'V', 2.4 - "Unholy Alliance"

We're only four episodes into V's second season, but it feels like the show's been back much longer. Is that a good sign, because these four hours have crammed so much material in? Or a bad sign, because things feel like they're dragging? It's definitely the former, actually. The writers have amped up the pace this year, with a dizzying amount of information being delivered, which is helping distract you from the (mostly) dull characters imparting it.

In "Unholy Alliance", three Peace Ambassadors were viciously murdered by a radical faction of the Fifth Column, prompting Erica's (Elizabeth Mitchell) resistance cell to find the faction's leader Eli Cohn (Oded Fehr) and persuade him to stop his hard line tactics that endanger innocent lives. Erica also got a new partner in Chris Bolling (Jay Karnes), an old friend she went through FBI training with, who got a hunch that Father Jack's (Joel Gretsch) involved with terrorists. Meanwhile, Anna (Morena Baccarin) travelled to the Vatican City to persuade the Catholic church to give her people their official support and condemn violence against the Visitors, or risk her using "miraculous" technology to convert a billion Catholics to her own cause. Elsewhere, Tyler (Logan Huffman) reacted badly to news of more anti-V suicide bombings and helped vandalize Father Jack's church, and Ryan (Morris Chestnut) was again manipulated into doing Anna's dirty work to keep his baby daughter safe.

The abiding memory of "Unholy Alliance" is seeing V tackle the issue of religion more overtly than ever. It's not intelligent enough to do a astonishingly complex job, but you have to admire its bravery in daring to broach the subject . Most alien invasion stories allude to the spiritual questions that must arise when extra-terrestrials are discovered, but you rarely see the aliens blackmail the Church into giving them their support. It's an idea that could have been even braver (was The Pope busy?), but it makes sense that Anna would want a billion Catholics obliged to treat her people with absolute respect. Also fun to see Anna learn more about the human soul, when she's told it's immortal and cannot be destroyed, leading to a moment when an undercover V still loyal to her mother (Jane Badler) claims the V's should be embracing what humanity has to offer their species. This also acted as proof that Anna's mother was a more revolutionary Queen who was ousted from her position by her intolerant daughter, and not an equally malicious matriarch deposed by her jealous child.

Giving Erica a new FBI partner feels like a good step, particularly when it was revealed Bolling's actually been recruited by Erica's suspicious boss, and is going to be gathering evidence that she's up to no good. I doubt Erica's cover is going to be blown anytime soon (the show needs to have someone in her position of authority), so it's likely Bolling will come to share her anti-V sentiments and feed her boss comforting lies. Or will the show take things down a less predictable path; maybe with Erica being forced to kill her friend to guarantee his silence once he realizes what's going on?

The introduction of Cohn could be interesting, as we learn his own pregnant wife was experimented on by the V's as Erica was, and he's a character with an extremist view on terrorism and what it'll take to defeat the V's. I'm not convinced the whole idea of Peace Ambassadors (an allegory for the Hitler Youth) has worked the way it was intended, as the members are all clearly innocent young people who have no reason to fear the V's. It would be more interesting to me if the V's asked their human Ambassadors to do dubious things "for the greater good", to at least make them responsible for bad things that give Cohn's group a stronger reason to want them dead. As it stands, they're just naïve dupes, and it's hard to see why Cohn's group bother targeting brainwashed victims.

Overall, "Unholy Alliance" was much like every other episode of V this year: a surprising amount of stuff happened, it was fast and fairly entertaining, but the expositional dialogue and dreary characters are a big weakness (with the obvious exception of Morena Baccarin, who remains marvelous.) I actually feel sorry for showrunner Scott Rosenbaum, who inherited certain things from his predecessor it's unfeasible to change (like Logan Huffman), because if V could somehow recast 80% of its actors the show would be improved immensely. The fact is, if there are scenes that rely on the human characters interacting on a personal level, V's a washout. They're just not interesting characters, and most look extremely bored. Mitchell relies on her signature close-lipped smile so often it's becoming comical.

