August 2007 Archives

Flash Gordon premieres tonight! Are you excited?

Oh, you're not. Okay, that's fine. Go ahead and be a jerk. I'll be over here, filled with glee. I actually got to see a screener of the first episode (that's just one of the perks of being an internet television critic; I also get 50% off my semicolons at punctuation.net), and it looked pretty good.

That is, the television show in my head looked pretty good. It turns out that "advance copies" are actually in advance of special effects. So the things I watched actually involved Flash Gordon and Dale Gordon running in fear from a very pleasant looking field. And a pickup truck being stalked by a ball on a stick, which I guess could be unnerving in the right situation. My point is that it's hard to really get into a sci-fi spectacle when the vast alien landscape is represented by a green curtain and a subtitle that says "alien landscape".

Of course, I was helped a bit by getting to tour the sets, which are housed in a barn hundreds of miles from Vancouver, BC. They didn't have to blindfold us during the trip, because we had to leave at something like 4:00 am, which is like 9:00 the previous night to internet television writers. Anyway, we got to see cool set elements like this statue, which looks suspiciously like the cover of Atlas Shrugged. I assume it's going to be one of the things looming in the background, although I'm not ruling out the possibility of it coming to life and chasing Flash and Dale around. If they're not going to give me special effects, I'm happy to make up my own.

I did get a good look at Ming, though. Unsurprisingly, they've decided to move away from the Fu Manchu-style Ming from the original Flash Gordon comic strip (and awesome 1980 movie that I know is what you think of every time I mention Flash Gordon). He operates a bit more like a vicious CEO, I guess, although that doesn't mean he doesn't have a dungeon and a torture chamber. I mean, how are you going to run a planet without occasionally (i.e. "every single episode, if they know what's good for them") strapping somebody to a complicated piece of furniture and threatening them with an even more complicated doodad? That's how you keep people in line!

In fact, judging from the first episode, fans of people getting captured, escaping, and getting recaptured are in luck. And as it happens, I am in favor of that! I still prefer Flash Gordon as a serial, which means somebody ought to be in peril every fifteen minutes.

And it helps if they're being menaced by somebody who knows how to dress. Since Ming no longer sports the four-foot moustaches, he can't really carry off the giant gold lamé lapels and red robes. So they've put him in this stylish number, because we all know that people who wear collarless jackets are up to no good. That was the real reason people burned all those Beatles albums, you know.

Anyway, not that I'm telling you not to watch, but it turns out the premiere will be on DVD on Tuesday. That's pretty quick work! While you're at the store, you might also be interested in the fact that the 1980 movie has just come out on DVD. Oh, wait -- that's me who's interested in that. Sorry about that.

Naturally, you will be wondering if I have maintained my objectivity after being lured by the outskirts-of-Vancouver insiders with their insider looks at statues, costumes, and the interior of barns. I can't promise that I haven't been lured over to the dark side. But I am going to be watching the premiere, even though I've already seen the non-SFX version.

Personally, I predict that special effects will improve the experience.

For those of us not lucky enough to pony up for the swanky digital likes of BBC America -- thanks, Snell, rub it in! -- there's thankfully still plenty of good stuff to watch on TV this summer. Stuff that doesn't involve fat people exercising for our collective amusement, even!

USA's Burn Notice is near-ideal summer viewing. It won't even come close to taxing your brain, but it's smart and witty enough to let you turn your brain off for an hour every Thursday night without feeling guilty about it.

Star Jeffrey Donovan has a sort of cold-blooded, reptilian charisma that he uses to good effect, whether he's playing a womanizing tycoon in a certain Will Smith movie I'm mildly ashamed to have seen, or a brain-damaged police detective with a bullet in his skull in his previous stab at USA Network stardom, Touching Evil.

Here, his distant, vaguely robotic demeanor serves him particularly well as Michael Westin, a wrongly ousted spy whose good heart is buried under multiple layers of kevlar, combat, and general paranoia. Westin's calculated, tactical, improvisation-heavy approach to tackling dangerous situations is a neat touch, pleasantly reminiscent of the glory days of MacGyver. Throw in a smoldering Gabrielle Anwar as his formidable ex-IRA girlfriend, and the perpetually-worth-watching Bruce Campbell as his genially sleazy pal, and you've got a sunny, laid-back mojito of a series. It goes down easy, and it won't take too many brain cells with it.

Crave something more cerebral? Get caught up with Damages, FX's outstandingly creepy new murder mystery/legal series. Rose Byrne is a naive young lawyer who finds herself working for superattorney Glenn Close, in the midst of a thorny case involving scandal-plagued CEO Ted Danson and the billions he swindled from his employees. Meanwhile, flash-forwards to six months in the future find a bloodied Byrne in police custody, dead-eyed and haggard, and the prime suspect in a brutal murder.

