Mon, Feb 18th, 2008
09:30 Doctor Who
10:30 Law & Order
11:30 Andy Barker, PI
12:00 Knight Rider
Doctor Who. Season 28, Episode 5. One of the strengths of Doctor Who is the characters. Having Micky join the TARDIS crew pays huge dividends in this episode, as we watch the various dynamics between him and Rose, him and The Doctor, and - of course - The Doctor and Rose. It makes for great television, even the story lets you down somewhat. Not that this is a bad story. It's just a painfully padded Part One of a story and - as such - it does tend to drag. The TARDIS takes the gang to a parallel Earth (not the usual story fodder for Doctor Who, althought it has happened before) and while there is certain novelty to the spin that is put on familariar characters, there is also some dreadful over-acting from Roger Lloyd-Pack and a tedious drawn-out climax waiting for the Cybermen to appear.
Law & Order. Season 18, Episode 1. A pedestrian story can't hide the fact that Law & Order has a cool cop again. Jeremy Sisto makes a superb impression in his debut. He's a great screen presence and steals every scene he appears in. I have not watched Law & Order in many, many years, but this might make me want to go back. I hope the second episode has a decent story, not dated rubbish like this.
Andy Barker, PI. Episode 4. A stolen laptop, a tax-filing deadline and a guest shot from Traci Lords make for another great Andy Barker episode. The show just zips along, flinging out some great gags at regular intervals. Andy's father-in-law getting repeatedly beaten up by accident is very funny, showing it to us on security cameras is genius. Andy's confrontation scene with Traci Lords is hilarious and the show ends with another superb chase sequences. This time, as he dodges a gun-wielding thug, Andy is trying to file a tax return on the laptop.
Knight Rider. Pilot. I wasn't a fan of the original series and I won't be a fan of this one (if it goes to series). It aims low, and succeeds! This is Mediocre at it's very best (if you know what I mean). A cool opening sequence shows us that Bruce Davison is a member of the regular cast, and the show then tries to convince us that his character is killed off in the first scene. Right. That illustrates the brain-power behind this little gem. New KITT is introduced and seems to be more pro-active than Old KITT, tracking down and saving a damsel in distress. Deanna Russo (very pretty, but of limited acting talent) is the damsel partnered with KITT for the first half-hour and...it's pretty cool stuff. Watching it, and enjoying it, I did have pause to suspect that Old KITT would have gotten away from the bad guys much easier, but that's neither here nor there. While all this is going on Sydney Tamiia Poitier (very pretty, but of limited acting talent) stars in a sub-plot that serves no purpose. The show returns to her so many times that it's obvious the purpose of all this is... to reveal that the guy with her is a traitor, who will tip off the bad guys when the time comes. Yawn. The producers obviously think we all stopped watching TV when KR went off the air, and that we couldn't possibly see this coming. Justin Bruening (very pretty, but of limited acting talent) enters the story at this point, does some cool action stuff and begins bickering with New KITT. When the pilot created artificial bickering between New Michael and New KITT I immediately felt embarrassed that I was watching it.
And that was it, really. New KITT took ages to get from A to B, while the bad guys took a helicopter and easily out-manoeuvered him. They killed New Michael's mother. Boo Hiss. When New Michael leaned over his mother's dying body Bruening failed to convey any emotion. He looked like he could have been deciding which cheeseburger to order. There was a pointless chase sequence at the end, and - it must be said - a truly cool moment when New KITT stopped the bad guys. A few more moments like that and I might have enjoyed it. But there wasn't and I didn't. Unlike Bionic Woman, which was rubbish and arrogant (seeming to think it was quality dark TV or something) this is merely rubbish and confident. It's bunk and it knows it. And while I hated the old show with a passion, it - too - seemed to know it was crap. And there was a market for it. There's probably a market for this, too. Sadly.
Highlight? Andy Barker, PI
Doctor Who, Law & Order, Andy Barker PI, Knight Rider 2008