Asides

• I have to admit, I'm interested to hear the explanation of what the V's were doing 20 years ago on Earth. They were being led by Queen Diana at that point, who was apparently placing V's on the planet in undercover roles to report on humanity, while experimenting on selected pregnant women so their children would have chunks of their DNA missing (thus easily replaceable with alien DNA.) I suspect Diana came to realize her species' plan to breed with mankind (in secret?) wasn't going to work, and then her ambitious daughter Anna saw her softening attitude as weakness and took over, with a new plan that took 15 years to perfect?
• I had to laugh at the scene where Anna's shuttle, unannounced, rapidly descended from the sky and almost flattened hundreds of Vatican City tourists, who nevertheless gathered to applaud her exit from the craft. Hilarious.
• Why is Chad Decker the world's most famous news anchorman? He reads an autocue with all the charisma of a hip geography teacher.
• The face-skin of Agent Malik was a surprisingly horrific visual. V's been doing a lot of gruesome stuff this year, probably to lure some teenagers in. Just be grateful we didn't see Malik's body being dissolved in that bath of acid. Or are you upset we didn't? You sick puppy, you.
• This episode was written by Rockne S. O'Bannon, the creator of Alien Nation, which was a TV series from the '80s about visitors from outer space trying to exist alongside humanity and facing prejudice. He must love that stuff.

WRITER: Rockne S. O'Bannon
DIRECTOR: Dean White
TRANSMISSION: 1 February 2011, ABC, 9/8c

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TV Ratings: 'Boardwalk Empire', Sky Atlantic

Sky Atlantic got off to a fairly disappointing start on Tuesday night. The 8pm hour-long preview Let The Stories Begin drew a measly 147,000 viewers, before the much-publicized debut of Boardwalk Empire boosted viewership to 438,000 at 9pm, only for the night's ratings to drop to 225,000 for the premiere of Blue Bloods at 10.30pm.

Boardwalk Empire only narrowly squeezed into the Top 20 digital shows airing that evening; beating the return of The Vampire Diaries on ITV2 (431,000), but drawing even with CSI:NY on Five USA. The most popular multichannel show was BBC3's repeat of EastEnders with 767,000 at 10pm.

Of course, Sky Atlantic is only available in 10 million homes, so it was never going to compete with channels that are available to 90% of the UK's 26 million homes. That said, Sky were probably hoping for more exciting numbers, considering the amount of publicity it's thrown behind Sky Atlantic's exclusive HBO content.

So what next? Atlantic's free to all Sky subscribers for the next six months, so it has time to build its audience. But if 438,000 viewers is all their expensive launch night can muster, will Sky feel the pressure to appease advertisers by making Sky Atlantic available to their rivals within the year? If it was available on Virgin Media and BT Vision, ratings would undoubtedly increase and advertisers would be much happier.

Sky have enviably deep pockets, but they're still a business aiming to recoup a £150 million investment in HBO's back-catalogue over the next five years. Can they do it single-handed, by enticing their 10 million subscribers and attracting even more? Or will they have no choice but to make Atlantic more widely available if showcase purchases like Boardwalk are attracting less than 500,000 viewers? Mind you, Boardwalk Empire is a new show without a readymade audience, so it'll be interesting to see what happens when an established show like Mad Men makes it Sky debut later this year. The critically-adored AMC drama was hardly a roaring success for BBC4, but will its ratings be pitifully low on Sky or comparable?

In related news, did you know Boardwalk Empire's first two episodes are being repeated on Sky3 this 13 February at 9pm? It's airing as part of a "Free Weekend Pass" event from Sky, who are obviously hoping to hook some Freeview, Virgin and BT customers and make them consider getting Sky to continue watching. Do those Weekend Passes work, or do they just infuriate people who can't resist sampling Sky-exclusive contents, but just can't afford to subscribe for more?

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'HUMAN TARGET' 2.11 - "Kill Bob"

I don't have much to say about "Kill Bob", so I'll be reasonably brief. This episode was entertaining and had good action sequences, but the idea behind it didn't quite take flight, and the subplots were very weak. The central premise was solid, though: a scientist working on weather satellites called Bob Anderson (Todd Grinnell) became the credulous target of an assassin, with Chance (Mark Valley) realizing the hitman is none other than his beautiful wife Angie (Lauren German). In shades of the recent Angelina Jolie action movie Salt, it transpired that Angie (named after Jolie?) is actually an undercover Russian spy called Natalia Petrovic, who has been ordered to kill her husband by her OSA handler Ivan (Richard Zeman), as he's outgrown his usefulness.

Human Target often takes a familiar idea and runs with it, which is exactly what happened here. Fortunately, "Kill Bob" wasn't a facsimile of Salt and, despite its title, also had little in common with Kill Bill, but it certainly amounted to a rather formulaic hour of entertainment. Chance simply played bodyguard to Bob; initially waiting to be sure Angie was the person responsible for the attempt on his client's life. The early scenes worked best, with the lurking doubts over Angie's guilt and Chance (rather weirdly) joining the Anderson's on a day trip to the country, and once the cat was out of the bag "Kill Bob" got added mileage by revealing Angie's actually trying to fake her husband's assassination to satisfy Ivan.

