TV Shows – JG Judgementally Comments…

Countdown

Can we count on Coundown to give Jensen Ackles a decent starring vehicle? Um…

What’s The Show? Countdown, Amazon’s attempt to get into the 24 market long, long after that seems like a Sensible Thing To Do.

What’s It All About JG? Starring, let’s say, Jensen Ackles as Detective Mark Meachum, Countdown asks a searingly pointed question – what if thrillers just somehow aren’t dumb enough yet? This one posits a threat which is going to be like 9/11 and Chernobyl, which is quite the thing – Meachum and a collection of the sort of people you always see in this type of thriller have joined a special task force dedicated to stopping whoever it is that’s planning this dastardly and nefarious deed. Not just any task force, see. A special one. Which means they get to do stunts and hacking and jumping and broom-broom fast driving, all while trying to prevent LA being turned into a fair approximation of the dark side of the moon. Oh and then also a potential presidential assassination that needs to be stopped as well, for reasons that seem to have less to do with the story and more to do with having something to do in the last three episodes after inconveniently wrapping up the plot far too early and also curing Meachum. Good luck with all that!

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode Eight, “The Reality War”

So the second Gatwa season bows out but does the last episode stick the landing?

Maybe the point of all this is up there?

What’s The Episode? The Reality War

What’s It All About, JG? Wondering if RTD has ever seen Doctor Who before, strangely. Anyway, following on from last week, the Doctor escapes the falling balcony because Anita from “Joy To The World” opens a Time Hotel door which he can then step through. The Time Hotel doors allow actual reality to start breaking through, so UNIT becomes UNIT again.

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode Seven, “Wish World”

The Rani’s (and also the Ranis) have an evil plan! Who would have guessed?

What’s The Episode? Wish World

What’s It All About, JG? Discovering RTD has seen Wandavision (or maybe Pleasantville) for the most part. But story-wise, we start off with the Rani (Panjabi version) in Bavaria, stealing a baby who can make wishes come true. We then find ourselves on a version of Earth where the Doctor and Belinda are married with a child, Poppy, and the Doctor works at UNIT, now an insurance company. Every so often, when someone doubts something, a cup will fall through a table. This is because the Rani is trying to measure doubt (can one assign a number to such a nebulous concept?). Conrad, from “Lucky Day“, has wished this world into existence, so it’s enforced heterosexuality, disdain for the disabled etc. – the typical right-wing fascist fantasy. Eventually, to get the plot moving, Rogue turns up on telly to give the Doctor a push in the direction of something interesting and he ends up confronting The Two Ranis (Panjabi and Dobson). The “current” version reveals she is trying to find…. Omega. Oh good. Then the Doctor plummets to his apparent death while screaming about Poppy being actually real while the world disintegrates.

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode Six, “The Interstellar Song Contest”

Is this what it’s come to?

What’s The Episode? The Intergalactic Song Contest

What’s It All About, JG? Eurovision in space, innit? But fine, the Doctor and Belinda turn up at the Intergalactic Song Contest, shit happens and most of it is really, really terrible (the writing, not the events, though also that). Susan pops in for a cameo (the only bit I actively enjoyed) and Mrs Flood is the Rani. Woo. The end.

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode Five, “The Story and The Engine”

What is the Story of Doctor Who anyway?

What’s the Episode? The Story and The Engine

What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor lands in Nigeria so he can go hang out in a barber shop with his friend Omo (Sule Rimi), leaving Belinda to cool her heels in the TARDIS. The barber shop has, however, been taken over by The Barber, who has abducted Omo and a few others. The barber, alongside a woman called Abby (Michelle Asante), is using them to power a mysterious engine with the power of stories which the abducted men are compelled to tell. Trying to leave the shop, the Doctor discovers it is both in Nigeria and on the back of a giant spider simultaneously. Fed up of not being in the episode, Belinda eventually arrives and gets caught too.

The Barber reveals he is a storyteller who spread stories of the Gods but received no credit so now wants revenge. The Doctor also figures out that Abby is in fact Abena, someone he met (and abandoned) when he was the Fugitive Doctor – she’s also looking for revenge. The Barber wants to reach the centre of the spider’s web to cut off the gods from the web and killing them, which the Doctor things will destabilise all human culture (or something). Abenda changes her mind on the revenge thing and – via braiding – gives the Doctor a map to the engine’s power source. The Doctor links the engine to his story which overloads it, the Barber is persuaded to let everyone go free, and everyone escapes. Omo retires, the Barber gets the (now normal) shop and Abby goes and gets on with her life.

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode Four, “Lucky Day”

Back to Earth with a bang and a catch-up with Ruby. But can a “political” thriller land its politics?

