Pramface (2013)

We're not in a relationship. We're barely even mates. 
We're just two people who had a kid.

Series 2 begins with Jamie and Laura now dealing with the trials and tribulations of being new parents. Jamie must juggle schoolwork, a job and parenting while Laura feels isolated and ignored by anyone she might be able to even converse with. Both suffer judgement and shame from strangers and even family while mostly tolerating each other. The series becomes more of an ensemble this season as the large cast of supporting characters get much more screentime and plotlines of their own. It was only a problem in that the supporting characters were often much more interesting than the leads. Mike continues his never-ending quest to lose his virginity while Beth sabotages him at every juncture and the various grandparents manage unemployment and rough spots in their respective marriages.

While the two leads are a bit overshadowed, they are by no means bad. It is deliciously wonderful to watch them awkwardly fumble around each other. Jamie tries his hand at dating and Laura trying to make adult friends are particularly cute, but the nature of the situation always comes around like in the quote above. Though it never veers to serious. Whenever it moves close to that line, the mood will be lightened by Mike doing something idiotic or Laura's father Alan will be quirkily doing something weird because of his recent head trauma. Still a decently watchable show, even more so if you like the rest of the cast.

Buyer's Guide:
Available for US audiences on HULU.

3½ Magic Mushrooms out of 5

Pramface (2012)

I know you're not a slut. A drunk and borderline paedophile, maybe, but not a slut. 

16 year old Jamie has just finished his exams and with his friend Mike crashes a party in the hopes of getting laid. Jamie is the only one to accomplish the task with the help of alcohol and a girl named Laura, a straight A student on her way to university who was just angry at her parents that night and in her drunkenness thought Jamie was sweet. After their night of drunken condom failings, Laura becomes pregnant and must now deal with all the trials and stigma of being a teenage mother as well as the lifestyle differences between Jamie's working class family and her upper class, rich one.

This short little comedy series deals with its subject matter in a very real and relate-able way while still being funny. The characters are actually fun and dynamic with even the secondary characters having some depth to them. Laura's parents are working through an affair by her father and Mike is a heaping load of comic relief with his shenanigans while still being a great friend. Jamie's other friend is a girl named Beth who despite her propensity to take up causes and charity, is rather insufferable about it. Jamie and Laura are the main source of drama as they clash over the pregnancy, but still manage to cooperate (mostly) even though they are basically strangers.

There was a little bit of a learning curve since the show is very British and being an American I wasn't always clear on the slang. I even had to look up the title, which while appropriate could probably still have used some more thought for marketing purposes. This also worked in the show's favor as the unique American prudishness about this type of subject isn't present and adds that more realistic touch whereas things like smoking and swearing would have been excised on this side of the Atlantic. A short and sweet 6 episode run.

Buyer's Guide:
Available to US audiences for free on Hulu. Here.

3½ Interrupted masturbation sessions out of 5

The Podge and Rodge Show: Poxy Box (2006 - 2010)

After A Scare at Bedtime ended, the twins from Ballydung (County Ring) weren't ready to lie down and call it a day. Luckily for us and them they didn't have to because some clever fool at RTÉ gave them their own chat show! Guests would join the brothers in their Manor kitchen for a candid chat that was guaranteed to include their public shames. They'd occasionally get lucky and have people with some actual talent (Sinéad O'Connor and… er… Dirk Benedict) but mostly it was a who's who of who the hell is that?

The original incarnation of the show ran for 4 glorious seasons, and each one got its own 'Best Of…' DVD collection that separated the wheat from the chaff. The Poxy Box collects together all the sexy wheat, delivering the cream of the crap pulled direct from the arse-end of good taste.

Podge and Rodge weren't shy about their feelings; if they didn't like someone they told them, leaving no room for doubt. Some guests clearly had no idea what they were getting into. The ones that had watched the show in advance knew the ass-ripping they'd get, and still they came. They earned some respect.
When Foster and Allen guested I almost lost my shit; there was no indication they knew about Fester and Ailin.
Women also got it pretty rough, being subjected to Rodge’s perversions.

The show was a well-deserved huge success. According to Wiki it was so popular that it even beat Lost and Desperate Housewives in the Irish ratings game.

