Tag: TV

American Horror Story: Coven

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★★★★
coven1“When witches don’t fight, we burn.”

While few shows on television are more twisted, perhaps the most bizarre thing about American Horror Story is that the creators of the franchise, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, are best known for that paragon of liberal smugness, Glee. It’s hard to think of two series more diametrically opposed, with AHS being deliciously mean-spirited, in a way much closer to Murphy/Falchiuk’s previous show, Nip/Tuck, but adding a far greater degree of viciousness. To steal a line once aimed at Margaret Thatcher by Denis Healey, AHS could fairly be accused of “glorying in slaughter,” as it romped through its first two seasons, set in a Los Angeles haunted house and New England lunatic asylum respectively. The stories it told were independent, albeit with a number of actors who appeared in both, playing different characters. Most notable among these was Jessica Lange, who showed exactly why she had won two Best Actress Oscars.

The third season ramped things up to a whole new level, and also became one of the most gyno-centric shows on television. The setting moved to New Orleans, and a school called Miss Robichaux’s Academy, which is actually a front for the education of young witches. The headmistress is Cordelia Foxx (Paulson), living in the shadow or her mother, Fiona Goode (Lange), who is the “Supreme”, a position which she will do anything to retain. However, Goode increasingly feels threatened, not only by the current batch of pupils, but also her own mortality, since she has recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Another problem is the opposition of a coven of black witches, led by Marie Leveau, a bubbling animosity which escalates after Goode digs up the infamous Delphine LaLaurie, a brutal and unreconstructed racist, and another immortal, buried alive by Leveau in the 19th century.

Goode’s struggles to retain control are just one half of the story: there are also the pupils themselves, who are gradually discovering their own powers and what that entails. There are five of particular note, ranging from teenage brat movie star Madison Montgomery (Roberts), to wild child of the woods, Misty Day (Rabe). The latter is obsessed with, in looks and behaviour, Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac – who has been rumoured for decades in urban lore to be a practicing witch. While that was amusing on its own, in one of the most amusing bits of stunt casting I’ve ever seen, the real Nicks turned up in a couple of episodes, playing herself. As mentioned above, Goode fears she’s on the fast track to being replaced as the Supreme, so for the girls, simply surviving to reach the “Seven Wonders” – the test to determine who has what it takes to replace the incumbent – will be tricky.

coven2“In this whole, wide, wicked world, the only thing you have to be afraid of, is me.”

I suppose you could read any number of metaphors here, more or less obvious, for other groups who have been oppressed due purely to their nature. But any such thoughts are far from a factor in our enjoyment of the show, which succeeds largely as the result of some brilliant performances. Beyond Lange, you’ve got fellow Oscar-winner Kathy Bates as LaLaurie, in a role which licks Misery into a cocked-hat for sheer unpleasantness. There are two further Academy Award nominees: Angela Bassett plays Leveau, while Gabourey Sidibe is Queenie, one of the new girls, whose main talent is that she can project whatever damage she does to herself, on to another person. She stabs herself, you get cut. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out she’s going to be capable of defending herself against whatever life – or Fiona – can throw at her.

But it’s probably the scenes between Lange and Bassett which sealed this show as one of our favourites of the year. They have an electric intensity which is completely compelling, with a seething undercurrent of distaste, mixed with grudging respect, because each knows the other is equally as powerful. Circumstances eventually lead to them having to join forces, as a company of witch-hunters seek to take them both down. That it’s not a comfortable partnership, just adds to the fascinating dynamics of power, and it’s another aspect where the show shines. Beyond the performances, which are generally excellent, it’s the intrigue which helps make the show so watchable: it delivers a perpetually-shifting dynamic of alliances and enmity, like Dangerous Liaisons on meth. Oh, and anyone can die at any time – usually, nastily and bloodily. However, in many cases, that’s more a temporary inconvenience than anything, and it’s not so much death which is to be feared, as what might happen to your immortal soul thereafter.

I would have to admit, a possible weakness in the show is an excess of plot threads, which tend to whizz in and out, without truly adequate resolution, as proceedings gallop on to the next. As well as the witch-hunters, there’s Leveau’s minotaur-esque lover, the religious neighbours,  and a story involving the resurrection of a boyfriend, that doesn’t quite go as planned. There’s enough raw material here for far more than the 13 episodes screened, but on the whole I’d far rather have over much crammed in to a show, than feel it’s spread too thinly. I’d probably also confess to some disappointment in the way the show ended, which wasn’t near the memorable bleakness of the preceding versions. Okay, if it wasn’t quite everyone joining hands to sign Kumbaya, I certainly expected a higher body-count, and less sense of dawn bringing a brighter future.

“This town ain’t big enough for the both of us. War is coming.. and you’re gonna lose.”

Still, these are minor quibbles, and it was a joy to watch something which played, at times, like a very, very pissed-off version of Charmed, but could also transcend just about anything you could predict or expect. It weaved fable and fact together beautifully – both Leveau and LaLaurie were real characters from New Orleans’ past – and provided some of the best and most interesting roles for women on television this year. Maybe it appeals to the submissive in us all, but it seems there’s nothing quite like an evil bitch, who has both the power to back it up, as well as the intelligence to know how to use it, and in Fiona Goode, we got to enjoy one of the best villainesses in the recent history of the medium. Lange is flat-out awesome, and can only be enjoyed as such.

