Australian television has been responsible for more than its fair share of bad shows over the years but it’s hard to remember a series as stupefyingly terrible as Conspiracy 365. I spent a good chunk of last year griping about how bad Crownies was but that show has nothing on Conspiracy 365. Conspiracy 365 is a family adventure series that is most notable for having a thirteen million dollar budget making it the most expensive drama series in FOXTEL history. The most interesting thing about Conspiracy 365 is that episodes don’t appear week to week but rather they appear once a month on the Family Movie Channel to reflect how each episode of the show takes place over a month in the life of young hero Cal Ormond. Either that, or FMC are leaving a month between episodes to give people a chance to forget how bad what they just watched was.

Conspiracy 365 is based on a series of young adult novels and centres around Cal Ormond as he uncovers a worldwide conspiracy that led to the death of his father. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a premise like this, even if Conspiracy 365 acts like Dan Brown for beginners with the first part of mystery involving little more than a couple of mentions of ‘a jewel’ and ‘a riddle’. The series opens with Cal studying for his pilot’s license (something all teenagers can relate to!) when his dad, who is a journalist who can somehow afford to give his son flying lessons, has to go overseas to a genealogy congress in Ireland because the newspaper he works needs a man on the ground at a genealogy congress and can’t just reprint the press release like a normal paper. The show then quickly rushes to Cal’s dad lying on his death bed having contracted a virus that destroyed his vocal cords and eventually kills him. He tries to alert Cal to the clues so he may discover the Ormond Singularity, which is the big family secret that may involve a pot of gold, or something.

What Conspiracy 365 lacks more than anything else is urgency. Cal is told by a mysterious man in a graveyard he has to stay alive until December 31^st but the show shrugs that off and continues to meander along. This is supposed to be an action adventure but the direction is so lacklustre that almost all of the action is incredibly static, with the exception of a single chase sequence which offered the one tiny burst of life in the entire hour. The soundtrack which pulses along seems out of tune with the camera work which tends to sit there like you’re watching an old episode of Neighbours.

There isn’t much more life visible in the acting which ranges from bad to bored to horrendous. There are bad guys out to get a hold of the Ormond Singularity (and to be honest I’m not sure if that’s a thing or if that’s a curse or if it’s a shitty heavy metal band) and they’re racing against Cal in an effort to track down the first clues which are a green jewel and some kind of riddle. These characters should be dangerous and they should feel like they’d be willing to do anything (including killing people and kidnapping teenagers) in order to get what they want – however, they’re played by Rob Carlton, Julia Zemiro and Andrew Curry who are not exactly villain material. Zemiro hams things up as you would expect, Curry acts as though he’s in a Power Rangers special and Carlton, who was great as the evil overlord Kerry Packer in Paper Giants, sleepwalks through his role as a villain who seriously has the name Vulkan Sligo.

You could argue that Conspiracy 365 is a kid’s series so seeing actors known for their comic ability in the roles of villains is part and parcel of children’s television, if it weren’t for the fact that Conspiracy 365 very much wants to be taken seriously. I don’t know a lot of kid’s shows where the main character steals a gun and where people are murdered left and right. While the villains are laughably bad the hero and his family are somehow worse – Harrison Gilbertson has the thankless role of our dour lead Cal. Gilbertson lets his enormous hair do most of his acting as he scowls through his stilted line delivery. His family consists of his up-to-no-good Uncle, his mum who doesn’t believe him, his best-friend who helps him out and his super-sweet sister aren’t fleshed out much more than those brief descriptions imply. That’s not entirely true, I guess, his best friend Boges is given the character trait of ‘saying “dude” a lot’, so that’s something.

The acting across the board is painful to watch and made worse by some of the clunkiest dialogue you’ll hear on television this year. Take my favourite scene from the episode where Cal, slurring his words, talks on his mobile phone to some poor extra playing the nurse who looked after his father.

Cal: Hello?
Jennifer: Cal? This is Jennifer Smith, I nursed your dad in the hospice.
Cal: Oh yeah, hi Jennifer.
Jennifer: Did you get the drawings?
Cal: What drawings?
Jennifer: Tom’s drawings, I mailed them to you. Your father really wanted you to have them.
(At this point the show switches into 24-style split-screen with Jennifer on one side, Cal on the other, and Cal’s family in the kitchen down the bottom even though they’re just preparing dinner.)
Cal: Yeah, yeah, I just haven’t had a chance to look at them yet.
Jennifer: I found something else. A memory stick. You know, for a computer. I’ll post it to you.
Cal: No that’s okay. I’ll save you the trouble. I’ll come round now.
Jennifer: I’m meeting a friend in the city; I could see you in Liberty Park near the footbridge, say 8 o’clock.
Cal: Okay, that would be great.

He hangs up.

