Category: TV Review

Cara Winter: The Anglo Files 3

wallander_01WALLANDER
by Cara Winter

I’ve been a fan of Kenneth Branagh’s work since the early 1990’s. When my parents finally bought a VCR, the first movie I rented from our local mom-and-pop video store was HENRY V, directed by and starring Branagh. I rented it so many times, the store owner eventually just let me keep it.

Over the years, I’ve seen almost everything Branagh has done, both in front of and behind the camera. (By the way, if you haven’t seen him opposite Robin Wright in Michael Kalesniko’s HOW TO KILL YOUR NEIGHBOR’S DOG? Go, watch it. Right now. I’ll wait.) So imagine my excitement when I learned (via LB, from whom all good things spring) of the existence of the BBC’s WALLANDER, starring the man himself. (Yes, a happy dance ensued.)

On the surface, WALLANDER is a run-of-the-mill detective show: a crime is committed, Detective Kurt Wallander (Branagh) is called in, and he attempts to figure out who-done-it. But just scratch the surface, and there’s so much more. Wallander lives alone in a sparsely furnished apartment; he drinks (quietly, in front of the TV) until he passes out; he forgets (or ignores?) his dad’s birthday. read article

Trying to Make Sense of ‘The Flying Nun’

Nope, sorry, impossible. Nobody can make sense out of THE FLYING NUN. Not even its loyal viewers back in the day. (None of the Team TVWriter™ minions was even born then, so we’re not responsible for this show’s unbelievable popularity. Nopers. Not even a little:

Sorry, old-timers, but TV Past ain't always better than TV today
Sorry, old-timers, but TV Past ain’t always better than TV today

by Pilot Viruet

From 1967 to 1970, ABC aired a strange little sitcom called The Flying Nun. The very existence of this show, which I discovered in passing just a few years ago, doesn’t make much sense at first. The title reads like a throwaway joke from an episode of 30 Rock, which routinely took clever potshots at NBC (and television in general) by expertly creating fake, empty programs that revolved around a hilariously straightforward title. The Flying Nun would surely fit right in with the fictional shows Tank It or, more appropriately, God Cop. The Flying Nun isn’t a punchline, though. It was a very real show, and even a somewhat successful one, that spent three seasons detailing the adventures of, well, a flying nun.

read article

Cara Winter: The Anglo Files 2

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MIRANDA
by Cara Winter

As we established in my last post, I am an unabashed Anglophile.

My friends, rather than shunning me, or trying to get me to watch LAW & ORDER: SVU, or finding me an A(ng)A meeting to attend… are full-onenablers.  Case in point:  on a recent trip to LA, my best friend (who long ago introduced me to BLACK ADDER) sat me down, and told me I was about to watch a show from the UK called MIRANDA.  It was February, 70’s and sunny in LA, I’d just left behind sub-zero temperatures behind in Chicago…  so naturally, instead of frolicking on a beach somewhere, I remained seated while she queued it up.

MIRANDA is a fantastically funny and gloriously absurd sitcom written, created by, and starring comedienne Miranda Hart.  Pretty much everything takes place in the title character’s tiny flat, and the joke shop she runs in the floor below. Miranda’s best friend Stevie (played by Sarah Hadland) helps her run the shop.  Occasionally they venture down the block to a restaurant where the chef is her other best friend, Gary (played by the dishy Tom Ellis) – who Miranda is secretly in love with (of course).  Within the first minute of S1 /Ep1, I felt something of a kinship with Hart – as would anyone who’s ever tripped over their own feet, passed gas at an inopportune time, or forgotten their underpants. read article

Cara Winter: The Anglo Files

Sit back and enjoy the first of what we at TVWriter™ hope will be a long series of reviews/reports/discussions of  UK TV from the remarkable writer – and Britvision fan – Cara Winter (whom we first met and immediately recruited for the site when she won the Action/Drama/Dramedy category in the 2013 Spec Scriptacular):

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The Anglo Files
#1: OUTLANDER

OK, so, confession time:  I’ve been known to watch TOP GEAR just to hear the accents.  I’ve seen every episode of SHERLOCK sixteen times.  I mayhave been accepted to drama school because I’d memorized the entirety of Shakespeare’s HENRY V.  My Google search history reveals more than a few “2BR rental, London” searches, and my dream car is a Mini with a Union Jack hard top.  I am (shamefully? or shamelessly?) …an Anglophile. read article

LB Sees CROSSBONES

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The Good:

  • The first episode of CROSSBONES plunges us right into an action-packed story with a rousing sea battle.
  • John Malkovich joins the ranks of great TV actors of 2014. (A year filled with great TV actors, btw.)

The Not-So-Good: read article