There was certainly no doubt about the show’s mass popularity. Although some hardcore fans grumbled over the dark humour occasionally injected into proceedings, e.g. LaLaurie’s horror at the notion of a “negro” President, it can’t be argued that this version proved a significant improvement, ratings-wise, over its predecessors. They averaged 2.8 and 2.5 million viewers, but season three upped season two by more than 50%, with four million on average, and reaching a peak of over 5.5 million. A fourth edition was already commissioned, well before the third even reached the half-way point. It will no doubt move on to a new location and era once more [the details are vague – Lange is apparently working on her German accent!], yet it’ll be hard-pushed to match this season for either intensity, or its abundance of strong female characters.

Dir: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and others
Star : Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Emma Roberts, Lily Rabe

American Horror Story cast

Killer Women promo

Video

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KillerWomenBased (loosely, according to some reports) on the Argentinian series Mujeres Asesinas, the series Killer Women follows the life of Molly Parker, a recently divorced woman, former beauty queen, and a daughter of a sheriff. She rises to the top ranks of one of the most elite and male-dominant law enforcement establishments, the Texas Rangers. Parker is played by Tricia Helfer, best know for playing Cylon “Number 6” in the reworked version of Battlestar Galactica. The executive producers include Sofia Vergara, who was one of the (not many) better things about Machete Kills, and Martin Campbell, the director of Goldeneye.

It’s an eight-week series, apparently designed as a mid-season replacement for the cancelled Lucky 7. One review said of the new show, that it will not “wear anyone out with ruminations on America’s historic notion of gender-appropriate employment. As the title declares with pride, the show has a lot in common with old-style drive-in second features at drive-ins.” Sounds perfectly acceptable to me: we’ve set the DVR. Killer Women airs on ABC at 10pm on Tuesday night. Here’s the promo.

Prime Suspect

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Before there was The Cooler, before there was either version of The Killing, and obviously before there was Maria Bello’s short-lived Americanized take, there was Dame Helen Mirren as Jane Tennison, one of the canonical figures of action heroine television over the past two decades. Though only fifteen feature-length episodes were aired – that works out at only one a year between the show’s debut in 1991, and its finale in 2006 – it has become an archetype for its portrayal of a female detective, relentless in her pursuit of criminals, but considerably more ill at-ease and abrasive when handling the people with whom she has to work. She’s great at spotting clues, interrogating suspects and putting together the pieces. However, Tennison’s personal life is a complete mess, she screws up any relationships on an almost daily basis, and is completely incapable of striking a balance between work and everything outside it.

Such a complex character requires an actress of the highest talents, and Mirren provides it. Before her film career, she cut here teeth with the Royal Shakespeare Company, though her early cinematic work includes both classic (The Long Good Friday) and entries which one suspects she’d rather forget (Caligula!). But even in the latter, she still carried herself with grace and poise, elevating the material. By the early nineties, she was respwected, yet not quite as renowned as she would become – her first Oscar nomination would not be until 1994, for The Madness of King George. Even now, Mirren acknowledges the show’s importance in her career: “It was an incredibly important part of what’s got me to where I am today. It was intense, many many hours on a set with many different directors, many different writers. I loved it, and that’s the way you learn.” Series creator Lynda LaPlante was also well established, having previously created a similarly iconic female character, on the other side of the law, in Dolly Rawlins, for her crime series, Widows.

While far from the first to portray a British female detective, the new show was a fairly-radical departure from previous entries such as Juliet Bravo or The Gentle Touch which, as the latter’s name suggests, sought to portray a kinder, gentler police force, with heroines comfortable at both home and work. LaPlante was having none of that, placing Jane Tennison in situations which contrasted her skills at police-work with her abject failures elsewhere (the show wisely chooses to focus much more on the former). Right from the start, Tennison has to prove herself in a male-dominated environment against the constant suspicion that she reached her position because of affirmative action, rather than on merit. Finding the right person for the role was crucial, LaPlante told NewsWeek in 1994, “She’s not physically heavy, but she has a strength inside her that is unusual. There’s a stillness to her, a great tension and intelligence in her face.”

One of the fascinating things about the show is the change that Tennison undergoes over the course of the series, which is particularly apparent if you watch them all in relatively short order. It would be hard to imagine an American show sticking with the same character over such a long period, but the infrequency of the production likely helps, and we see Tennison evolve over the length of the show from a somewhat tentative and naive detective, becoming hard-bitten and cynical (for very good cause), eventually ending up an alcoholic, teetering on the edge of complete burn-out and suffering from blackouts and the DTs, who is trying to solve one last case reach retirement through sheer, bloody-minded willpower. It’s a fascinating arc to watch, and I particularly appreciated the way, at the end of the final episode, the writers didn’t provide an obvious or “fluffy” ending, which could have compromised the integrity of the entire show.

