TV Picks: 15-21 April 2013 (America in Primetime, Da Vinci's Demons, Defiance, Ice Cream Girls, Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States, etc.)

Below are my picks of the most notable TV shows premiering/returning to UK screens this week, which includes the global Netflix release of Eli Roth's Hemlock Grove webseries. The time are a-changing! The title 'TV Picks' isn't technically correct now...

MSN TV: ITV's BRITAIN'S GOT TALENT

Over at MSN TV today: I've reviewed the return of ITV's BRITAIN'S GOT TALENT, which is going up against BBC1's The Voice in a Saturday night light entertainment battle...

In a crowded marketplace of reality competitions, Britain's Got Talent finds itself at the top of the pile ever since the X Factor started floundering. It helps that it's chiefly designed to be fun and entertaining for viewers. It has a less pervasive feeling of audience manipulation, or Simon Cowell making decisions based on who will line his pockets the quickest. Maybe the show is just better at hiding the business side of itself, but there is a much nicer vibe to proceedings. This premiere didn't even verbally eviscerate the no-hopers who turned up to the Birmingham auditions. I'm also glad the judging panel hasn't changed because the mix was almost perfect last year.

Continue reading at MSN TV...

TV Finale: SPARTACUS: WAR OF THE DAMNED - 'Victory'

Warning: the following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS for the Spartacus: War of the Damned finale, which hasn't aired in the UK at time of writing.

As I've mentioned before, the only reason I stopped reviewing Spartacus halfway into its 'Vengeance' season is that the show had evolved into more of a straightforward action-adventure drama with lashings of blood and rampant sex. There's nothing wrong with that, but the first two seasons ('Blood & Sand' and 'Gods of the Arena') were, to me, more interesting because of a narrower focus and smarter political elements. I just wasn't sure what purpose my reviews were serving beyond putting into words a sense of weekly excitement, shock and awe. So I stopped writing about Spartacus, but I never stopped watching. And while the later 'Vengeance' and 'War of the Damned' seasons probably aren't my favourites, they were astonishing spectacles that never forgot to balance character with action.

DOCTOR WHO, 7.8 - 'Cold War'

Considering he's one of the biggest Whovians amongst the show's new crop of writers, Mark Gatiss's scripts have been something of a disappointment--never living up to the promise of his series 1 highlight "The Unquiet Dead". There was "The Idiot's Lantern" (awful), "Victory of the Daleks" (flawed) and "Night Terrors" (mediocre). So I was just pleased "Cold War" was a mostly successful episode, despite pushing lots of over-familiar dramatic buttons, while reintroducing Classic Who fans to a familiar villain in Skaldak; an Ice Warrior, of the type encountered by Jon Pertwee's Doctor back in 1974.

HANNIBAL, 1.2 - 'Amuse-Bouche'

I thought Hannibal's pilot was terrific (one of the best I've seen in years), and I'm so relieved this second episode was almost as brilliant. In fact, aspects of it were indeed better. I had assumed Hannibal would operate as a case-of-the-week procedural, enlivened by the eponymous doctor's lurking presence and clandestine activities, but "Amuse-Bouche" suggested otherwise.

COMMUNITY, 4.9 - 'Intro to Felt Surrogacy'

I stopped reviewing Community earlier this year because there hasn't been much to say about each new episode lately. They're marginally entertaining and contain the odd excellent line of dialogue, and I still really love the cast, but this isn't the show I fell in love with. I thought "Intro to Felt Surrogacy" stood a chance of turning things around, and it started promisingly with a clever way of transforming the characters into puppets (being part of experimental therapy to aide group communication), but the actual episode itself failed to get off the ground.

TV Ratings: MAD MEN's season 6 premiere fails to attract Sky Atlantic viewers

Sky Atlantic outbid the BBC for the rights to show Mad Men, and it launched to an unsurprisingly weak 98,000 last season. Now the ratings are in for its sixth season premiere, and that audience has fallen to 58,000. (That's a loss of 40,000 viewers, if maths isn't your strong suit.) I know ratings ultimately don't matter in Sky's case, because they're into the idea of building a brand and a collective reason for people to subscribe to them, but that's a really bad number. Their recent Game of Thrones premiere attracted 700,000 viewers.

What's going on? Only 58,000 people? Admittedly you can't just start watching Mad Men in its sixth season, and its premise and setting only appeals to a certain type of viewer, but it was getting around 355,000 on the BBC between season 1-4. Where have those viewers gone? Do only around 100,000 of them have Sky and almost half have stopped watching? Are people buying the DVD box-sets later on? Has it become a show people download instead? It didn't break into TorrentFreak's Top 10 of 2012, so perhaps not...

I don't know. I have no explanation. Maybe it wasn't promoted as much and 40,000 people just didn't realise it was back? I tend to skip ad breaks these days, so does that seem like a valid theory? (Update: I'm aware there was a streaming issue with SkyGo on Wednesday, but I'm not sure if those online figures would have been added to BARB's overnight ratings.)

THE SHINING getting a prequel in THE OVERLOOK HOTEL?

Uh-oh. It looks like someone's been impressed by what A&E have done with Bates Motel, the TV prequel to Psycho. Warner Bros are apparently very keen to make a prequel to their own classic movie, The Shining. It's early days, but producers Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island), James Vanderbilt (Zodiac) and Bradley Fischer (Shutter Island, Zodiac) are apparently in talks with Glen Mazzara (The Walking Dead) to write The Overlook Hotel.

It all sounds very worrying to me. I'm not even very keen on Stephen King writing an unnecessary sequel to The Shining, entitled Doctor Sleep. If they're going to cash-in on The Shining name, why not just make King's own sequel into a movie?

As a massive fan of Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror (it's my favourite movie), the idea of a prequel sounds ludicrous. I don't see any other option available to the makers of The Overlook Hotel, beyond doing a "haunted hotel" 1920s drama (the era of the people who were haunting Jack Nicholson's character). I understand some things have a pop-culture cachet that helps sell them (and you need all the help you can get in today's crowded marketplace), but you risk tarnishing a legendary movie by proxy with this. Oh well.

To be positive, the listed producers are behind some good movies and Mazzara's a decent choice to write something like this, so maybe something good will come of it.

Audioboo: DALLAS - season 2

I may stop blogging about every new Audioboo I record soon, so please keep that in mind. The latest instalment will be embedded in the right-hand sidebar, and uploads are immediately tweeted to my feed. You can also subscribe to my boos with iTunes.

But for now, embedded below is my quick appraisal of TNT's DALLAS, which is approaching the end of its manic season in the UK. Has the show weakened since its surprisingly good returning season? Has Larry Hagman's death caused irreparable damage? Does too much happen to the Ewings? Find out after the jump!

Trailer: THE HANGOVER - PART III

THE HANGOVER III appears to feature no hangovers. Or drinking. Oh, but Vegas is back. youtu.be/96TelFMZwHc
— Dan Owen (@danowen79) April 11, 2013