Unfortunately, the subplots this week were very poor -- especially in the case of Ames (Janet Montgomery), who arrived back from a trip to Las Vegas with Ilsa (Indira Varma) and announced she's married to a man she's only known a few weeks. This news irritated Winston (Chi McBride), who places a great deal of value in the institution of marriage, and there was the expected frosty atmosphere. Trouble is; who cares. Ames has been season 2's biggest misfire, mostly because she's so petulant and nowhere near as charismatic and sexy as the writers hope. Most of the time she just doesn't fit into the needs of the show itself, and she certainly hasn't managed to endear herself to the audience. The news of her irresponsible marriage didn't have the desired impact, and it was annulled by the end of the episode anyway.

Overall, "Kill Bob" was distinctly average and wasn't helped by the fact it spoils what's been a brilliant run of double-bill episodes that turned Human Target into must-see TV for much of January. When this show has a really exciting story and is pushing its characters into new territory, it's a great deal of fun. When it's riffing on lukewarm ideas and filling the gaps with pointless filler, it risks being a washout. Still, it was mildly interesting to see the show turn the spotlight back on Ilsa's dead husband Marshall Pucci, who was seeing a mysterious woman shortly before his death. I'm predicting he's not really dead and will re-enter Ilsa's life before the season's over -- probably coinciding with the moment Ilsa realizes she's falling in love with Chance. Anyone agree?

Asides

• Human Target has pinballed around the schedules this season; from Wednesdays, through a run of double-bills on Fridays, to Monday. Interestingly, this Monday episode delivered season 2's best rating yet (7.7m), which is almost double its Friday performances (which were still good for that notoriously tough timeslot.) The Wednesday night ratings seem to hover around the 5m mark. It just goes to show how much scheduling can affect a show! But wherever you put Human Target, it seems to do quite well, which is a promising sign for the show's future.
• You may recognize Lauren German from Hostel: Part II, making her the second actor from that movie to appear in Human Target, after Roger Bart. She also appeared in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre remake and the short-lived TV series Happy Town.

WRITERS: Brad Kern & Zev Borow
DIRECTOR: John Terlesky
TRANSMISSION: 31 January 2011, Fox, 9/8c

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'Boardwalk Empire': what did you think?

Sky Atlantic launched last night, with Boardwalk Empire as its crown jewel at 9pm, followed by Blue Bloods as 10.30pm. What did you think? I don't get Sky Atlantic myself, so I can't offer my opinion on the channel, but a friend told me Boardwalk Empire was spoiled by the advert breaks. The episodes run to a full hour on HBO, so will every episode be stretched to 80-mins to accommodate ads on Sky? That doesn't sound too good! Of course, most people watching will have Sky+ so they'll probably never watch live and instead fast-forward through any commercials, so does it really matter these days?

If you have an opinion to share about Sky Atlantic or Boardwalk Empire's premiere (directed by Martin Scorsese, no less) then please do so below. I reviewed Boardwalk's pilot last year, which I thought was marvelous, but this morning's reviews from British critics are mixed. Is the problem partly the fact it was overhyped by Sky, or is Boardwalk Empire simply overrated?

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'CHUCK' 4.13 - "Chuck Versus The Push Mix"

Over the years, Chuck's writers have been forced on many occasions to write would-be series finales, owing to uncertainties about the show's future. They've done an astonishingly good job, until now. "Chuck Versus The Push Mix" was the culmination of the Volkhoff (Timothy Dalton) and Mary Bartowski (Linda Hamilton) storyline that has fuelled season 4, but it was oddly underwhelming until the final 10 minutes. And even the belated jolt of adrenaline and emotion in the fading moments was nowhere near the high standards set by previous finales.

This week, Mary and Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) tried to access Volhoff's HYDRA database, only to discover he's moved its location to "the Contessa", which is later proven to be a ship. Chuck (Zachary Levi) found a fragment of the glass eye that can access HYDRA, before flashing on its creator Roni Eimacher, setting in motion a plan with Morgan (Joshua Gomez) to find and interrogate Eimacher for information on Volkoff and "the Contessa". Meanwhile, Volkhoff was unnerved by a cryptic electronic message, apparently sent from his nemesis Orion (aka Stephen Bartowski, the late-husband of his beloved Mary), which prompted him to move Mary to the safety of the Contessa, with Sarah in tow.

