December TV Update
Some TV Shows I've watched this year
****
Worzel Gummidge (Jon Pertwee) is a scarecrow who comes to life. When Mr Peters moves his two children John and Sue to a caravan on Scatterbrook Farm, they encounter him. He’s supposed to keep the crows off the ten acre field but is always wandering off and having chaotic adventures.
Worzel doesn’t understand things well, but he does have a variety of different heads he can change, so he can put on his reading head to read or his dancing head to dance. He’s always looking for a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake. He’s in love with Aunt Sally (Una Stubbs), a coconut shy target, who acts very superior and always takes advantage of Worzel. Often this descends into a food fight. Unlike the majority of other living scarecrows, Aunt Sally wasn’t made by the Crowman (Geoffrey Bayldon) a mysterious figure who travels the countryside on his tricycle with his dog Ratter, making and maintaining scarecrows. The scarecrows regard the Crowman with almost religious awe, the humans consider him an eccentric, though one with some old countryside wisdom.
This is a kid’s show, and never quite manages to reach the heights of the later version. Yet there’s some good stuff, with Worzel and Sally having a children’s understanding of things, and occasional dark moments. Worzel’s unwavering devotion to Sally, who treats him appallingly, is what the show keeps returning to. Pertwee worked to get this made, and later revived, thinking it’s what he would be remembered for. Not quite as it turned out, a beloved children’s show but one that was neglected after the generation that grew up with it. Instead it’s his Dr Who work that is still being watched.
Watch This: Fun, energetic kid’s show with imagination and
fun stunts
Don’t Watch This: Just pratfalls, food fights and silly
accents
Victoria Neumann is the vice president elect, she’s also secretly a supe called the head-popper. Removing her from succession is a job for the CIA. However she’s allied with Homelander, the world’s premier supe. A job for The Boys is to try and find a way to get rid of her without massive, fatal, retaliation.
Top superhero team The Seven needs new members and despite being the most powerful supe in the world, Homelander has two, possibly three concerns. He’s got grey hair, getting older, will die one day. So he wants to leave a legacy for his son. He consults Sage, the smartest woman – sorry smartest person – in the world. She comes up with a plan, one that he keeps pushing against because he can’t help himself.
Here the show gets even more blatant about it’s politics. Homelander’s plan revolves around a January 6th showdown as the electors for the US Presidency are counted, reflecting real events. The new president’s plan to get a bill through congress falls apart when stolen medical records reveal that Starlight – who is ambivalent about her followers becoming a political movement – had an abortion. Her self doubt leads to her powers becoming unreliable.
Meanwhile The Boys are no longer led by Butcher, who is dying of cancer. The team no longer trust him, he’s kept too many secrets. When he does come clean on one, they complain and he tells them he’s telling them now isn’t he, he’s trying to do better. Every member of the team considers leaving at some point.
Has The Boys passed it’s peak? It seems that the blatant points of last season were not blatant enough, leading to this one with clear parallels of recent American History, and in particular US right wing obsessions. Vought is trying to have it both ways, being both anti-Woke (Vought on Ice is doing Let’s Put The Christ Back Into Christmas) and touting their diversity at the same time. Meanwhile Homelander parrots right wing talking points but when confronted with a room of billionaires who basically agree with them, can’t be specific about his plans because he actually only cares about himself. (Sage, who is supposed to handle the details, has been shot in the head and her brain has not yet regenerated).
Several characters have to face dilemmas, but it’s the same ones as ever, just the scope turned up. The gruesome and horrid mutilations and results of super-powers continue to show up, though fewer of the setpieces landed for me. Have they shot their bolt? There’s some real pathos in the scenes where various characters make the same errors again, yet more where it’s just odd. I don’t know.