“Women are taught to smile, to be pleasant, to be charming, to be attractive. Tennison doesn’t do that. She is driven, obsessive, vulnerable, unpleasantly egotistical, and confused. But she is damn good at what she does and is totally dedicated.”
— Helen Mirren

Mirren is the sole character to appear in all the episodes. She’s supported by a swathe of faces you’ll recognize if you spend any time watching British television or movies. The first series alone included future Oscar nominees Tom Wilkinson and Ranulph Fiennes, as well as Zoe Wanamaker, and others to be seen include David Thewlis, Ciaran Hinds, Jonny Lee Miller, Mark Strong, Frank Finlay and Peter Capaldi, recently announced as the new Dr. Who [in Suspect, he plays a transvestite, which is certainly… different]. Most of the series are single stories, told over two 100-minute episodes, except for the fourth, which is a trio of individual parts. This extended length, allowing a single crime to be dissected in greater depth, is another difference to American shows, which tend very much to be “crime of the week,” with or without also a longer story arc.

While all the cases are homicides, they cover a wide breadth. After the first season, there tended to be an underlying social issue: this could be racial, political or class-based, and often provide an additional level of difficulty to the investigation. Particularly in the early seasons, Tennison is depicted as having to fight prejudice from her colleagues. The feminist aspects (perhaps thankfully) do fade somewhat, once she becomes more established, though the level of support she gets from her superiors is never something on which she can rely. Throughout, she struggles with self-doubt and loneliness in her position, no-one able to understand the pressures of the job, and help share the burden on her shoulders. But part of her strength is that it never interferes with her dedication to the case, or her pursuit of those responsible for wrong-doing. Unlike a good number of her colleagues, who are sometimes prepared to sacrifice justice for the sake of expediency, Tennison’s morality is absolute, and she won’t compromise it for anything, regardless of the potential personal cost.

Obviously, this isn’t “action” in the “fisticuffs and car-chase” mould of policework (I’ll refer you to Red and its sequel if you want to see Mirren wielding the heavy weaponry!). Virtually the only weapons Tennison wields are her mind and her tongue, but it’s hard to tell which is the sharper, and they are both undeniably effective at getting to the truth, no matter how deeply it may be hidden. Her bravery is undeniable, not just in the perpetual quest for justice mentioned above, but her willingness to put herself into potentially lethal situations when the need arises., such as at the end of the fifth series where she faces an armed suspect, alone and without anything to protect her. While it’s one thing to go into such situations with the physical presence to handle them, doing so when you don’t have such an ability, is probably even more courageous.

Though some episodes are now more than 20 years old, they hardly seem dated at all: the writing is still sharp as a razor, and can stand with anything you’ll find on television today. But it’s Mirren’s performance which makes this work, and is why I just didn’t bother with the US remake; good though Bello might be, she can’t hold a candle to the original. There’s a reason Mirren was nominated for six Emmys, winning two, and six BAFTAs, taking home three. Virtually every cop show with a female lead which has come out since – or, at least, all the good ones – owe something to Prime Suspect, and a central character who embodies the tension between work and home life. Never shying away from the darker side of law-enforcement, or the toll it exerts on those who maintain it, this isn’t just one of the best recent action heroine TV series, it’s among the best TV series of any genre or era.

Wonder Woman (Unaired TV Pilot)

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★★★
“Nowhere near as bad as you might think.”

Allowing for the fact this was more or less a rough-cut – you can still see the wires as the heroine throws villains around – this actually is far from the atrocity you expect, going from the pre-production fan loathing. The story avoid the whole “origins” thing, hitting the ground running by having Wonder Woman/Diana Prince (Palicki) already fully-active, and busting crime around Los Angeles. Her extra-legal activities, with the local cops’ complicity, bring her to the attention of the federal authorities. Meanwhile, she’s tussling with the board of her company over the merchandise that funds her crime-fighting, objecting to the size of the tits on her action-figure – and, yes, they actually say “tits”, to my surprise. Finally, the villainess (Hurley) is performing illegal medical experiments with steroids and such, to create super-soldiers, and it’s up to Wonder Woman, her plane (wisely, no longer invisible), bullet-deflecting bracelets and lasso which may or may not be of truth (it’s unclear from this episode) to stop her.

Yeah, there’s probably too much going on, as it establishes that Prince is not just an action heroine, but also a business mogul, being the CEO of Themyscira Industries, and a woman: y’know, with needs. They each have their separate identities: it’s a nice touch, though not all of this needed to be put across in the pilot I think. They might have been better off bringing the other angles in down the line. What does work, surprisingly well, is Palicki, who both looks the part – a particular surprise, given the heat the costume took – and manages to hit most of the dramatic points necessary. However, I can see how fans of the comic books would probably still hate it, since there’s barely any acknowledgment of her ancestry as the princess of an all-female tribe from a remote island.

I particularly liked the hard-edged “neo-vigilante” approach of Wonder Woman, who has no aversion to violence and at one point, flat out kills someone by driving a pipe through his neck. Don’t recall Lynda Carter doing that: The Dark Knight has a lot to answer for. On the down side, the script does have its fair share of cliches, from the grieving mother through to the romantic interest. But, really: you can turn on the television any night of the week and see far less interesting or well-considered excuses for series, which somehow managed to get themselves green-lit. It has potential to be, if not great, at least half-decent: given the lack of action heroines on TV these days, it’s a pity this one received the televisual equivalent of a wire coat-hanger.