It was another of Chuck's slightly strained piece-moving plots, which often struggle to flow very naturally and crumble to dust when you stop to think about them logically. To be honest, I think Chuck's naturally jocular nature protects it from harsh criticism in this respect, but I still wish the show was more robust with its plotting and there wasn't a half-improvised feel to everything. It ultimate became an episode of moments, some of which were entertaining: such as Morgan trying to bend his way through a corridor of deadly laser beams using his yoga skills, before snagging his wet-suit on a bolt and being forced to strip to his underwear.

My big issues with "... Versus The Push Mix" are down to season 4's general direction and storyline, particularly regarding Volkhoff and Mary. Dalton has undoubtedly done a great job with sketchy material, despite the fact he was twice as entertaining as the bumbling Tuttle before his real identity was revealed, but Volkhoff has ultimately been too much of a blithering idiot. I was ready for Chuck to give us a villain with a savage bite, but Volkhoff was instead written as a love blind fool with a bizarre obsession with Mary.

Worse, the Mary Bartowski storyline has been simply torturous from the start, I don't care what people say. The show spent far too long playing with our expectations about her, then didn't seem to know if Mary was deep undercover or a genuine traitor, and finally the writers seemed to give up and turned her into a tragic figure of infatuation that needed rescuing by Sarah. Throughout this episode, Hamilton gave her usual rote performance, with the fixed expression of someone with concussion. There's nothing fun, interesting, cool, humorous, or complex about Mary, so some of the blame rests with Chuck's writers. As the epitome of a self-sacrificing spy, who gave up her family to infiltrate and destroy Volkhoff Industries, there was a curious lack of impact here. This was the moment when Mary's mission to destroy Volkhoff (the man ultimately responsible for killing her husband) reached its climax, but Mary was pretty much wasted: Sarah handled most of the action, Morgan did the comedy, and Chuck got the privilege of defeating Volkhoff by laying a trap at his father's cabin. I know this isn't the Mary Bartowski show, but shouldn't she have been more instrumental in the plot? I'm still convinced the writers realized Mary wasn't working out as a character, and Hamilton was a buzz kill who didn't bring the natural charisma of her screen husband Scott Bakula.

Onto the positives: Ellie (Sarah Lancaster) went into labour, and her subplot delivered some of the warmth missing elsewhere. It was an especially fun way to involve Jeff (Scott Krinsky) and Lester (Vik Sahay), who decided to steal Devon's (Ryan McPartlin) "push mix" CD for Ellie to listen to during her labour, and arrived at the hospital as "Jeffster" to play Salt-N-Peppa's "Push It" over the hospital's public address system. It was a rare moment when Jeffster actually worked (their reputation far exceeds their mirth-making ability), mostly because the choice of song was perfect for a birth sequence, and the silliness of them prancing around reception with stunned patients tickled the funnybone.

Overall, thanks heavens this wasn't Chuck's series finale, as it could have been if NBC hadn’t ordered 11 more episodes. It was far too low-key for series finale status; lacking a strong Chuck/Sarah combo and with Casey (Adam Baldwin) invalided for, what, the fourth time this year? The final scene, with Chuck proposing to Sarah in a hospital corridor, was also a bone of contention for me. The aim was to give them a private moment together, as the camera itself chose to focus on a floor waxer that drowned their conversation, but that was a creative choice I strongly disagree with. I think fans were owed hearing Chuck's proposal after being teased with it for so long. Could you imagine if that was the last scene of Chuck, ever? I'm relieved there are more episodes in the pipeline, but still oddly hopeful NBC will call it a day with Chuck now. The show's past its best, I think most will agree.

WRITERS: Rafe Judkins & Lauren LeFranc
DIRECTOR: Peter Lauer
TRANSMISSION: 31 January 2011, NBC, 9/8c

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'EPISODES' 1.4 - "Episode Four"

I was led to believe Episodes radically improves from "Episode Four" onwards, but this was the week asphyxiation with a cushion felt preferable to watching the interplay between Matt LeBlanc, Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig. I don't actually blame the actors (particularly the latter pair, who could hardly refuse leading roles in a US comedy from a co-creator of Friends), but LeBlanc's proving to be every bit as mind-numbing as his post-Joey career would have you suspect. I'm sure he's a nice guy in real life, and I can see the appeal of playing yourself to someone with his narrow range, but Episodes is terribly dull and a waste of his and everyone else's time.

