Here are some of the new shows I have tried.

Running Wilde – It’s got Will Arnett. Will Arnett is very funny. He was very funny in a supporting role in Arrested Development. He was very funny in a supporting role in 30 Rock. Here he plays the lead. Turns out his brand of funny isn’t good for the lead. He’s too kooky. Too nuts. When your part requires you to be the most ridiculous character in any given scene, it’s hard to find the pathos necessary to win the audience over.

Running Wilde, Falling Flat

When you combine that with a back story that makes you a spoiled rich kid, you end up with one of the least sympathetic lead characters in sitcom history. Will Arnett as Steven Wilde is not likeable enough to sustain a situation comedy.

Keri Russell is also in it as the female lead. I don’t think she’s done comedy before. She turns out to have reasonable timing. Keri Russell is not horrible.

Peter Serafinowicz is also in it as Wilde’s equally wealthy and equally dim next-door neighbor. It’s a thankless role based around eye-liner and a hilarious Middle-Eastern accent. It is not cutting-edge comedy.

Running Wilde is brought to you by the team behind Arrested Development. Do not be fooled. This is no Arrested Development. I wanted to like Running Wilde. I did not succeed.

Mike & Molly – This is a sitcom about fat people. Mike is fat. Molly is fat. They hook up at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. Mike tries to appear casual when asking Molly out by leaning on the snack table. It collapses under his weight. I did not make that up.

It's funny because they're so fat, geddit?

Mike & Molly is appalling. It’s not that it’s not funny (it isn’t). It’s not that it’s crude (it is). It’s just so horrid and unpleasant that it’s hard to know who it’s aimed at. Do non-fat people enjoy laughing at fat people? If so should we encourage that by developing a primetime situation comedy around the concept? Alternatively, do plump people enjoy seeing their lives reflected as obese buffoons perpetually unlucky in love and life?

Melissa McCarthy plays Molly. I have seen her as a series regular in both Gilmore Girls and Samantha Who?. She was funny and engaging in both shows. In neither instance was her character’s size an issue. I think Ms McCarthy has done herself a huge disservice appearing in Mike & Molly. The show is unsure, rude and awful.

Friends - The Reunion

Better With You – I just had to go back and remind myself what this was. I watched it last night and it may well be the most forgettable 22 minutes in pilot history. It’s about three couples (there’s a new dynamic for a sitcom!).

• Mia and Casey – They’ve been together for less than two months
• Maddie and Ben – Maddie is Mia’s big sister. She has been with Ben for nine years
• Vicky and Joel – Mia and Maddie’s parents. They have been married for 35 years.

Star-wise, this is some low-wattage stuff here. Mia is played by Joanna Garcia. She’s fab. She’s young, she’s spunky, she’s full of vim. She charismas everyone else off the screen. Boyfriend Casey is a full-on surfer dude which is odd as the show appears to be set in Manhattan.

Maddie and Ben are generic New York 30somethings. A little uptight, a little neurotic with a typically unfeasible apartment. It’s all so blah. Even the title of the show is blah. See if you can remember it without glancing up two paragraphs. Nah, me neither.

Shat My Dad Says

$#*! My Dad Says – It’s pronounced “Bleep My Dad Says” which tells you everything you need to know about whether or not this show is going to be amusing. It’s based on the Twitter stream @shitmydadsays, which is a list of quotes compiled by Justin based on things Justin’s dad says. That’s right. It’s a sitcom based on a Twitter stream.

I’ve been following @shitmydadsays for a few months now. It’s pretty funny. Here are some examples of the “shit” that Justin’s dad says:

I wanted to see Detroit win. I’ve been there. It’s like God took a shit on a parking lot. They deserve some good news.

and

Son, no one gives a shit about all the things your cell phone does. You didn’t invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that.

and

Fine, let’s take a vote. Who wants fish for dinner?…Yeah, democracy ain’t so fun when it fucks you, huh?

and

I like the dog. If he can’t eat it, or fuck it, he pisses on it. I can get behind that.

I don’t know if Justin’s dad actually said any of that stuff but it’s bloody funny. Unfortunately this attempt at turning a series of 140-character, expletive-laden haikus of perfect disdain into a sitcom is a dull disaster. Part of the problem is the language. On Twitter, Justin’s dad is a poetic genius. On TV, he’s William Shatner. I love William Shatner, but he’s floundering here. This show should have been on Cable, not CBS. It should have swearing in it. It shouldn’t have any apologizing or touchy feely stuff.

The people responsible for adapting this project for TV have totally failed to grasp what makes it work as a Twitter stream. In the last few days since the show debuted, the stream has been remarkably quiet. Either Justin’s dad was too busy watching the news or, for the first time ever, he’s showing too much tact to comment.

Not funny... and a little bit racist

Outsourced – It’s about an American who is sent to India to manage a call center. He’s a fish out of water. Cultures clash. Only by looking at ourselves through others’ eyes can we really see who we are. Doesn’t sound so bad does it?