Dir: Jeffrey Reiner
Star: Adrianne Palicki, Elizabeth Hurley, Carey Elwes, Tracie Thoms

La Femme Nikita: season one

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★★★
“French kissing in the USA”

To say I approached this show in a roundabout way would be an understatement. 15 years after its original screening, after three separate movie versions and two seaseons of the largely unrelated version of the story starring Maggie Q, I finally got round to it. So, bearing tht in mind, it’s a different beast from what I expected – mostly because it’s a lot less action-oriented. Peta Wilson, as lost soul turned government operative Nikita, looks like she could potentially kick your arse, but (largely for budgetary reasons, I believe) there’s only token moments of hand-to-hand action: the focus is much more on spycraft, undercover work and deceit, rather than full-on assaults. There are still occasional sequences, but even these tend to involve relatively brief gun-battles, not the martial arts brawls which are one of the new version’s trademarks.

The other chance is that Section One, their version of Division, is not malicious – at least not in the same way. It’s certainly a heartless organization, which is utterly ruthless, and prepared to dispose of anyone who may interfere with their actions, but it’s more an awareness that when you’re dealing with terrorists, organized crime or other threats to the country and world, you can’t be unwilling to get your hands dirty. It leads to a significant bleaker overall tone, and is amazingly prophetic, given this was screened well before 9/11 led to this attitude become a necessary part of national security. Early on, it’s established that you can never trust Section heads Operation (Glazer) and Madeleine (Watson, who was also part of the remake, playing Senator Pierce – her given name there was also Madeleine), to the extent that their deceit becomes almost a cliché.

There are some direct nods to Besson’s movie: her first assignment is to murder a target in a crowded restaurant, and the bathroom assassination crops up in a later episode. On the other hand, there is one significant difference from the original film, in that Nikita here is genuinely innocent of the crime for which she is sentenced, simply happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her refusal to engage in the actions Section demands of her is a strong thread of the first season, with a reluctance to compromise her moral code being pitted against Section’s desire to control her for their own ends. Early on, she risks “cancellation” (termination with extreme prejudice) more than once, by disobeying orders, usually to protect others from Section action.

Another area in which this show differs from the current version, is a much more pronounced use of music. There are fairly lengthy sequences, several minutes on occasion, where scenes unfold over almost all of a song. A soundtrack CD was about the only piece of merchandise given any wide-scale release by Warner Bros, including the title track by X-Files composer Mark Snow, as well as songs by Depeche Mode and Morcheeba. Also popping up in the first season, are Morcheeba, P.J. Harvey, Sister Machine Gun and several tracks by neo-classical/industrial band In The Nursery, whom I coincidentally went to see in Hamburg, back around the time these episodes first aired. It’s certainly a trademark of the show, and is an aspect I consistently enjoyed.

On the other hand, apart from the lack of action, the angle I liked least was the relationship between Nikita and her handler/fellow agent, Michael (Dupuis). I’ll come right out and say it: I hate ‘shippers, and storylines that pander to them are nothing more than an irritant to me, especially in shows which I watch for action, where they do little except interfere with the good stuff, in my humble opinion. [We’ve seen this in the new incarnation, where the show has disintegrated from one of the best shows on TV, into little more than Mr. and Mrs. Smith And Friends.] I’m definitely a “noromo”: If I wanted unresolved sexual tension and relationship nonsense, I’d watch daytime soap operas. Right from the first time Nikita and Michael meet, it’s doe-eyed heaven, even though there is obviously little or no honesty, trust and anything else on which a genuine relationship could ever be founded.

There are also a number of aspects of the show which now seem undeniably dated, which is always going to be an issue when a series is trying to be “cutting edge”. Most obvious is the technology – an early episode has tech wiz Birkoff explaining about IRC, something now so passé, an explanation would probably be needed again! – but the opening credits always get a chuckle, especially the final “morph” at the end, which looks incredibly cheap. Meanwhile, Wilson’s accent drifts in and out without rhyme or reason: at times, she seems straight off Bondi Beach, while at others it’s almost entirely subdued.

The episodic nature of this, with less concentration on an over-riding story arc, is both a strength and a weakness. It frees the creators up for some really good stories, but there’s not much incentive to plug in the next episode – I largely watched them in double-bills, but it took me more than seven months to get through the first season’s 22 shows. I enjoyed the bleakness and emotional chilliness depicted here, which as noted above, is probably more relevant now than then, but the obviously lower production values, and its replacement of high-energy action with dramatic angles that Wilson isn’t quite up to handling, brought its overall entertainment value down significantly. I’m probably just about interested enough to pick up the second season at some point: however, that is not likely to be for a while.

Star: Peta Anderson, Roy Dupuis, Eugene Robert Glazer, Alberta Watson

Nikita: season two

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★★½
“More characters! ADD MORE CHARACTERS!”

