December 18th, 2009 admin
Starring: Rebecca Romjin, Lindsay Price, Jamie Ray Newman, Paul Gross, Ashley Benson, Jack Huston, Veronica Cartwright, Sara Rue
Director: Maggie Friedman
Network: ABC
Desperate Housewives meets Charmed was most likely exec producer Maggie Friedman’s pitch to ABC for this latest effort to bring an adaptation of John Updike’s supernatural melodrama to the screen. Previous attempts were made as far back as 1992, and again in 2002 with neither of which were picked up by a network. Perhaps with that in mind Friedman sought out the very best and hired pilot specialist David Nutter, a man with no small hand in launching such hi-concept series as Supernatural, Smallville, and Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles. A decent enough pilot it was too, offering up a playfully comic take on smalltown frustration and thirty-something female angst from the point of view of three deeply unfulfilled women.
Most people will likely know something of the story having caught the star-studded `80’s film adaptation that saw Jack Nicholson’s lothario demon outwitted and sent scurrying back to Hell courtesy of Michelle Pfiefer, Susan Sarandon, and Cher. While the players aren’t quite as eye-catching the characters remain much the same - three New England ladies wish upon a fountain together for the perfect man, get an inkling of magical power, and find themselves inexplicably drawn to a charming, enigmatic new arrival who may, or may not, be The Devil.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
Posted in American Television, Reviews | No Comments »
November 18th, 2009 admin
Starring: David Duchovney, Natascha McElhone, Madeline Martin, Evan Handler, Pamela Adlon, Eva Amurri, Kathleen Turner
Created By: Tom Kapinos
Network: Showtime
Airtime: Sundays, 10:00pm EST
One of the crowning jewels in Showtime’s impressive slate of original programming, this sassy, sexy take on relationships in the new millennium started out as an deceptively layered hymm to the harmony of monogamy and the blissful intoxication of a happy marriage. Wearing the hat of a hip singles show, espousing the joy of hooking up, laced with copious amounts of gorgeous, naked flesh, those who stuck around found the balled of cynical writer Hank Moody to be one mourning the lost art of seduction, the death of romance, and pining for just a little bit of love in today’s lovemaking. A modern day libertine to be sure, Hank was a tortured soul who deep down just wanted to be with his wife, Karen.
Bidding goodbye to her at the end of season two, and with it the rock upon which the show is built, this misfiring third season has been one long, difficult search for some dramatic meat. In a real-world sense its entirely understandable for actress Natascha McElhone, whose husband suddenly and tragically passed away last year, to want to take some time, but in terms of the show it was a disaster. A rotating gallery of vague distractions, half-hearted love interests, and strange bedfellows are no substitute for a star-crossed lovers tale, and there is something oddly lazy and lowbrow about Hank’s exploits this season thus far.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
Posted in American Television, Reviews | No Comments »
October 13th, 2009 admin
Starring: Gail Simmons, Toby Young, Padma Lakshmi, Tom Colicchio
Executive Producer: Dave Serwatka
Network: Bravo
Airtime: Wednesday, 10:00pm EST
Top Chef is to most other culinary shows, Hell’s Kitchen for example, as fillet mignon is to hamburger. Airing on the suave Bravo network, home of such self-inflated pap as Inside the Actors Studio and the absurdly patronizing Queer Eye, Top Chef conducts itself with sheen and an air of superiority that suggests they don’t need some angry blond Glaswegian shouting and screaming obscenities.
Gathering together sixteen of the countries top culinary professionals, all of whom can cook, no question about that, the show then whittles them down one by one until we crown ourselves a Top Chef. This season features the backdrop of Las Vegas and challenges are themed around things such as gaming, with each quick fire challenge rewarding the victor with a casino chip worth $15,000. Like most high-end fine dining, the show is biased towards Nouvelle Cuisine, with the chefs taking the better part of two hours to prep and serves up dishes that your average person could demolish in two bites.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
Posted in American Television, Reviews | No Comments »
September 30th, 2009 admin
Starring: Chad Michael Murray, James Lafferty, Hilarie Burton, Bethany Joy Galeotti, Sophia Bush, Lee Norris, Antwon Tanner, Jackson Brundage, Lisa Goldstein, Austin Nichols, Kate Voegele
Created By: Mark Schwahn
Network: The CW
Original Air Date: 09/01/2008 – 05/18/2009
Love it or hate it, Family Guy displays an uncanny knack of boiling something down to its essence for the sake of a 30 second pop culture gag that have become the show’s staple. So when they condensed bland teen drama One Tree Hill, now in its seventh season as an anchor of the CW Network, into the following exchange: “I’ve got so many problems.” / “Hey, nothing that can’t be fixed by staring at a lake.” You can pretty much fill out the rest yourself. It’s the kind of show that you can break from to spend three months backpacking through Asia, and still manage to get caught up in half an hour upon your return. It’s about decent middle-class Americans in the sleepy town of Tree Hill North Carolina and their daily battle against the worst possible soap opera conventions.
