, zero spoilers. A further look at pilots was going to come but they don’t seem to have particularly leaked out into general consumption, True Blood and Fringe excluded and Fringe nearly gave me an aneurism watching it, let alone reviewing it in depth.

The CW has decided that what sells is money and sex after the success of Gossip Girl. Of course they seemed to have missed the point that while GG gained a lot of buzz this didn't translate into actual ratings. Because the show is aimed at young people who download their TV, rather than watch it. As Dirty Sexy Money was taken as a title one such new show gets the boring title Privileged, about two little rich girls and their poor tutor. From the previews available the tutor looks like she will be as whining and neurotic as Dawson’s Creek's Joey Potter. She comes with the obligatory male best friend completely in love with her, yet as per usual she remains completely oblivious to the raging erection he gets every time she so much as breathes near him. The actresses playing the two rich girls are attempting a mediocre impression of Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls yet only ever achieve a substandard Marissa Cooper, which is never a glowing commendation. The other big new show on this network is the much lauded 90210 spinoff/remake/revamp. About a group of rich kids... but everyone knows this premise already. Somehow the casting department managed to snag the actor that played Michael on The Wire, who will no doubt enjoy his new gritty material on the streets of Beverly Hills, moving from dealing with heroin addicts to shopping addicts. Oh and obviously he is playing both the kid from the wrong side of the tracks and fulfilling the "token" quota. Wire fans know he can do better. Further to this Jessica Walters, previously of the excellent Arrested Development, has been cast and the two show runners used to work on the classic Freaks and Geeks. For a show so shallow there really is a strong calibre of talent behind it that could give it depth, thus meaning it may actually be worth watching. A concern though is the way the show is being marketed, its simply baffling. The CW is trying to gear itself toward a teen audience, yet this show is doing all the stunt casting it can to pull in fans of the old show. Bringing back old characters and allowing them to dominate proceedings isn't going to win over any new fans, nor let the new characters develop and breathe on their own. Its pretty much going to alienate and annoy everyone, just actual rich kids.

Fox has Fringe, the new show from J.J. Abrams, about investigators into the paranormal with an overriding conspiracy built in. Basically it looks set to be a mash up of the elements of J.J.’s previous shows, mystery (Lost), silly spy antics (Alias), angst, angst and more angst (Felicity), it is overall and most importantly a completely blatant rip off of the X Files. With the failure of the recent feature film you have to wonder if there is still a viable market for this. Still, the fanboys will lap it up making it at least a moderate success as J.J. Abrams can seemingly do no wrong, despite abandoning most shows he produces to the ether as soon as he spots something new and shiny. As an aside another Wire veteran turns up here, Lance Reddick. He played Cedric Daniels in The Wire and here he also plays Cedric Daniels from The Wire (not typecast at all then). Dollhouse, from Joss Whedon is coming next year starring Eliza Dushku as an agent for a company who pulls off assignments varying from crime to sex fantasies for high paying clients/perverts, her mind being wiped and freshly imprinted with a new personality for each mission. It does sound rather like Alias, except with the useful happenstance that being an undercover spy created tension. It sounds like it will play more like a brunette Buffy being put into a variety of invariably tiny costumes designed to send the males in the audience into salivating fits of joy. Since the network already commissioned another brand new pilot for Dollhouse it may soon be sitting on the scrap heap beside Firefly. At least it can’t be any worse than last years Bionic Woman.

Speaking of Bionic Woman, NBC apparently did not learn their lesson in how to remake an old show. Not least another bad old show. The network doesn’t seem to understand that what made the remake of Battlestar Galactica a success was that it is completely and radically different to its original namesake. This season Knight Rider drives on to the airwaves and the showrunner promises that it will be like watching The Fast and the Furious every week. The only film I’d like to see even less week in week out is Van Helsing and I regularly thank God that didn't happen. To pair with this NBC also has a remake of Top Gear, which you can bet will feature generic, square jawed bland hosts and a whole bucketload of product placement. Afterall why give a fair critical review of something when you can get given a ton of money to give an entirely biased one, if you need a case in point simply pick up a copy of Empire, the magazine seemingly incapable of giving an average rating in a review.

CBS has Worst Week, a remake of a thoroughly pedestrian British sitcom. The plus point here is they couldn't really make it worse and can only really improve; however the only recent remake of a British show that has worked is The Office and that is mainly due to some fantastic casting, amazing creative team and a strong finished product to draw inspiration for. That an executive can think that The Worst Week of my Life was successful and creative enough to remake simply illustrates the dire state of the British sitcom at the moment (Peep Show excluded). A remake of My Hero can only be on the horizon and if the thought of that doesn’t chill you to the bone I don’t know what will.