It’s not just that the dialogue is clumsy – “a memory stick, you know, for a computer” – and it’s not just that the character decisions make no sense “I could see you in Liberty Park near the footbridge, say 8 o’clock” because the landmark both these people would know is the footbridge in Liberty Park – and it’s not even the question of how Jennifer got Cal’s mobile number – the worst part of that conversation is that it’s all delivered in such a wooden, uninterested way by both Cal and Jennifer Smith (who you know isn’t an important character because her surname is Smith and not Sligo) that reeks of a student production rather than a 13 million dollar epic adventure series.

The biggest question that hangs over Conspiracy 365 isn’t ‘what is the Ormond Singularity?’ but rather ‘where did that 13 million dollars go?’ This is one of the shoddiest looking productions to make it on screen and to imagine where all that money went is mind-boggling. This is a drab little show that lacks even a hint of flair. This is a completely artless production that makes the claustrophobic Crownies look like Boardwalk Empire in comparison. The only explanation for how this show is bad as it is, is if the entire cast and crew all happened to be having a really bad week when they made it and couldn’t be bother putting in a single ounce of effort. After a year of solid Australian dramas on FOXTEL from Spirited to SLiDE to Killing Time to Cloudstreet this is a huge leap backwards in pay TV drama. Somehow the Family Movie Channel have spent 13 million on a series that looks like it cost twelve dollars and was made by a class of bored high school kids.

 Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Ugly

When a writer creates a television show that you love they deserve a certain level of trust and understanding. We trust that if a writer missteps they will be able to find the path again and return to form. Once a writer creates something that you consider to be an exemplary piece of television it is near impossible to follow it up with another great piece of TV, but that is exactly why you have to forgive any questionable creative decisions they may make. Joss Whedon fans stayed with Dollhouse through those early iffy episodes because of Buffy, Angel & Firefly and they were rewarded for it. Aaron Sorkin fans are waiting patiently for his upcoming series The Newsroom because The West Wing & Sports Night were so good and we want him to get over the huge misstep that was Studio 60. We wait for that spark of greatness to reappear and that is why Deadwood fans are willing to forgive whatever John From Cincinatti was supposed to be because we knew that when David Milch next returned to our screens he’d bring back something like this wonderful new series Luck.

Luck stars Dustin Hoffman as Ace, a man just released from prison and who is looking to get back into the gambling business by enlisting his driver Gus (Dennis Farina) to buy a horse and act as a front. In typical David Milch fashion Hoffman is surrounded by a massive cast of characters each of questionable morality played by all sorts of great character actors. Kevin Dunn, Richard Kind, John Ortiz, Nick Nolte and more all pop up throughout the first hour as trainers, owners, jockeys, agents, gamblers and other folks who spent a good chunk of their day down at the track. Just as he did with Deadwood Milch creates a living and breathing world full of intriguing characters.

HBO previewed the first episode of Luck late last year partially in an effort to promote the series but also to give people time to settle into Milch’s world. Deadwood is my favourite drama series of all time but it was a series that I greatly struggled with in the early goings. When I first watched the show I gave up after three or four episodes because the world was so dense and the dialogue so impenetrable that I felt like the show wasn’t for me. The second time I watched Deadwood the early episodes felt the same until episode six when everything clicked into place. David Milch, like The Wire’s David Simon, creates worlds that take time to understand. Deadwood was such a rewarding and fantastic television experience because it took time to understand the show.

Before writing this review I made sure I watched the pilot for Luck twice because I knew I was going to miss something, and I had, and the second viewing was surprising more rewarding than the first. Even though I knew what was going to happen by the end of the episode I had a far greater understanding of the characters, of the world, and of all the dense gambling speak that’s spattered throughout the show. Milch throws his audience in the deep end and expects you to learn how to swim. Other writers might hold your hand by introducing a character whose sole purpose is to explain how horse racing works but Milch doesn’t do that. He trusts that you will be able to keep up and it makes for a far more gratifying viewing experience.

Luck isn’t just race track chatter and world building, this first episode also tells a cracking tale about four gamblers, led by Kevin Dunn, who bet big on a Pick 6 (again, if you’re not up on your gambling terms going into this series I’m sure you will be by the time it’s over) which will pay out over two million dollars if they win. As you would expect from David Milch the dialogue is filled with crackling wit and a good helping of cussing. Michael Mann directed the pilot and he brings an exciting visual flair that compliments Milch’s way with words. The race sequences are truly breathtaking and like no horse racing I’ve seen put on film before. This pilot episode is an absolutely fantastic hour of television and if Milch and Mann can keep this up (and there’s no reason to doubt they can’t) Luck is easily going to be one of the best series of the year.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Good

Bad shows are a dime a dozen but spectacularly stupid shows only come around a couple of times a year. Lost Girl, a Canadian series that debuted on the SyFy channel last week, is so amazingly stupid that it’s hard to know where to even begin. Lost Girl stars Anna Silk as Bo, a woman with a mysterious ability that allows her to drain people of their life through the power of kissing. We first see Bo in action when she kills a date rapist by making out with him in an elevator, so she can save a mouthy pick-pocket named Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) who soon becomes Bo’s sidekick through the power of never-shutting-up about wanting to be her sidekick.