Watch This: Bold critique of superhero stories and politics
married to funny and grotesque adventures
Don’t Watch This: Nothing new to say as the dystopia spirals
This is the British dub of the Japanese television show, based upon the 14th century Chinese novel, one of the Four Great Classical Novels. The English script was based on plot synopses, not directly translated from the Japanese (or Chinese). The episodes in English are narrated by Chinese-British actor Burt Kwouk, perhaps slightly hamming up his accent; the native English speakers put on a variety of “Chinese” accents.
Ambitious official Kao Chiu insists that a temple open a sealed vault; from it escape nine dozen souls of heroes who have saved China and will again. The souls spread out across the land. One of them finds its way to Lin Chung, an officer in the Imperial Guard. Resisting Kao Chiu, head of the Imperial Guard, when he imposes crushing taxes and harsh punishments, Lin Chung is arrested, accidentally killing a man. The honest judge (one of the nine dozen) realises there’s something wrong and downgrades his death sentence to prison. Lin Chung accepts this to protect his wife; however Kao Chiu rapes her and tries to have Lin Chung killed. Lin Chung escapes to the water margins of Liang Shan Po, a refuge for outlaws, though his wife has to commit suicide to allow him to get free.
Most of the early episodes revolve around introducing a new hero (there are 26 episodes, and not all 108 heroes get a spotlight or even a name) and finding out what their deal is. There’s a tiger hunter who fights tigers with his bare hands, three brothers who are boatmen, Hu Sanniang the one woman who sticks around for more than a couple of episodes, the good squire, the big guy, the flower priest, the one who is magic etc. In every case Kao Chiu’s plan to either get money, get promoted, defeat Liang Shan Po, chase women or inconvenience a rival outrages their senses of justice (or just gets in their way) converting them into his enemies.
There are lots of bold and exciting fight scenes, the principals handling their weapons with ease, often a dozen fighters brawling about the screen. These are made grittier with the occasional setpiece, where someone is attacked and then turns to reveal a face full of blood. Eventually it becomes clear that the various towns and villages are the same set re-dressed, as the same stuntmen in different uniforms burst through the same alley, or cross the same bridge.
The show engages a little in the politics – the young Emperor is being misled by Kuo Chiu, Liang Shan Po is there to protect the people. It’s a bit Daoist – Lin Chung realises that to win he has to let go of his anger and lust for revenge, and Kuo Chiu overreaching himself is what leads to his downfall and a return to harmony. And also a bit of magic! “Politican? Black magician!” says the narrator at one point in a powerful couplet. Mostly it’s about clouding minds so people get trapped seeing illusions. They also invent a cannon, and then destroy it because it’s too dangerous.
Unfortunately the women mostly appear for an episode or two and either die or vanish. Not entirely to accent Kuo Chiu’s evil or to motivate the men – on her second appearance Hu Sanniang’s dart-throwing, bare-legged sister Yen Li is killed to motivate her! Having caught this on the TV back in the 80s as a small child I recalled the fights pretty well, the rape and suicide somewhat less.
Watch This: Fun martial arts series with good action and
occasionally interesting ideas
Don’t Watch This: Chinese classic funnelled through Japanese
TV and racist British dubbing
A new Doctor (the recurring time-travelling immortal hero) arrives in the chaos of the three part special, with David Tennant briefly re-appearing as a return to that incarnation before bi-generating to exist simultaneously with Ncuti Gatwa. Tennant hasn’t reappeared since then. The story is that that Doctor is taking some time to rest with the family of his former companion, badly needed rest after saving the universe multiple times.
And that makes some sense as the new doctor is full of energy. He likes music and dancing and is enthusiastic and encouraging. He even manages to have a brief romance before accidentally sending his paramour into a prison dimension. He’s matched by the barely less enthusiastic Ruby Sunday, who he met when a goblin tried to steal a baby her (foster) mother was fostering. The goblins travel back in time to try and eat Ruby as a baby; the Doctor saves her, but this time-locks him out of that place and time, making it impossible to learn who Ruby’s birth-mother was.
