Last week, something unprecedented happened: A cable company actually delivered a service that they didn’t have to. Comcast (and their OnDemand channel Xfinity) opened all premium cable channels to non-subscribers so that people could perform marathon viewings of, say, Dexter or Spartacus (review of it later today). There were even some basic cable and broadcast series like Portlandia or Grimm to choose from, but who cares about them? Now I don’t have to subscribe to Showtime, Cinemax, or Starz for a month just to watch 5 hours of Californication or see how the final season of Boss ended after getting mildly addicted to the first…
Cinemax…
“Banshee” and “Hunted”…Who knew Cinemax would ever have dramas worth watching? Well it turns out they do. And, even more shocking, they turned out to be smart. Banshee is less obviously good as it jumps off from B-movie leanings, but it is done so sharply, you can feel the presence of co-creator Jonathan Tropper (a novelist who writes literary fiction, not TV pulp, and it shows) all over it. Banshee is preposterous, wild, outrageous, and remarkably fun. Just describing the plot————a bare-knuckle thug gets released from prison, and seeks out his former partner/lover who’s living a bland suburban life in Banshee, Pennsylvania where he quickly assumes the identity of local sheriff, and gets entangled with an Ex-Amish crime boss——–makes it sound a lot dumber than it is, but I think the show’s real delight lies in its breakneck pacing and excellently drawn characters (the slinky, layered daughter of a Ukrainian crime boss, a transgendered Asian computer hacker, that shunned Amish crime boss who uses his warped discipline to master a backwoods empire).
Then there’s “Hunted,” which deals with corporate espionage in a way that delivers thrills without ever insulting the audience’s intelligence. Grade for both shows: B+
Showtime…
Californication (season six)…Showtime may actually be the worst premium cable network as it suffers from a seriously poor movie selection (movies range from titles you’ve never heard of to titles you’ve never heard of…from 1994) and they don’t have one show that I really, truly love. [Dexter and Homeland come closest, but Dex is past his prime and Homeland has never been as good as people claim…Showtime’s best series ever is the grossly ignored Brotherhood.] And yet I’ve seen every episode of Californication’s six seasons. The show has never been good…it’s no longer even attempting to be, and I wonder how long they’ll keep this thing running in place? By the end of the second-to-last episode of the sixth season Hank was (once again) deciding whether or not he wanted to be with Karen (who’s not even given a plot line this season) and I was wondering why they thought people still cared. This show is unexplainably addictive, but it’s no longer worth watching. It’s cheap, it’s hopelessly repetitive, and (worst of all) it pretends it’s deep by having Hank occasionally fake a connection with a human being and exchange sentimentality with his daughter…and yet I’ll probably keep watching until they cancel it. Please cancel it. Grade for season six: C-
Starz…The Cancellation Network, a show has a slim chance of making it to a second season on this network. Their longest running show (and hit) is Spartacus with only three full seasons, and a mini-prequel season.
Torchwood: Miracle Day (season 4 of the show)….I’ve heard for years about how great Torchwood is, and how I absolutely need to see it and Doctor Who. Well, if this is any indication, I really don’t need to. It takes an interesting idea (people can no longer die) and botches it completely. I don’t know if the show lost me with the worst CGI I’ve ever seen (I should have known better than to think the BBC would spend more than 10 bucks on one of their non-costume dramas) or the worst Bill Pullman performance I’ve ever seen (as an unintentionally cuddly child rapist/killer who acts more like Kramer from Seinfeld than a real villain/serious creep) or just its general half-assed, “hey, it’s good enough” tone, but the appeal mystifies me. Grade for season: D+
Camelot…This show is another co-production between the BBC and Starz, and it also had only one ten episode season. It’s a pretty generic Sword and Sorcery epic with nothing all that special about it. The overall series may have been a dud, but Eva Green absolutely delivers as the sexy, often-naked, always-scheming half-sister of King Arthur. In a better world, the miniseries would have been just about her, and saved us from the boring trials of “the good guys,” who actually have a pretty backwards idea that Arthur (who had no idea he was a royal until after his father died) is a more worthy king simply because he’s a man and Eva’s character is a woman. Grade for season: C-
Magic City…The entire first season is only eight episodes, but it’s one of the few Starz shows to make it to a second season. Lucky on their part, but not so lucky on the audience’s, since there’s absolutely nothing special about this series that’s about a Miami hotel manager in the late 50’s who gets in bed with a mobster (Danny Huston, who might as well have devil horns since he’s playing an eeeeeeeevil Jewish gangster who does something bad in almost every scene he’s in). You can practically see it pitched as “The Sopranos meets Mad Men,” and maybe that sounded more promising than it really is. Grade for first season: C
Boss (Second Season)…The one Starz show (besides the cancelled Party Down, and Spartacus) that I actually like, so, naturally, it got cancelled after a low-rated second season. It follows Tom Kaine, the mayor of Chicago who is played by a not-so-Frasierly Kelsey Grammar and is capable of anything and everything, including murder, setting up people for disgrace, and setting someone up for a murder so they can be disgraced. Season 2 tries to make Kaine a little less viscerally despicable and I can’t say the show’s attempt at heart really works (his conscience is played by Sanaa Lathan as a painfully naive, one-track Mayoral Aide and he tries to do right by her…before eventually installing hidden cameras in her house and spying on her in the most creepy of manors), but it’s a valiant effort. The show’s second season suffers by continuing to follow plotlines that don’t work (the slob reporter who’s obsessed with taking Kaine down, Kaine’s whiny, drug-addicted daughter) and creating a couple new ones (the ghost of Ezra following around Tom way too long), but the show was never perfect. Watch it if you enjoy slick, nasty politicians scheming around equally nasty foes for power, and then be sad there’s no (deserved) third season. Grade for second season: B…[And, oh what the hell, grade for first season: B].