Fifteen minutes into the pilot it seemed as though we were being set up for a sort of modern day Xena where a woman with super-powers and her short, smart-ass sidekick go around town kicking ass and making quips. That is until a pair of detectives, Dyson, a white guy who looks like Chris Martin and Hale, a black guy who wears a funny hat, tracked down Bo and kidnapped her by using Hale’s magical whistling ability which can disable anybody he whistles at. Dyson and Hale then take Bo to meet some elders, who inform her that she’s Fae, and they’re all Fae, and Fae has two sides – the light side and the dark side, and Bo has to pick which side she wants to be a part of. In short, Lost Girl gets really stupid really quickly.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with weird logic defying mythologies and there’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea that living in the human world are a more advanced species known as Fae. What’s wrong with Lost Girl is that this information is presented in the dumbest fashion possible. We meet a woman with strange powers and her sidekick, then she’s thrown into a room and has exposition dumped all over her. We find out she’s a succubus and that all members of the Fae are different species and come from different clans and we’re given so much useless, dopey information about this world that each additional piece just seems stupider than the last. As a member of the Fae Bo must fight some Under-Fae in order to survive some test and then she has to decide whether she joins the Light-Fae or the Dark-Fae but instead after her human sidekick Kenzi saves her at the last minute, Bo chooses no Fae, she chooses to go it alone.

Hearing the word ‘Fae’ thrown about in incredibly serious tones by a collection of actors who leave no piece of scenery un-chewed is pretty amusing-in-the-wrong-way. However, when Lost Girl actually tries to be funny it falls flat on its face. Every second line uttered in this show is a quip of some description. Most of the dud lines are given to Kenzi because she’s the mouthy sidekick and is forced to say things like “you can control people by touch and not in a creepy handjob way” as if saying something like that even makes sense. When Kenzi first sees Bo use her powers she records it on her phone and says “this is so gonna go viral” because kids these days and their YouTubes, am I right?

Once Bo is tied up and forced to choose sides she goes into quip-overdrive where she suddenly becomes incapable of replying to a question without making a quip about. While the supposed-to-be funny dialogue isn’t funny, all of the supposed-to-be serious dialogue is funny. When Dyson takes Bo from the doctor he says “they’re going to give her the test” to which the doctor replies with a straight face “without training? That’s madness!” Lost Girl is a dumb show with a dumb premise and dragged down by even dumber writing. It is overwritten, badly acted, poorly shot, garbage. This same material in smarter hands could produce a fun, if still silly, sci-fi series but what we get instead is one of the dopiest new shows of the season.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Ugly

Before we get to FX’s latest animated comedy offering Unsupervised I want to talk about their other animated comedy Archer; more specifically I want to talk about why it is that I don’t enjoy Archer. A lot of people whom I like and admire, from critics to actual humans I’ve met in the real world, have expressed how wonderful Archer is. As a result I’ve given the series a couple of chances but keep coming back to the same conclusion – this show isn’t for me. It’s not because I think Archer is bad or anything, it’s just not my thing because I find Archer himself to be an unredeemable asshole and that makes it hard to enjoy the show. Now, I’ve enjoyed shows centred on unredeemable assholes before (Eastbound & Down springs to mind) but there’s nothing in Archer that leaves me wanting to watch more of the show simply because I find it a deeply unpleasant experience.

This brings us to Unsupervised an animated comedy produced by the It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia guys about a pair of dumbass teenagers with high self-esteem but low luck with the ladies; it’s like a more articulate Beavis & Butt-Head. Unsupervised stars the voices of Justin Long as Gary, the more level-headed of the pair, and David Hornsby as the excitable Joel. Joel and Gary are best friends who have a reputation around their school for being the ‘dirty’ kids in part because they like to spend their spare time building lightning rods on the roof of their house. Their best friends at school are the prudish Megan (Kristen Bell) and the overweight Darius (Romany Malco). Joel & Gary are frustrated that everybody else in the school seem to be “69ing” left and right and they haven’t even made out with a member of the opposite sex yet.

What works best about Unsupervised is that the show seems to have a good understanding on who exactly Joel and Gary are. While Justin Long’s voice work as Gary isn’t particularly inspiring, David Hornsby is hilarious as Joel, who sometimes can’t control his excitement over the stupidest of things. The show doesn’t have as solid a grasp on the rest of the cast with the exception of their weird friend Russ who creepily sniffs his cast and who the guys need to separate themselves from if they have any chance of scoring.. Other characters are either sketchily drawn or so out of place they feel like they’ve been dropped in from a Seth MacFarlane series; most notable in that department is the boys’ Australian neighbour Russ who is completely ridiculous and not in a funny way.