When we last saw Nikita (Q), she’d gained some help for her struggle against Division in the shape of fellow defectors from the organization, Michael (West) and tech guy Birkhoff. But she’d lost protege Alex (Fonseca), who had stayed with Division to further her lust for revenge on those who’d killed her parents, while reclaiming her family fortune. Meanwhile, Nikita’s nemesis and former boss Percy had been usurped by Amanda (Clarke), and was now in a plexiglass box in the basement. Throw in Oversight, the government committee supposedly in charge of Division under Senator Madeline Pierce; CIA agent Ryan Fletcher and Pierce’s son Sean, who join Team Nikita; Owen, a rogue guardian, keeper of one of Percy’s black boxes… And I haven’t even got to Michael’s love-child, a source of much angst for all concerned.

I think the main problem with this sophomore season is clear: too many characters, resulting in plotting that’d be thrown out by a telenovela as far-fetched and convoluted. It was also notable that Nikita did significantly less heavy lifting on the action front, with Michael taking up more. Because, of course, no woman can survive without a man. Unfortunately, the increased focus on relationships – of multiple kinds – is probably almost inescapable on a network like the CW, even when a show gets buried in the “death slot” of Friday night. But it defused what made the show stand out: a kick-ass independent heroine, who could handle herself without relying on a team of men, and as a result, I frequently drifted off, either to sleep or to do something else more interesting. Which would be just about anything.

By the time of the last few eps, I would genuinely not have been bothered if the show had been canceled. But then, it returned to form: Percy escaped, getting himself a nuke and a satellite – nothing good can come of this. Focus on a genuinely threatening villain and the heroine, not the soap-opera “Mikita” ‘shipper bullshit, and I was engaged again. The end came almost full-circle – in part, I suspect because the makers didn’t know when they were shooting the final episodes, whether or not they’d be renewed. And, in the end, I am glad it has been given a third season, because there’s no show quite like it on television – despite the flaws, it’s flying the flag for genuine action heroines, almost solo. Still, how long my interest lasts when it returns, remains to be seen.

Star: Maggie Q, Shane West, Lyndsy Fonseca, Melinda Clarke

The (Short) Life and (Quick) Death of Charlie’s Angels

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Well, that didn’t take long. While not quite the first new show on the fall 2011 schedule to get cancelled, the Charlie’s Angels reboot did survive much longer. After scathing reviews and ratings that were weak to begin with, and went downhill from there, not even a spot of same-sex canoodling on set could shore things up. Four weeks in, ABC pulled the plug. Let’s start with those reviews, shall we?

  • “ABC’s new drama Charlie’s Angels seem to want to go back to the ’70s to rustle up some girl power, but it fails miserably and offensively… It contains some of the worst acting of the last decade on network television, much of it by Minka Kelly. The writing is atrocious… It sets the standards of television back to, well, the lesser efforts of the 1970s. And that’s nostalgia nobody needs to relive.” – Hollywood Reporter
  • “A cluttered, poorly acted, ridiculously predictable wannabe action show with an alarming wardrobe budget and few surprises… Would be better if it was faster-paced, grittier, and the characters should be more flawed – because that’s how audiences like their heroes in the new millenium.” – Starpulse.com
  • “A silly hour of escapism even less believable than Vampire Diaries. If you were looking for something witty or sly, I think you were out of luck.” – Entertainment Weekly
  • “It’s unlikely anyone expected much from a revival of that eye-candy progenitor Charlie’s Angels; the surprise is that you’re getting so little… [The original] had energy and glamour and a self-aware sense of frothy fun, all of which are missing from this lugubrious update.” – USA Today
  • “The truly and genuinely terrible acting…is hard to separate from the execrable script they’ve been saddled with… It feels like pre-chewed food: intended for easy digestion, it comes out (1) unappetizing, (2) textureless, and (3) devoid of character.” – NPR

It could perhaps have withstood these barbs, if it hadn’t been for the poor ratings. 8.76 million viewers watched the Sept. 22 premiere, leaving it third in the timeslot, with less than half the audience for CBS and Fox’s offerings. That was disappointing enough, but it lost 19% of its audience the following episode, and by week three, it was down below six million. The death-knell was that, among the 18-49 year old demographic key to advertisers, Angels was on a mere 4% of the TVs in use during its time slot.

I watched the show, albeit out of a sense of duty more than real expectation; I loved the first of Drew Barrymore’s movies, but was unimpressed with the sequel, and the series seemed to fall uncomfortably between paying homage to the original, and being in tone with modern action heroine mores. Said creator Alfred Gough, “It won’t be campy or retro. The characters are real and emotionally grounded, but they still like to have fun, wear great clothes, solve crime and kick some serious ass.” And, unfortunately, take orders without question from an unseen male boss. While the makers could hardly dump that, it’s an angle that now comes off as less whimsical than creepy and stalkerish.

This illustrates a tension that couldn’t be adequately resolved. They killed an Angel with a car-bomb early in the first episode, but the show also had silly banter about handbags, and the results possessed an unevenness of tone that dogged things for the entire run. Trying to balance dark and light on television is a lot harder than it looks, and few shows manage to do so effectively; those in charge here should have watched and taken copious notes from Burn Notice, which does this much better (and is also set in Miami).

Mind you, they’d be hampered given there’s little indication of any significant acting talent among the lead trio, whose laughter seemed perpetually forced and who gave their characters little in the way of distinct personalities. I also have to wonder if making them all ex-criminals – rather than underutilized cops, as in the original – made it harder to empathize with them. However, there is also a lot more competition among action heroines these days; when the original aired, kick-ass chicks (even to the limited degree in Angels) were rare. Now: not so much, and Nikita or Sidney Bristow would eat up and spit out the entire trio, picking their teeth with the bones.


That said, the series was not without its moments, and the action, though sporadic, was generally okay – they did at least use guns, despite the presence of Drew Barrymore as a producer. Ironically, the last episode before the death sentence was handed down, was probably the best. This was a loose remake of a cult favorite from the original series, Angels in Chains, which saw the trio thrown into a Cuban prison being used as a source of women for a call-girl ring (I’m sure that was also the plot of a full-on exploitation pic, but I’m damned if I can remember the name). It benefited from a good supporting cast: Erica Durance as a CIA agent, Elizabeth Pena as the prison warden and James Morrison (who played Jack Bauer’s boss Bill Buchanan in 24) as a corrupt businessman.

But I can’t confess to feeling upset in the slightest that it has gone, beyond a sense of vague disappointment that any series involving action heroines has bitten the dust – there aren’t enough on broadcast TV. I’m sure it’ll be used as “proof” that these shows just don’t work, but the problem here was less the concept than the execution. While not the worst remake attempt to come out of Hollywood lately (no-one who saw Knight Rider will argue!), it was a poorly-conceived adaptation of a show that truly was a product of its era, and should have been left as such.

Nikita: season one

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★★★★
“TV Sinners”

Most action-heroine fans will know that this was not the first TV series inspired by Luc Besson’s classic GWG film. Between 1997 and 2001, La Femme Nikita ran for four full seasons, plus a shorter fifth one, with Peta Wilson playing Nikita. In early 2010, the CW Network announced it was developing a pilot to try out a new version of the show, and this was picked up for a series in May. The CW seemed a bit of an odd choice: their idea of an action heroine tends more towards shows like Gossip Girl and the 90210 reboot, with a target demographic of 18-34 year-old women. So was this version going to showcase a kinder, gentler Nikita?

I was reassured by the casting of Maggie Q as the lead, who has a solid action pedigree, both in Hong Kong (Naked Weapon) and the West (Live Free or Die Hard and M-I:3). While its source material was clear, it took a different approach. Instead of telling Nikita’s story from the beginning, with her recruitment into a shadowy semi-official organization and training as an assassin, it starts later, after she has mutinied and left them. Now, she is working to bring down the organization known as Division, its leader, Percy (Berkeley), and his right-hand man, Michael (West), who trained Nikita before she went rogue. Her ‘secret weapon’ is Alex (Fonseca), a new recruit going through training, while acting as Nikita’s mole and feeding her information, allowing her to sabotage and obstruct Division’s missions.

The results have generally been pretty impressive, probably the closest thing to a true kick-ass heroine on network TV since the demise of Alias [which may have have happened some time before the end of Alias, if you get my drift]. If not quite as dark as the Wilson incarnation, it is certainly satisfactory on this level, with death, torture and treachery lurking in just about every episode. The characters arcs certainly have their twists and turns: the alignment of loyalties at the end of the series is radically different from where they started, with people on both sides crossing over. It’s easy for a show like this to get into a rut – Division sets up an operation, Nikita foils it, or whatever – and the generally avoided this pitfall.

In what one suspects was a nod to the target demographic, this was as much about Alex as Nikita, who has her own past to contend with. There is, probably inevitably, the love interest, in the form of a blandly attractive next-door neighbour, who is basically the first man she meets after Alex completes her training and goes into the outside world. There was something similar for Nikita, though this first looked to be heading in one direction, then swerved in another during the second half of the show. That was one of a number of changes made mid-season: it seemed as if the makers needed to fine-tune things on the fly; I was concerned where this might lead, but it didn’t hurt the show.

One particular improvement was the appearance of Amanda (Melinda Clarke). Initially Division’s psych evaluator, she took a much more prominent role, and the relationship between her and Alex made for an interesting dynamic, not unlike Sidney Bristow/Irina Derevko [hmmm…]. We also enjoyed Berkeley’s portrayal of Percy: remembering him as the heroic, if inept George Mason in 24, this was a real change. The final couple of episodes had some epic twists, though I was a bit peeved with the “deaths”, which proved not to be terminal. I find it a cheat: as we saw with Buffy, once a character has come back from the grave, death tends to lose its sting, though the execution here was not as clunky or contrived.

They even crammed in nice nods to the original movie and its TV predecessor too, with a dive down a chute to escape, and a cameo from Alberta Watson, one of La Femme Nikita‘s actors, as part of the intelligence committee supposedly in charge of Division. By the time the dust has settled, Nikita was driving off into the sunset with a surprising ally, and Alex was also teamed up in a new way, setting things up nicely for the second series. Whether it was going to get one or not seemed in doubt for a while, as the rating did sag mid-season, dropping the show onto the ‘bubble’. However, it was announced in May that the CW would pick it up for another series, moving the show to Friday nights to play along with Supernatural.

