Superheroes, spies and Sherlock in this month’s spoiler-free TV round-up.
Daredevil (Season 2)
It’s certainly the summer of good-guy-on-good-guy dust-ups in the superhero subgenre this year, with Batman v Superman lighting up the box office last month and Captain America v Iron Man set to do the same next week (in the UK and 41 other countries, anyway; “next month” everywhere else). First out of the gate, however, was Daredevil v Punisher, in the second season of Netflix’s initial Marvel-derived success. Also throwing love-of-his-life Elektra into the mix, plus some additional plot elements teased in season one, meant Daredevil had more to do this year. However, far from feeling overstuffed (like so many a weak superhero sequel), it rose to the occasion, with a second run that was arguably even better than the first. Charlie Cox continues to be a real star as Matt Murdock, Jon Bernthal gave an excellent rendition of Frank Castle as a genuine human being, and supporting players like Deborah Ann Woll and Rosario Dawson shine too. Also, less widely praised but one of the season’s subtle successes for me, was Geoffrey Cantor stepping ably into the series’ Ben-Urich-shaped hole. And the fights were both plentiful and eye-poppingly choreographed, even more so than the first season’s. Exciting stuff all round.
Elementary (Season 4 Episodes 14-16)
I’m a little surprised I’m still with this “Sherlock Holmes in modern day America with a female Dr Watson” series, because it was never a particularly good version of Sherlock Holmes and it still isn’t. What it has turned out to be is a decent show in its own right (for a US network procedural, anyway), with sometimes-interesting characters who happen to share the names and the odd characteristic of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed creations. It’s so much its own show that it’s never really bothered adapting the canon, so it was very odd when episode 16, Hounded, didn’t just use a few names from The Hound of the Baskervilles (as the series has in the past), but actually had a passable swing at modernising the entire plot. It doesn’t seem to have gone down too well with critics and viewers, though for my money it did a much better job than Sherlock’s disappointing attempt.
The Night Manager
A lavish, all-star, ultra-hyped John le Carré adaptation that, thank goodness, lives up to its reputation. Although it wrapped up in the UK a couple of weeks ago, it only started in the US last night, and I recommend any America-based readers who enjoy a good thriller to get on board tout suite. The Night Manager doesn’t have a Tinker Tailor-style twisty-turny plot, but fills that gap with tension and suspense. Tom Hiddleston is a likeable hero, dragged in to something that might seem over his head, but which it emerges he has an affinity for. Hugh Laurie is a personably chilling villain, Olivia Colman kicks Whitehall ass, Tom Hollander perfectly judges a part that could’ve been caricature, and Elizabeth Debicki shows a very different side after her ice-cold villainess in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. As for talk of Hiddleston being the next Bond… initially his character here couldn’t seem further away from 007, lending credence to my presumption that everyone declared “he could be Bond!” just because he was in a spy series. But as it goes on, he gets to be suave, cunning, and sleep with pretty much every female character that isn’t his boss. So, yes, he could be Bond. At this point he’s certainly a better pick than too-old-for-it-now Idris Elba.
Things to Catch Up On
This month, I have mostly been missing season four of The Americans, aka the most underrated drama on television. Well, apart from with critics, that is, who’ve given this run 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. I don’t know if anyone bothers to air it over here anymore (ITV ditched it after the second season), but I’ve always got it via other means anyhow, so it’s a moot point for me. I also save it all up and binge over a couple of weeks, because it really suits it — in the same way it suits, say, Game of Thrones, but as no one watches The Americans it’s much easier to avoid spoilers. This year, that means I won’t get stuck into it until sometime in June. Can’t wait. Well, I can, because I am. But you know what I mean.
Next month… Game of F***ing Thrones returns!
I have very mixed feelings about Person of Interest, whose fourth season has only made it to UK TV in the past few weeks (the belated fifth starts in the US in May, they announced yesterday). When it works, it’s a good quality vigilante/procedural action show; but its array of arc plots are as unrewarding as they are never-ending, and are consequently unsatisfying to a fault (literally). However, now that I’m so deep into it, and with cancellation finally confirmed (the foreshortened and delayed fifth season will indeed be its last, as was also finally announced yesterday), I feel like I’m in ’til the bitter end. The makers just bloody better have had the notice to get a proper ending into that now-final episode…
When Amazon picked up Ripper Street after the success of the third series, it was for a fourth and fifth season totalling 13 episodes. The show’s writers seem to have taken the double recommission to heart and crafted an arc plot to last throughout those two seasons, meaning this first half ends on a big surprise and with all sorts of things left up in the air. And now we have to wait. Still, it’ll be fascinating to see how there are six or seven more episodes left, considering the predicament they’ve put the characters in.
I think I sounded a little more dismissive of Shetland than I’d intended in 
The quality of this revival has certainly been all over the place. I was wary of episode three, Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster, because comedy always seems at odds with The X Files’ grand conspiracy storylines, but I thought it was hilarious and deserving of its acclaim as the best episode of the season. Home Again felt like solid standard X Files fodder, and Babylon was clearly trying to be zeitgeisty but perhaps wasn’t fully thought-through. As for the much-maligned finale, My Struggle II… well, it was a mess, and over-ambitious, and a stupid idea to end it on a cliffhanger when no one knew how well the revival would go down. Let’s hope Chris Carter is right that there’ll definitely be more.
This month, I have mostly been missing The Night Manager. The critically-acclaimed ratings hit is, as you likely know, a spy thriller adapted from a John le Carré novel, which not only means it has pedigree, but that its star — Tumblr-beloved Marvel villain Tom Hiddleston — is now being tipped to take over as Bond. I wouldn’t know, I’ve not seen it yet.
100Films.co.uk 