So, what new shows are on the air? Are they any good? And what are their chances for survival? Televised Revolution is here to help with a primer to the uncharted waters of this years US TV season.

Community
The show with the biggest buzz behind it, supported by a favourable critical reaction, Community is certainly one of the stronger pilots this year.

Joel McHale (The Soup) stars as a suspended lawyer who attends a community college after his degree was deemed invalid by the State Bar. A single-camera comedy, the show feels like a 1980′s Bill Murray comedy, with its smart-ass protagonist leading a group of aimless ne’er do-wells.

McHale is fun as the morally-challenged lead of the show, with strong comedic contributions from the entire ensemble. Concerning, though, is the casting of Chevy Chase. His role as a mature-aged student simply isn’t meaty or amusing enough for the on-screen presence and star power wielded by Chase. It’s great seeing him on-screen, but he just feels mis-cast. It’s a role that should have just gone to a good character actor. Instead audience expectation is just too high.

Community stars Joel McHale, Chevy Chase, Yvette Nicole Brown, and John Oliver. The pilot was directed by Joe & Anthony Russo, and created by Dan Harmon.

Eastwick
Based on the 1987 film Witches of Eastwick (itself an adaptation of the John Updike book), Eastwick centers on three women from a small town who meet at a wishing fountain. A man of mystery, Darryl Van Horne, arrives on the scene to ignite their hearts and the magic that exists within them.

The show feels like a mix of Desperate Housewives and The Witches of Eastwick movie, with a dash of the Gilmore Girls small-town flavour thrown in for texture. That later vibe may simply come from the fact the shows town centre is in fact a re-dressed Stars Hollow.

The casting of the show is serviceable and based on long-lasting goodwill from Due South, I’m always happy to see Paul Gross in anything. Visually, the show isn’t particularly distinct and the script just felt lifeless. Eastwick is a show lacking any sense of joy or spark. That said, it may be worth revisiting in a few weeks time.

Eastwick stars Rebecca Romaijn, Paul Gross, Jaime Ray Newman, and Lindsay Price. The pilot was directed by David Nutter (Smallville, Supernatural, and The X-Files), nd Executive Produced by Maggie Friedman.

Cougar Town
I find Courtney Cox to be shrill and awful. And the cultural fascination with middle-aged women hunting young men as lovers is over-done.

Needless to say, I come to Cougar Town with a pre-established animosity. I also didn’t make it to the end of the 20 minute pilot.

Courtney Cox stars as a middle-aged, upper-middle class, sexually charged woman. She shares custody of her smart-mouth son with her financially destitute ex-husband, and has two strong female friends. This is a show that offers no surprises and seemingly has no reason to exist. It certainly doesn’t exist to entertain.

Some of the one-liners in the show aren’t bad, but that’s to be expected from show-creator Bill Lawrence (Scrubs). The problem with the show is that there simply isn’t enough depth to the characters for the audience to care, nor is the premise strong enough to engage. Cougar Town is reminiscent of the pilot to Weeds, only strip away the weed, biting wit, and the strong, emotionally layered female lead.

Cougar Town stars Courtney Cox, Christa Miller, and Busy Phillips. The show show was co-created by Kevin Biegel and Bill Lawrence.

Modern Family
Another single-camera comedy, Modern Family sets its focus on three connected families. A true surprise, the show lifts itself above what could be a tired over-done premise and delivers a show that actually felt fresh.

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Ed O’Neil (Married With Children) is excellent as the tired Jay Pritchett, an older guy who has married (presumably) for the second time in life to his much younger latino-bride Gloria, of whom has an 11 year-old son from an existing marriage. Pritchett clearly feels his age and clearly feels ill at ease with his younger wife and step-son.

Julie Bowen (Boston Legal, Ed) is Jay Pritchetts daughter from his previous marriage, Claire. Claire’s family live the stereotypical family form. She has a loving husband, two daughters, and one son. There is absolutely nothing original about the setup as we’ve been watching this family on TV for decades in different incarnations, yet it doesn’t feel tired on this show. Bowen is a great screen-presence, as is Ty Burrell who plays her husband. Burrell is provided the best scene in the show as he attempts to follow through with a threat to his son that if the mis-handles his plastic BB gun, Burrell would retaliate by shooting the son.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson (The Class) is Mitchell Pritchett, Jay Pritchetts homosexual son. Mitchell is returning from a trip overseas with his partner where they adopted a daughter. Mitchell is ill at ease with the public perceptions that surround his sexuality.