The other dangling plot from the specials is the return of old gods, embodiments of fundamental forces of the universe, like games or music or death. Two of these are returning champions from old Doctor Whos. There’s some interesting bits weaving in and out, recurring characters scattered across different time and stories.
Perhaps unfortunately the answer to one of the mysteries isn’t very satisfying. What if the real adventure in time and space was love, and maybe family? But the Doctor doesn’t get that, he meets people then moves on. Seems a bit weak. Most of the high concept episodes are good, and some dangling bits are fun, the war planet being occupied by an army of Anglican priests that could just as easily been any other army is good. And 73 Yards, because it never needs to explain itself, it keeps the mystery and touch of horror intact. A couple miss the mark with the reveal at the end sort of just… there.
Watch This: Dr Who, with more hits than misses
Don’t Watch This: Making the Doctor’s non-traditional
masculinity front and centre does it few favours and the tech satire is not
especially sharp
In 1975 the former captain is in a Vietnamese re-education camp. There he writes and re-writes his confession, revealing how he ended up here. Before the fall of Saigon he was the aide to the general, who ran the secret police. Half-Vietnamese half-European, he went to university in the United States, and is being mentored by Claude, a CIA officer who is one of several figures played by Robert Downey Junior.
The captain is also an agent for the Viet Cong, passing on information to them. His handler is a childhood friend, one of three of them who were the three musketeers. As South Vietnam collapses he is given new orders, to join the evacuation flight to keep an eye on the general and the émigré community.
In America the General is paranoid, surprised at how hostile people in the camp are. Rather than understanding that, as an authority figure, they blame him for the disaster they’ve endured, he assumes there is a saboteur, a mole undermining him. Of course there is, the captain, who communicates via a ficticious relative in France with coded messages.
Released from the camp, the captain moves to Los Angeles, first working at the university, getting caught up in various schemes. The general opens a liquor store, though this is at least partially a cover for his plans to return to Vietnam and overthrow the government there. The captain is introduced by Claude to a congressman who is a big supporter of the Vietnamese and the intelligence community and to a film director, who makes the captain an advisor on his film about the Vietnam war.
The general’s paranoia moves out of control, and the captain has to give him a suspect. And then he has to kill him. This starts to get his roommate, the third of the three musketeers, out of his depression, as his wife and child were killed in the evacuation. The general’s daughter moves out, becomes an entertainer, decides to be American to the general’s dismay. Things get more convoluted, with a Vietnamese-American journalist involved when the captain tries to sabotage the attempt to invade Vietnam.
All this inevitably leads back to the re-education camp and the confession, where the former captain has to write and re-write, going back and changing the story, adding events, altering them, having to confront the unbearable parts. A clever and brilliant looking spy drama about not fitting in, culture, race, divided loyalty and violence.
Watch This: Excellent historical spy drama of betrayal,
Vietnam and America from an unusual lens
Don’t Watch This: Complicated, confusing and full of tricks
and twists that make little sense
A short season, partly due to the writers and actors strikes. Robin continues equalizin’, vigilante action on behalf of those with nowhere else to turn. She attempts to begin a romantic relationship with detective Dante, continually being interrupted by the case of the week. Dante meanwhile has a new Police Captain who tells him to obey the rules and stop goofing off on these vigilante cases.
Dee, Robin’s daughter, inspired by her mother and teammate’s military service, is interested in joining a military school in preparation for a career. They try to dissuade her, thinking she should go to college which of course makes her more stubborn. Meanwhile she starts her own attempts to stand up for what she thinks is right, dealing with bullying at school, at a protest for a climate change denier and then when a trans friend goes missing gets in on a proper case, again, which again has Robin worried about if she’s doing the right thing when her daughter is in danger.
