Television reviews
DIANNE Butler reviews your evening television for the week.
———-Wednesday 26th———-Remember Me,Showtime Premiere, 7.30pmRating: 3 Stars. PUT-up-or-shut-up time for Robert Pattinson won't be until the sun finally sets on the Twilight phenomenon.
So fair play to the British heart-throb for skipping well ahead of the program and testing himself in trying circumstances for Remember Me.
Obviously very eager to prove he is more than just a poster-friendly face, Pattinson is on a mission here to flash some legit acting credentials.
Despite the occasional awkward moment, the guy has what it takes for showbusiness.
Pattinson plays Tyler Hawkins, a poor little rich boy student slumming it in a grotty New York apartment to get back at his heartless tycoon of a dad (Pierce Brosnan).
Early on, it's hinted that Tyler has other, non-parent-baiting reasons for being such a chain-smoking, binge-drinking, babe-slaying no-hoper.
All will adequately be explained, particularly once Tyler softens up to start a relationship with cute classmate Ally (Emilie de Ravin). In the interest of added complications, it also turns out that Tyler recently had a run-in with Ally's father, a tough New York cop (Chris Cooper).
So far, so relatively predictable then. Or so you would think. To be honest, Remember Me gets quite good quite quickly once it sketches out its familiar storyline.
A good deal of time is spent getting to the bottom of Tyler and Ally's respective family problems, and the pay-off earned is genuinely compelling.
Pattinson and de Ravin effectively channel that "you and me against the world" vibe that young lovers everywhere know so well.
All in all, Remember Me is a faintly memorable romantic drama that proves there are bigger and better things to come from Robert Pattinson. ———-Thursday 27th———-RushChannel 10, 8.30pmRating: 3 Stars.SO now Josh is dead? Really? Well, nothing's confirmed yet, the results aren't back from the lab, but that hand pressed up against the window of the burnt-out vehicle doesn't look too flash. It could belong to anyone, but Lawson is knocking on Tash's door to prepare her for bad news just in case. Very thoughtful.
But he and Josh were are, let's not get ahead of ourselves after all best friends who ran out of more than one restaurant without paying the bill. Which is why he comforts Tash with some quick sex. It's what Josh would've wanted. Let's hope he really is dead, right Lawson?
And now the rest of the Rush cast look like getting finished off by the bomb, which appears to be "somewhere in Melbourne". Part of me hopes there really is a bomb. Because of the stupid police minister and her intransigence.
We can't shut down Melbourne and cause widespread panic, she tells Kerry (Catherine McClements) during one of their standoffs. Not during Spring Racing Carnival. Kerry draws her a map, and somehow resists using puppets: guy dying of radiation poisoning. Two hundred kilos of Semtex somewhere. And her big closer: they've got a facility that was obviously used for radioactive material. Yes Kerry, it's called Maralinga, we really need to get that cleaned up sometime.
It's a solid episode, and they had to wrap up this whole storyline, if that's in fact what's happened, but it's all fairly routine when you think about the heat of episodes past. Is it because Callan Mulvey's not in it? That's my theory. He and Rodger Corser are like Brad and Angelina. In the early days, before they argued.
There can't be many episodes left of this show. It feels like there aren't anyway. ———-Friday 28th———-Scott & BaileyABC1, 8.30pm Rating: 2 Stars.
I DON'T know is a big "SURPRISE!" what you want when you're just back in the office after three months off because of a stabbing? Which, given it was administered in your home by a life-long family friend, may have also been quite the SURPRISE!
Still, Janet the DC Scott part of the equation here is a total pro, or else she came back to work far too soon. Probably the second one, but either way she handles this idiotic party with somnambulant aplomb.
And now the cops/shrink combination handling the Geoff Hastings case said nutter who stabbed her have decided only Janet (Lesley Sharp) can get out of him just how many women he dispatched over the years. Genius idea, isn't it?
Geoff Hastings, if we asked his neighbours, would've been polite and kept to himself. I watched that episode where we met Geoff and I can't remember now, but I'm pretty sure I had to stop myself from telling you he was the killer.
Based on the golden rule of screen production that says the highest paid guest star is the murderer.
Geoff was played by that guy who plays Molesley in Downton Abbey. I blame it. All that subservience, something had to snap.
Tonight, though, the big thing is DC Rachel Bailey's slippery barrister boyfriend, Nick Savage (Rupert Graves). She's almost done in a hit-and-run and there are suddenly questions whether there may be a connection to Savage. If so, what a shocking breach of bedroom etiquette. There's also a case, of a boy who was breathing, but not any more. A bullet went through his phone and then part of the phone lodged in his brain. So in conclusion, no, mobile phones do not prevent brain damage. ———-Saturday 29th———-The TenantABC2, 8.30pm Rating: 5 Stars.GEE, it's going to be hard to go past Carry On Screaming! on GEM at 10.45 this morning. People are always whingeing about how there isn't enough children's programming (rubbish) so what's wrong with this?
Better than Grandpa in my Pocket over on ABC2, which apparently is meant to be a kids' show. Grandpa in my Pocket … I don't think so. Technically Saturdays on free-to-air should be your favourite time of the week. New episodes of Doc Martin, Agatha Christie of unknown provenance, and I mean, why wouldn't you spend four hours of your life watching Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers? Unless the Lord of the Rings episode of Four Weddings gave you all the Gollum you could take. Does three hours and 40 minutes seem like enough time to you? Its on GO! so there are ads, and I just hope they don't find themselves eating into Eclipse Music TV.