It’s only evident in the final scene of the pilot that the three distinct families are connected.

Christoper Lloyd (Frasier, Wings) and Steven Levitan (Just Shoot Me, Back To You) have produced a progressive, yet very accessible comedy about what it means to be a modern family. The show is very sitcommy and offers very little in the way of innovation, but as far as comfort television goes, this is sterling. I started watching the show with very low expectations and finished happy to see more.

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As the week goes on, Televised Revolution will bring you more reviews of new TV shows hitting the US airwaves, including Flash Forward, Mercy, The Good Wife, and The Forgotten.

ADbc is a new panel comedy show produced for SBS.

It’s focus: history.

It’s host: RRR’s Breakfasters host Sam Pang.

It’s quality: Well, it makes me want to believe in evolution.

The concept behind ADbc is good. Panelists compete by answering trivia questions about history. Much like the UK panel show QI, the comedy and and general thrust of the show is derived from the on-air talent playing with the comedic potential of facts and trivia. There are a few fundamental problems with the program though that prevent the show from being appointment television.

ADbc’s host, Sam Pang, is very stiff. He seems like a nice and affable guy. And give him some more experience on TV, he could likely very easily carry a show like this. From the first episode of this series, it’s apparent that Pang needs time to develop his skill and find his television mojo. Pang should be given time as a panelist on a show like this before graduating to being the host. He’s still too green and too reliant on working from the quiz show questions.

The visual look of the show is off-putting and make it look like a community TV game show with a decent budget. The set design is far too iPod white. I’m pretty sure Dulux now have a paint in that shade. Comedy doesn’t stem from sterile cleanliness. This is why there has never been a good hospital-based comedy. The graphics interrupt the flow of the show a little too much and were obviously created to allow for frequent edit points throughout the show.

But, please don’t read too much into my negativity. The show does have potential. Sam Pang does feel more relaxed in the second episode and the show has a better flow & rhythm as a result. Hopefully with a bit more time, Pang will find his groove. Also, I really dig the small musical tracks that are run over the graphics, of which are performed by Tripod.

With a visual style that plays against the potential of the show and a host who is visibly inexperienced, ADbc is fighting an uphill battle against itself. Given that it’s on SBS, the show will be given time to air the entire run of the show and allow it time to develop and grow.

ADbc airs on SBS1 Thursday nights at 8:30pm. Panel guests on the first episode are Tony Martin, Matt Preston, Emily Booth, and Celia Pacquola.

The Unusuals, a new series to air on the ABC, is a cop show unlike anything aired before, yet emulates almost every show you’ve ever aid your eyes upon. At its core, The Unusuals has adopted a Lost-style mystery involving the death of a police officer. One of the cops in the squad are responsible and each of them have a mystery background they’d rather not have revealed. The show works where other Lost wannabes failed in that it is to Lost what post-modernism is to modernism. Yes, it’s a Lost wannabe, but it is so much more.

How can one truly describe The Unusuals? It’s Lost meets The Job, meets Pulp Fiction, meets almost every Nickolodeon kids show you’ve seen, meets Escher.

What’s It About?
Detective Casey Shraeger is a cop working Vice. One night she finds herself pulled from her current assignment working a street corner and assigned to the Homicide Department. A cop has been murdered that night and she’s assigned to work with the cops partner to solve the crime.

As Shraeger and her new partner, Det. Joe Walsh, investigate the murder of Walsh’s partner, Shraeger learns that everybody in the squad has a secret. Shraegers new Sergeant, Harvey Brown, informs her that he wants his squad cleaned up and so brought her in to facilitate this.

This serves as the plot of the series. What it doesn’t tell you is that the show is wickedly funny. The dialogue is witty and sharp, with each character offbeat in their own charming way. What really makes the show work, however, is the constant abstract police calls one hears in the background of scenes, met by bizarre background site gags. We’re talking arrests of men in hotdog suits, ninjas, and my favourite, the twin midget ladies identically dressed. Oh midgets, you have my heart.

Who’s in the darn thing?
The casting in this is terrific. Serving as the two leads, Joan of Arcadia’s Amber Tamblyn leads the cast as Shraeger, with Jeremy Renner (who I’ll admit to unfamiliarity with) as her partner Walsh. Adam Goldberg (Entourage, 2 Nights In Paris, Dazed & Confused), Harold Perrineau (Lost, Oz, The Matrix films), Terry Kinney (Oz), and Monique Gabriela Curnen (The Dark Knight, Che) round out the cast.