However, all the plot is perhaps secondary; we want to see ass being kicked. I have largely to agree with Maggie Q, who said, “In terms of action, I don’t see our quality of action on any other show right now. I’m sorry. They may have bigger explosions, but our fights are genius.” For TV work, it’s certainly well above average, and she was apparently instrumental in getting the original co-ordinator fired: “This is my genre, what I’ve been doing for 14 years. I know it well. There’s a level of quality I will not let dip, ever, when it comes to the action… I said, he’s gotta go. It’s dipping. It hasn’t dipped enough in a way that audiences have recognized yet, but it will. I know his style. He’s not innovative. He doesn’t have what it takes to take the show to the next level. And we’re done. We’re done here. We need to bring someone else in.”

What stands out in particular is how much of her own work Q is doing [and, to a lesser extent, Fonseca]. As she also pointed out how much things have changed: “I remember seeing bad wigs on doubles. Then they cut to a close-up, then there’s a wide shot and you know the actress is not doing it. When I fight, you’re right there in our faces – very Bourne. You expect that from that calibre [of film], so why wouldn’t you expect it on TV?” That’s what I think probably impressed me most about the show: at its best, you could stand it beside Salt, and it would not suffer in the comparison. Here’s an example:

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Yep. I think it’s safe to say that the series has delivered copious amounts of high-quality action, combined with mostly interesting characters, and sufficient plot twists to keep us thoroughly entertained. Overall, it ranks among our favourite five shows of the year to date, of any genre, and comfortably leads the pack as far as action heroines go. We’re already looking forward eagerly to its return, so we can find out what lies in store for Nikita, Alex and Amanda. Oh, and some of the non-heroines too. I guess. :-)

Star: Maggie Q, Shane West, Lyndsy Fonseca, Xander Berkeley

Police Women of Broward County

  By

★★★½
“Mums with guns.”

Twenty years ago, Cops debuted on Fox, and has become a part of the cultural landscape, leading to an avalanche of spin-offs, ranging from the serious to the complete spoofs (Reno 911 being the most notable). The very first episode took place in Broward County, Florida and, two decades later, the latest in the field returns there. PoBC, as I’m going to refer to it for obvious reasons, follows four women members of the Sheriff’s Department there, both at home and on duty, as they take down the bad guys and deal with the public.

The four present a cross-section, covering three races and a broad range of ages, from 25-year old Deputy Shelunda Cooper, to Detective Julie Bower – almost double Cooper’s age, whose hair appears firmly rooted in the 1980’s. Each episode is a semi-random selection of incidents. If there’s a theme, it’s in the type of crimes with which each deals. Bower is a member of the sex-crimes unit, which covers everything from rape cases to staging prostitution stings [one of which involved her dressing up as a street hooker]. All the cases of Detective Ana Murillo seems to involve drugs, while Cooper is the queen of the “domestic” – if there’s a family squabble, she’ll be there. Detective Andrea Penoyer’s caseload has a little more variety, though she achieved a certain notoriety for her gung-ho quote, “There’s always a good time to use a Taser,” featured prominently in the trailer (below).

Murillo seems to have a little bit of an attitude, shall we say, especially if any of the members of the public with whom she comes into contact do not adopt the appropriate reverential approach – such as the woman who has the temerity to talk on her cellphone. Murillo basically confiscates the phone, and there are numerous other incidents in the show which have a questionable nature as far as constitutional rights go. Her approach to law-enforcement appears to have more in common with Judge Dredd than “To protect and serve,” though one wonders whether TLC’s description of it as a docudrama – emphasis added – has more significance than might immediately be obvious.

“I’m no different fron the guys, I still kick ass and take names – I just do it with nail-polish and lip-gloss.”
— Ana Murillo

Despite Murillo’s unquestioned position as Empress of Lip-gloss, it’s blonde, blue-eyed Penoyer who is the glamour queen of the show – though the illusion is somewhat damaged when she starts yelling commands at suspects in a voice that’s probably the audio equivalent of getting Tazered. Though as she points out, such an attitude is necessary: “When someone walks in a room and you got a cop who is 6’5″ and 300 pounds, he looks intimidating. So we have to act intimidating: we have to be very, very serious and let people know we’re not playing around.” Well, not all the time, anyway. We also get to see Penoyer and her policewomen friends shopping for guns, and relaxing on the beach. In their bikinis.

This illustrates the strange double-standard at the heart of the show: on the one hand, it wants to show that the subjects are “just like the guys”. On the other, it keeps reminding us that three of the women are mothers – two of them single moms – and takes great care to point out how much they care about their kids. That’s the dichotomy that’s at the core of girls with guns: the contrast between the maternal and life-giving aspects and the death-dealer. I suspect, however, that it would be giving the creators of the show more credit than they deserve if I were to say they were conscious of such philosophical concepts.

Oddly, it’s Cooper of whom we grew fondest, even though she seemed condemned to the pettiest of crimes – someone refusing to pay a taxi fare for instance. Yet she seemed the one most genuinely concerned with her role as a member of the community, not just as a law enforcer. In one scene, she was called to an elderly gentleman’s apartment and ended up calling his girlfriend on his behalf; in another, she gave a homeless person the sandwich her husband had bought for her dinner. When she got a ‘proper’ crime – a burglary – and was able to take fingerprints, she was so genuinely delighted, we couldn’t help but cheer – hopefully, she’ll eventually achieve her ambition of getting into the CSI side of things.