What’s The Episode? “Lucky Day”

What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor and Belinda land on Earth in 2007 to try and get another Vindicator reading and encounter Conrad Clark, a small boy the Doctor gives 50p to. An adult Conrad (Jonah Haeur-King) has another chance encounter with the Doctor and Ruby as they hunt down a Shreek, which he’s marked by as prey. We then move forward to reacquaint ourselves with Ruby Sunday as she is now. She’s decided to appear on a Doctor-related podcast hosted by Conrad and they start dating. Going to a village in the countryside for a romantic date, it seems like the Shreeks are attacking. Rubby calls in Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) and UNIT but in fact, it’s all just actors in costume. Conrad thinks aliens, the Doctor, and UNIT are all fake because he’s a conspiracy nut and he’s trying to out them. This results in a scandal as he tries to discredit UNIT so UNIT are on the back foot. Conrad breaks into that flippin’ great UNIT HQ in London with the help of an inside man and tries to livestream the event and get Kate to admit it’s all fake. Instead, Kate sics an actual Shreek on him and he ends up with his arm bitten off (and reattached) before getting sent to jail. Where the jailer is Mrs Floor (of course). The Doctor bothers to turn up at the end to give a speech about how awful Conrad is and Conrad basically tells him to fuck off, then Mrs Flood apparently lets him out. The end.

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode 3, “The Well”

Can third time be lucky for this season?

What’s The Episode? “The Well”

What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor and Belinda land on a spaceship to get further readings from the Vindicator to try and get them back to Earth. They are unceremoniously dumped on a planet where a military rescue team – straight out of Aliens – are trying to find out what happened to a mining colony. Entering with the soldiers, the Doctor discovers just one survivor, a deaf cook named Aliss. She has “something on her back”, which turns out to be the creature from “Midnight”, still around some 400,000 years later and this is that selfsame planet, now stripped of its diamond. The Doctor is able to force the creature out of Aliss but it attaches itself to Belinda instead. Thanks to some fancy shooting from the leader of the soldiers, Shaya (Caoilfhionn Dunne) Belinda is freed and they return to the drop ship where the TARDIS is and go on their merry way. Only for a post-departure scene where Mrs Bloody Flood turns up again and also it looks like the creature escaped.

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode 2,”Lux”

The first episode wasn’t great but can “Lux” be the light at the end of the tunnel?

What’s The Episode? “Lux”

What’s It All About, JG? The Doctor and Belinda arrive in 1950s Florida, where people have gone missing at the local cinema. They investigate and discover that the projectionist, Reginald Pye (Linus Roache) is still inside, playing movies to an empty theatre. Inside the theatre, they are terrorised (allegedly) by Mr Ring-a-Ding (Alan Cumming), an old-timey cartoon who is actually Lux Imperator, the god of Light. After faffing about in an animated section and a metatexual section, they escape back into the real work. They manage to defeat Lux by having Reginald Pye use a bunch of celluloid to blow a hole in the back of the cinema, let in lots of sunlight, and then Mr Ring-a-Ding just sort of drifts away (rather like the point of this episode) and the missing people are all restored.

Doctor Who Season 15/2 Episode 1, “The Robot Revolution”

Ncuti Gatwa’s back for a second season of the fifteenth Doctor. But can Season 2 manage a better start than his first one?

What’s the Episode? “The Robot Revolution”, the first episode of Season 2 (let’s not get into the whole numbering thing again).

What’s It All About, JG? The episode starts with Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) getting a star certificate from her awkward boyfriend Alan (Jonny Green) before cutting forward 17 years, where she’s a nurse working in a hospital and living in shared accommodation with other twenty-somethings. A robot turns up and abducts her, just as the Doctor arrives to try and prevent said abduction (and Mrs Flood does a bit more fourth-wall breaking). She’s taken to the planet MsBelindaChandra, the one that Alan named after her, to be made queen and marry the AI generator. The Doctor turns up to try and save her, cry, and generally put things right. The robots on this planet rebelled against the population for what seemed to be no reason. The AI generator actually turns out to be Al (as in Alan), her old boyfriend, who has been wired into the planet’s system and was responsible for said robot revolution via some timey-wimey shenanigans and time slippage. He’s stopped by touching two versions of the star certificate from different times which reduces him to a single egg and sperm. Trying to take Belinda back home, because she does not want to be there, the Doctor discovers the TARDIS bounces off 25th May 2025 and so they need to go the long way round.

Jet Lag: The Game

Can Jet Lag: The Game be a YouTube series that’s worth spending time on? You better believe it!

What’s The Show? A first for this blog – a YouTube series, Jet Lag: The Game

What’s It All About, JG? It’s a travel competition, starring Sam Denby, Adam Chase, and Ben Doyle. Each season of the show centre around a different type of game – Tag, Connect Four, Capture The Flag, that sort of thing. These are played out over different geographical areas, so Connect Four involved capturing four American states in a diagonal or row as per the game, Tag involves trying to tag one of the other players while they each try to make their way to an end point somewhere in Europe. You get the idea. Tag has been done twice, actually – Tag Across Europe – but every other season has been unique in its gameplay. Sometimes the play area is a country, with the most recent series at time of writing playing out across Australia, sometimes it’s the whole planet, as with Race Around The World. Most seasons feature a guest of some description (except for the Tag seasons and Hide and Seek, which just feature the boys), with Ben and Adam comprising one team and Sam and whoever the guest is making up the other. The show is shot on iPhones, giving it an immediate, reportage, feel. In every iteration of the game, though, teams or individuals must complete tasks in order to earn money to allow them to travel. Thus it becomes a strategy of what you can earn and where you can go to secure the ultimate victory.