What happens in that crucial first episode?
Meanwhile Detectives Banks and Delahoy investigate some missing neighborhood cats. Oh, and then there is that ongoing murder investigation.

Is it any good?
At least once a year I get to watch a new show that is filled with promise that is just darn exciting. Sometimes the shows meet that initial promise. Many times they don’t. The Unusuals is certainly oozing with potential. It’s funny, the cast are great, and there’s enough substance that coming back for the second episode is a no-brainer. That said, based on the tone of the show, there is a strong danger that it could potentially fall apart at any moment. Should the show get an early cancellation, expect to hear about this shows for years as people talk about yet another brilliant, but cancelled, series.

Locally, Channel 9 have reportedly got the broadcast rights to the series. It’s difficult to see how a show like this may fit with their schedule. Hopefully they’ll have enough faith in the series to give it a serious go.

Law & Order: UK has Dick Wolf taking the Law & Order formula and transplanting it to London. At its core, the investigation of a murder is a fairly easy to translate formula. What makes this such an interesting adaptation is that the half-hour Order section of the show requires a radical shift in its structure to accommodate a different legal system.

The translation, thankfully, actually works. For the most part.

What’s It About?
Law & Order follows a very specific formula. Each section of the show is broken into two halves. The first focuses on a murder investigation from the perspective of the detectives on the case. The second half hour focuses on the legal proceedings that follow, from the perspective of the DA and his Assistant DA. Occasionally there will be some blurring of the storyline with the police appearing in the second half of the show. It’s a rigid formula that seems to have worked.

Law & Order: UK is simply an extension of the franchise and does very little to the pre-established formula in order to make it function.

Who’s in the darn thing?
Law & Order: UK stars Bradley Walsh (Coronation Street), Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Galactica), Harriet Walter, Ben Daniels, Freema Agyeman (Doctor Who), and Bill Paterson (Auf Wiedersehen, Pet). Interesting is the casting of Battlestar Galacticas Jamie Bamber as Detective Sergeant Matt Devlin, appearing on screen with his natural British accent.

What happens in that crucial first episode?
As with all of the thirteen episodes that comprise of the first series, the script for the first episode is adapted from an episode of the US series. Law & Order: UK show-runner Chris Chibnall reportedly watched every episode of Law & Order to find 15-16 that would translate well to Law & Order: UK.

The first episode is based on the 1992 L&O episode “Cradle to Grave” in which the police investigate the death of an infant who has died after a gas leak in a poorly maintained apartment building. It’s a fairly by-the-numbers affair. While the original series is rarely highly engaging, it’s a shame that the UK adaptation didn’t choose to use a more meaty episode for its launch.

Is it any good?
I’ll admit by bias up front on this, I’m generally not very keen on watching procedural police dramas. It isn’t that I dislike them, I just find them to be a very disposable form of television drama and don’t have reason to return week after week. That said, I don’t generally hate them either. And I didn’t hate this.

Ultimately, Law & Order is a fairly well put together procedural police drama. While the format adapts quite well for the UK, the show does maintain a certain air of inauthenticity. It certainly feels like the UK, but it doesn’t feel like UK television. Once Law & Order: UK starts producing original scripts that reflect their own culture, the show will certainly be a much more fulfilling experience for the viewer and cease to be purely a novel experience.

What’s It About
Tim is your everyman character. A twenty-something New Yorker, Tim works in a non-descript job and lives with his equally non-descript girlfriend. The biggest problem for Tim is that while he is certainly not a malicious guy and is rather well-intentioned, he is just a tad ethically dubious. And this is what regularly kicks him in the pants.

Who’s in the darn thing?
Nobody. It’s a cartoon.

What happens in that crucial first episode?
Each episode is broken into two separate stories. In the first story, we find Tims girlfriends parents visiting for the first time.

Walking through the front door, Tims girlfriend is angry, and her parents startled, to find Tim on the couch with a prostitute named Debbie. Whether Tim is telling the truth that it was an accident stemming from an attempt to call a plumber is questionable. Almost as questionable is whether Debbie is telling the truth that Tim rang her up stating ‘Cock-a-doodle-do, send someone over for some back door action at Tims place’. What we do know is, for a moment, Tim believes that he is innocent.