Russ brandishes a big knife like he’s a broad 80s caricature of Australians and he tells stories about how he once went undercover as a kangaroo and fell in love with another kangaroo. This stuff is only half amusing but is so completely detached from the world Joel and Gary inhabit that it’s hard to see what the point of it is. Despite the strange inclusion of a character like Russ Unsupervised manages to separate itself from something like Good Vibes, another series about a pair of unlucky-in-lust teenagers, by making sure the humour comes from the characters and not from a random spattering of cheap pop-culture references.

Oddly, despite the fact I laughed more during the few episodes of Archer I’ve seen, I enjoyed Unsupervised more because it’s two leads weren’t unrepentant dicks, they were likeable dopes. Unsupervised’s animation is certainly far worse than Archer; at times Unsupervised is a pretty ugly show to look at. Archer also has a far better handle on its own universe but the difference is that while Archer may be the better show it’s not a show I enjoy spending time with. Unsupervised is pretty rough around the edges at this early stage but its grubby little world doesn’t leave me feeling grubby just for visiting it.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright

Creating a successful reality show isn’t easy, just ask The CW. At the moment The CW has a single successful reality franchise in America’s Next Top Model, and they inherited that series from UPN. The only successful reality show The CW have ever made all on their own was Beauty & The Geek and they cancelled that one after five seasons. Other than those two shows The CW have done nothing right in the world of reality television. The CW have cultivated such a reputation for terrible reality television that they can’t even dupe audiences into watching a single episode of their new shows. Remodeled their latest shemozzle was one of the lowest rated debuts for a new show in the history of the perpetually low rated The CW; it scored half as many viewers as the quickly cancelled and universally hated H8R did.

If you did bother to tune in you would have found a reality show fighting against itself, unaware of what type of show it wanted to be. Half of the show follows “super agent” Paul Fisher (who looks and acts unnervingly like an Evan Handler character) as he helps out struggling model agencies around the country, who are all part of his modelling network called, imaginatively enough, The Network. Basically this half of the show is Kitchen Nightmares but with modelling agencies. The other half of the show takes four aspiring models who are part of The Network and takes them to New York to try and score some gigs. This half of the program is like America’s Next Top Model if you took away the competitions, the cattiness and focused instead on models handing people their resumes. Both halves of this show are tedious and poorly put together but at least the ‘agency makeover’ part has a point.

Paul Fisher has obviously studied at the Gordon Ramsey school for abusive makeovers because Fisher does his best Ramsey impersonation. Fisher is pissed off that the agency is underperforming, he’s pissed off the staff don’t seem to care, he gets pretend angry when they dare do something like laugh in his presence, basically he acts like he was raised by reality television makeover programs. Unfortunately while Fisher acts like just as much of a dick as Ramsey does he lacks Ramsey’s charisma and humour. Paul Fisher proves that forceful bleating and hand gestures do not a reality TV star make. It doesn’t help that Paul’s followed around by his creepy, lispy, goth man-servant Joseph who makes nothing but sarcastic comments like “she’s got a latte to learn” after the owner of the agency dared drink a latte while Paul was talking to her.

Remodeled is a deeply unpleasant series populated with unamusing dopes who take their meaningless jobs a little too seriously. The folks running the struggling talent agency in the first episode at least looked like they enjoyed themselves, while the self-serious Paul and Joseph nearly died of embarrassment by the agency’s sign because it – shock horror – looked like it belonged to a dentist office. Not only are the inhabitants of this show uninteresting but everybody in the series also has a creepy way of infantilizing their models at every possible moment. These women and men who work for these agencies are referred to as ‘my kids’ or ‘my children’ or ‘my babies’ by everybody from Paul to the folks running the struggling agencies. They’re not just treated like commodities that can be ‘stolen’ by other agencies they’re treated like they’re children and not fully functioning human adults.