Mel has started a veteran’s support group, which inevitably lead to more cases. Also her family keep getting into trouble, putting her return-from-the-dead husband into perspective, she may not even be the weirdest one. Harry, her husband, is hijacked by Colton Fisk, Robin’s CIA contact. He keeps annoyingly and mysteriously coming from nowhere to insist on missions; and seeing how the CIA act frankly he’s right to not tell anyone anything. These guys are appalling. They left a colleague of Robin’s for dead, and when she comes back to seek revenge, they kind of flap about uselessly, one part working against each other. Forget about New York City needing extra-legal vigilantes, the CIA need internal agents going rogue just to avoid weapons of mass destruction going off.
Despite the shortness of the season they cram in some personal missions and a character change for every character. Leading to two of them leaving the team at the end. For a show that had comfortably found it’s niche, alternating between gritty street problems of the marginalised with weird high concept terror, while a bit of domestic drama of juggling home life and vigilante action, it’s making a choice to change the balance. Maybe they’ll do something interesting with it? I mean I doubt it, it's the cases of the week where they find some interesting setting or milieu and sit there for a while that are where it’s at it’s best, the characters bringing their perspective to bear on it. Changing the on-screen ensemble doesn’t seem likely to make it better.
Watch This: Gritty, occasionally clever and enlightening
vigilante action show
Don’t Watch This: Violent solutions to crime while using
deception in domestic settings
And Don't Forget: Denzel Washington plays the same character in a movie series
Lois Lane has cancer, and has to be treated for it. Meanwhile Superman is being attacked by super-powered criminals – specifically criminals who have already been captured, and also who have been ill. Signs point to Bruno Mannheim, Lois’s white whale. A community leader who has opened a research hospital in the deprived Metropolis district of Hobb’s Bay, he’s also the head of the organised crime syndicate Intergang. Lois transfers to his hospital to try and find out leads.
The whole family has to come to terms with this. This is complicated by Jordan coming into his powers and performing rescues (always doing more than his parents allow) and Jonathan (re-cast for some reason) getting a truck and starting at the fire station as a cadet. After the events of last season Sarah is now in on the secret of who Superman is. Together with Natalie the four teens get into various trouble, including going to a party in Metropolis. Based on this, I can’t help thinking that Smallville isn’t a thousand miles from Metropolis (approx. the distance between Kansas and New York) but no more than a couple of hours drive. They’ve not moved across country they’ve gone upstate! Confusing the issue a character talks about moving to Topeka (actually in Kansas) “a four hour drive”. Obviously trying to figure out the geography is a fool’s game.
Lois makes a friend in the treatment room, Peia. Peia has a secret of her own, in fact several intertwining secrets. Lois is having to learn a lot of hard lessons, not just about herself and her self-image but about how she uses people as a journalist. (She ought to have learned that last season really).
This manages to balance the teen drama, the small town drama, the family drama and the superheroics better than the last season. Bruno Mannheim is a threat, but as a criminal who uses super-powered henchmen he’s one who fits better with the other storylines. He might kill someone, collapse a building etc, this is clearly more dangerous and urgent that Lana, now mayor, having to deal with a mould infestation in the school, but it’s on a similar scale.
In that way anchoring everything around Lois’s cancer and how even Superman is helpless before it makes the show work better than it ever has. On the other hand it’s trying so very hard to be about cancer, to explain the process, the difficulties, the way that people react and come to accept. It’s not that a teen-friendly drama can’t address issues, the Arrow-verse that this show got rudely snipped off from did it quite a lot. But it often feels earnest and stilted, the dialogue seeming like model conversations where people talk about how they’re feeling rather than how actual people react. Which doesn’t quite match how teens and superheroes are all talking past each other obfuscating things.
Lex Luthor comes back in the final two episodes, a new grim gangster Luthor, let’s see what he gets up to next season.
Watch This: A curiously old-fashioned superhero TV show,
still doing the soap opera-and-rescues that was the alternative to the big
screen spin offs of ten years ago, still refining itself
Don’t Watch This: A
lot about cancer, also the show doesn’t know what organised crime is despite a
lot of the plot being about it
While You're At It: I watched the 4+1 pre-Man Of Steel Superman films
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