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What Spring TV shows will you be watching? - 2014 Edition -

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beat

Member
On the Canadian broadcast of SNL, there was a promo for Remedy, a Canadian hospital show starring Enrico Colantoni, and it was so half-assed I thought it might be some weird SNL bit, but nope, it's real.
 

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Premiering today:

Ghost Hunters - SyFy - 9/8c

Dark Rye - Pivot - 9:30/8:30c

Workaholics - Comedy Central - 10/9c

Broad City - Comedy Central - 10:30/9:30c

Wahlburgers - A&E - 10:30/9:30c

Reviews:

Newsday - Broad City - TV Review

They know how to nail situations/characters, while snappy edits cull fluff, leaving only comic gold.

Variety - Broad City

Adapted from its Web format, Broad City is hardly a fully formed exercise just yet, but with a clear comic voice (Jacobson and Glazer are also the writers) it merits the time to find itself.

Entertainment Weekly - Broad City

The show veers precariously between low-budget and lazy, and the sketches are hit-or-miss. Still, Jacobson and Glazer make an appealing odd couple.

Boston Herald - Mama’s boys battle it out on ‘Wahlburgers’

A&E’s Wahlburgers is a thick heaping of Boston baked silliness starring two of Hollywood’s biggest stars and their beloved mom.

Newsday - 'Wahlburgers' review: Where's the drama?

There's no drama, no trumped-up conflict, no insights, no revelations and absolutely no discreet view of a once-notorious Dorchester clan that ran wild in the streets but now drives them, coolly surveying their kingdom for another restaurant location.

Variety - TV Review: ‘Wahlburgers’

It’s generally playful, but unlike the burgers, consists of completely empty calories.
 

obin_gam

Member
How many has seen BBCs The Musketeers?
I thought it was very very enjoyable! Sure it was cheesy and cliché in some scenes, but the overall feeling I got was "fun".
The only problem I had was the fencing. How could BBC screw such a simple thing up and confuse Rapiers with Sabres?

With Rapiers you dont slash, you thrust! Otherwise they will break instantly FFS!
 

Leeness

Member
Reign is back tonight!

BasJA.gif
 

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Premiering today:

Mitt - Netflix

Reviews:

NY Post - ‘Mitt’ sheds light beyond Romney’s failed White House run

The stiff who was born wearing a necktie and a starched shirt is transformed and redefined in just 90 minutes.

Hollywood Reporter - Mitt: Sundance Review

Achieves in an hour and a half something Republicans wanted desperately to do throughout 2012: It makes Mitt Romney human. Lovable, even.

Variety - Sundance Film Review: ‘Mitt’

A determinedly apolitical movie that inevitably will be viewed in partisan terms, "Mitt" is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall portrait of family life on the U.S. presidential campaign trail.
 

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Premiering today:

The Only Way is Essex - Hulu

Lizzie Borden Took An Ax - Lifetime - 8/7c

Black Sails - Starz - 9/8c

Reviews:

THR - Lizzie Borden Took an Ax: TV Review

Lizzie Borden Took An Ax: Christina Ricci gave some whacks; and when it all was said and done, it was in fact quite creepy fun.

AV Club - Christina Ricci takes a whack at playing Lizzie Borden

It’s just a period horror story starring Wednesday Addams as the high-strung monster from the playground jumping-rope rhyme, with costumes and furnishings (and a general lack of extras) that suggest a high-school play.

TV Guide - Lizzie Borden

An utterly pedestrian docudrama that never lives up to its campy billing.

Tim Goodman - Black Sails: TV Review

This ambitious pirate story is helped immensely by going beyond the pay cable freedoms that often bog down lesser shows in boobs, blood and sex. "Black Sails" steers itself out of that realm after a few episodes and makes a play for bigger, more complicated stories. Solid acting patches up weaker spots. A series worth a look.

SF Gate - 'Black Sails' review: Pretty pirates don't quite hold water

[Viewers] figure there will be sex and nudity, blood and violence. Black Sails has most of that, but there isn't enough action in the first four episodes. If you give us a pirate series, we want to see ships going at it on the high seas.