While it’s doubtful you could create an enjoyable reality series out of any of these elements (Paul would be a lifeless git not matter the show you put him in) Remodeled manages to fail at absolutely everything and the result is a truly awful experience. Remodeled is a confused series that doesn’t know what type of show it wants to be, but it’s also a deeply unpleasant and mean series about uncharismatic jerks yelling at people because they’re not signing enough ‘kids’ to exclusive contracts. The way Paul and his cronies act you can almost imagine them being recast as pimps in The CW’s RePimped where Paul drives from corner to corner getting his brothels in order. “Look at that red light; it looks like a stop light not a cathouse. Unbelievable.” “You could say they have a latte to learn,” Creepo Joseph would add before some pimps got slapped. I somehow suspect that fictional series might attract more viewers than another dire ‘makeover’ program where some dope yells at people because he doesn’t get what he wants.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Ugly

For months now we’ve been hearing how Channel 10 were bringing Young Talent Time back. Rob Mills has been popping up in ads telling us that it’s been off the air for 24 years but now it’s back! The first episode of the new Young Talent Time even opened with Millsy presumptuously informing us that “you’ve been waiting for it!” Whatever IT is. IT has been off the air for 24 years, you’d think they might have been a bit clearer about what Young Talent Time actually is rather than just telling us that whatever it is it’s back. I’m twice as old as the target audience for this show and I’m still too young to have watched the original series when it was on the air. Half way through the first episode Rob Mills still hadn’t let on what the show was actually about but if the content of this episode is any indication Young Talent Time is all about how great Young Talent Time is.

Now that the credits have rolled and some kids sang that song that some other kids once sang this much is now clear: there are a group of ten singing, dancing young people and each they will occasionally sing and dance. Starting from next week there will also be a talent competition where four entrants will show off their young talent and they’ll be judged by Tina Arena (who if you didn’t know was a member of the original Young Talent Time at the start of this episode you may have gotten an inkling that she was by the end of it) and somebody whose apparent real name is Chucky Klapow.

The ten young moppets assembled to sing and dance for our amusement range from age 11 to age 16. They each seem to have been chosen for their unique ability to look like a cast member in a Disney channel sitcom. These guys shouldn’t just be singing and dancing on a stage with Rob Mills, they should be travelling across the country in a singing bus while solving mysteries. If Young Talent Time were an American production you could hear the groans at the manufactured superficiality of the whole endeavour coming from miles around. These aren’t American kids though, this perfectly groomed and racially diverse Up With People bunch are Australian, so this sugary sweet nonsense is uplifting and daring because positivity is the new negativity or something like that.

All of this young talent would be far more bearable if the show didn’t insist on patting itself on the back every thirty seconds. Hearing young people sing and dance is great, hearing Rob Mills congratulate those same young people on singing and dancing right after they’ve just sung and dance isn’t so great. Half of Young Talent Time’s running time was handed over to people talking about either a) how many talented performers were on the original Young Talent Time, b) how great it is that Young Talent Time is now back on the air or c) how many talented performers are on this new version of Young Talent Time. Instead of, you know, letting us see how talented the young performers were the show preferred to simply talk about it.

Over the course of the hour we only got to see the kids perform four songs, and what we saw wasn’t that much better than your standard issue Australian Idol group performance. If your definition of exciting young talent is to see a group of kids perform watered down versions of pop songs in between old people talking about how they used to be a show a few decades ago than this episode would have been right up your alley. Rob Mills ended the episode with the words “next week we kick off the new Young Talent Time…” which was jarring to hear because I could have sworn that we’d just spent the last hour kicking off the new Young Talent Time. Let’s hope that next week when things kick off for reals they do away with all of self-congratulating and backslapping and Young Talent Time worship and, you know, actually show some young talent.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad

As is typical of a J.J. Abrams produced television series Alcatraz has a nice juicy mystery hook to rope us in. The series opens with Sam Neill’s voice informing us that in 1963 Alcatraz closed and all of the prisoners were moved off the island but that’s not what really happened. What really happened, he goes on to tell us, is that all 302 men on the island, both guards and inmates, disappeared on that dark and stormy night in 1963 never to be seen again. That is until they slowly start to reappear in present day San Francisco, but what do they want, where did they go and how can I hire Sam Neill to narrate all of my mysteries?

In the build up to Alcatraz there was a lot of talk about how this J.J. Abrams production contained some notable similarities to that other J.J. Abrams production Lost. Alcatraz boasts an ex-Lost writer as one of its creators, it takes place on an island, there’s an ongoing mystery, Hurley is in it and one of the first characters we meet is named Jack. However upon after viewing the first two episodes of the series you’ll quickly discover that Alcatraz isn’t much like Lost at all (although Jorge Garcia does seem to still be playing Hurley) and is instead far more like that other J.J. Abrams series, Fringe.

There’s no escaping how very Fringe-y Alcatraz feels. There are so many elements of Alcatraz that feel lifted directly from that series that you might wonder why they didn’t just title the show Fringe Division: San Francisco. First there’s our lead Detective Rebecca Madsen played by the tough, attractive, blonde actress Sarah Jones, and who is in no way like Anna Torv’s Olivia Dunham because Dunham worked for the FBI and Madsen, oh wait, she gets hired by the FBI in the pilot. Madsen is recruited by Emerson Hauser played by Sam Neill, he works for the FBI, but unlike on Fringe, the division Emerson works for is a highly classified special division. Oh wait.