Now the inevitable ticking time bomb with any high school drama is that people eventually do graduate, at which point your comfortable template format (not to mention your cheap, manageable, location shooting) goes out of the window. There are ways around it – the final season of Malcolm In The Middle engineered it so that Reese had to repeat his senior year – but the larger the cast the harder it becomes. Typically after high school the next stop is college (you’re naive if you think graduation will end the High School Musical juggernaut), but really, there is nothing quite so unbearable as “Generic High School Blather: The College Years.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
Posted in American Television, Reviews | No Comments »
September 11th, 2009 admin
Starring: Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, Vincent Kartheiser, January Jones, Christina Hendricks, John Slattery
Created By: Matthew Weiner
Network: AMC
Original Air Date: 07/28/2008 – 10/26/2008
Taking full advantage of the void left by the conclusion of The Wire, Matthew Weiner’s riveting picket fence tragedy has quietly and without fuss taken ownership of that show’s thrown and now wears the crown of the best show on television. A sharpened skewer aimed at the dark heart of our nation’s romanticized past, Mad Men follows the exploits of Manhattan advertising Sterling Cooper, and it’s employees as they busily work to promote the American dream while simultaneously coming to terms with it as a fallacy in their own private lives.
While it might sound as dry as a mouthful of prairie dust, Mad Men, just like the real business of advertising, is all about the disconnect between perception and reality. Key to the show is that absolutely everybody is hiding something. Whether it’s mousey copywriter Peggy with an illegitimate child, secretly gay Salvador from the art department, or buxom office queen Joan and her abusive fiancée, life at Sterling Cooper is a careful balance of rotating indiscretions. In an era defined by stifling conformity, rigid gender roles, and the dedication to a single, solitary way of life – The American way – Mad Men casts the viewer adrift in a sea of intrigue. The wall of grey-flannel suited gents indicating happy cogs in busy machines, while at home perfectly feminine women wait, quietly going mad in prisons of domestic dissatisfaction.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
Posted in American Television, Reviews | No Comments »
August 28th, 2009 admin
Writer/Director: Peter Chinn
Network: The History Channel
Airtime: Tuesday, 10:00pm EST
An absolute must for any geology buff, and certainly worth a look for anyone with a passing interest in physical science, How The Earth Was Made offers a sprawling, detailed survey of our planet’s most enigmatic features in an attempt to understand their part in Earth’s natural evolution and speculate upon the role they might play in our ultimate fate.
Natural history in every sense of the term, the series each week focuses on a unique geological phenomenon and dissects its origins, formation, evolution, and tracks its cycles in an attempt to determine what it will do next. From asteroids arriving from space to the deepest part of our planet’s oceans, no stone is left unturned, so-to-speak, as skilled experts and simple graphics are employed to explain and to illustrate the almost incalculable energy that is built up, transferred, and exchanged every second beneath the Earth’s crust.
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
Posted in American Television, Reviews | No Comments »
August 26th, 2009 admin
Starring: Adam Richman
Executive Producer: Matt Sharp
Network: Travel Channel
Airtime: Wednesday, 10:00pm EST
With Obama on the defensive over the healthcare debate his administration can only pray that conservatives don’t cotton on to the deliciously irresponsible antics of Travel Channel’s Adam Richman, as one look at him will likely kill any chance of universal healthcare in this country for good. Now airing its second season, the eponymous battle is waged weekly as Richman scours the country for the best and most infamous pig-out spots, and in doing so ably illustrates that there is nothing on this Earth that cannot be exponentially improved by the simple application of melted cheese.