There's a heap of extras on each disc, including a previously unseen pilot, the Ballydung weather report, the Miss Ballydung Pageant, Ballydung Idol, a sex toy show, and obligatory bloopers.

4 discs, approx 145 minutes each (581 minutes total).

4 scuttering gobsheens out of 5

Podge and Rodge: A Scare at Bedtime (1997–2006)

America has ABC. Britain has BBC. Part of Ireland has RTÉ. It's widely available now on satellite, but back in the 90s the channel broadcast to only a small part of the country. To receive it outside of the Southern region you needed an addition to your regular aerial. If you had that little red box then you had old geezers Podge Judas O'Leprosy and Rodge Spartacus O'Leprosy on your TV screen!

Each evening the channel had something called 'A Prayer at Bedtime' to remind viewers that dirty dreams about naked ladies was frowned upon by JC and his lily-white virgin momma. Podge & Rodge’s A Scare at Bedtime was a parody of that. It's also an iniquitous parody of the typical Irish stereotype. It's fun to laugh at the Irish, but no one laughs harder than the Irish themselves. Their greatest attribute is their wickedly self-deprecating sense of humour.

The format had the twins of Ballydung Manor either in bed together or chilling in their kitchen. Podge would tell Rodge a tall tale/horror story with a Poe-esque twist. Rodge would get scared or bored. He'd blaspheme, and then rub his "mickey" at what he considered a particularly sexy bit. If there were no sexy bits, he'd invent his own.

The two perverts and their scabby cat Pox are some of the shittiest constructed puppets you'll ever see, but it really didn't matter. It was all just an excuse to drop lewd jokes and say "Feck" a lot, but quite often the creativity of the two writers/puppeteers, Mick O'Hara and Ciaran Morrison, was comedy gold; it was those two guys that raised it above its limitations and made it so outrageous.

If you want to skip to the best parts go direct to series 7. By that stage they were far out of control by RTE standards. If you want to learn the seedy side of Irish colloquialism, then there's no better place to start.

150 episodes, approx 5–10 minutes each.

3½ feckless eejits out of 5

Pushing Daisies (2008)

"What's your plan? To bring him back and ask him where she is?"
 "..."
"That was a joke."
"Heh-heh."

Season 2 kicks off some time after the season 1 cliffhanger. The Pie-Hole waitress Olive is crumbling under the weight of the secrets she now knows, private investigator Emerson Cod continues in his quest for a certain missing person, alive-again Chuck wishes to reconnect with her past and The Pie-maker Ned wishes to stay connected to his can-never-touch sweetheart Chuck even as circumstances force new changes on them. All that digging into their collective pasts though may dredge up things that they didn't expect and may even be dangerous. All while continuing to solve bizarre and outlandish murders by reviving the victims to ask who killed them.

With the extended episode count, the show was going new and interesting places. But then it is quickly and hastily shoved into a mostly unsatisfying conclusion in the end due to cancellation. Having never recovered the lost audience from the writer's strike the previous year, ABC decided to not renew the show despite some mail-in efforts of daisies and pies by fans as well as petitions and the remaining episodes were sporadically burned off. Which is a pity because the aforementioned new stories were looking to be exciting and what is there is still wonderfully entertaining with colorful and fantastic aesthetics, strange and original murder mysteries and snappy banter. There is also a cadre of wonderful guest performances from many well-known actors throughout the episodes that bring great characters and stories to a bittersweet end.

Buyer's Guide:
Available in DVD and Blu Ray box sets and on iTunes, Netflix and Amazon.

4½ Alliterative names and gratuitous cleavage out of 5 

THE PACIFIC [2010]

"There are things men can do to one another

that are sobering to the soul.

It is one thing to reconcile these things with God,

but another to square it with yourself."

Nearly 10 years after the hugely successful 10 part mini-series Band Of Brothers, producers Steven Spielberg & Tom Hanks and HBO reteam for the World War II mini-series companion piece The Pacific.  It focuses primarily on three marines from separate regiments of U.S. Marine Corps in the Pacific Theater of Operations.  Based on the tormented memoirs of Eugene Sledge, Robert Leckie and the life of John Basilone, The Pacific has a bit of a difficult time narrowing down into a coherent, smooth narrative which hurts the series a bit.  With this baffling choice, we're never fully involved with the characters to feel as deeply for them that we did with the men in Easy Company.