Hauser acts as sort of a Lt. Broyles ordering Madsen from strange case to strange case all whilst accompanied by his short dark haired assistant Lucy Banerjee, who I stress is nothing like Astrid from Fringe. Madsen is teamed up with Jorge Garcia’s character Dr. Diego ‘Doc’ Soto, an Alcatraz expert who knows everything there is to know about Alcatraz and everybody who was ever locked up there. Doc isn’t exactly the Walter character but he’s the closest thing they’ve got – he occasionally gets flustered in the real world, he’s the main source of comic relief, and he has all the answers in much the same way Walter seems to have been solely responsible for every strange thing that’s ever happened in the universe. Heck, the lab Doc and Madsen work out of even looks like Walter’s lab.

This isn’t even to mention the way the returned prisoners act as this show’s ‘freak of the week’ and how everything is drenched in greys and dark greens. This isn’t to say that Alcatraz is bad because it looks and acts like its entire DVD collection consists of nothing but Fringe, because there are far worse shows Alcatraz could be aping in order to get by. What it does mean though is that Alcatraz doesn’t feel like its own show just yet. It doesn’t help that not only does the show itself feel borrowed but the different parts of the show don’t quite gel together. The procedural elements, the flashbacks to the escaped prisoner’s time in Alcatraz, the deeper mythology; all of the parts work reasonably well on their own even but none of it feels wholly original, as if the writers are only using these elements because they saw other shows using them.

If Alcatraz can find its own voice it should be able to sit proudly beside Fringe because the cast assembled is pretty enjoyable. Sam Neill is a lot of fun as the stern and kind of dangerous Emerson, Jorge Garcia may just be doing what he always does but he’s good at it, and Sarah Jones grows on you over the course of the two episodes, she felt a little lightweight to begin with but she makes for an engaging actress at the centre of the show. What’s also encouraging about Alcatraz is that unlike J.J. Abrams’s Person Of Interest, from earlier in the season, this show gives equal time to the case-of-the-week as it does to the deeper mythology. Fringe proved that there’s nothing wrong with doing case-of-the-week stuff as long as it builds to something deeper, and as Alcatraz has lifted a lot of its ideas from Fringe already let’s hope it paid attention to that point as well.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright

There have been a number of remakes and adaptations arrive on our television screens this season but none of them feel quite as unnecessary as Napoleon Dynamite. The original film arrived over half a decade ago when it quickly embedded itself in the pop culture of the time before fading away like so many meme-friendly movies before it. It’s telling that a week after The Firm, a TV adaptation of the 1993 Tom Cruise film, that somehow Napoleon Dynamite still feels the more dated of the two ideas. It feels like a lifetime ago we were cracking jokes about having ‘skills’ and laughing at ‘ligers’ and contemplating buying one of those Vote For Pedro shirts that no doubt these days live on as dustrags around the nation.

Sitting down to watch Napoleon Dynamite with my memory of the film reduced to little more than that image of Jon Heder and the word ‘gosh’, the last thing I was expecting was to actually enjoy this animated version of Dynamite and his world, and yet, that’s exactly what happened. My expectations going in had also been lowered by FOX’s last animated offering Allen Gregory, which angered me in ways I still can’t quite explain. I shouldn’t have been as worried, sure Napoleon Dynamite felt like it was cashing in on a trend that existed in a pre-Twilight world (and who honestly can remember a world when Twilight wasn’t a thing?), but this show wasn’t being made by Jonah Hill, this show has Mike Scully of The Simpsons fame helping steer the ship.

While the characters themselves feel like they would fit better in a Mike Judge-King Of The Hill style world the involvement of Mike Scully actually lends the show a latter-day Simpsons feel. While there are certainly funny moments in the first two episodes Napoleon Dynamite lacks the social observation of Mike Judge’s work and it’s never even half as sharp and hilarious as the 90s Simpsons. These days though The Simpsons has become a reliable joke machine that churns out amusing but hardly memorable episodes of television and that seems to be the model Napoleon Dynamite is following. The first episode involves Napoleon joining a fight club when the pimple cream he uses has the unusual side-effect of giving him unbridled rage, this culminates in a battle against his brother Kip in the Thunder Cone in front of a crowd of cheering locals, which is the sort of thing you could imagine Homer doing in one of the lesser episodes of The Simpsons. The second episode that aired Sunday night involved a love machine called Scantronica 3000 which pairs up all of the kids in Napoleon’s class, which again, feels like a second-rate Simpsons plot.

This isn’t to say that these plots don’t contain funny moments, they certainly do, it’s just that the show doesn’t seem to want to say anything beyond ‘isn’t this goofy?’ There’s certainly nothing wrong with this approach to animated comedy but it leaves the show feeling a little surface level. While the film earned laughs by playing these absurd characters relatively straight the cartoon, unsurprisingly, treats everything far more cartoonishly. Characters will fly through the air when flung from the Gravitron at the fair, characters will compete in epic cage matches in an abandoned silo in the middle of a corn field; no longer are the characters alone exaggerated comic creations but their entire universe is as well.