Don’t kid yourself. It’s shocking. I’m pretty sure it’s racist too, although it’s hard to put my finger on it. Perhaps it’s the mocking of Indian accents. It could be the jokes about Hindus thinking cows are sacred. Maybe it’s the amusing way that all Indian food gives you diarrhea. There’s so much to choose from. It’s a smorgasbord of grim.

Here’s a hilarious clip where an American expat explains that Indian food will give you the shits.

Outsourced is unrepentantly pleased with itself. It thinks it’s witty and taboo-busting. It’s actually turgid and misanthropic.

So that’s five new shows in varying shades of shite. But don’t despair. There are some good comedies on TV, just not new ones. Modern Family came back just as funny as last year. The Office may be winding down, but it’s still delivering. 30 Rock has been consistently strong and started the new season well. And the best new show of last year just started its second season. If you didn’t watch the first season of Community, you have plenty to catch up on and plenty to look forward to. Enjoy.

Sex and the City

Entourage

The Sopranos

In almost every instance where I committed to an HBO show, it’s come after the show has already broken out. This time I thought I would try something different. The only things I know about Boardwalk Empire before watching are that it stars Steve Buscemi and it’s directed by Martin Scorsese. That’s a heady combo. Crazy Eyes out of Mr. Deeds and the guy who put Wesley Snipes in a Michael Jackson video. Awesome.

So I’m going to live-blog the opening episode of Boardwalk Empire and give an impressionistic review of how it feels right out of the gate. Try to keep up.

Before the show starts, I’m not loving the name. It doesn’t sound right when you say it out loud and it doesn’t look right in print. I’m concerned that this may be a bad omen for the show. Now, roll VT.

Opening seconds: Theme tunes are key to HBO shows. They establish mood. They set tone. The theme tune here is a little laid back for my tastes. I can’t imagine it coming to represent the show the way “Woke Up This Morning” tells Tony Soprano’s story.

The credits tell me that Michael Pitt is going to be in it. Great. He’s great. I also see Kelly MacDonald’s name. She’s cool, it’s just that 15 years after Trainspotting, she still looks like a school girl.

The other cast names float by innocuously, right up to “and Dabney Coleman”. Another bad omen. Coleman is a giant ham. I get that he’s a jobbing character actor with an impressive resume, but to me he’ll always be the a-hole boss in 9 to 5. Sorry Dabney.

Executive Producer – Mark Wahlberg! I didn’t know that. Interesting. I think Marky Mark is under-appreciated. He was absolutely the best thing in The Departed and Entourage proves that he’s more than just a pretty face.

So, throughout the opening Buscemi is standing on the beach in a pair of natty brogues. The tide comes in bringing hundreds of badly CGI’d bottles of (presumably) bootleg whiskey. The water covers Buscemi’s brogues. His feet are wet, but he is far from drowning. Whoa… heavy.

Opening scenes: It’s a period piece. Someone is looking at a pocket watch. The camera pulls back to show him standing on a boat. Waiting.

Another boat arrives with crates of bootleg Canadian whiskey and a henchman says, “Liquid gold, boyo.” We’re in Atlantic City in 1920. I’m not sure of the significance of the “boyo”. It feels ethnic. Irish? Is that important?

On the road now heading to New Jersey (been there, done that) and the bootlegger get hijacked by men in hoods. I’m not sure whose side we’re on yet, the bootleggers or the hooded hijackers, but I guess that’s the point.

Three Days Earlier: We find Buscemi in a room full of women listening to an old biddy talk about the evils of liquor. Buscemi is introduced to the crowd as “Atlantic City’s esteemed treasurer, the honorable Enoch Thompson.”

Buscemi delivers a BS story about eating rats to stay alive because his father was a degenerate drunk. “Prohibition means progress.” I’m betting he sees the benefits of prohibition differently than his audience. Meanwhile Michael Pitt is Jimmy, just back from the war. Jimmy waits outside, smoking.

Buscemi was smoking in the opening credits. Pitt’s smoking now. That’s how we know we’re on cable guys. People on cable, smoke. People on network shows do not.

Out on the street, Buscemi is universally hailed as “Nucky!” as a mock funeral is carried out for liquor including a horn section in blackface. It’s 1920, we’re two hours from the start of Prohibition in the US. Everyone is stocking up on alcohol while it’s still available.

Babette’s Supper Club: It’s packed and swinging. Everyone’s drinking. Nucky heads upstairs to find his brother. Nucky’s brother is in charge of the police. Nucky gives a speech to the Mayor and local bigwigs about the opportunity the Volstead Act offers them all to carry on selling alcohol for three times as much as they have been. No one is too worried about getting caught.

Jimmy sits quietly as Nucky tells everyone that he is going to be “Man Friday” to a fresh faced up-and-comer. Jimmy remains unmoved by the appointment.

There’s a countdown and the band plays Taps for the death of alcohol before switching gears and kicking off a whole new party, screaming “Prohibition” and cracking bottles of champagne. Nice.

Everyone has a girl, except Jimmy. He has a cigarette. Jimmy leaves the party early.

Ouside the saltwater taffy store

At home with Jimmy: We find that Jimmy is married with a young kid. He had a place at Princeton, but he gave it up to go to war. Now he doesn’t know what he’s good for.

Two years killing Jerrys doesn’t exactly prepare you for a whole lotta outs.

The Academy: We cut to a bunch of men in suits being sworn in as prohibition agents, “unswerving in duty and incorruptible in character”. Yeah, right!

The Hotel: Some wiseguys are checking in. Some other wiseguys come and introduce themselves. We hear some names. Arnold Rothstein. Charlie Luciano. I’m no expert, but I reckon Arnold is wearing black socks and that Charlie will turn out to be reasonably lucky.

Kelly MacDonald comes to see Nucky. She is visibly pregnant. Omar from The Wire is left waiting outside for his appointment. Anyone who watched The Wire has big love for Omar. I wish he had gone in to meet Nucky instead of Kelly.

Kelly spins a sob story about an out of work husband. Nucky gives her some money. He’s a regular humanitarian. Mobster with a heart of gold.

Out on the boardwalk all the shopfronts are shiny and new. All the posters advertising cigarettes are gleaming. It’s like they didn’t have dirt in 1920. It’s a classic mistake made by period dramas. Vintage cars never have dents or muddy wheels. Period props always look like they have never been used. It’s a bit irritating and I’m guessing Scorsese wouldn’t allow it in one of his movies.

Nucky stops outside a store advertising “Baby Incubators”. Seriously. It’s right next door to the saltwater taffy store. He looks in the window and sees an undersized baby being looked after by a nurse and place inside some kind of cabinet – presumably the incubator. There are no price tags on any of the cabinets. I can’t imagine they do much passing trade out on the boardwalk. This is the weirdest scene so far.

Finally getting round to it: A man comes to talk to Nucky. A flashback (flash forward?) tells us he’s the man from the boat with the pocket watch. We wouldn’t have recognized him otherwise. I have a realization that that’s why the flashback/forward has been edited in there. Someone watched this scene and said, “Who’s this guy? Are we supposed to know who he is?”. It’s not clever editing. It’s editing to compensate for the lack of clarity.

The delivery is coming from Canada tomorrow. We already know what happens to it. We now know that the bootleggers are friends of Nucky. We still don’t know who the hooded hijackers are. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Jimmy is under one of those hoods. I promise to leave this sentence in if it turns out I’m wrong.

The Funeral Home: Nucky goes to a funeral home. Given that this was HBO, we knew there had to be nudity at some point. It’s to Scorsese’s credit that the first nude is full frontal, head to toe and a corpse. A guy called Doyle is leering at it disturbingly. From this we learn that he is slightly unhinged. I have no doubt that this will prove significant.

The funeral home is a front for a bootlegging operation where the imported Canadian whiskey is watered down and rebottled. Jimmy gets into a mini-rumble with Doyle who pulls a piece right away. Nucky wrestles it away from him and Jimmy is sent outside.

Nucky and Jimmy have it out. Jimmy tells Nucky he doesn’t want to work for the fresh-faced kid. All he wants is an opportunity. Nucky delivers the soundbite:

This is America, ain’t it. Who the fuck’s stopping you?

Back at the Hotel: Nucky and the wiseguys are being watched by the Feds. We learn from the Feds’ banter than most of the Feds are dumb.

Nucky and the Wiseguys

Nucky and the wiseguys sit round a table in an empty restaurant. Someone mentions that Rothstein won $2 million on the World Series (Boom!). Someone else looks at Luciano and says “And they call this one Lucky!” (Double Boom! Oh I’m good.)

Outside, Jimmy is shmoozing with some other wiseguy muscle. They bond over being working stiffs. They talk about how much Rothstein and Luciano are worth. We see the gears working in Jimmy’s mind. He’s looking to make a move. At the end of the conversation the other muscle introduces himself. Al Capone. Nice! I’m thinking he may be under the other hood.

Jimmy and the Feds: Jimmy gets picked up by the Feds. They admire his service record. They offer him a job with the bureau. “It’s a godly pursuit”. Before we see Jimmy answer, we cut to a sex scene. It’s HBO. You had to know the naked corpse wasn’t going to be enough to meet the quota. A topless bimbette bounces on Nucky. Mr. Scorsese, how do you sleep?

Little Man Boxing: We cut to a scene of men boxing. Little men. Is that the correct term? Who knows? All I know is it’s either gratuitously exploitative or gloriously surreal. You never know with Scorsese. Jimmy is there to meet Capone. We see the right side of his face for the first time. It’s scarred. Nice! Jimmy and Al conspire.

Godfather Homage: Nucky’s sitting in a theater. Instead of watching opera, he’s listening to a stand-up comedian. While the comedian continues his patter we cut back to the hijacking from the start. It looks like the Feds are in the woods. The hijacking turns into a bloodbath as the two hoods shotgun all the bootleggers. The Feds were in a different woods and they storm the funeral home to shut down the operation there.

The hoods come off and it’s Jimmy and Capone. Ta-dah. Looks like Jimmy screwed everyone from both sides, stealing the booze and offering up the factory to the Feds. Oooh. Intrigue.