And obviously there's 7Mate, doing the right thing by everyone all week and running a festival of Bond. Some of that architecture amazing. And I'm not talking about Pussy Galore's foundation garments here, you realise. But tonight nothing will stop me from watching The Tenant, which came out in 1976, after Roman Polanski's big crowd-pleasers Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby.
You may find it's like Rosemary's Baby in some ways.
It doesn't exactly recommend apartment living, for one thing. And there's a similar battle going on within the main character a small, diffident man named Trelkovsky, played by Polanski about whether he's going mad, or is he just paranoid?
Shelley Winters plays the building's concierge, Melvyn Douglas the landlord. Brilliant. It's a really intense film.
———-Sunday 30th———-RingerChannel 10, 9.30pmRating: 3 Stars.THIS isn't good. Siobhan's husband just called her Bridget. Which is her name.
It's just that as far as he knows she's his wife Siobhan. Bridget and Siobhan look the same, on account of being identical twins, both played by Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Tremendous relief anyway that was just a dream. But the day will come when Andrew Martin (Ioan Gruffudd) is going to turn to his wife and start asking questions. Surely. He can't be that dumb. Can he? He's some sort of hot finance dude and, even allowing for the shape the US economy's in, he's still got his place at the Hamptons and one in Manhattan for weekday living and the cars on tap and what about Siobhan's wardrobe? Which somehow fits Bridget, Bridget who by rights should be about 15kg lighter, thanks to her choice of lifestyle. She's on the straight and narrow now though, with a fake happy marriage and a fake pregnancy, things couldn't be better. If you don't count being on the run from the FBI.
OK, Ringer isn't Chekhov. I don't really like Chekhov anyway. Three Sisters makes me want to put my head in the oven. But I can't see this turning out like that. So far only the cops and Bridget's 12-step sponsor Malcolm even know there are two sisters. But at some stage when someone has a secret like this, on a TV series like this, you have to tell other people. And tonight, Bridget away for the weekend with Andrew and their alleged best friends Henry and Gemma has reached this point. Siobhan was sleeping with Henry before she died. Not that she's dead. She's living in a hotel suite in Paris and up to no good. Reasons unknown. But Ringer isn't the type of show where I'm going to expect all things explained to me.———-Monday 31st———-SuitsChannel 7, 10.30pmRating: 3 Stars.WHAT just happened, Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) wants to know after Harvey Specter has clearly faked a fight with their prisoner client to give them more time to work on getting him released because he's so nicely groomed he has to be innocent.
And Ross is meant to be the smart one. Everyone is very well-groomed on Suits. This is the last episode in the series tonight. Have you stuck it out?
It has been given a slight runaround with the time, half an hour here and there, but Seven's basically kept it where it is.
At least it's stayed put on a Monday night.
I'd say they're going to bring it back for a second series by the way they trumpeted the US announcement the other day. They probably wouldn't have done that if they were going to abandon it.
So tonight there's the thing with the guy in jail, Clifford. Clifford is a name that says victim to me, so I wouldn't be too concerned, between Harvey the strutting haircut and Mike the genius numbers guy, who isn't even an actual lawyer, he'll get out.
Despite Harvey's breezy admission he hasn't given Clifford's case a "minute's thought in over a decade". I feel as if this is racism on some level, but both Clifford and I ignore it for the bigger picture here. Which is, how is Mike's oldest, most unstable friend, Trevor who knows all about Mike's Past and who just turns up tonight at Mike's door without calling ahead or anything going to react when he finds out he has been sleeping with Jenny?
Mike doesn't even really want to have sex with her. Or part of him does, obviously.
He really wants to get with Rachel, but that would destroy the tension in the show.———-Tuesday 1st———-Mike & MollyChannel 9, 9pmRating: 3 Stars.HOW'S Chuck Lorre all his shows, Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Mike & Molly, are back-to-back tonight. None of them is much chop, not really, but just getting three on in prime time, it's pretty rare for one person.
I love that line from Roseanne Barr about Chuck Lorre in the big piece Vanity Fair had on Charlie Sheen in June. Lorre used to work for her on Roseanne, until she sacked him. She said Lorre made Sheen deliver some of the worst jokes to ever come out of an actor's mouth, "Thereby making ingesting knockout drugs a must".
It's a shame, knowing what we now know about Melissa McCarthy, that she's saddled with saccharine one-note Molly. Molly's going nowhere. Her relationship with Mike (Billy Gardell) can only go in one direction. It has no choice. It's been locked into this show's decision to make this about "fat" people.
There's no room for any other outcome, even though Molly is plainly light years beyond Mike in every aspect.
It's really starting to grind my gears, the way Mike is so damned grateful that Molly's agreed to go out with him. Man up, dude.
You've had sex that involved vegetable oil, you've said the I love yous, and tonight you're buying her a calorific Valentine's cake. You're solid.
But Mike strikes trouble when he finds out he's not Molly's first boyfriend. Imagine. It's a terrible shock and he accidentally eats an entire cake. Mike is in such a state he even gets advice from Carl's grandmother, an insulting stereotype who should be written out of the show. But Molly has an AC/DC song on her iPod and maybe Mike can serenade her with that.
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