Napoleon Dynamite seems like its willing to try almost anything in order to score a laugh which is both a good and bad thing. It’s good in that these first two episodes score laughs by expanding the Napoleon Dynamite world of jokes beyond the pronunciation of ‘gosh’ and two main characters who are incredibly full of themselves despite being enormous losers. However, it’s also bad because when it pushes the boundaries of what it can achieve as a comedy it occasionally breaks the fabric of its own reality simply to make a throwaway joke or two, which I’m not convinced is worth it.

In the early goings of any show, animated or otherwise, the series has to establish what sorts of things can happen in the show’s universe and what sort of things can’t happen. Can people fly? Are there ghosts? Will somebody come to town and build a monorail? What is a realistic story for this universe? Giant paintball wars work on Community but that’s not something you can see Breaking Bad getting away with. What types of things can happen in this universe? That’s what the writers are always testing out.

One of the moments where Napoleon Dynamite breaks ‘reality’ is after one of its better gags. Kip is a big fan of a crappy themed pizza place where he takes his date so they can listen to the soulful tunes of the animatronic animal band sing ‘Taking Care Of Business’ where the word ‘Business’ is replaced by ‘Pizza’, which for my money was pretty damned funny. However, at the end of the episode Kip takes the family to see the animatronic band and his family breaks it to him that they’re not a real band, just robots, at which point the robots get up, thank Kip for always coming, and walk off stage. Now that, to me, is a fairly cheap joke that the show only gets by breaking the reality of its own world – in that this isn’t just a world where cartoonish versions of humans live but also one where a band of robot animals play gigs down at the local pizzeria. I liked the first joke because it played around with the world we know but I didn’t like the second joke because it completely undercuts the first joke making it somehow less funny for a throwaway gag that will presumably never be mentioned again.

Now, of course, that may just be me. Maybe you thought that second joke was a lot funnier than pop songs re-written with the word ‘pizza’ in them (and yes, I laughed again at ‘All That She Wants (Is Another Pizza)’) but I thought it showed that Napoleon Dynamite is going to just throw as much as it can at the wall and hope it’s funny without worrying whether it fits in the world or not. That’s the exact opposite approach Bob’s Burgers takes, where no matter what crazy thing happens it always seems like it could happen in the world of Bob’s Burgers. Napoleon Dynamite is still a reasonably funny show, and almost certainly a surprisingly funny show given that expectations were somewhere below basement level, but I’m not convinced this is a show that’s going to grow into something great and instead may just hover around the realm of ‘occasional amusement  generator.’

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright

When the news came down whatever pipeline it is that news comes down that FOX were going to be creating a Bones spin-off titled The Finder I was a little curious, not because I’m a big Bones fan (I’ve only ever seen the pilot but remain rapt by the will-they-won’t they Booth & Bones action in the ads for the show) but because I wasn’t sure what part of Bones could be spun-off to create a new series. It turns out no part of Bones could be spun-off to create a new series. It seems that Walter Sherman, the ‘finder’ who finds things, was introduced back-door-pilot style through a random episode in the sixth season. CSI may just take its formula and move it to a different location and Grey’s Anatomy may have moved one of its more beloved characters to a new city but The Finder isn’t what you normally call a spin-off; it’s what you’d more accurately call a new standalone show.

It’s not like you can’t create a spin-off based on a character introduced in a single episode, it’s just it’s hard to see what The Finder has to do with Bones, in fact it’s easier to see how The Finder could benefit from no Bones association whatsoever. First of all, I’m sure I wasn’t the only viewer worried I wouldn’t know where The Finder fit into the Bones universe and was therefore hesitant about diving in uninitiated. Second of all, any Bones fan so dedicated to that series they’d want to follow a spin-off would presumably be disappointed not to have something that resembled the original program they love so much. It seems to be a lose-lose situation especially as The Finder is a reasonably fun procedural about a guy and his quirky team of outsiders who have the illustrious task of ‘finding things for people’.

The Finder is up there with Unforgettable for daffy premises that sound like they could be parody versions of the crime procedural genre. Geoff Stults, the poor man’s Nathan Fillion, plays Walter ‘The Finder’ Sherman who is ex-military and suffers from brain damage that has left him with a compulsion to find things. Stults is joined by Michael Clarke Duncan as Leo, his best friend who’s always got his back, Maddie Hanson as Willa, a juvenile delinquent in Leo’s hands, and Mercedes Masohn as Deputy U.S. Marshal Isabel who is attractive and presumably exists to fill in any story gaps when the crew needs ‘information’. The cast are all pretty fun in this first episode even when they’re spewing giant chunks of background exposition about themselves and their friends, which is all of the time.