The Home Stretch: It takes Nucky and his brother less than 15 seconds to work out Jimmy’s the one. Nucky goes to see the Commodore (played by “and Dabney Coleman”). The Commodore thinks it was a mistake for Nucky to get involved with Arnold Rothstein. The Commodore sneers when he says the name “Rothstein”. He offers Nucky a book on the subject by Henry Ford. It’s called The International Jew – available now in all good bookshops. It looks like the Commodore has a first edition as the book doesn’t have a scratch or a bend on it. Another win for Pristine Period Props, Inc.

Nucky and Jimmy: Jimmy is waiting for Nucky. Nucky tells Jimmy that he could have him killed. Jimmy knows he won’t. It’s a bona fide bromance. He tells Nucky exactly what Nucky needs to hear:

You can’t be half a gangster, Nucky, not anymore. Let me help you.

Final bloody montage: Stolen whiskey is delivered. Various people are beaten or shot to death. It’s a montage. It’s pretty bloody.

Er… that’s it: The end… for now.

So, what’s the verdict? It’s no Sopranos. Buscemi is good and Pitt’s his equal except when they make him say all those things about how the war has made him a different man, yadda yadda. I can see myself watching a series based around Pitt’s Jimmy. The rest of the cast is forgettable. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of Kelly MacDonald, but the truth is she’s already played her part by the end of this opener.

Period Omar

For a series like this the supporting cast has to be strong. Think of the four HBO shows I mentioned at the beginning. Now think of Stanford Blatch, Lloyd, Paulie Walnuts and Omar. The first hour of Boardwalk Empire comes and goes without a memorable moment for any of the supporting cast. Even Al Capone gets short shrift. It’s going to be hard to sustain.

But let’s go back to Omar. Michael K. Williams has one of two non-white speaking roles in Boardwalk Empire (the other was the Commodore’s maid) and he only has one line. He’s an actor of enormous charisma and I’ll probably watch another episode just to see what they do with him. But they better do something with him.

I don’t usually talk about stuff like this, but I found the editing choppy and amateurish. Dialog scenes were blocked in the most basic ways and edited together to add the urgency that the words didn’t deliver. Makes me wonder how much of Scorsese’s movie craft is him and how much is Thelma‘s.

I’m pretty sure that my experience of this show was tainted by my decision to write about it while I was watching. On the one hand it enabled me to identify the obvious telegraphing of what TV execs probably called “the twists”. On the other hand, it put enough distance between me and the show to prevent me from engaging fully. I guess I’ll tune in again next week to see where it goes.

In the meantime, here’s that bromance between Nucky and Jimmy. See if you can see what I mean about amateurish editing of a simple conversation between two men facing each other. I actually think Pitt may be acting Buscemi off the screen here. Weird.

Victoria Coren - Better looking than William G. Stewart

I love quiz shows. I watch University Challenge every week and I really like Only Connect too. I used to really like Fifteen-to-One when it was on as well.

The common thread is that I like quiz shows with real questions. I like it when the questions are hard. I like feeling good when I can answer them. I don’t like feeling tricked when I can’t.

My mum also likes quiz shows. She’s much better than I am at answering the questions. She won some money on The Pyramid Game once. I lost on Jeopardy.

My mum told me I should watch Pointless. It’s an interesting format. You have to answer the question correctly, but with the least likely answer. The aim is to get no points at all for finding a correct answer that no one else would ever have known. If you get the answer wrong, you get the maximum of 100 points… which is bad. It’s like Reverse Family Fortunes/Feud.

OK that’s all the background you need to enjoy this clip. Watch and cringe as a man who identifies himself as a Maths teacher answers a question on US Geography which he admits is his weakest subject.

Cyrus Garza in Outlaw

I guess it all comes down to where you stand on Jimmy Smits. Me? I’m ambivalent. Let’s review.

He first showed up in L.A. Law as a Victor Sifuentes. I didn’t watch much L.A. Law. In the world of Steven Bochco, I was more of a Hill Street Blues guy.

Then Smits had a long run in Nippedy Blue. He even won a Golden Globe. But, to be honest, I stopped watching after Caruso left so I kinda missed Smits on that show.

Years later he showed up on the last two seasons of The West Wing and (spoiler alert) was eventually elected PotUS. But by the time he arrived, I had already bailed, giving up roughly when Sorkin did, so I never really saw Smits in that either.

I did see Jimmy Smits in the last two Star Wars movies, but he was pretty bad and not at all like I imagined Princess Leia’s foster dad.

Also Jimmy Smits was responsible for the only weak year of Dexter so far when he played psycho ADA Miguel Prado in Season Three. Fortunately, Prado’s sticky end served as a perfect critical response to Jimmy’s performance on the show.

So now Smits is back. He’s got a new show on NBC called Outlaw. Smits plays Cyrus Garza a Supreme Court Judge with a gambling habit and an eye for the ladies. Looks like the writers have been playing back-story Lotto again. A little bit of this and a little bit of that and people will believe this could be a real character. Except I’m people. I don’t believe.