Mo Ryan - 'Black Sails'

What's mystifying is why Starz and the creators of Black Sails seem to think that, given the expanding array of options available to consumers, any content creators can get away with peddling fare that can't even manage to be consistently mediocre.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
I thought Rake was pretty good, honestly. Yeah, it's a legal procedural, but at least in the pilot enough of the time was spent outside the case of the week to make it work as a sort of character study as well. Kinnear gives a good performance as a drunken gambling womanizer defence attorney, behind on paying his bookie, living with his college friends (one of whom is a prosecutor). His ex-wife is his psychiatrist; when he's not hooking up with a fling, he's seeing a prostitute that he's in love with. He's friendly with his bookie's collections guy.

The A-plot involves a serial killer who recants all of his confessions and LAPD corruption (result: he's found not guilty-ish but now the mayor and the LAPD have it out for Kinnear) while the B-plot involves Kinnear winning a sports bet and getting paid with an enormous high-grade tuna which he needs to re-sell before it goes bad (result: he is not able to, so they end up having tuna steak for dinner).

None of this is very original but I think it all adds up to a pretty interesting setup for a show about a guy who has totally lost control of his life and only barely hangs on because of his palpable personal charm. I found the pilot very funny and bouncy, with a really good energy. I'm not sure the legal procedural element worked that well to me and I'm not really confident anyone is going to write an interesting case on a weekly basis at this point (it's just all been done before, and there's nothing worse than a "ripped from the headlines" approach like what Castle has been doing for years), so I hope the show continues to give relatively short shrift to the weekly cases and focuses on the protagonist's personal life.


Edit: Black Sails is boring as hell. A bunch of bland looking people with stupid or no hair dimly lit and talking in period inappropriate accents by a lethargic camera operator. Starz's typically stupid approach to gratuitous nudity. Bear McCreary's soundtrack, when used, is nice enough but I wouldn't watch the show. The worse scene is when a female character (who is tuff like 1 of the boyz) puts on a show. A guy tells her to go fuck herself so she responds about how wet she gets when she meets a man who makes money. It's pretty crass. There are always people lurking in the background trying to double-cross each other and sometimes there are scenes where people are talking at each other and explaining whatever is supposed to be going on but honestly all of the people basically looked the same to me and I mostly zoned out when they were talking about anything. The plot is something about pirates looking for a ship filled with money. They appear to have taken the pilot down off Youtube so I didn't give it a second try.
 

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Premiering today:

Herblock: The Black & The White - HBO - 9/8c

Generation Job: The Pursuit to Find Better - Pivot - 9:30/8:30c
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
What are the period appropriate accents?

Everyone talks in fairly modern diction with strong accents meant to evoke pirates but they just seem like Americans trying to be british in 2014. Some don't even try. It just feels chintzy, like the rest of the show.
 

Clevinger

Member
Everyone talks in fairly modern diction with strong accents meant to evoke pirates but they just seem like Americans trying to be british in 2014. Some don't even try. It just feels chintzy, like the rest of the show.

Ah, I get what you mean. Don't agree, though. I thought they were all fine except the French girl. I even thought the one American actor pretending to be English did a decent enough job.
 

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Premiering today:

Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond - BBC America - 10/9c

Hawking - PBS - 10/9c

Reviews:

Tim Goodman - Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond: TV Review

Directed with aplomb by Mat Whitecross, who periodically decides, in the course of this four-hour feast, to stop making a movie about a man and instead make a Bond movie, Fleming is the kind of movie that winks at you constantly and you never get annoyed by the intimations.

Mo Ryan - 'Fleming' Review: A Look At The Spy Who Created Bond, James Bond

Cooper does a solid job with the title role, and the early installments have an engaging briskness. However, Fleming drags a bit in its second half; given its slender budget, it might have worked better as a three-episode miniseries.

Slant - Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond

Fleming the character is Bond without the mystery, and Fleming the miniseries is a Bond epic reduced to the most generic of redemption stories.
 

