Would Amanda/Emily
(Emily VanCamp) ever get to smile for longer than five seconds without resorting
to jaw reconstructive surgery?
Would Nolan (Gabriel Mann) ever meet a man who
knew how to take his underpants off?
Would Margaux (Karine Vanasse) ever meet more
than one journalist in her media empire?
Would Victoria (Madeleine Stowe)
totally morph into The Addams Family’s Morticia?
These, and many other questions,
occupied me throughout the four seasons of Revenge, which has finally succumbed
to the cruel world of broadcasting euthanasia.
The writing was on the cards for
the ABC show halfway through season three, when the actors started to appear as
confused as viewers were as to what the hell was going on. One could only
imagine the horror they felt when their eyes first alighted upon each new
script, wondering how many more expressions of staring into the middle distance
they could muster, while their brains tried to compute the machinations of the
plot.
The last episode airs tomorrow
night in the US (the UK has five weeks to go), and I have to confess that, for
all its silliness, I’ll miss it.
ABC has also cancelled Forever,
starring my fellow Welshman Ioan Gruffudd. I’ll miss that, too, but it’s not
hard to see where it went wrong as viewing figures tumbled.
The basis premise was that Dr
Henry Morgan solves crimes using medical knowledge he has gleaned over 200
years. Each time he dies, for some never quite explained reason he turns up in
water, only to start life all over again – hence his living forever.
The series fell apart when they
dropped the explanation from the start of each episode. If you didn’t know the
basic premise, you would have been baffled as to why Abe (Judd Hirsch) was
calling Henry “Dad” (Henry was his father in another life), or, even, what the
flashbacks were to a young Henry. Revenge always set out its stall at the start
of each episode, whereas Forever ignored a really important piece of dramatic
advice – Don’t hide the ball.
May is a difficult time for US
shows as they wait to hear whether the axe is going to fall. I’m sorry to see
NBC’s Bad Judge go, because I found Kate Walsh in the lead very funny. It was a
neat script, but I suspect caved in to complaints from the legal profession
that it portrayed judges in a bad light. Hey, it’s a comedy, guys!
The Mysteries of Laura, another
NBC show and an adaptation of the Spanish drama Los misterios de Laura, has
survived. After a brief shaky start, when it didn’t seem to know quite what it
was, it quickly settled into a very funny, quirky, feel-good, must-see show, in
no small part down to the always compelling Debra Messing as Detective Laura
Diamond.
NBC has also saved The Blacklist.
I have no idea what is going on anymore, but I could watch James Spader turning
up in a hat with no explanation whatsoever for the rest of my life. He is one
of my favourite actors of all time.
Raymond “Red” Reddington is a
fine creation, and viewers root for him no matter whose brains, or how many
brains, he blows out (again, for seemingly no reason whatsoever). All you need
to know is that there are a lot of bad people in the world who are afraid of Mr
Spader in a hat and he wipes them out in order to help the FBI.
Oh, yes. And he
has some connection to the only officer he will work with, Elizabeth Keen
(Megan Boone), whose job it is to stare quizzically at Mr Spader in a hat and
save him from the bad people as well. Maybe all we’ll ultimately discover is
that she is his milliner and has just been trying to pin him down for a fitting
for new head attire.
The Americans will be returning
to FX for a fourth season – another must-see show starring Matthew Rhys (fellow
Welshman, also – we are coming, people, and are already among you!) and Keri
Russell as two Soviet Intelligence agents seemingly living a normal suburban
life in the USA as Philip and Elizabeth Jennings.
It’s an extraordinary show
(created and produced by former CIA officer Joe Weisberg), with even more
twists and turns than Revenge, but all of them totally believable. The wigs
bother me a little because, in a dim light, you could be forgiven for thinking
you had alighted upon a canine rescue centre.
It’s hard to concentrate on the
sex scenes when Philip is required to sleep with other women when under cover,
as I just fear for the poor pooch falling from his head into the woman’s foo
foo. How either of them would emerge looking half decent without engaging the
help of a topiarist is anybody’s guess.
The jury’s still out on CBS’s The
Good Wife, starring Julianna Margulies as lawyer Alicia Florrick, but with
slipping viewing figures, I am a little nervous. It’s still a great show, but
it hasn’t been the same since the death of Will Gardner (Josh Charles). The
Will they/Won’t they get together? that was so central to the plot, was removed
in an instant and left a hole they still haven’t quite been able to fill. A bit
like . . . No, no jokes, please.
But it still has the
extraordinary Christine Baranski (Diane Lockhart) and, at its heart, a moral
core that, every week (as well as overall), delivers a valuable message without
being patronising or preachy.
If, with Revenge, it’s axed,
Sunday nights as I know them will be over. I might have to start going to
church. Or the pub.
Funnily enough, the jury’s not out on that score.