In the second story, a poorly planned birthday party ends with a very small turnout. In order to save the reputation of the party host, the small group of attendees concoct a wild tale of their night. The next morning, however, Tim finds that the story created for his night featured him getting raped by a homeless man. So what happens when Tim goes to the police station to identify the bum in a line-up? Does it end in sexy results? Tune in…

Is it any good?
The comedic tone seems very closely linked to Comedy Centrals mid-90’s animated series Dr Katz: Professional Therapist. Unlike most animated comedy shows, the jokes are not frenetic. In fact, most of the stories feature very little movement, with characters just standing around. Animation is, at times, possibly not the right term for this show. In many ways the shows style echoes the slacker minimalist lifestyle of the shows protagonist.

Depending on your comedic sensibilities, this may be well worth a watch for you. I’ll certainly be back for some more.

The Beverley Hills 90210 sequel series 90210 is one of the more interesting series launching in 2009 due to the wealth of history that underpins it. BH 90210 was the show that launched the notion of the prime-time teen drama series, emulated by shows like Dawsons Creek, The OC, Gossip Girl, and many, many more. Even series like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer have BH 90210 to thank for various plot, content, and structure conventions.

And so when reviewing 90210, it’s difficult to ignore that past. As a spin-off series of sorts, it doesn’t back away from its origins, but now comes with so many of the new conventions and expectations of a teen drama that have been built upon by the many BH 90210 imitators.

So, what’s it about?
Annie and Dixon Wilson are two teens from Kansas who are forced to move to Beverley Hills with their parents Harry and Debbie. Harry’s mother Tabitha is a former actress who now has a drinking problem, prompting Harry to move his family so that she can be looked after. The family are forced to deal with the culture shock of now living in Beverley Hills – a world that is astoundingly familiar if you’ve turned on the television in the past 20 years.

Who’s In The Darn Thing?
Shenae Grimes (Degrassi: The Next Generation) is seemingly the focus of the show as Annie Wilson, with Tristan Wilds (The Wire) as the adopted brother Dixon. Trash-soap favourite Rob Estes (Melrose Place, Silk Stalkings) portrays the family father (and principal of West Beverley) Harry Wilson, with Lori Loughlin (Summerland, Full House) as the mother Debbie. Jessica Walters (Arrested Development) stands out and completely shines in a character that is barely removed from her Arrested Development character.

Additionally, Jennie Garth and Shannon Doherty have recurring guest roles as their BH 90210 characters Kelly and Brenda.

What happens in that crucial first episode?
The family rock up to meet grandma and live in their new home. Quickly they are whisked off to school. Annie befriends the schools popular bitch, Naomi, of whom steals Annie’s term paper to use as her own. Annie also also reunites with an ex-boyfriend named Ethan.

Meanwhile Dixon tries out for the school lacrosse team where he is blamed for starting a fight. Ethan knows that Dixon didn’t start the fight, but lies to protect a team mate, but eventually realises the error of his ways and comes clean about the incident. But, not before Dixon SMS’ Debbie to inform her that Ethan is cheating on her.

Riveting stuff, no?

Is it actually any good?
As stated earlier, 90210 is in an interesting position in which it has tried to retain the general ethos of the original series. That is to say that while it seeks to look hip and edgy as it deals with teen issues, an undercurrent of nice family values belies the entire series. At the same time, however, the genre has moved beyond that. The OC was clever in the way it blended the drama of the teen protagonists with the drama of their parental figures. 90210 takes this on board, but combines it with the approach of Degrassi: The Next Generation which also incorporates the lives of the protagonists of its original series, but showing them at their current station in life.

The show does make a few small missteps. First of all is the origin of the family moving from Kansas. It would have been nice to see the characters in their former hometown prior to moving to 90210 to at least create a sense of juxtaposition between their old and new lives. As they form in the pilot, they feel simply like new TV characters with no sense of history. The fundamental changes in their lives subsequently seem non-existent.

The second issue is that the teen characters are supposedly angered by the fact they had to move and are supposedly testy with their father. It’ difficult to accept this when it seems to be smiles-a-plenty.

90210 is lightweight and has very little going for it for discerning, adult viewers. That said, one could do worse. As long as there is nothing scheduled against it of note, the show should do okay. It’s difficult to imagine anyone going out of their way for this series, though.

90210 commences tonight on Channel 10 at 8:30pm

As such, it is interesting to watch the manner by which ABC Online is undoing the fine work of ABC1′s Media Watch.

This week Media Watch ripped into 2DayFM for their on-air stunts and the relative low brow nature of them. Media Watch questioned their ethics in putting to air segments such as a competition in which a man was to view four womens vaginas in studio and determine which belonged to his girlfriend.