It’s not spoiling too much to say that in the pilot Cyrus Smits gives up his seat on the Supreme Court to go back to practicing law and helping the people who have been let down by the justice system.

I’m pretty sure there’s never been a show before about a Supreme Court Judge who resigns to go back to being a trial lawyer. Outlaw gets points for originality. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure there has never been a courtroom drama with such a weak and unengaging case and a trial lawyer who has very few courtroom skills beyond knowing all the judges’ first names and the names of their wives.

Smits is supposed to be charming but they give him the clunkiest things to say:

Following the rules, doesn’t always lead to justice. And when that happens, Eddie, you gotta change the rules.

With that level of legal acuity, you can see why he was picked for the Supreme Court.

Outlaw is an out and out dud. Cyrus Garza has to be reckless and erudite. He has to fly by the seat of his pants and have everything worked out in advance. He’s politically incorrect and a bleeding heart liberal. He’s too many contradictions and Smits just isn’t good enough to make him credible.

Kooky private investigator Lucinda Pearl

The only highlight of an otherwise record-breakingly dull supporting cast is Carly Pope as the kooky private investigator Lucinda Pearl.

Lucinda gets all the best lines and uncovers all the clues. She also gets to tease Justice Garza’s uptight clerk, Eddie, with some wholly inappropriate sexual banter.

I’m pretty sure that Lucina crosses the line into actionable sexual harassment in almost every scene she appears. It would be funnier if her role weren’t so utterly demeaning.

Two weeks ago Archie Panjabi grabbed an Emmy for playing the equivalent role of sassy, sexy know-it-all PI, Kalinda Sharma in CBS’s The Good Wife. Compare and contrast the two parts to get an idea of how wrong-footed Outlaw is.

Outlaw lacks any of the subtlety, nuance or sexy understatement of the The Good Wife. Carly Pope’s performance suggests she could do better, but the rest of the show is just too broad. It’s as if the writers were typing with mittens on.

I’ve made a compilation of Ms Pope behaving inappropriately. After you watch, imagine the same role being played by a man and tell me if you think it’s still OK.

The Duchess is the last of the Mitford sisters–a set with which I was only peripherally familiar.  Still a life on the interwebs means I’m able to fill in the gaps fairly quickly.

Here’s what I was able to learn about the Mitford sisters.

Nancy (1904-1973). Novelist and Biographer. I haven’t read any of her work. Her essays, which may or may not have been tongue in cheek, helped define U and Non-U usage of English. It turns out that the upper classes are much more straight forward than the aspirational middle classes when it comes to saying what they mean. Who knew it was posher to say “loo” than “toilet”?

Pamela (1907-1994). Referred to by John Betjamin as the “Rural Mitford”.  Referred to by sister Jessica as a “you-know-what-bian”.

Diana Mitford - Fascist

Diana (1910-2003). Of all the Mitford sisters I could have shared a birthday with, it had to be Diana. Married first to a Guinness, she later married Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists in a secret ceremony in Berlin where Goebbels and Hitler were the only guests. Diana spent most of WWII in Holloway prison. Post-war, Diana reviewed books for The Mail and The Times, but she never renounced fascism and, when she appeared on Desert Island Discs, described the Holocaust as “exaggerated”.

Unity (1914-1948). Loved Hitler. Seriously. Unity was crazy for the Führer. After attending the Nuremberg Rally in 1933, Unity moved out to Berlin so she could stalk Adolf Hitler. At one point she even had Eva Braun spooked. Unity was a giant, Hitler-worshipping Nazi.

Unity and Adolf - just good friends.

After England declared war on Germany, Unity was so upset she shot herself in the head. She lived another couple of years and some people think she gave birth to Hitler’s baby. I don’t.

Jessica (1917-1996). In any other family, Jessica might have been the crazy one. Jessica eloped with her second cousin during the Spanish Civil War. After he was killed during WWII, Jessica married an American civil rights lawyer. They were both members of the Communist Party. Needless to say, Jessica did not get on very well with sisters Diana and Unity. Jessica became an investigative journalist and wrote about the commercialization of funeral homes in The American Way of Death.

Deborah (1920-). The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire. Deborah merely took tea with Hitler, but she didn’t speak German and, so, couldn’t be expected to hold up her end of the conversation. In 1941 she married Lord Andrew Cavendish who later became the 11th Duke of Devonshire. She remains to this day remarkably untouched by controversy.

The Mitford sisters–equal parts bonkers and fascinating.

Diana’s daughter in law, Charlotte Mosley, has been granted access to nearly 80 years of written correspondence between the sisters. she published around five percent of the letters in a collection called The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters. It sounds delicious. I’m ordering it today.

Shaggy and Scrappy

Another day, another TV pilot reviewed. Terriers is one of those shows that defies programming logic. It doesn’t belong on the air and yet here it is. It doesn’t have a well-known cast. It doesn’t have a unique premise. There is nothing original about the entire enterprise.