STUART THORNILEY

The Jennifer Lopez Spin-Off Showcase

It was revealed yesterday that ABC is working with Jennifer Lopez to create a TV adaption of her mediocre film Maid in Manhattan. This is one pitch you can’t help but wish had been killed in its early stages as a result of the writers strike this year. But it did give rise to an interesting question: what could possibly be a worse J-Lo film to adapt for TV:

The Wedding Planner – This movie had Jennifer Lopez as a wedding planner (the title isn’t exactly misleading) who “breaks the most important rule of all: she falls in love with the groom”. Let’s take this to the next level. Re-establish the premise as a reality show where Jennifer Lopez plans a wedding for a random lucky couple (read: desperate fame seeking morons whose marriage will likely last as long as their 15 minutes of fame) all the while secretly trying to steal the groom for herself. Jennifer Lopez is perfect at the actual planning of a wedding since at this point she has said “’til death do us part” at least as many times as Pete Doherty has stated he’s clean. The finale should feature the wedding and Lopez making a grand attempt to ruin it, steal the sap from his unsuspecting bride and score ratings success win her man and find true love. And of course, edit the show so that Lopez looks heartfelt and endearing throughout, not like the fickle, heartless whore that she is.

Anaconda – In this film Jennifer played a director (laughable in itself) caught up in an attempt to catch an anaconda. As a TV show, J-Lo and her crew travel around the world, finding rare and dangerous animals, especially anacondas, and wind up in a variety of perilous situations. An anaconda on a plane, for example, that’s not been done at all. Shoot it like a documentary, handheld camera, Cloverfield style. This way you stand a chance of hiding the dodgy CGI snake and also if the camera is shaky enough then it might disorient people so much they are so busy vomiting they are unable to change the channel. Instant ratings smash.

Gigli – Simple one this: find some contractual obligation that requires Ben Affleck to return and play out the movie on a weekly basis: the same flimsy plot, same awful dialogue and the same terrible acting. But with Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck having to perform love scenes together now as exes the awful onscreen chemistry would create a new apex of cringe comedy. It could even surpass the level of awkward Showgirls managed to create by having Jesse from Saved by the Bell flop around like a dying seal while having sex in a pool. People would tune in just to see how big a train wreck it turned out to be. Plus it could do us all some favours in the long-term, the film did. It destroyed Jennifer Lopez’ career, sent Ben Affleck into hiding and toward better prospects and added the term “it’s turkey time, gobble gobble” to the lexicon of things to never, ever say when attempting to seduce someone.

The Cell – The film is about a child psychiatrist played by Lopez who has developed a technique that allows her to travel through the minds of her patients and uses it to go into the mind of a serial killer. The show could be a decent twist on the standard procedural. Each week simply unveil a new mystery and have Lopez enter the mind of a killer to find clues so that she can solve it. Each mind could be vastly different and the concept leaves huge room for creativity, to create amazing, imaginative sets and worlds ruled by clever conceits such as a mind ruled by OCD or an adult with the mind of a child. It could create some interesting drama and raise intelligent questions. What makes a man kill? What happens when you begin to understand the motive for murder or even begin to empathise with a murderer?

Okay, so the last one could actually work. But the overall point is clear: Jennifer Lopez makes bad, trashy movies; we really don’t need her to start making bad, trashy TV too. We have The CW for that.

STUART THORNILEY

Pilot Watch Part One - Bloody Mess

It’s the time of year that the pilots of upcoming shows leak out into the internet for all the contempt and bile we can pile upon them. Or vice versa, we take a show to heart and praise it widely and loudly to anyone that will listen. Of course then it hits the air, the general audience sighs and flicks the channel to Deal or No Deal. Then the little show that could is swiftly stamped with cancellation by the big network that can. Still, some shows are already picked up to air regardless of this and its always worth giving them a bit of face time before the tweaks are made (or in some cases the culling, massacre style of a show’s entire cast and crew) and the official television premiere arrives.

True Blood

This fantasy pilot revolves around the premise that vampires live among us and have for some time unnoticed (old hat) but when a new synthetic blood is released they decide to reveal themselves to the world at large (not so old hat). Obviously they don’t exactly become media darlings, being treated with the same fascination and scorn the press and public exclusively reserve for Britney Spears these days.