Now, there is a delicious sense of irony that ABC Online have opted to sensationalize the Media Watch story by putting a framegrab of four g-string clad ladies on its site as a means to entice people to click on the Media Watch story link.

ABC Online:

ABC Online Up Close:

The ‘Best of abc.net.au’? Well, I guess that is really just a point of view.

Okay, perhaps that is a tad harsh. The show is by no means terrible, but this is a horribly bloated pilot that has such great production values and style that it covers up the fact that the series so far is a little bit under-developed. They are issues that can perhaps be straightened out as the series kicks off, but as it stands, Fringe is wonky.

So, what’s it about?
As this is a genre show in a post-Buffy world, our hero is a lithe blonde lady. In this instance, she works as an FBI agent. Her partner (in both senses of the term) is infected with some form of disease while they investigate an unusual happening in an aircraft and so she goes in search of a crazed scientist and his son (the only person who can make sense of his father) to find a cure. Said scientist apparently specialises in ‘Fringe’ science, including diverse fields like mind-control, teleportation, invisibility, and re-animation. Along the way they discover the involvement of the mysterious science company Massive Dynamics.

Who’s in the darn thing?
The show actually has a solid cast. The star of the show is Australian actress Anna Torv, a NIDA graduate who had appeared in Secret Life of Us and Young Lions. Torv makes for a solid lead, though does perhaps lack the charm needed to carry a genre show like this.

The supporting cast and guest-stars are really quite wonderful. Boston Legals Mark Valley takes on the role of the wounded partner, proving that the guy really should be fronting his own show by this point. Lance Reddick of The Wire appears, adding strong gravitas to a show which might seem exceedingly dull without his presence. Oz’s Kirk Acevedo, likewise, grounds the series nicely as a fellow FBI agent.

The one weak point in the cast is perhaps the marketings strongest sales point. Dawsons Creek star Joshua Jackson co-stars as the scientists son. Jackson is a fun TV actor, but gosh is he a little out of place on this series. The dialogue doesn’t seem authentic coming from his lips and his very presence makes the show seem a little bit cartoony, in a bad way.

What happens in that crucial first episode?
A diseased man kills an airplane worth of passengers in the sky in a very impressive opening scene and a task-force from multiple agencies is formed to investigate. The head of the investigation team seems aware as to what may be taking place, but instead is letting his personal issues with the shows protagonist get in the way.

The protagonists partner is infected with the disease during the investigation, meaning the case is now personal. Protagonist finds a scientist and his son to help, they discover the involvement of an evil scientific corporation, a cure is found. The pilot concludes with our protagonist being drafted into a new FBI division that investigates ‘fringe’ scientific cases.

That’s right folks, this show looks to be The X-Files 2.0.

Is it actually any good?
I went in with high expectations. All the buzz on the program had been good and JJ Abrams has a great track record of producing compelling television. Unfortunately, the show simply feels a little half-baked. The rationale for this disparate group to stay together at the end of the pilot feels forced and hackneyed. Joshua Jacksons character lacks relevance to any of the events of the series, instead shoe-horned in simply to provide the show with an additional male lead. And considering how very X-Files the opening sequence seemed, the fact that the shows continued premise evokes so much of what that show had been about, the entire premise simply feels tired.

That said, the production values are high and the show looks gorgeous. The show makes use of a great in-scene title-card effect that is novel. Considering the pilot reportedly cost US$10 million to produce, one would expect the show to have a high production standard.

With any luck, show-runner Jeff Pinkner will rein the show in and iron out the glitches. The two-hour pilot didn’t sell the show as effectively as needed, but rather felt bloated and exposed its weak points. Perhaps the regular one-hour format will keep the show on track.

LINK

Discussion and discourse on any topic simply should be better than this in a publication that offers checks and balances. Why must The Courier Mail show complete contempt for their readership by publishing such woefully sub par writing?

All of that said, a nifty opportunity should be promoted, so here we are.

For those of you into the NRL, the State of Origin is just weeks away. As great as watching TV at home is, you may find some value in heading out to the Cineplex cinemas at hawthorne or Victoria Point where the game will be televised on the big screen. For free!

State of Origin!

Hawthorne and Victoria Point will again be hosting the State of Origin on the cinema screens on Wednesday 21st May. To obtain your tickets simply go to either Hawthorne or Victoria Point and ask for a free ticket. Limit three tickets per person.

http://cineplex.com.au/