So how does a show like this get made? Well it’s chock full of talent. Industry talent. The kind of talent that gets shows made. Shawn Ryan is the big name to notice here. Ryan created The Shield which was the first breakout hit for FX Networks. Ryan helped put FX on the map for original drama. It even won an Emmy for Best Drama Series.

These days Ryan is running a show called Lie To Me for one of the big networks, but FX still has mad love for him. They love him enough to put 13 episodes of Terriers on air.

One of the other important names is Ted Griffin. Griffin’s the writer. Ten years back he wrote Ocean’s Eleven for Soderbergh. It was a hit. Now he’s writing this.

The third piece of the no-name trinity behind Terriers is Donal Logue. He’s an actor. Logue’s been in a bunch of things that you won’t remember him from. Movies. TV. You know, things. He won an award once at Sundance for a movie that nobody saw called The Tao of Steve. His performance is supposed to be completely charming in the movie which is critic-speak for “the hero’s a fattie”.

Er... I don't think so!

The last thing I saw Logue play was a police captain in Life. I was enjoying his performance right up until the moment they put him in bed with Sarah Shahi. It was just too much of a stretch. I don’t care how much baggage her character was supposed to carry around, no one that hot falls for the fat man. Especially not the greasy unshaven fat man.

Take it from one who knows. I bagged my hottie before I piled on the pounds. No way she’d give me a second look these days even if I was her superior officer.

Back to Terriers. Logue plays this ex-cop dude who’s doing the whole unlicensed PI thing with his best friend who is both scrappy and nondescript. Logue has an ex-wife who cares and an ex-partner who cares and an ex-act replica of every other back story you’ve ever seen. Who cares? Terriers is a show that makes a virtue of not doing anything new.

So Logue and Scrappy get ahold of some kind of case and then hang on until the bitter end… like terriers… geddit? Repeat ad cancellation.

Terriers, the show, is just like its second lead – scrappy and nondescript. It may well be the most missable new show of the season.

Maggie Q as Nikita

There have been several incarnations of Nikita and I’ve seen them all.

The original movie Nikita came out in 1990. It was directed by Luc Besson and released in the US as La Femme Nikita. If Luc Besson ever went on Mastermind, his specialist subject would be ‘Style over Substance’. I must have seen it as a video rental back in the day. It’s a fine movie with a great central performance from Anne Parillaud.

In 1993, they remade the movie in the US with Bridget Fonda and called it Point of No Return. But there was really no point to Point of No Return. The remake had none of the chic sense of danger, none of the emotional intensity and in place of Jean-Hugues Anglade there was charisma sinkhole, Dermot Mulroney. It is not a good movie.

In 1997, the franchise moved to TV. I’ve seen more episodes of this show than I care to admit. None of them made sense. In fact, there was very little about the entire show that made sense. Given that it was made in Canada and starred an Australian, there is no reason to have called the show La Femme Nikita. Nor was there any reason to give the male lead a comedy French accent. It’s all very odd.

In each of the movies, Nikita kills a cop and is sentenced to death. In the first TV show, Nikita is innocent which kind of makes the redemption-through-assassination angle moot.

La Femme Nikita was a silly TV show. I’ve watched a lot of silly TV shows. La Femme Nikita was particularly silly.

Now they have relaunched the brand once again with another TV show, this time simply called Nikita. It stars Maggie Q as Nikita. Nikita has gone rogue. She’s trying to bring down the government organization that trained her.

I like new shows. I’m willing to give almost anything a shot. I tried to like this. I failed.

Nikita is desperately bad. Nikita is a rogue agent going up against a shady government organization willing to kill to protect its secrets. It’s gritty. It’s nasty. It has to get Maggie Q down to her underwear early and often or the advertisers will bail.

The Maggie Q-clothing dilemma is resolved in less than five minutes with a dream sequence which may or may not be a flashback. Either way it happens inside Nikita’s head and the entire scene lingers over Maggie Q in a tight fitting, red one-piece as she completes a kill with her bare hands, takes out a body guard with some handy cutlery and fails to get away clean. It’s silly and lascivious and it made me feel dirty.

You can watch it here:

Don’t get over-excited. Nikita goes to see her former foster father who may have had a more hands-on approach to parenting than is desirable. We find out some of her back story. In this incarnation they told her she killed a cop but she was too high to remember properly. Way to change up a back story!

We learn that Nikita was her real name before she was recruited. That’s not very clever. If you have an unusual name and happen to get recruited as an invincible assassin by a shady government organization, you should at least expect to get a new name out of it. Nikita is so… memorable. But then this shady government organization is about the least discreet of any shady government organization ever seen.

At the drop of a hat teams of shady government gunmen swarm into public cemetery toting automatic weapons. A shady government hitman slices up the bodyguards of a foreign dignitary in the corridor of a hotel. Teams of shady government henchmen blithely shoot up a charity fundraiser. Talk about hiding in plain sight. These guys won’t be happy until their killshots show up on YouTube.

