Apologies for the delay
since Part 1, I will now continue this series...
Human Target [Fox]Human Target, an adaptation of the DC comic book is certainly superior and more believable than it’s somewhat fantastical and idiotic short-lived
ABC predecessor.
Mark Valley who portrayed
Anna Torv’s on-screen partner in the
Fringe pilot was retained by Fox for something a bit more in line with his talents than
J.J.’s cerebral sci-fi show.
Valley now plays
Christopher Chance, a bodyguard for hire with a mysterious past and it seems it’s there that the similarity between the new show and it’s predecessor ends - thankfully.
Gone are the daft
Mission: Impossible type masks meaning a different actor would not be replacing
Valley for half the episode as originally done with
Rick Springfield. Fox opted instead for a more practical “bodyguard” who will literally draw out the assailant putting himself in the line of fire. It's a far more realistic premise then the comic book maintains where
Chance actually replaces his subject in his life; acting like and looking like him in an effort to reveal his assassin. The deficiencies of that nonsense in a world now where women are just as likely to be an assassin’s target would have been awkward in the pilot episode.
Chance’s first case was to protect a super-railway engineer played by
Tricia Helfer [Sweet
Lucas! Is that woman improving with age?] – if it was still an ABC show, we’d have had lantern-jawed
Valley dressing up as a woman and attempting to be
Helfer – or
Helfer in a man-suit or some inane CGI solution (I shudder to think!) – thankfully Fox eschew cross-dressing deviants.
Christopher Chance is supported each week by
Winston, a retired cop,
Chance's mentor and boss played by
Boston Public’s
Chi McBride and their extremely shady and well connected tech dude
Gurrera, excellently played by
Watchmen’s
Jackie Earle Haley. Early episodes are mixed but overall a promising start to a new
Human Target - without a stealth bomber-office!
US - Fox, Wednesdays 20:00/19:00c
****
Spartacus: Blood and Sand [Starz]Spartacus: Blood and Sand tries hard to be as good as a HBO show with full frontal nudity and lashings of blood but the
Starz series comes off more as a poor bastard son of a night of dirty sex between
Gladiator and
300. There’s enough swordplay, blood, death and dismemberment here though to retain my attention for a while at least as I so rarely get the opportunity to yell “OOoooooooh yeaaaaahh heh heh hehhhh!” at the TV as I would often do in the cinema.
Starring
Andy Whitfield,
John Hannah and
Lucy Lawless as
LucretiaUS - Starz, Friday 22:00 Eastern
**1/2
Caprica [Syfy]Caprica has begun to air its regular episodes after the pilot has been doing the
Hulu and DVD rounds since April 2009. I’ll be perfectly honest,
Battlestar Galactica is so good it’s on the shortlist for
“The Whopper Awards of the Decade” for the best series of the past 10 years, even despite some of the esoteric religious angel nonsense towards the latter season. But one of the strengths of that series was the incredible opening, a mini-series of epic proportions which charted the downfall of human civilisation on 12 planets and scattered them out into space in the wake of nuclear explosions galore. There’s zero of that here, we do have an extraordinarily acted tale concerning religiously fuelled terrorism and the dangers of technology – but with no explosions in space, and I’d like things to explode in space…
Starring:
Eric Stoltz,
Alessandra Torresani and
Esai Morales as
Joseph Adama.
US - SyFy, Friday 21:00; UK/EIRE - Sky One, Tuesday 21:00
***1/2
Steven Segal: Lawman [A&E]I watch precious little unscripted television unless it’s late night talk shows [which in many cases can even then be scripted to a large extent] but there is one show that has appeared on the scene for some 12 weeks now and is simply one of the most bizarre and frightening things on TV. I
spoke about it before, but I’ve seen it now and it’s real and raw – I speak of course of
Steven Segal: Lawman.
Segal has previously reported has apparently been a deputy sheriff in a parish of Louisiana for the past 20 years and has only revealed this fact now to the world. That’s right – no one arrested by or perhaps even who crossed paths with
Deputy Segal ever attempted to present this story to TMZ or other media outlet, in the days of the Internet no one reported or took a photograph, nothing. I’ll say no more on that element, you decide.
Segal is presented here as some sort of
Robocop who can slow down time as he scans the [disturbingly 99.9% Afro-American] potential offenders he encounters during his routine patrols. He takes part in the arrests of those that appear to have perpetrated crimes and often are mostly surprised and even delighted to see and recognise him “
Steven Segal? What the *bleep*” and “My auntie watches all-o-your movies; uh-huh she sure does,” are just two of some such examples.
Segal also takes part in the training, development and mentoring of the less experienced officers, he can apparently shoot the top off a cotton bud so as a marksmanship instructor he's most certainly utilised by the department. Needless to say the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s department personnel have a high probability of knowing the basics of Aikido when called upon to defend themselves.
As pure entertainment it’s practically second to none.
Segal certainly outweighs every other officer of the department which supports the idea of a documentary as one can’t very well run too fast or too long with steady-cam and sound equipment after real cops so we never miss much of
Segal trudging his now portly frame after the action, it’s unintentionally funnier than
Reno 911. Long may this insanity continue.
US - A&E, Wednesday 23:00/22:00c; UK/EIRE - Crime [Sky553], Crime +1 [Sky554] and Crime HD [Sky555]
****