In Canada: Mondays, 9pm, CBC

UPDATED 9/1/9: With new pic and vids
UPDATE 2: Apparently, the BBC is going to acquire this, although no airdate is fixed

There's kind of a golden rule in time travel stories: never interfere with your own past. Don't go meet your parents because your dad or mum will fall in love with you and you'll never be born; don't try to save a relative's life because the wee timerous beasties will start eating you while you're trapped in a church. That kind of thing.

The other golden rule is that you're travelling in time to make a difference to the world. Let's stop war being averted, aliens invading and taking over, or the future president of the United States from being killed by assassins.

Being Erica laughs – it is a dramedy after all – at that kind of jessie talk. It's a time travel show in which the heroine does nothing but interfere with her own past, all because her life's a bit of a mess and she'd quite like a decent job or boyfriend for a change.

Erica Strange is 32, lives in Toronto and her life has gone to pot. She has a Masters but works in a call centre – or should that be worked? She's cute but always gets dumped or treated badly by rubbish men. Everyone she knows seems to be married and successful. If only she didn't keep making such bad decisions.

After she wakes up in hospital after an allergic reaction to a nut-infused coffee, a mysterious, saturnine man called Dr Tom (Baker?) turns up at her door offering her therapy that's guaranteed to fix her life. What he doesn't tell her is that it involves travelling into her past to points in her life when she made bad decisions to see if she'd make a better job of things with the gifts of hindsight and maturity.

First 'leap': Prom Night.

Continue reading "Review: Being Erica 1x1"

Pay attention, UK readers: this may be about a Canadian show, but it's going to be on FX (aka "The channel that gets all the good stuff but no one can get and no one watches") in the UK soon, so it affects you now.

The Border is Canada's good TV programme. An atypically conservative take on world affairs, it's a look at terrorism, crime, international relations, spies and other nefarious activities, all set to the backdrop of Canada's Immigration and Customs Security (ICS) agency. It does what 24 and Spooks does - except better and with a smaller cast.

So popular did it prove when it aired during the American writers' strike last January that it was re-commissioned for a second season while it was still airing, and a third one is on its way soon.

But since most of y'all won't be watching it for a while, I'll continue talking about it after the jump - and specifically, the second season finale.

Continue reading "Season finale: The Border (season two)"

Read other posts about: The Border

In the US: Tuesdays, 9/8c, ABC
In the UK: E4, some time this year probably

It has to be said that Scrubs hasn't been what it was for some time. Originally, a comedy show about doctors that also looked at the more human side of having to cope with people who are ill and dying, over its last few seasons, it's become something of a cartoon, in which reality has been shoved aside in favour of silliness and cartoon-like behaviour.

The strangeness of Scrubs is that it was an ABC Studios production for NBC, a network that didn't really seem to know what to do with the programme anyway, seeming at times almost to have forgotten the show existed.

But after NBC dropped it with a literal, medieval fanfare finale last season, ABC picked it up and has decided to run with it. Will the change in management help bring Scrubs back to its former glory for its probably final season, or like a giant oil tanker, will it prove impossible to turn back on course at this late stage?

Continue reading "Review: Scrubs 8x1-8x2"

Read other posts about: Scrubs

In the UK: Sunday 4th/Monday 5th January, 9pm, ITV1

While shows like Demons demonstrate that ITV1 still has somewhere to go to redeem itself with drama after a decade of predominantly awful output, something that we can probably all agree on is that ITV1 is the home of decent crime TV in Britain.

While the Beeb has restricted itself to anaemic period stuff, comfy escapism like Jonathan Creek, Inspector Lynley cobblers or excruciating rubbish like The Invisibles, ITV1 has been producing classics of modern, gritty crime fiction for decades, including the Prime Suspects, Cracker, Wire in the Blood and even The Bill. Okay Wallander was good, but for the most part, BBC1 has sucked, while ITV1 has done well.

Blimey though, has it really been nearly two decades since the first Prime Suspect. Doesn't time fly? I'm sure they'd be cranking out more episodes if only Helen Mirren hadn't decided to get old, curse her.

That might well be the thought Prime Suspect creator Lynda La Plante had when she was writing the novel Above Suspicion - while simultaneously being unable to get much stuff on TV other than one of those few ITV1 crime misfires, Trial and Retribution, and the slightly bland The Commander. "If only we could do Prime Suspect: The Early Years, hopefully with some hot young actress. Let me write that as a novel and see if they adapt it."

Hey presto, here it is. A two-part mini-series starring the exceedingly hot (and talented) Kelly Reilly as a young rookie DC hunting a serial killer. This one's going to run and run.

Continue reading "Review: Above Suspicion"

In the UK: Saturdays, 7.20pm, ITV1

Unto each generation, a rip-off is born. This is especially true of ITV1, which never knowingly fails to panic when it sees someone else's format and decides to make it its own. And thus Strictly Come Dancing begat Dancing on Ice, Doctor Who begat Primeval and so on and so on. Here, though, ITV have decided they want to rip off both an American format and a book.

