Category: TV

East West 101: Seasons Two & Three

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There was a time back around 2013 when I was regularly reviewing DVDs of non-American crime dramas. They were released by companies like Acorn and MHZ. I was reviewing them so often that I seriously considered making it my beat, so to speak. Like I thought I could just be a reviewer of non-American television.

If I’m being honest I don’t really remember East West. I have the vaguest of memories of reviewing it, but reading my actual review doesn’t stir anything up. That’s not to say it is a bad show, as I did give it a good review, but at the time I was watching a lot of crime dramas and they do tend to blend together.

Anyway, you can read that review here.

Television Recaps

As I am going through all of my old posts, giving them a slight edit, and then making them public, we are coming to the brief period in which I was recapping a few television shows

A recap is like it sounds – a brief synopsis of what happened within an episode of a series with bits of trivia thrown in and some of my thoughts.

I enjoyed doing it, but it was very time-consuming and I always felt the pressure of getting something up the moment it aired, and so I gave it up.

Too soon as it turns out. When I was writing those recaps, back in 2006, that whole industry was in its infancy. Back in the print magazine and newspaper days, they might write a review of an entire season of a show, or more than likely they’d give a sneak peak of an upcoming season or a new show. But there wasn’t enough space to do regular episode recaps.

Print is free on the Internet and eventually, sites figured out that people enjoyed watching an episode and then going online to read about what they just watched. Lost may have been the show that made that idea really popular. That show was so full of Easter Eggs and little details that might be important that fans were endlessly discussing each episode.

Any number of critics and writers got their careers by doing recaps. I sometimes wonder if I had stuck with where I might be and what I might be doing.

But I didn’t and here we are. And now you get to read my little attempt at doing recaps. I’m interested in seeing how they hold up. Certainly, they are little time capsules of TV from many years ago.

Elmo’s World: All About Animals

elmos world

I grew up watching Sesame Street. Oddly enough I don’t remember watching it at all, but I do have distinct memories of watching Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood.

When my daughter was born Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood was no longer on the air (well, there were reruns but in my town, they came on really early), but Sesame Street was still in full swing. My daughter loved it. I loved it. Still do, though the daughter is too old to watch and thus it doesn’t get much airplay anymore.

Obviously, Sesame Street is designed for little ones. But it also works well for adults. They have some very clever gags, and they love pop culture. They’ve made some great spoofs (one of my favorites is a Middle Earth parody called Lord of the Crumbs), and they often invite celebrity guests to do little skits. I especially love when a singer comes on and sings one of their songs but with slightly altered lyrics. Norah Jones once sang “Don’t Know Y” and I still regularly play Feist turning her song “1,2,3,4” into a counting song.

During those days that my daughter watched Sesame Street every day I requested a few of their DVDs and did some reviewing for Cinema Sentries. You can read my review of Elmos World: All About Animals here. Spoiler Alert: Despite me praising the show in the last several paragraphs I found this DVD to be a bit grating. But that’s because it is just the Elmo’s World section of the show and nothing but the Elmo’s World section of the show. And that gets tiresome fast.

Beware the Batman: Shadows of Gotham, Season 1 Part 1

beware the batman

Batman is probably my favorite superhero. I love that he doesn’t have superpowers. He can’t fly, he doesn’t have super strength. He can’t shoot rays out of his eyes, etc. He is very strong and well-trained, but he’s still very much a regular human. There have been lots of reiterations of him on the big screen and the small, not to mention all the different comics.

Beware the Batman was a short-lived television series that aired on the Cartoon Network. I reviewed it back in 2014 and now you can read it here.

Blood on the Docks

blood on the docks dvd cover

I watch a lot of television crime dramas. The very nature of television series and crime dramas tends to push these things to similar formulas. One of the classic character tropes in crime dramas that feature police as their main characters is to have one be perfectly straight-laced and by the books and another to be a wild card, willing to do what it takes to solve the case even if that means bending the rules.

Blood on the Tracks is as formulaic as it gets (at least according to my review, as I really don’t remember anything about it), but apparently, it works. And that’s the thing about a good formula, you can make it work pretty easily, especially if you have good actors.

You can read my full review here.

Doctor Who: Terror of the Zygons

doctor who terror of the zygons dvd cover

Doctor Who
Terror of the Zygons
Season 13, Story 80
Original Air Date: August 30-September 05, 1975

Classic Doctor Who first came to America in 1972 with Jon Pertwee portraying The Doctor, but it didn’t do very well and was quickly dropped. A few years later, with Tom Baker now in the lead role, the series was sold to PBS and became a cult hit. Most fans of a certain age hold a special place in their hearts for those Tom Baker stories, including me. Sort of.

I wasn’t really a fan of the series when I was growing up. If memory serves the series came on here late on Saturday nights. I remember watching it a few times (and I have a very specific memory have the bejeezus scared out of me by the Daleks which made me ask my mother to lie down with me even though I was old enough to be embarrassed by that request). But it is Baker who fills my earliest memories of the series. It was many years later, in fact, that I even knew The Doctor was played by multiple actors.

Anyways, when I was first getting into Classic Doctor Who stories I watched and reviewed this Tom Baker story, and you can read my review here.

Poirot: Series 9

poirot series 9 blu-ray

I love a good cozy television mystery. There is something comforting about sitting down on the couch and watching a smart detective solve a murder week after week, episode after episode.

I’m not actually the biggest Agatha Christie fan, at least not in terms of actually reading her actual books. But I do enjoy many of the films and television series that have been based upon her works, and Poirot, the BBC series starring David Suchet is one of the best.

Suchet so perfectly embodies the Belgian detective I find it difficult watching anybody else play the role now I’m pretty sure Series 9 was the first time I really sat down and watched this series. It was definitely the first time I ever reviewed one (I’ve reviewed a few others since then.)

You can read that review here.

The Secret of Crickley Hall (2012)

the secret of crickley hall poster

As I’m slowly making my way through all the reviews I’ve written for Cinema Sentries I regularly find movies and television series that I have only the vaguest memories of ever watching. This is one of those things. I watched The Secret of Crickley Hall and reviewed it back in 2013, nearly 10 years ago. That in itself kind of blows my mind. I have a very fuzzy memory of receiving the DVDs for this, but I could not tell you the first thing about it.

Reading my review it seems I didn’t really like this series. It also makes me scratch my head because I begin with an admission that I don’t like ghost stories, and I love ghost stories. I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote that. I also didn’t know who Suranne Jones was at the time and I’ve since come to admire her as an actress (she’s fantastic in Scott & Bailey).

Anyway, you can read my thoughts about it from ten years ago here.

Spiral: Season 2 DVD Review: A Superb, Layered French Crime Drama

spiral season 2 dvd

Over the last few years my movie watching has gone way up and my television viewing has gone down. I find it easier to sit through a 2 hours movie than to make it through several seasons (and many hours) of a television program.

It doesn’t help that there are just so many shows out there. It seems like every other week I’m hearing about some new show that everyone is talking about and is a must-see. Who has the time to watch it all?

I have a bad habit of watching a few episodes of something, then getting distracted by a bunch of movies or another series and I forget to finish a season, never mind an entire series.

Spiral is a fantastic French crime series that I’ve watched 2 or 3 seasons of, but never finished. I’m at the point now where I’d have to start at the beginning, and like I say, who has the time?

Anyway, I wrote a review of Season 2 many years ago and you can now read it at Cinema Sentries.