With Alan Ball, widely known for writing American Beauty and for creating Six Feet Under for HBO in the past, adapting this for television from a book series you’d assume we are in safe territory with this pilot. It not only features Ball’s favourite theme, death, and a cast packed with the quirky characters but for some reason the whole thing doesn’t really mesh together. This could have been a gloriously mad piece of work, the dark comedy of Ball’s previous work in a fantastic new setting where he can get away with playing his trademark fantasy sequences straight but (at least in the pilot) this isn’t the case.

It’s disappointing, imagine you watched a show that had glowing reviews throughout its run. So, you sit down to watch the other show they created, thinking all the while how fantastic it will be and how much you will love it. And yet when you turn the TV on you discover you are watching Saved By The Bell, with full knowledge that the gawky one Screech went from this to an insanely creepy porn career. You would vomit your brains out of your nose whilst simultaneously shitting yourself in horror.

The characters are the first problem. If this were a UK show I’d be convinced the writers were sat making notes on characterisation from a combination of Buffy reruns and Jeremy Kyle. Sookie, the main character, is essentially a demure version of Buffy, with her own superpower to boot. Although the most action Sookie is likely to see is at the diner where she works, hearing what the overweight, horny patrons imagine they’d do to her if she was to find them remotely sexually attractive. Sookie wound up lumbered with the superpower no one really wants: telepathy. The actress also played Rogue in the X-Men movies so at this point she must be wondering why she keeps getting stuck with crap, useless superpowers. Anna Paquin does turn in solid enough work here, but she looks as bored with the material as I was watching it. The primary vampire, Bill, plays to type with the usual mix of pseudo mystical bullshit and mystery shrouding him. This doesn’t really work either, perhaps the actor didn’t pull the material off but I generally find Count von Count from Sesame Street a more intriguing character, hell he has arithmomania which practically shouts to me spinoff (or just replace one of the leads on Numbers with him, it couldn’t be any worse).

The rest of the cast includes the main character’s African American best friend who is such a caricature that she is frankly uncomfortable to watch, an ex-Home and Away actor as Sookie’s brother who wanders around the pilot gormless and horny as if some pages from that show got mixed in to the script here. Two lesser characters are the stereotypical and overly camp homosexual chef and the lead’s grandmother, who you can’t help but fear will wind up being a wholesale ripoff of the grandpa in The Lost Boys. Making matters worse are the actor’s dreadful attempts at a Southern accent, which range from a slow Forrest Gump drawl at their least offensive to a vacant George W. Bush impression at their worst. The characters didn’t appear to have much depth to them beyond what the plot demanded and so were painted in broad strokes that didn’t make them particularly endearing. The best friend and chef in particular contrast appear like flimsy cardboard cut-outs behind Six Feet Under’s Keith Charles who managed to be both African American and gay without seeming like a parody.

The plot that wraps around the characters isn’t particularly compelling either. The change the vampires have had to society isn’t truly explored beyond a few whispers of worry, whereas you can’t help but feel if it happened in reality The Daily Mail would be having more than a field day, the pitchforks would be quite literally drawn and paraded through the streets. The rest of the plot seems to be idly ticking of a checklist of vampire fiction staples, for instance when Sookie meets Bill the show doesn’t even attempt to subvert your expectations, as you’d expect she instantly falls for him like an insipid schoolgirl. The pre-credits scene shows the potential of the premise, reminiscent of horror films it establishes the setting neatly, building tension and it manages to achieve a decent twist within only a few minutes that need not be spoiled here. But this sequence isn’t connected the rest of the pilot and by the end it seemed the show could have benefited from similar scenes with focus on building the world and the characters so that they are believable. Instead the pilot meanders; you can’t immerse yourself in the world and you find that you are drowning in its plot holes. Similar to my feeling on Lost really, except four years haven’t passed and the plot holes haven’t yet turned into a yawning canyon of lost hope and forgotten mysteries.

The True Blood pilot isn’t on par with the witty, subversive nature of Buffy’s early years, not enjoyably melodramatic like 60s vampire soap Dark Shadows nor does it really add anything new to the vampire genre on screen. CBBCs cheesy Young Dracula contributes more and for something that is basically a loose rip-off of The Munsters that is saying something. All in all, the only thing the pilot is comparable to is bad Anne Rice fan fiction. The show of course may end up doing well and HBO does need new drama at the moment with many of its old series having recently ended. Perhaps the show itself will improve as it goes on or the pilot will be tweaked before it airs, revealing a masterpiece that was hiding between the cracks.

But as it is, I’d rather watch a show about a Count… that counts. Preferably while solving crime.

Coming Up: A look at J.J Abrams upcoming Fringe, the X-Files ripoff dressed up in Lost trappings and Dollhouse, the new show from Buffy scribe Joss Whedon.

STUART THORNILEY