Another weakness with the series is it's lack of focus on someone in charge of the tactical side of the Pacific War seeing as we learn next to nothing about a lot of the questionable maneuvers they made.  It's one war-torn terrain to the next, without giving us any idea what exactly was going on with the placements of the marine themselves.  Band Of Brothers educated us with the tactical side of the war, the hands-on violent side and the hearts & minds of the soldiers, while The Pacific relies a little to heavily on the doom & gloom of overly long battle sequences that aren't much different from episode to episode.  This might work in a 3 hour film but to drag it out over 10 hours is simply not interesting enough to remain effective.

Where it does excel in, is it's brutal honesty and will to take risks in horrifying the viewer with questionable actions from the protagonists.  Normally, we're led to believe soldiers and marines are nothing but heroic, where as here these guys do some pretty terrible things to their enemy, each other and themselves.  It's unsettling to think human beings could perform senseless acts like this but something we need to know and never forget. 

With some jaw-dropping production values, wonderful performances from Jurrasic Park's Joseph Mazzello, Rubicon's James Badge Dale and Treme's John Seda, beautifully frightening music from Hans Zimmer, Geoff Zanelli & Blake Neely and some unforgettable stark scenes of brutality, violence and despair, The Pacific is definitely better than most television today.  It's just unfortunately had a lot to live up to, compared to the near-perfect Band Of Brothers.

10 Episodes. Roughly 60 minutes each.

Buyer’s Guide:
 Available in both DVD and Blu-Ray sets on it’s own and packaged with it’s companion series Band Of Brothers.

3½ letters that will never make it home out of 5

Pushing Daisies (2007)

"You can't just touch someone's life and be done with it."
"Yes I can. That's how I roll."

Ned is The Pie-maker, a bakery owner who learned at a young age that he could revive dead things with a touch. The caveat is he can only keep what he touches alive for one minute or something else will die in its place. If he touches a revived thing again it will return to being dead forever. He uses this gift to help his business partner who is a private investigator by reviving murder victims to ask who killed them and collect the rewards. This becomes a problem when the case involves his childhood sweetheart being murdered on a cruise. Ned revives her, but is unable to re-dead her because of his love for her and ends up letting her live and she becomes the newest crime-solver. Ned also begins a relationship with her. One in which they cannot physically touch lest she die again in addition to an amorous third party in the bakery waitress and Ned's own neuroses.

Bryan Fuller created an odd mix of a show here. It is both very upbeat with its lighthearted soundtrack, bright, saturated colors and borderline saccharine romance, but also with a foot in the grim with it's gruesome murders and black comedy. It is by design reminiscent of a fairy tale (complete with a great narration by Jim Dale), but not the happily ever after kind. The old, uncensored and very adult tales before they were watered down into kid's bedtime stories.

Despite there being at least one dead body per episode, the show never veers too serious. The likeable characters are full of jokes and witty banter about the often very odd and hilarious deaths around them that range from the typical guns and strangulations to death by scratch n' sniff and being run over by monkeys. Add a cup of romance, relationships, jealousy and secrets for an entertaining and original mix of a show that despite its jumble description of a comedic detective fantasy drama is very coherent and very watchable. Season one's writer's strike truncation to 9 episodes is the only real problem as there should have been more of a season.

Buyer's Guide:
Available on DVD and Blu Ray box sets and on iTunes, Netflix and Amazon Instant Video.

5 "Bitch, I was in proximity!" out of 5

Planet of the Apes: TV Series (1974)

Spin-off TV series of the PotA movie series. The human population can talk, which makes sense for dramatic purposes. Before getting upset about such changes it's worth considering that the first Planet of the Apes film was set in the year 3978. The TV series is set sometime during or after the year 3085 (it's never specifically stated). That leaves a possible 893 years between series and film, which is ample time for mankind to forget how to speak for any number of reasons.

Alternatively, the series can be considered as a separate entity, as simply another telling of the original Pierre Boulle novel. That makes more sense to me because it avoids a number of other small inconsistencies with the films.

