Iain J Coleman (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} iainjcoleman) wrote,@ 2008-02-15 00:37:00 |
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TV reviews
Tonight's telly:
The best thing we watched on telly tonight was Tenko, but since that's a week-old recording of a decades-old series, it doesn't really count as "tonight's telly", does it?
No, tonight was the second episode of Ashes to Ashes. It was, I'm glad to say, a great improvement on episode one. Compared to Life on Mars, it's a load of shallow tosh - but compared to last week's episode, it's fun and entertaining. Alex's conviction that her colleagues are just imaginary constructs still threatens to kneecap the drama, but apart from that I found tonight's episode much more enjoyable than last week's.
Then the was The Big Bang Theory, a new American sitcom about a bunch of socially inept physicists. how could I not watch this?
It turned out to be a simultaneous experience of joy and frustration. Joy, because the script was wonderful. Seriously, it really rang true for me as a physicist. It's not just that the jargon was right, though that was impressive enough. It was that the mindset of physicists was brilliantly captured by the writer. These were my people.
Or at least, they should have been. Two problems kept the show from greatness. The first, and worst, was the acting. The whole script was realised with that terribly mannered, arch, US sitcom style of acting that just screams "Laugh! Laugh at me! Look, I'm doing a funny voice, with outlandish mannerisms to boot! Laugh, damn you all, laugh!" It would have been so much realer, and so much funnier, with more naturalistic performances. US sitcoms can manage this - see the US version of The Office - but I spent most of the time imagining how easy it would be to shift this script to the UK just by changing a handful of words, and how much better it would be with proper British screen acting. The second issue was the laugh track. These are generally hateful at the best of times, but this one was so exuberant, and featured so many random shouts and call-outs, that I imagined it might itself build into a lecture on Aristotle's theory of humour.
It's sad because with a few stylistic tweaks this could be a great show.
Tonight's telly:
The best thing we watched on telly tonight was Tenko, but since that's a week-old recording of a decades-old series, it doesn't really count as "tonight's telly", does it?
No, tonight was the second episode of Ashes to Ashes. It was, I'm glad to say, a great improvement on episode one. Compared to Life on Mars, it's a load of shallow tosh - but compared to last week's episode, it's fun and entertaining. Alex's conviction that her colleagues are just imaginary constructs still threatens to kneecap the drama, but apart from that I found tonight's episode much more enjoyable than last week's.
Then the was The Big Bang Theory, a new American sitcom about a bunch of socially inept physicists. how could I not watch this?
It turned out to be a simultaneous experience of joy and frustration. Joy, because the script was wonderful. Seriously, it really rang true for me as a physicist. It's not just that the jargon was right, though that was impressive enough. It was that the mindset of physicists was brilliantly captured by the writer. These were my people.
Or at least, they should have been. Two problems kept the show from greatness. The first, and worst, was the acting. The whole script was realised with that terribly mannered, arch, US sitcom style of acting that just screams "Laugh! Laugh at me! Look, I'm doing a funny voice, with outlandish mannerisms to boot! Laugh, damn you all, laugh!" It would have been so much realer, and so much funnier, with more naturalistic performances. US sitcoms can manage this - see the US version of The Office - but I spent most of the time imagining how easy it would be to shift this script to the UK just by changing a handful of words, and how much better it would be with proper British screen acting. The second issue was the laugh track. These are generally hateful at the best of times, but this one was so exuberant, and featured so many random shouts and call-outs, that I imagined it might itself build into a lecture on Aristotle's theory of humour.
It's sad because with a few stylistic tweaks this could be a great show.