Vert boil

Member
Broad City: Apart from Fred Armisen in the first episode it's been fairly lacklustre.

Chicago PD: I can just about watch Chicago Fire unironically but I have to watch PD as if it was a parody of cop shows. It's actually an entertaining show if you watch it that way.
It's really weird seeing characters from one show randomly show up in another.

Kirstie: Still laughing at this. Travolta was on a few episodes ago. 8|

Kroll Show: Hilarious so far. Gigolo House is going to be amazing.
Jenny Slate as Denise. :3
 
Watched all of S3 for Sherlock (just waiting for PBS to finish on Sunday to complete it again) and am now watching Fleming (since it premiered last night).

That's it for me so far.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Today in sitcom shark-jumping moments:
A-plot: One half of a couple says "I love you" and the other has trouble emotionally committing and won't say I love you back
B-plot: Celebrity stuntcasting

Last year in sitcom shark-jumping moments:
A-plot: Product placement for a car
B-plot: No b-plot, it's just product placement for a car
 
This was the episode that premiered against Happy Endings and the episode where a Ford commercial beat Happy Endings :-(
I am soooooo lttp on Happy Endings. My wife and I recorded the entire series when VH1 ran it on New Year's Eve. We're probably about 20 episodes in and love it.

Sorry, ivy. :-(
 

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Tim Goodman taking a look at some of the shows starting up after the Olympics and later this year:

- All the Upcoming Buzz Shows You Need to Know About

Seems like the best ones are:

Silicon Valley (HBO, April 6). Talk about instant impact — this Mike Judge comedy looked to be firing on all cylinders before HBO has even dropped it into the race. Critics got a look at two episodes and an extended sizzle reel. It's one of the favorite things I saw at TCA, and I'm willing to bet Silicon Valley could be HBO's most wide-appeal comedy in ages.

The Leftovers (HBO, summer). Critics got to see the pilot of this Damon Lindelof series, based on the Tom Perrotta book and directed by Peter Berg. It's both complex and ambitious. Also: weird and riveting. The Leftovers is a series that may take another two or three episodes to wrap one's head around, but it's buzzing like mad and should continue to.

Fargo (FX, April 15). I would put Fargo near the top of any list of buzz series because, having watched the pilot — and wanting to rewind scene after scene — this looks to be an out-of-the-box gem for FX.

The Strain (FX, July). Holy hell - This different-than-usual vampire story, based on the trilogy of books of the same name, looked really scary and intense. I'm not much of a vamp fan, but The Strain looks like something you can't take your eyes off of — and that will generate buzz every time. When the clip ended, I wanted there to be another one.

Inside Animal Minds (PBS/Nova. April 9). I know, it sounds strange. How many Nova specials are going to generate buzz. But anyway, having seen clips and listened to the animal experts talk, prepare to have your mind completely blown. One of the best, least-expected panels at TCA. Also: fun.
 

beat

Member
Andy Daly has a show coming up Feb 27th on Comedy Central:
Review, co-created by and starring Daly, will debut Thursday, February 27th at 10pm. Daly plays Forrest MacNeil, a TV critic who reviews life experiences like stealing, drug addiction, and sleeping with a celebrity. The supporting cast includes Jessica St. Clair as his wife, Fred Willard as his father-in-law, and James Urbaniak as his producer, with Andy Richter, Ashley Tisdale, Jason Mantzoukas, Rich Fulcher, Emo Phillips, Andy Blitz and Maria Thayer set to guest star.
 
What the hell, there's a new Mike Judge comedy starting on HBO?! Where have I been? And quel surprise that the best new stuff is coming via HBO and FX. Killing. It.
 

beat

Member
Hey, three episodes in and Broad City is already really funny. I'd definitely recommend it.
 

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Premiering today:

Babylon - Channel 4

Fresh Meat - Hulu

The Walking Dead - AMC - 9/8c

The Talking Dead - AMC - 10/9c

Comic Book Men - AMC - 12/11c
 
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