Published: 7 May 2013 : 1 week, 6 days ago
It’s a tough ask to stand out in the world of police procedural dramas. They’ve been around since the inception of television (Dragnet debuted in 1951) and each year sees thousands of hours of serialised cop drama churned out like undifferentiated sausage meat. But for every deconstruction or splintering of the genre (The Wire, The Shield, The Killing) the police procedural follows a relatively unchanging script: crime occurs, police arrive, suspects grilled, family grieve, resolution. The exact colours, phrasings and dialect evolve – the current craze for Nordic crime is heavy on gazing into endless horizons, for example – but at its core we know exactly what we getting. And so it is with Southland, a police procedural set in Los Angeles.
Splitting its time between the beat cops John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz), the terse wisdom-dispensing veteran, and Ben Sherman (Benjamin McKenzie), the preppy rookie and viewer surrogate, and various flashier detectives, Southland hits all the marks you’d expect; lots of door-knocking, sitting in patrol cars, drawing weapons and narco gang crime.
Created by NYPD Blue veteran Ann Biderman and developed by ER and West Wing show-runner John Wells, Southland is difficult show to pin down. It angles for rough and edgy no-glamour and pays little attention to overarching narrative. Scenes start halfway through, plots appear and disappear with an irregularity that will frustrate those accustomed to the long-haul drama of Breaking Bad. Dialogue is often ripped – jarringly – straight out of scripts way below its pedigree. But it gets under your skin by playing it down. By the end of the second series the wheels are in motion for something much better and bigger and the gushing and universal praise later seasons have received begins to bear fruit. Southland is head and shoulders above its police procedural current competitors.
JUSTIN HOOK
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Published: 7 May 2013 : 1 week, 6 days ago
Rebel Wilson has come a long way since being the biggest bogan on the Ten Network, itself a major feat. As part of the ensemble skit show The Wedge, Wilson joined a long list of Australian comedians serving their time on a comedy show devoid of any actual comedy. There was little to suggest that half a decade later the proudly ‘plus-size’ Wilson would be one of hottest talents in Hollywood. And like her or not, she is. From hosting the recent MTV Music Awards and scene-stealing in Bridesmaids to appearing in the new Michael Bay film, Wilson is doing everything right. But you’d be wrong in thinking Pitch Perfect is a generic by-the-numbers comedy built around an emerging talent scurrying up the totem pole of fame, as the marketing suggests. And that reason has a name: Anna Kendrick, possessor of the sexiest mandible in all the lands.
Kendrick is Beca Mitchell, a surly, indie-esque freshman who is classic square peg/round hole material. Through a tortuous passage of events she ends up in an all-girls a capella group struggling to make it through the state singing championships. The nationals – as you correctly predicted midway through the last sentence – beckons. Despite being a grunge throwback, Beca has a good voice, as does Kendrick. She’s a genuine star. Even though every road-tested underdog cue is hit, Pitch Perfect is far from leaden.
Wilson is a confident performer but her cast mates rise above and beyond, especially Adam de Vine (Workaholics) as leader of the opposing all-boys a capella group – the Treblemakers. Pitch Perfect is close in sprit to School of Rock but the large amount of improv on display in this film (apparently 50% of the dialogue was unscripted) delivers far more than Jack Black wailing and channelling John Belushi.
JUSTIN HOOK
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Published: 7 May 2013 : 1 week, 6 days ago
When it premiered, scathing British political satire The Thick of It was a breath of fresh air. Dusting off the reliable Yes, Minister model of inept politicians and self-serving bureaucracy, Armando Iannucci updated it with pinpoint accuracy for the Tony Blair/Alistair Campbell/WMD years. Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) was the sewer-mouthed ringmaster of idiots and director of communications to an unnamed government (presumed to be UK Labour) for whom YouTube ‘best ofs’ were invented, shepherding various Ministers through a never-ending cascade of disasters and belittling anyone dumb enough to stand still in his line of sight. His arrogance and mastery of spin was a reflection of the 2000s – a decade in which truthiness (twisting reality to suit opinion, turning it into ‘fact’) was voted word of the year. But Tucker is back, in a new decade, with the same sneer and the same shit to clean up, overseen with the usual crazy-armed theatrics.
With his party voted out of office, Tucker and his bosses are in opposition. Nicola Murray (Rebecca Front) the bumbling ex-Minister for Social Affairs and Community is now opposition leader by default. Predictably, she cocks it up. On her way down, Murray manages an accidental coup d’état of sorts by calling a Levenson-style public inquiry about the relationship between the press and government. Despite his venom and spittle-lipped rancour, Malcolm Tucker was the beating heart of the show and it’s only fitting that his run should come to an end through such a forum. It’s also fitting it started to resemble some sort of fact/fiction banana sundae – airing in the UK as Levenson was still a going concern.
Episode-for-episode, The Thick of It is one of the best TV series of the last decade, comedy or otherwise. Iannucci’s new political satire – HBO’s Veep – has massive shoes to fill.
JUSTIN HOOK
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