The notion that everything is bigger in America is a cliché, but one that is well founded. On Richman’s menu are monstrous portions of the most delectable, delicious delicacies born out of the minds of culinary maniacs and available to those long on courage and short on sense. A Brooklyn native with a background in acting, Richman embarks each week to a different destination and hones in on famed eateries, boasting unique, bizarre, and, above all, BIG signature dishes.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
Posted in American Television, Reviews | No Comments »
August 18th, 2009 admin
Starring: Eddie McClintock, Joanne Kelly, Saul Rubinek, Genelle Williams, C.C.H Pounder, Alison Scagliotti, Simon Reynolds
Created By: Jane Espenson, D. Brent Mote
Network: SyFy Channel
Airtime: Tuesdays, 9:00pm EST
One of the great unsung heroes of science fiction/fantasy, writer and producer Jane Espenson has toiled tirelessly behind the scenes on such epic television odysseys as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Battlestar Galactica. Now assigned the duties of showrunner on the forthcoming Galactica prequel Caprica, Espenson cuts her boss lady teeth as part of the re-branding efforts on the new Syfy original series alongside co-creator Brent D. Mote.
Espenson has handily demonstrated that she has both the smarts and the scripts to make just about any idea fly. In spite of that, Warehouse 13 gives off an oddly familiar aroma of ingredients made up of former SyFy flavor-of-the-month projects that the network saw fit to either cancel or simply not renew. The comically mundane objects possessed of magical properties brings to mind the 2006 mini-series The Lost Room (excellent, by the way), while the melding of detective stories with elements of the supernatural was a staple of 2007’s The Dresden Files.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
Posted in American Television, Reviews | 1 Comment »
July 30th, 2009 admin
Starring: Thomas Jane, Jane Adams, Sianoa Smit-McPhee, Charlie Saxton, Anne Heche, Eddie Jemison, Rebecca Creskoff
Created By: Dmitry Lipkin, Colette Burson
Network: HBO
Showtime: Sundays, 10:00pm EST
These trying times of increasing economic hardship are certainly an odd basis for a comedy, but that is precisely where HBO has set out its lemonade stand for their latest half-hour offering. Opening with a dime tour of the once mighty Motor City, now dilapidated and depressed, Hung’s irreverent hero Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane of Punisher fame) glumly offers an assessment of our nation’s fiscally drowning underclass. Peppered with shots of junkyards, car graveyards, and images of abandoned industry, Drecker characterizes his troubled city as “Headquarters on the river of failure.”
Despite a mildly taboo premise, and tantalizing shots of Jane’s shirtless, impossibly ripped torso occurring with the frequency of a Chippendale show, this isn’t really a sex comedy at all. Rather Hung is a comedy about male angst, about the emasculating nature of recession. It’s a comedy about America. In fact almost every aspect of this show has an underlying economic message. A high school teacher and coach of the town’s luckless, winless basketball team, currently riding the wave of an unprecedented losing streak, we learn that Ray earns more than a waiter and slightly less than a plumber.
Click here to read the full review at Uinterview.com.
Posted in American Television, Reviews | No Comments »
July 29th, 2009 admin
Starring: Ruby Gettinger
Executive Producer: Sarah Weidman
Network: Style Network
Original Air Date: 11/09/2008 -
At first glance there might seem something slightly odd about a show centered on the efforts of a morbidly obese woman to slim down from upwards of 500 lbs appearing on the style network. At second glance Ruby might in fact seem to be the very worst, most insidious idea so-called “reality television” has ever vomited forth from of its diseased orifice. After all, here is a woman so beyond obesity that to continue her lifestyle even one more day invites debilitating sickness and death that nonetheless is prepared to exhibit her impossible struggle on television for mass consumption. And compelled by the very nature of reality television you can be sure that on the other side of the camera is a room full of “development” people, commanding a salary, whose sole purpose is to dream up ways for her to potentially stumble and fail and then somehow integrate them into the show.
What a blessed relief than that at no point does Ruby ever allow this to become just another cynical sideshow. A bright and bubbly Savannah southern belle, Ruby Gettinger is an irresistible force of personality whose warmth and openness about herself and her condition just draw you towards her. Joining her on this epic odyssey of weight loss and rehabilitation are Ruby’s live in roomies and self-confessed serial enablers, the camp-as-a-row-of-tents Jeff, and her hilariously gormless home schooled “nephew” Jim, who bizarrely lives there because his parents “got a cat and he’s allergic.” (!)
Click here to read the full review at JustPressPlay.net.
Posted in American Television, Reviews | No Comments »