Enough jibber jabber. Is it any good? Yes, in a typical low budget 1970s kind of way. It starts out with an ongoing story arc clearly defined but drops it somewhere along the way. I'm guessing it would've resurfaced had the series been allowed to come to fruition. Unfortunately, it got cancelled after just fourteen episodes.

The wonderful Roddy McDowall returns to the franchise. He plays a different character than he did in the films but is again sympathetic to the humans. Being caught between two worlds and unwelcome in both means he receives most of our sympathies as viewers, despite being covered in fur.

The story requires that Roddy and the two human protagonists are forever moving from town to town. It gives the writers the opportunity to create their own sub-section within the ape world while still remaining a part of the larger premise.

There was to be three distinct zones: an ape city with human slaves; a rural zone where humans are allowed to farm provided they provide produce for the ape city; and a Forbidden Zone that's inhabited by rebellious humans. The last zone was held back and never got the chance to be explored.

Continuity is maintained through each individual episode by having the trio of escapees pursued by a butt-hurt gorilla, determined to see them shot for their "crimes" against the accepted doctrine.

Like the book and films it uses the format to comment on various social problems that are still relevant today. It mostly plays it safe but occasionally leaves you in no doubt as to what it's attempting to say. While it probably won't hold the attention of the average viewer weaned on modern TV, if you're an Apes fan and can appreciate 1970s productions then it's an entertaining journey for as far as it gets. The world is believable and the characters are developed enough that they grow to be more than just the aforementioned vehicles for social commentary.

14 episodes, approx. 47 minutes each.

3 bananas and brown eyes out of 5

Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011)

The magical girl genre holds a special place in my heart. When I was young, Sailor Moon introduced me to an amazing new world and changed the way I perceived superheroes. Fight scenes in shows like Lyrical Nanoha left me enthralled, and Cardcaptor Sakura's unrelenting sweetness could get through to me even at my most cynical. Some shows, like Princess Tutu, took the genre to stranger, sadder places, but very few series strayed far from what fans loved about the genre. Then came along a series that was willing to draw parallels between magical girls and Faust.

I almost hate to review Madoka Magica because I think it's at its best when you don't know what's coming. On the surface, it's sweetness and candy, everything you'd expect a magical girl series to be, but underneath, it's twisted, subverting and deconstructing everything fans know and love about the genre. Even as the show's darkness becomes more obvious, it continues to shock and horrify. Even when you know what might be coming, it's easy for the cuteness to lull you into a false sense of security.

 The animation in Madoka Magica is pretty uneven, but when it's at its best, it's fantastic. The cutout animation is amazing to watch, and incredibly effective. I've hardly ever seen something like it used in an anime, and never in a show like this. Other scenes, especially the simpler ones, suffer from inconsistency and poor movement. While the show's opening theme is fairly forgettable, the rest of its music is fantastic, and really helps to set the mood.

Storywise, Madoka Magica's biggest weakness is that some elements aren't fleshed out enough. There's one arc in particular that really would have benefited from at least one more episode. As is, it feels like some parts of the story are rushed or don't feel entirely earned. It's an ambitious series, and I would have loved to see what the writer (Gen Urobuchi) would have done if he'd had 24 episodes instead of 12. Still, even as is, I found Madoka Magica to be thrilling and satisfying. As cruel and terrifying as it can be, it's still a love letter to magical girls in its own way.

It's hard for me to say how much Madoka Magica relies on the viewer's knowledge of magical girl tropes. I can think of a few moments that might not be that effective if you're not familiar with the cliches they're playing with. Because of this, I can only recommend Madoka Magica wholeheartedly if you're a magical girl fan. But hopefully, even if you have no interest in the mahou shoujo genre, you can still be captivated by a show about magical girls.

12 episodes, approx. 24 minutes in length

Buyer's Guide: 
To be blunt, I wouldn't suggest buying Madoka Magica at this time. Right now it's overpriced, and the release itself isn't very high quality. If you want a physical copy, you'd be better off importing the series (the MSRP prices are pretty close to Japanese prices anyway) or holding out for a better release.

4 lives put on the line for cake out of 5