So with just the deletion of a letter y, Buffy the Vampire Slayer becomes The Buff Vampire Slayer: the last of a long line of monster-killers, equipped with super strength and reflexes, becomes mentored by a foreign national called Rupert with a fake accent, and has to take time out from school work and a platonic best friend (who'd really like it to be something more) to embrace an unwanted destiny, while a weary mother looks on unknowingly.

The only difference: it's a bloke, not a girl, Rupert is American (sort of) and the Slayer is the last of the Van Helsings who fought Dracula and other beasties of the night.

Sigh. Except it's ITV1 and it comes from the makers of Hex, so do I really need to mention the fact it's not very good?

Continue reading "Review: Demons 1x1"

Well, it may be a while since they've been on, but that doesn't stop me making a few notes and comments on some of the Christmas fare. Not all of it, since I still haven't watched Crooked House or The 39 Steps, but Gavin & Stacey and Doctor Who's The Next Doctor at least.

Gavin & Stacey
Disappointing this. Kind of like Gavin & Stacey by numbers, with more or less the same as what we've seen before just slightly expanded upon – a kind of G&S's greatest hits – rather than anything too original. So we get the holiday incident, the big fight, references to Ness's exciting past, etc, but nothing too startling. Don't get me wrong, there were some great moments, but they were surprisingly few and far between.

Still, at least the potential for a new series is obviously there, they did try to give both Gavin and Stacey something to do this time, and there were no sudden flip-flops of character designed purely to achieve a happy ending or a wrap-up of loose plot threads. And it is a Christmas Special, so you have to give it some leeway.

All the same, I found the BBC3 "Making of…" show, Gavin & Stacey: The 12 Days of Christmas, to be a whole lot funnier than the episode itself.

Of course, it might just be because we didn't watch it on the day then met up with my wife's aunt, who said "Oh, haven't you seen it yet? Well, I won't spoil it for you then," before proceeding to tell us about six of the funniest bits in it. Curses.

The Next Doctor
50% of this was good, 50% of this was bad, and there was a pretty clear demarcation line: anything with David Morrissey in it - good, even moving at times; anything with the Cybermen, little children or Dervla Kirwan in it - bad and very silly, particularly the giant Cyberman.

Again, a Christmas special so some slack should be given and it was a whole lot better than last year's Titanic snooze-fest with Kylie. But not great.

Time for a third-episode verdict on TNT's Leverage then. After a good start, the show has continued to maintain its relatively high standards. Episode two tried to go for a slightly harder edge, with an Iraq veteran being cheated out of his rehabilitation money by government contractors and crooked politicians.

Episode three went with something a little more personal and more interesting, with Christian Kane's character returning home to Kentucky to deal with a racehorse owner who kills horses for the insurance money. High mark of the overly complicated episode is the introduction of the show's Professor Moriarty: fellow insurance investigator Mark Sheppard (BSG, The X-Files, Bionic Woman, etc), who's scheduled to appear in at least five episodes. Sheppard is adept at the cons and investigations as Hutton but is on the right (?) side of the law, and makes an interesting addition to a show that was in slight danger of repetition and losing tension in the long run.

Most of my initial criticisms remain: it's not very hard hitting, the cons are easy to spot a mile off and there's a fair bit of duff acting. Add to that Gina Bellman's less than outstanding attempts at accents, a decreasing amount of the character interplay from the pilot and the fact that most of the cons have relied on something being obviously switched at the last moment. It's also not especially memorable, so you never really remember the cleverness of the cons or much of the plot in the same way as you do with Ocean's 11, say. 

But it's still very fun to watch. The cast are all pretty charismatic and there's an intriguing randomness and weirdness to its sense of humour (one character has a fear of horses because "they murder clowns" and there's a flashback to Kane being tortured because he wouldn't reveal the location of a monkey, for example). 

Worth watching if you want some diverting, not too heavy entertainment of an evening. 

Carusometer rating: 2
Predictions: Should last at least season

OMG. It's like totally the final episode. And like team Sarah Jane are in so much trouble. If only there were like a really old, slow-moving dude who could help them.

Continue reading "Review: The Sarah Jane Adventures 2x12"

Read other posts about: The Sarah Jane Adventures

Oh look, it's team OAP, ready to save the world and be easily duped. Doh!

Continue reading "Review: The Sarah Jane Adventures 2x11"

Read other posts about: The Sarah Jane Adventures

Time to talk about Father's Day part 2. Oops. Sorry meant The Temptation of Sarah Jane Part 2. Follow me.

Continue reading "Review: The Sarah Jane Adventures 2x10"

Read other posts about: The Sarah Jane Adventures