The Finder may not resemble Bones all that much, outside of its focus on the characters solving the case rather than the case itself, but it certainly shares a fair amount in common with all those shiny successful USA Network procedurals like Burn Notice, White Collar and Royal Pains. The Finder is a sunshine procedural where the characters are all quirky and there are a lot of Hawaiian shirts on display. This light touch is really the only thing that sets The Finder apart from its more grim contemporaries. While USA has found great success with this particular type of ‘blue sky’ programming the Big Four networks don’t have a lot of shows that offer you fun characters in sunny locations solving quirky cases and The Finder fills that gap nicely.

There are certainly areas where The Finder trips over itself, the aforementioned exposition dumps that take the place of dialogue are tiresome, but it has such a likeable vibe that it’s hard to get worked up by its shortcomings. Stults makes for a charismatic lead, which is especially important once you clock onto the fact that his character Walter is a bit of a dick. It’s also good to see Michael Clarke Duncan in something even if he does get to play ‘the nice guy who’s really big’ for the umpteenth time in his career. The Finder may be a shallow series but it’s also a glossy and enjoyable one. If you like your crimes to be solved with a light-hearted touch than The Finder might be the show for you just don’t expect much more than that.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright

There are lots of reasons not to like the new CBS sitcom Rob starring Rob Schneider. First, there’s Rob Schneider, who has built a career on the firm foundation of ‘remaining friends with Adam Sandler no matter what’. Second, there’s the premise of a guy who looks like Rob Schneider marrying a beautiful Mexican woman only to discover he’s married into a zany Mexican family with all of their zany Mexican problems. Thirdly, and this probably the key reason not to like Rob, it isn’t funny, not even a little bit. Even though there is almost nothing redeemable about this third rate sitcom we should probably thank our lucky stars that it wasn’t any worse.

When looking at some shows it’s sometimes interesting to figure out what went wrong and work out ways it could improve. Looking at Rob the question isn’t what went wrong but ‘why wasn’t it worse?’ This isn’t a good show by any stretch but it’s a mini-miracle that it isn’t a bigger travesty. One of the saving graces of the show is not Rob Schneider who sleepwalks through his performance in much the same way he sleepwalks through his entire career. The supporting cast, which includes Cheech Marin as his father-in-law and Diana-Maria Riva as his mother-in-law (and if you want to write an essay about the way Hollywood treats women you could start with the way Marin, in his mid-60s, is paired up with Riva who’s 42), aren’t as bland. Riva does have the rather thankless role of pissed off mother-in-law but Marin has some fun with his fed-up grump act. It’s not the stuff of great comedy but it makes some of the more painful jokes go down easy.

The jokes themselves are a combination of groan-worthy one-liners (“We can get you out of this – it’s a marriage, not a gym membership.” Which is funny because gym memberships are notoriously hard to get out of…), jokes about Mexicans (Rob’s uncle-in-law has just arrived from Mexico and he plans to never leave), and awkward shenanigans where Rob gets into situations that get out of control fast. It’s these wacky situations that are Rob at its absolute worst; at one point Rob wanders into his wife’s grandmother’s bedroom to look at a shrine she’s built for her dead husband. He adjusts the portrait, it falls into the candles, the candles fall on Rob, he gets hot wax on his pants, he takes his pants off, grandma walks into the bedroom, she sees Rob without pants, she screams, he says ‘it’s not what it looks like’, he grabs her to stop her from screaming, he holds her mouth and tries to wrestle her away, he carries her to the bed, he throws her face down on the bed – AND THAT’S WHEN THE WHOLE FAMILY WALK IN and see Rob behind grandma with her face down on the bed like he’s about to rape her. Isn’t that the worst? When your new wife thinks you’re about to rape her grandmother – it goes without saying that the laughtrack loved that bit.

The element of Rob that we haven’t discussed yet is the Mexican situation. We’ve been through this recently with shows like Outsourced and even 2 Broke Girls where different ethnic groups are brought in so that the white characters can make jokes like ‘isn’t it funny how curry makes you poo a lot?’ or ‘isn’t it amusing how Asians are good at math?’ but here’s where Rob distinguishes itself just a tiny bit. The jokes aren’t about how crazy Mexican’s are, the jokes are about how stupid Rob is. Sure, there are a handful of jokes that might be considered un-PC if they weren’t the sort of standard issue Latino jokes employed by guys like George Lopez or Felipe Esparza but most of the jokes are about Rob and how much of a screw-up he is. That doesn’t make Rob any funnier but it certainly makes ignoring this show easier. This is a bad show but it could have been a lot worse; at least Schneider isn’t in a dress (although I bet Schneider and David Spade are kicking themselves they didn’t jump on Work It).

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad