Watching TV with Americans

Bandersnatch is such a radical piece of television storytelling that it doesn’t play on any of my devices.

I like to think of A Very English Scandal as the third in the Paddington trilogy.

Kim Bodnia is the unlikely TV sex symbol of our generation. He stands on the shoulders on Daniel Benzali and Dennis Franz, which can’t be fun for any of them.

The Academy hands out Oscars to television actors and TV movies. They should cut out the middleman and give them to TV shows next year.

Least liked Bond Girl becomes most famous Real Housewife.

Jussie Smollett leaves Empire for scripted reality spin-off.

The instant gratification of Killing Eve reminds me how little time we have for a new show to grow on us.

Dario Cecchini is the “Whaboom” of the Top Chef universe.

Crashing is just Rocky for comedians, right down to the hat.

Historically, GEICO has had a better hit rate on sketch comedy than SNL, and more subtly integrated product placement.

FX has cornered the market on languid anti-comedies that may or may not have something to do with Louis C.K.

With Married at First Sight and Surviving R. Kelly, Lifetime proves it loves shows about men getting away with mentally abusing women.

The Simpsons episode on To Kill a Mockingbird made the case for Go Set a Watchman without even mentioning the sequel.

Not only is Last Week Tonight the best investigative journalism on TV, it’s also a transatlantic reboot of The Soup.

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is perilously close to joining the ranks of the bad television it routinely parodies.

I don’t want to keep going on and on about how futile it is to DVR R-rated movies broadcast by TV stations but I’ve recorded the entire Rambo franchise three separate times now and the film closest to the original theatrical version was in Spanish.

The Bachelor’s celebrity fanbase seems to consist entirely of the American comedy elite.

Doctor Who: Resolution was so unremarkable, it’s the best special they’ve done in years.

Americans watching Season 3 of Poldark must think all Britons are pathologically suspicious of European politics and determined to cut ties with the continent at any cost.

Last Call with Carson Daly cancelled. In other news, headline surely from past suddenly appears incongruously in present day.

Netflix demonstrates to broadcast networks how to put theatre on TV by recording a piece of theatre and showing it on TV.

National Geographic and The History Channel are staking their future on original dramatic television in the hope that one day they will be even less educational than TLC.

I was in the UK just long enough to see a David Bowie documentary on the BBC. You know, a weekend.

Netflix gang-cancels its Marvel shows as Thanos joins the corporate board.

Outlander continues to refuse to recast its rapidly ageing leads. Even ex-cast members can only join other shows as the older versions of their characters.

The “shocking” finale of this season of The Bachelor is him marrying social media.

By the time my son graduates college, Conan will be a Vine.

Do we really need a Sopranos prequel movie? I feel like The Real Housewives of New Jersey already exhausted the franchise.

PBS Kids’ Let’s Go Luna is absolutely unassailable in every regard other than how long it took to appear.

NBC’s tribute to the Elvis ’68 Comeback Special seemed more like a compilation of all those moments from The Bachelor where the couple enter a room and someone you’ve never heard of is singing.

Proven Innocent promoted its Pilot the day after it aired with a video telling viewers what they had missed because Kelsey Grammer.

Good Girls is really implausible. Christina Hendricks couldn’t get away with a masked robbery. I could draw her body from memory right now.

A lot of the shows my son watches are on Noggin. If only I knew what Noggin was.

After years of fucking around with style, The Walking Dead has finally settled on a silent movie melodrama approach. And I could not be enjoying it more.

Fresh Off The Boat addressed the topic of people within minority groups not liking each other personally. It’s a triumph in representation to have enough people from the same minority on screen to do that storyline.

It was announced that Elementary will end in 2019, leaving a gap in the market for a sleuth-led police procedural or show about an unorthodox genius who works within conformist institutions.

This entry was posted on March 2, 2019 at 11:00 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.