Close is unsurprisingly marvelous as the Machiavellian attorney, running her firm with a ruthlessness that any respectable mafia don would envy. She plays things close to the vest, leaving the viewer perpetually guessing what's going on behind her eyes -- and, perhaps, wondering whether her jaw is going to unhinge so she can devour some hapless victim whole. If she's an unrepentant monster, why does she so clearly love her husband? And if she's not so bad on the inside, why does she go to such vicious, frightening lengths to manipulate everyone and everything around her?

Byrne more than holds her own, too, conveying all of her character's doubts and suspicions with admirably subtle facial expressions and body language. The clever writing lets ordinary objects, innocently introduced in a flashback, take on ominous new meanings when they're found at the future crime scene. The plot twists are entertaining and surprising, but Damages' real oomph comes from the fevered, claustrophobic atmosphere it creates. It's a uniquely uncomfortable show, favorably reminiscent of Hitchcock.

Need something to lighten up the tension? God bless the Brits, yet again, for bringing David Tennant back in a triumphant third season of Doctor Who, now making its stateside debut on the SciFi Channel. The Doctor's an incredible character -- funny, daring, tender, and frightening, all at once -- and Tennant plays him to the hilt. This season, he's paired with the superb Freema Agyeman, as whip-smart new companion Martha Jones, for another round of improbable adventures. Even at its worst -- let's just say "pig men," and leave it at that -- the show's still marvelously silly fun. At it's best, its thrills, chills, and great big unabashed heart (two of them, in the Doctor's case) can give even the most jaded viewer the best kind of goosebumps.

Meanwhile, SciFi's better-than-average Eureka returns for its sophomore season, displaying a surprising skill for mining the previous season's plots for intriguing new twists and sneakily intelligent drama. On the surface, it's still the amiable, accessible Northern Exposure-with-death-rays it was last year. But underneath, it's weaving some intriguing plot and character threads that all seem to be leading somewhere big.

In all, this summer's crop of scripted series seems a lot brainier and better, at least percentagewise, than the shows most networks trot out in the fall and midseason. Kinda makes me wish it could be summer all year round -- on TV, at least.

BBC America's Jekyll (see airtimes) is, oddly enough, written by Steven Moffat. This site has a long, tortured history with Mr. Moffat. We've praised Coupling on numerous occasions, although we didn't really like most of the fourth season. His four episodes of the revived Doctor Who are among the series' best.

But then there's the down side. When one of us suggested that the way the character Jeff was sent off in the final episode of Coupling seemed disrespectful to the character and the actor who played him, Moffat wrote us personally to complain about our characterization and point out that he holds nothing but the highest respect for that actor.

Things are weird after you have a painful interaction like that. I suspect Phil will never watch Coupling again, despite the sheer brilliance of those first three seasons. Myself, I've let it go, mostly because I can't help but love those Doctor Who episodes. Seriously. "Girl in the Fireplace?" Best. Episode. Ever. Even if it is giving my son nightmares about robots now. (Daddy's fault.)

Now here comes along another show that proves that, emotionally scarring e-mails to TeeVee notwithstanding, Steven Moffat really knows how to write. Following up the farce of Coupling and the spooky sci-fi of Doctor Who, Jekyll is on the horror and psychological thriller side of the ledger. And it's really fantastic stuff.

The subject matter may differ, but Jekyll shows Moffat using all the tricks that have served him well in both Coupling and Doctor Who. Funny, awkward meet-cute at a dinner party? Check. Conversation between a character and a previously-recorded video of another character? Check. Weird time sequences that bounce back and forth, with plots that eat their own tails? Checky-check-check. And laugh-out-loud dialogue? Yes again.

Anyway, to the details: Jekyll is a modern take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, obviously. However, in this six-hour miniseries the Jekyll is Dr. Tom Jackman, and early on he laughs off the suggestion that he could be the descendant of the namesake from Stevenson's book. But facts are facts: Jackman's got another person inside him, who shares his body and uses it to do all sorts of things that the upright father of two would never dream of doing.

If this sounds like a bog standard horror movie set-up, you're right. But it doesn't do Jekyll justice, because of the inventive ways Moffat has chosen to tell the story. Rather than go chronologically, the story whips around, first introducing us to Jekyll and Hyde, then slowly revealing the nature of their shared-body arrangement and the rules they've (seemingly) agreed to follow. We meet their concierge (for lack of a better word), played by future Bionic Woman star Michelle Ryan. We meet Jackman's wife, played by Gina Bellman of Coupling fame. And eventually (but only at the series' halfway point) we see how Jackman came to first discover he had a Mr. Hyde inside him.

It's a fantastic thrill ride, peppered with surprise character turns, including a breathtaking scene when Mrs. Jackman is confronted with Mr. Hyde for the first time and reacts in an unexpected way, one that took my breath away and made me sit up and take notice at the electric performance I was witnessing.

Those of us who have been at the receiving end of Steven Moffat's Hyde-like wrath may want to avoid Jekyll. But everyone else should seek out BBC America and give it a look. It's, quite simply, the best thing I've seen on TV all summer.