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| The CW |
The cable and premium landscape is lacking a bit in new shows. I expected one new show from all the premium channels, but only Cinemax is launching a new show in the fall. Cable's full of series' with no air date and also reality television. I don't write about reality television in the blog, and writing about shows with no air date doesn't seem worth the time and effort. Of the shows I preview today, I think Arrow could be the best of the bunch, even though the creative team produced No Ordinary Family two years ago.
THE CW
ARROW
Premiere Date: Wednesday, October 10 at 9PM
Premise: (from The CW's press release, May 2012) After a violent shipwreck, billionaire playboy Oliver Queen was missing and presumed dead for five years before being discovered alive on a remote island in the Pacific. When he returns home to Starling City, his devoted mother Moira, much-beloved sister Thea, and best friend Tommy welcome him home, but they sense Oliver has been changed by his ordeal on the island. While Oliver hides the truth about the man he's become, he desperately wants to make amends for the actions he took as the boy he was.
Thoughts: Arrow's received significant buzz over the summer. Joblo.com posted about the extended trailer because they were excited by the possibility of who the bad guy will be. I am not a comic book guy. I used to name The Green Arrow my favorite superhero around 2004 because I thought Legloas was a bad ass in Lord of the Rings. At the very least, the claim pissed my friend off. I watched the first trailer than the extended preview, read about the show on message boards and io9, and read interviews with Guggenheim and Berlanti. Why am I optimistic about Arrow? I'm sort of buying into what Guggenheim and Berlanti are selling about the tone being similar to Chris Nolan's Batman movies. The show is full of pretty people, but the tone and atmosphere is dark and gritty. It makes sense to tap into what made Nolan's Batman work because Green Arrow is a wanna-be Batman character, a billionaire playboy who fights crime in a suit with cool gadgets; Oliver Queen wants to make amends for his family by doing vigilante work.
My concerns with the show begin with the creative team. No Ordinary Family is one of the worst superhero dramas made. The whole team didn't know what they were doing, what they wanted the show to be, how they should balance serialization with crummy case-of-the-week stories. There was nothing fun about NOF. Green Lantern, the Ryan Reynolds/Blake Lively film, flopped in movies and received bad reviews. Some of the Green Lantern team is working on Arrow. None of this seems to bode well for the creative side of Arrow; however, Dan Fienberg wrote that the pilot is 'short on comic book whimsy.' That is good because NOF never figured out comic book whimsy. It successfully made Michael Chiklis into a jackass every week, though.
Audiences shouldn't expect the quality of Chris Nolan films. Arrow is a CW show on a CW budget. The tone and the atmosphere seem inspired by Nolan's Batman. That's all. The full premise lists Oliver's desire to reconcile with a former girlfriend he treated poorly as the first thing he wants to accomplish post-shipwreck. The CW characters are nothing without romantic angst. I hope Arrow will be thought-provoking, have good action scenes, compelling antagonists, and depth. If a teenage boy is performing brain surgery in episode five, I'm out. I plan on writing about Arrow weekly.
Chance of Weekly Review: 100%
BEAUTY & THE BEAST
Created By Eric Charmelo & Nicole Snyder
Premiere Date: Thursday, October 11 at 9PM
Premise: (from The CW's press release, May 2012) Catherine Chandler is a smart, no-nonsense homicide detective. Several years earlier, Catherine witnessed the murder of her mother at the hands of two gunmen. Catherine would have been killed too, but someone - or something - saved her. No one has ever believed her, but she knows it wasn't an animal that attacked the assassins...it was human.
Thoughts: The CW must be counting on some of the Twilight audience watching Beauty & The Beast, right? Handsome man saves Kristen Kreuk from danger. Beauty and The Beast develop an unbreakable bond, somehow bonded by fate. I've seen critics and bloggers harp on the unbeastliness of The Beast character. Good looking people are still monstrous. I don't care about that. Nothing stood out in the five minute preview. The main mystery is rote. Kreuk wants to learn more about the night two men murdered her mother and why Vincent Keller, the beast, saved her life and has watching out for her for almost a decade. I feel that the week-to-week product will be procedural base. The mythology doesn't seem to be present; at the most, audiences will be curious to learn more about the army's DNA experiments. The original series that aired from 1987-1990 seemed more magical and more visually appealing than the 2012 remake. I'll probably write about the pilot just to see how Kreuk does as a homicide detective and whether any sparks exist between her and the dude.
Chance of Weekly Review: 3%
EMILY OWENS, MD
Created By Jennie Snyder Urman
Premiere Date: Tuesday, October 16 at 9PM
Premise: (from The CW's press release, May 2012) At long last, Emily Owens feels like she is an actual grown-up. She can finally put her high school days as the geeky-girl-with-flop-sweats behind her; she's graduated from medical school and is now a first-year intern at Denver Memorial Hospital, where she'll have the chance to work with world-famous cardiologist Dr. Gina Beckett - and where, not-so-coincidentally, her med-school crush Will Rider is also an intern. So why does everyone keep warning her that the hospital is just like high school?