I do have some serious qualms about the philosophy of policing shown here. While there’s no denying the awful effects of drug addiction [some of those arrested are a stark, poignant reminder of that], the efforts here seem almost entirely directed at street-level pushers – who, curiously, all seem to be black. What are the odds of that? Busting them is a pointless endeavour, since it simply creates a temporary gap in the marketplace, into which someone else will stop. Even more dubious are the prostitution stings: disturbing amounts of police resources are devoted to something which is basically a massive waste of time. Want to control prostitution? Legalize it, license it and tax it.

Once again, however, the creators have little no interest in addressing such things. This is about the telegenic end of policing, where no bad guy gets away and questions about rights and the ethics of entrapment operations are not considered. It’s entertainment, pure and simple – and even as people who have a very low tolerance for “reality entertainment” [since we usually find it neither realistic nor entertaining], this is curiously habit-forming.

Shown: TLC, Thursdays, 9pm
Star: Ana Murillo, Shelunda Cooper, Julie Bower, Andrea Penoyer

Police Women of Maricopa County

  By

★★★★
“More Mums with Guns.”

The second series of TLC’s “mommy cops” reality series struck close to home, centered as it was on Phoenix. It didn’t come as much surprise as our local sheriff, Joe Arpaio, is infamous locally as a media whore, who wastes no opportunity for self-promotion, and is a sharply-divisive figure locally, adored and loathed by about equal parts of the population. We wondered how long it would take before Joe slimed his way onto the screen: six minutes into the first episode, we had our answer. Fortunately, this was more of a blip, and our fears of an Arpaio-centered show proved largely unfounded [see the execrable Smile… You’re Under Arrest for how bad this could have been].

The series was an improvement on its predecessor, and not only because of the thrill of seeing local places [though we soon realized the editors played fast and loose with geography, consecutive shots often being miles apart]. The Florida show was actually quite depressing in many ways; seemed like the majority of crimes were a) drug-related, and b) ethnic. Here, there’s a good deal more variety: it seems like the sheriff’s office spent as much time serving warrants to deadbeat dads as anything [this is one of Sheriff Joe’s tactics to pad his crime numbers and make him look good, because those are piss-easy warrants to serve, compared to those involving real criminals. Again, see S…YUA]

As notable as what is shown, is what was not included. The MCSO are notorious for “crime sweeps,” which are much about illegal immigration, a massive hot-button political issue in Arizona, as any other offense. However, these have come in for criticism from civil liberties groups, and there was not a mention of these high-profile activities on the show. The only real coverage of the topic was in chasing down “coyotes”, those who smuggle illegals across the border. On the other hand, whiny, liberal media outlets such as the Phoenix New Times bleat “Can’t The Tourism Board Shut This Show Down?” Actually, I like the New Times in general, and we’re good friends with one of their reporters, but the paper’s politics are a different issue entirely.

But outside of the the “Ooh! Been there!” local interest, I think the characters here were generally a slightly more personable bunch. As before, it centres on four women – again, mostly single moms, which makes me wonder whether the job attracts them, or leads to marital stress. There’s Deputy Amie Duong, who is the “Shelunda” of the series – when you see her arrive, you know a domestic dispute isn’t far behind. There’s Deputy Kelly Bocardo, the token minority representative, whose three brothers (among her 14 siblings, apparently!) also work for the department. And there’s Detective Lindsey Smith, whose accemt appears to drift, chameleon-like, depending on to whom she’s speaking.

Finally, there’s Detective Deborah Moyer (right), who is completely marvellous, and the main reason to watch the show. A 19-year veteran, we’d be entirely happy if the show was 100% about her. While the other women occasionally seem very scripted when they are talking to the camera, that isn’t the case with Moyer: there’s a definite sense that what you see is what you get with her. While her policing style may not be “by the book” – in one episode, she basically arrests a teenage girl for failing to hug her father – her reactions are entirely natural and certainly had us nodding in approval more often than not. She just comes across as being very normal: when she encounters a young perpetrator, she tends to think about her own kids of the same age.

But all the police here are more interested in “justice” rather than the letter of the law. That’s in contrast to the Broward County show, where there was far too much entrapment going on: I don’t think the police should be involved in creating crime. It was also notable that the cops in Arizona seemed to have much more discretion. If you were respectful and polite (the New Times would no doubt say “subservient”), you stood a much better chance of getting off with a warning than if you gave them attitude. I’ll file that away for the next time I encounter law-enforcement here, though one speeding ticket in a decade hardly makes me a habitual offender. Still, if we got to meet Detective Moyer as a result, we might considar a life of crime!

What the show did best of all was make us appreciate that, behind the grandstanding, publicity-seeking nonsense of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, are a number of dedicated, hard-working officers who have a very difficult job to handle. They’re not Robocops, and so are both imperfect and fallible, but law-enforcement personnel are human, just like you and me. Being reminded of this fact is something that is never a bad thing.