Reviewed: The Blacklist (Fris, Sky Living); Scandal (Thurs, Sky Living); The Last Ship (Fris, Sky 1); Boardwalk Empire (Sats, Sky Atlantic)
It's an all-American look at the telly this week as John Byrne takes in a transatlantic quartet of varying quality . . .
You just can't beat US TV shows. In terms of quality, variety, even quantity. There's just so much to choose from it's ridiculous.
Last Friday's episode of The Blacklist showed once again why this show has become one of the surprise hits of recent years in its native USA since its debut 12 months ago.
Combining the basic procedural-with-a-twist that's been a TV staple for decades, this show is also very slick. James Spader is a compelling standout in the lead role of Raymond 'Red' Reddington, a hardcore criminal now helping the FBI to nail dangerous crooks and terrorists. He also looks great in a suit, even though he's not exactly pencil-thin.
Anyway - the story. After a bank robbery in Warsaw, it's determined that what was stolen wasn't money, but Kaja Tomczak - a member of staff with an incredible memory. She has all the info inside her head about all the bank's dodgy dealings with criminals.
Agents Elizabeth Keen and Donald Ressler are sent over to Poland and free Tomczak, but they soon run foul of double agents and corrupt local cops, before Red intervenes. Always several steps ahead of everyone else, he places Tomczak on his private jet and offers Keen and Ressler plane tickets back to the US.
Red then lines up a meeting with his nefarious nemesis, Berlin, who had Red's ex-wife Noami kidnapped in the season two opener. Berlin's got a lot of money tied-up in the bank, which Red has siphoned off thanks to Tomczak, and so Red offers him a straightforward deal: his money for Red's wife.
There are lots of 'blink and you'll miss it' moments on this show, like the Mossad agent, Samar Navabi, who pops up out of nowhere to save Keen and Ressler and finishes the episode by being recruited by the FBI. However, it can be enjoyed as a procedural by just letting all the other, 'series-arc' stuff float over your head. Usually it's one or the other with modern TV shows, but they've very cleverly managed both on The Blacklist and that's no mean feat. And it rolls along like a theme park ride. Great fun.
Far more straightforward is Scandal (Thursdays, Sky Living), which is still bounding along in its frantic third season. Well, when I say 'straightforward' I mean insane. This show resembles a psychotics' party, with a bouncy castle inside everyone's head. This show is beyond bananas.
As noted before in this column, hardly any characters talk on Scandal; they just shout and scream at each other, usually at aneurysm-inducing levels. But in recent weeks this show has gone completely off the map in terms of the carry-on of the characters. Soon, someone's head will explode, and it may well be mine.
In the latest episode, we had Olivia resume her shouting match with her dad Rowan, the usual hyper-sterics of White House Chief of Staff, Cyrus Beene, and his journalist husband (how can there be so much hate and jealousy in one marriage?) and the clearly demented vice-president, Sally Langton.
She murdered her husband the other week, has a direct line to God (who, she claims, guided her hand to kill her husband), and is now going to run as an independent candidate against Fitz in the upcoming US Presidential Election. As a bonus, she resembles Chucky from the Child's Play horror movie franchise.
The recurring attention drawn towards Fitz and Olivia's on/off affair is getting a bit tedious now, but it was thankfully kicked to the sidelines before you could figure out how much aspirin you can safely swallow during an hour watching TV.
There was also a new arrival, in the shape of Jon Tenney's Andrew, the Governor of California, Fitz's former lieutenant governor, and now his new VP candidate replacing Loopy Langton. It turns that this guy has the historical hots for the First Lady, the pragmatic Mellie, and a fondness for sex on his desk. He'll fit in well here, once he learns to shout up for himself.
I am no longer bothered with plots on Scandal. I just watch for the oddly calming effect of watching all these power-mad sociopathic characters and how miserably unhappy their chaotic lives seem to be. Makes my life seem very Zen in comparison.
I considered giving up on The Last Ship (Fridays, Sky 1) very early on as it seems to be just following a dull routine, but gave it another try. More fool me. Each week the ship and its crew bump into a life-threatening adversary before solving the problem and moving on to the next one, making it a painfully predictable hour of gung-ho 'Mericana.
It doesn't help that the two main leads, Eric Dane and Adam Baldwin, both play the surly US patriot-with-a-gun role with alarming realism. Every week they're just itching to blow some non-American to kingdom come.
This time around a landing party looking for some monkeys got into a spot of bother with a former drug baron who's taken over a small community in Nicaragua and controls them though fear. But no one tells an American Navy officer what to do, eh?
Both sides try to out-dumb each other and in the end it all goes as predictably as an episode of Star Trek from the 1960s. I really need to give up watching this gung-ho rubbish, but Adam Baldwin is quite hypnotic as the surly second-in-command. Maybe I miss his character in Firefly . . .
Much better is the fifth and final season of Boardwalk Empire (Saturdays, Sky Atlantic), which is all about the murderous pursuit of money rather than something as daft as murdering for an ideal. With just four episodes to go there are bound to be plenty of corpses on-screen between now and then, and Nucky Thompson was rather fortunate he wasn't one in last Saturday's episode. They're obviously saving his demise for another time.
While sipping a drink with Sal Maranzano, discussing the threat posed by Lucky Luciano, the bar they were in was littered with bullets. Nucky survived, but he now knows that Johnny Torrio, who set up the meeting, was in cahoots with Luciano and Lanskey to have him killed.
Elsewhere, Margaret settled with Carolyn Rothstein, but poor oul' Gillian Darmody's pleas about regaining her sanity fell on deaf ears and she remains institutionalised. Still, at least she's not dead, like poor Sally Wheet.
Chalky's revenge-filled hunt for Narcissse resulted in him chancing upon his former squeeze, Daughter Maitland. Similarly, Nucky's brother Eli was visited by his pregnant wife, who he encouraged to move their family from Atlantic City to Chicago.
A hugely embarrassing dinner date (for Eli) with the Muellers followed and that was broken up by armed men who took Eli and Mueller/Van Elden away. They were two feds who gave the lads a grim choice: either face the gas chamber for the murders they'd committed, or nick Al Capone's ledgers to prove he's avoiding tax. I'd take my chances with the gas chamber!
It was a busy, busy episode. They're cramming so much into this final run, they might even forget to kill Nucky off in the end.
John Byrne
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