Thoughts: Emily Owens is warned that the hospital is just like high school because Jennie Snyder Urman wanted to bring high school melodrama to the high stakes world of medicine. The main character is bubbly, sweet, innocent, insecure, kind, caring, etc. She's the kind of doctor patients love because she actively cares about the patients. The other doctors enter and leave and never make eye contact. Urman makes it easy to root for Emily. Her high school nemesis works alongside her and is still mean; the boy she likes doesn't like her back; she struggles to fit in; her attending physician questions her abilities. Emily alone can empower herself and overcome the rejections and disappointments she encounters as a med student. I don't think the premise is interesting, and the characters aren't very memorable. I never liked melodramatic medical shows like Private Practice and Greys Anatomy.
Critics criticized the title because it doesn't say anything about the show. Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman worked just fine for that show. I doubt many people watch this show anyway.
Chance of Weekly Review: 0%
SHOWTIME
OLIVER STONE'S SECRET HISTORY OF AMERICA
Created By Oliver Stone
Premiere Date: November 2012
Premise: (from Showtime's press release, August 2009) As Americans, do we really know and understand our shared and complicated history? How do we recall the small details and forgotten players that influenced some of the biggest events from America's past? Will our children actually get the "real" or whole story from reading history books? And how will it affect the future of our country?
Thoughts: My favorite book is Leo Tolstoy's War & Peace. Tolstoy uses many pages to portray the war and take historians to task for the way they depicted history. Tolstoy disputes key moments and deconstructs them to prove the key moments weren't key at all. The maligned commander in chief Kutuzov was portrayed as an aloof old man who refused to battle when battle was needed. Tolstoy wrote a magnificent defense of Kutuzov. Kutuzov, in Tolstoy's view, was the one person in the Russian army who gave Russia its glory back and who understood what the Sovereign and the German theoreticians didn't. Tolstoy had the same mistrust for history books as Oliver Stone. Oliver Stone's documentary seems similar to Tolstoy's restructuring and re-contextualization of history. If Oliver Stone comes near the quality of Tolstoy's deep study of the Russian-France war in the years from 1805 to 1813, this documentary should be spectacular.
Chance of Weekly Review: 0%
COMEDY CENTRAL
BRICKLEBERRY
Premiere Date: Tuesday, September 25 at 10PM
Premise: (From Comedy Central's Press Release, August 2012) In the series premiere of the animated half-hour series, Brickleberry National Park is facing closure, but not if the park's dysfunctional park rangers can help it!
Thoughts: Comedy Central's Welcome to Bickleberry on YouTube contains 50 seconds of animated animals fornicating in a variety of positions as a group of kids watch. Their park ranger announces that the scene in front of them represents nature in all its majesty. Daniel Tosh is an executive producer of the show. A new ranger is brought to Brickberry to whip the park into shape. The new authority threatens the old guard of rangers who are content to do their worst. I don't know what kind of jokes will be told or what the style of humor will be. I'll wager it'll be irreverent. I'm all for a funny animated series. I'm going to check out the pilot.
Chance of Weekly Review: 29%
PBS
CALL THE MIDWIFE
Premiere Date: Sunday, September 30 at 8PM
Premise: (From PBS YouTube Page, 2012) This moving, intimate, funny and true-to-life series, based on the best-selling memoirs of the late Jennifer Worth, tells colorful stories of midwifery and families in London's East End in the 1950s.
Thoughts: BBC aired the six episode series a few months ago and averaged over 10 million viewers. The main character, Jenny Lee, works in the poorest neighborhood of the East End, ministering pregnant women who will give birth in appalling conditions. The music in the trailer is quite pleasant and pastoral. The trailer itself is a collection of scenes. PBS loves buying up period pieces from the BBC. They've had success airing Downton Abbey. I figure this series will succeed. I'm patiently waiting for PBS to buy the rights to the BBC's Hollow Crown series--the four historical plays from Richard II to Henry V.
Chance of Weekly Review: 0%
CINEMAX
HUNTED
Created By Frank Spotnitz
Premiere Date: Friday, October 19 at 10PM
Premise: (From Cinemax's Press Release, August 2012) From "The X-Files" writer and producer Frank Spotnitz comes this eight-episode drama set in the world of international espionage.
Thoughts: This is an espionage thriller. Melissa George's character survives an attempt on her life by members of her own team. Melissa George kicks a lot of ass in the trailer I watched. Hunted reminds me of Liam Neeson movies actually. I think of Wanted, too, only because the titles have the same number of letters. Cinemax may or may not have brought the show over from the BBC. Mr. Eko is one of the stars. If I remember the premiere in two months, I'll give it a go.
Chance of Weekly Review: 55%
THE YOUTUBE CLIP OF THE WEEK
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