So Nikita has vowed to bring down the the shady government organization known as ‘Division’. Division is headed by a really nasty man. The nasty man is played by Xander Berkeley, a fine and recognizable character actor. Berkeley has fun chewing up Division’s scenery. He says things like this:

I’m not going to let a piece of street trash slow down this operation. Not for one minute.

and this:

Nikita is our new priority target. Threat level six!

Berkeley would be very convincing as the big baddie apart from one important detail. His character, the head of Division, Nikita’s nemesis is called… Percy.

Percy is not a good name for a nemesis. It ruins key dialog like this:

Someone has to stop Percy.

and this:

If Percy goes down he has no problem taking everyone down with him.

People called Percy are destined to lack menace. It is impossible to maintain an air of menace when you answer your cellphone, “Percy!”. This show proves it.

I may stick around and watch another couple of episodes. There may be more dream sequence/flashbacks for me to review. Other than that, this is the first turkey of the new season. With a baddie called Percy.

King Dork by Frank Portman

I just finished reading King Dork by Frank Portman. Frank Portman is the lead singer and songwriter for a pop-punk band called The Mr. T Experience that I have never heard of and I’ve heard of a lot of bands (although not a lot of pop-punk bands, it seems).

The Mr. T Experience have released 10 studio albums over the past 25 years with titles like Milk Milk Lemonade and Revenge is Sweet, and So Are You.

I tell you this to illustrate that Mr. Portman (he prefers Dr. Frank) knows a thing or two about naming bands and naming albums.

I tell you that because it’s one of the fun features of his debut book, King Dork which came out in 2006. Tom Henderson is King Dork. Sometimes people at school call him Mo. Which is short for Chi-Mo. Which is short for “Child Molester”. Which is a nickname he got when his seventh grade career aptitude test suggested he might join the clergy.

Tom’s friend is Sam Hellerman. Tom and Sam spend far more time naming their dream band than actually playing any instruments. At the start of the book they are in Baby Batter with Tom as Guitar Guy… on guitar and Sam on “Base and Scientology”.

Throughout the term the band goes through a number of permutations including Ray Bradbury’s Love Camel (Moe-Moe on guitar, Scammy Sammy on Bass and Callisthenics) and The Elephants of Style (Guitar: Mot Juste. Bass and Animal Husbandry: Sam Enchanted Evening. First Album: Devil Warship.). Don’t worry if you have trouble keeping up. There’s a valuable and hilarious ‘Bandography’ in the appendix.

The entire book covers August to December of Tom’s sophomore year in high school. It may seem like a relatively short space of time, but if you have any memory at all of 10th grade (my fifth form) you will know that a lot can happen. Over the course of the book, Tom uncovers secrets about his father’s death, goes into therapy, beats up a bully, reads Brighton Rock (“the best book ever written”), reaches second base, rounds third, is hospitalized with a suspected skull fracture and performs in a Battle of the Bands as lead singer in The Chi-Mos! (First album: Balls Deep).

Among all the things Tom finds awful about school there is one teacher-imposed ritual in particular that he can’t stand.

It’s kind of like a cult.

They live for making you read it. When you do read it you can feel them all standing behind you in a semicircle wearing black robes with hoods, holding candles. they’re chanting ‘Holden, Holden, Holden…’ And they’re looking over your shoulder with these expectant smiles, wishing they were the ones discovering the earth-shattering joys of The Catcher in the Rye for the very first time.

Too late, man. I mean, I’ve been around the Catcher in the Rye block. I’ve been forced to read it like three hundred times, and don’t tell anyone but I think it sucks.

Of course, Tom has far more in common with Holden Caulfield than he knows. Mainly, they are both unreliable narrators. I don’t think I had even heard the term when I read The Catcher in the Rye. I took everything that Holden said at face value and never gave a thought to the idea that he might be in the middle of a mental health breakdown.

Years on, I’m a little more tuned in to the idea that a teenage narrator may not be in full possession of either his wits or the facts. In fact Tom Henderson probably knows and understands less than every other character in the novel, including his friend, Sam Hellerman.

And yet, despite Tom’s failure to grasp the truth, despite his sullen refusal to communicate clearly with almost anyone, despite his inability to identify his own shortcomings, he is an engaging and, even, charming hero. He doesn’t say much out loud, but the things that he wants to say–the things he thinks about saying–are witty and wonderful.

I used to think an unreliable narrator implied intent. The narrator was deliberately trying to mislead me. But Tom Henderson, like HC before him is as clueless as the rest of us were at the same age, fumbling around trying to form the relationships which will humiliate us the least.

King Dork is a great book. If you’re thinking about offering it to a young teen to read, you should know that it contains scenes of teenage sex and drug use. They’ll definitely want to read it when you tell them that.

I remember, I remember when I lost my mind…

It was the Summer of 2006 and “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley owned the world. It was a joyous piece of pop that seemed to spring out of nowhere. You know the original, but here’s one of my favourite cover versions by The Kooks for you to play while you’re reading.

I had been following one half of Gnarls Barkley even before the single broke out. A couple of years before “Crazy”, Danger Mouse released The Grey Album.