This week, after some pointless preamble about Beverly (Greig) being incensed by the fact LeBlanc's co-star in Pucks looks 25 but is secretly older than she is (mid-40s), the "story" began. LeBlanc lost custody of his two children, got drunk at a bar, called Sean (Mangan) to pick him up, was visibly annoyed when Beverly joined her husband on the hour-long drive, tricked them both into chauffeuring him to his ex-wife's house, then showed them his cute boys while they slept. It was an episode intended to give us a breakthrough between LeBlanc and Beverly, who hate each other, by showing Beverly the softer, parental side to LeBlanc. It even ended with a moment where LeBlanc called Beverly by her real name, rather than "Betsy", and was allowed to crash as their house like a naughty teenager who's phoned his parents after a wild party got out of hand.

Only, in the very next scene, the previous night's developments were swiftly undone: a sober LeBlanc was back to calling Beverly "Betsy", it was revealed he snuck a bimbo into his room while they were asleep (seriously, that's so out of order), and the atmosphere returned to prickly. So what was the point of this episode, exactly? To show a softer side to LeBlanc? All very well, but has he really come across as anything but a little egotistical and rude? It's hardly been an outrageously funny and brave performance that's made you marvel at how far LeBlanc's prepared to poke fun at people's preconceptions of him. The episode softened an already soft target of gentle ridicule.

I didn't really buy into the situation with LeBlanc's broken family life, either -- and a quick browse of the actor's Wikipedia page seems to prove the truth of things has been altered for the purposes of this show. LeBlanc actually has two step-kids and a daughter with ex-wife Melissa McKnight. Plus, he's dating his Joey co-star Andrea Anders, who was so hilarious in Better Off Ted it's a shame she isn't playing herself in this series. That's the kind of meta-comedy universe I wish Episodes was playing with. Heck, a few barbed remarks from LeBlanc about his Friends co-stars wouldn't go amiss!

The satire's toothless, the characters spin in circles, the comedy doesn't catch fire -- it's an intolerable, oppressively unfunny mess.

Aside

• Is anyone else irritated that Sean and Beverly only grumble about their comedy being ruined for American consumption, but don't actively fight against the stupid changes? In this episode, which barely featured any of the usual TV production scenes, they now seem resigned to the fact Pucks is a travesty. It's hard to care about the Lincoln's situation if they appear to have accepted it themselves, and are getting paid a fortune to create this pilot.

WRITERS: David Krane & Jeffrey Klarik
DIRECTOR: James Griffith
TRANSMISSION: 31 January 2011, BBC2/HD, 10/10.30PM

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DVD/Blu-ray Releases: FEBRUARY 2011 ('Buried', 'Despicable Me', 'Due Date', 'Easy A', 'RED', 'The Social Network', 'The Office: S5', 'Primeval: S4', 'Upstairs, Downstairs', etc.)

On the first day of every month I pick my favourite DVD and Blu-rays that are released over the next four weeks in the UK and Ireland. Below is the result of that work for February:

7 FEBRUARY

Californication: Season 1-3 [DVD]
Californication: Season 3 [DVD]
Eat, Pray, Love [DVD] [BLURAY]
Garrow's Law: Series 1 & 2 [DVD]
Garrow's Law: Series 2 [DVD]
I Spit On Your Grave (2010) [DVD] [BLURAY]
The Office: Season 1-5 [DVD]
The Office: Season 5 [DVD] (** out of four)
The Runaways [DVD]
The Sarah Silverman Program: Season 1 [DVD]
The Sarah Silverman Program: Season 2 [DVD]
Swingtown: Season 1 [DVD]
Takers [DVD] [BLURAY]
True Grit (1969) [DVD] [BLURAY]
Upstairs Downstairs [DVD]

14 FEBRUARY

30 Rock: Season 1-4 [DVD]
30 Rock: Season 4 [DVD]
Buried [DVD] [BLURAY]
Human Planet [DVD] [BLURAY]
Open Season 1-3 [DVD]
Open Season 3 [DVD]
The Social Network [DVD] [BLURAY]
RED [DVD] [BLURAY]
Vampires Suck [DVD] [BLURAY]

21 FEBRUARY

Burke & Hare [DVD] [BLURAY]
Despicable Me [DVD] [BLURAY]
Easy A [DVD] [BLURAY]
Jersey Shore: Season 1 [DVD]
Legend Of The Guardians [DVD] [BLURAY]
Primeval: Series 4 [DVD] [BLURAY] (*1/2 out of four)
Psych: Season3 [DVD]

28 FEBRUARY

Due Date [DVD] [BLURAY]
Paranormal Activity 2 [DVD] [BLURAY]
Spooks: Series 9 [DVD]

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