The Grey Album was the first great mash-up I discovered taking vocals from Jay-Z’s The Black Album and merging them with familiar musical moments from The Beatles by The Beatles, the album that has long been known as The White Album.

If you’re a fan of The Beatles and a fan of The Beatles, The Grey Album is a revelation where tunes like “Helter Skelter” are fused with “99 Problems” to produce something even angrier but more grounded than either track managed before.

But this isn’t about Danger Mouse. This is about the other half of Gnarls. The voice. Cee Lo Green. Despite the huge global success of “Crazy”, Cee Lo never managed to look too cool. Throughout the period he was promoting the single he was happy to play the goof. Because of that voice.

A couple of years on and “Crazy” is still fondly remembered, but Cee Lo is back with a new album and a new killer single. It’s been buzzing around for a while with a makeshift typographic video on YouTube that’s been a viral smash, but now he’s gone and made a big budget video for the song and it’s bloody marvelous.

You may not want to sing along too loudly as the lyrics get a little saucy, but if this isn’t the song you start humming the next time someone cuts in line or slows down before the traffic lights, I’ll eat a large sombrero.

A selection of Bookers. How many have you read?

All that means is, I’m a sucker for awards. I’m the reason they give out literary awards. Statistics prove that I am more likely to buy a book by an author I have never read if it wins the Booker.

So how’s that working out? I just finished Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize. I don’t usually read much historical fiction. I didn’t read The Other Boleyn Girl or watch The Tudors. My knowledge of the life and times of Henry VIII was sketchy at best and while I might have been able to conjure up, “divorced, beheaded, died, etc.” I wouldn’t have been able to tell you which wife was which.

So the book worked for me as a fictional primer on the court of King Henry, but I’m not sure it was entirely successful as a novel. The focus of the book is Thomas Cromwell a lowborn man who dragged himself from the gutter to the loftiest heights of Tudor society. He has the King’s ear and the Queen’s favour. He is feared and loved exactly as he expects.

It’s a compelling portrait of a complex man, but occasionally there are moments where it all feels a little too researched. The death from the “sweating sickness” of Cromwell’s wife and children is probably historical fact. Included here, these facts are exploited to provide literary motivation to a fictional construct. Following the death of his wife, Cromwell seeks comfort in the arms of her sister, Johane. Again there may be historical evidence for this (or not), but it reads like a authorial device not an organic plot development. Simply put, the book is sometimes a little clunky.

Wolf Hall may be the best fictional representation of the real life of Thomas Cromwell, but it’s not the best fiction.

There is also something clunky about the prose. I don’t mean that the writing is bad, far from it. Just that sometimes sentences are constructed that seem hard to parse. I found myself on more that one occasion having to drop out of a sentence to work out who the subject was.

It may be unfair to quote out of context like this but I want to offer an example of Mantel’s confusing prose.

You could watch Henry every day for a decade and not see the same thing. Choose your prince: he admires Henry more and more. Sometimes he seems hapless and sometimes feckless, sometimes a child, sometimes master of his trade. Sometimes he seems an artist, in the way his eyes range over his work; sometimes his hand moves and he doesn’t seem to see it move. If he had been called to a lower station in life, he could have been a travelling player, and leader of his troupe.

At Anne’s command he brings his nephew to court…

In the first paragraph it’s clear that it is Cromwell who admires Henry VIII. There is a long description of Henry’s attributes where the “he” throughout is the King. But the paragraph immediately following begins, “At Anne’s command he brings his nephew to court…”. It’s not especially jarring, but we’re back on Cromwell again without due notice. I read a lot. I understand how sentences are constructed (or, at least, I think I do) and this was just one of many occasions where I only realized who we were talking about two or three sentences in. It could be me, but I don’t think so.

Since winning the Booker, Wolf Hall has also won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US. So it must be kinda good, right?

There’s lots to like about Wolf Hall. It’s the best Booker of the past couple of years, but that’s not saying a whole lot. Last year’s winner was The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. It was a dreadful load of tosh. A first novel that felt like it on every page.

In 2007 the winner was The Gathering by Anne Enright. An Irish book so it’s bound to be jolly, right? Except it’s not. Equal parts dour and dull make it a joyless experience and unlikely that I will read Enright again. It’s not that everything has to be light and fun, but there’s only so much misery I can take.

Another year before that and we were back in India with Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss. My one-word review: yawn.

So why do I bother with award winners? Why do I persist with these meaningless indicators of other people’s taste?

The truth is that the hit rate for prize winners is about the same for every other kind of recommendation engine I could use. I try to read widely. I try to read books by authors I haven’t read before. And most of the time I’m disappointed. Most of the time the books are not revelatory works of exceptional brilliance. Most of the books I read do not change the way I look at the world. Most novels do not make me grateful for the gift of literacy.

But, once in a while, I read something truly great. Once in a while I’ll read something because it won a prize and discover that, perhaps coincidentally, it is also a tremendous work. It happened with Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, it happened with J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur.

The Remains of the Day.

Staying On.

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

And, of course, Midnight’s Children.

Maybe it will happen again this year.