True Blood (season one)

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Rating 3¾


Created by Alan Ball

Based on the Southern Vampire Mysteries novels by Charlaine Harris

EP1 ‘Strange Love’ (Written and Directed by Alan Ball); EP2 ‘The First Taste’ (Written by Alan Ball, Directed by Scott Winant); EP3 ‘Mine’ (Written by Alan Ball, Directed by John Dahl); EP4 ‘Escape from Dragon House’ (Written by Brian Buckner, Directed by Michael Lehmann); Ep5 ‘Sparks Fly Out’ (Written by Alexander Woo, Directed by Daniel Minahan); EP6 ‘Cold Ground’ (Written by Raelle Tucker, Directed by Nick Gomez); EP7 ‘Burning House of Love’ (Written by Chris Offutt, Directed by Marcos Siega); EP8 ‘The Fourth Man in the Fire’ (Written by Alexander Woo, Directed by Michael Lehmann); EP9 ‘Plaisir d’Amour’ (Written by Brian Buckner, Directed by Anthony M Hemingway); EP10 ‘I Don’t Wanna Know’ (Written by Chris Offutt, Directed by Scott Winant); EP11 ‘To Love is to Bury’ (Written and Directed by Nancy Oliver); EP12 ‘You’ll be the Death of Me’ (Written by Raelle Tucker, Directed by Alan Ball)

Starring Anna Paquin (Sookie Stackhouse), Stephen Moyer (Bill Compton), Sam Trammell (Sam Merlotte), Ryan Kwanten (Jason Stackhouse), Rutina Wesley (Tara Thornton), Nelson Ellis (Lafayette Reynolds), Michael Raymond-James (Rene Lenier), Jim Parrack (Hoyt Fortenberry), Carrie Preston (Arlene Fowler), William Sanderson (Sheriff Bud Dearborne), Chris Bauer (Detective Andy Bellefleur), Todd Lowe (Terry Bellefleur), Adina Porter (Lettie Mae Thornton), Alexander Skarsgård (Eric Northman), Lizzy Caplan (Amy Burley), Aisha Hinds (Miss Jeanette), Deborah Ann Woll (Jessica Hamby), Kristin Bauer (Pam), Michelle Forbes (Maryann Forrester) and Lois Smith (Adele Stackhouse)


Sookie Stackhouse is a telepath who works as a waitress in a diner in the small community of Bon Temps in Louisiana. Her best friend Tara Thornton works the bar and Tara’s cousin Lafayette Reynolds is a short order cook. He also deals drugs and has a gay porn website. Tara’s mother Lettie Mae is a violent long-term alcoholic who believes she is possessed by a demon. The diner is owned by Sam Merlotte, who is in love with Sookie but does not openly express his feelings towards her. Bill Compton, a vampire who was turned during the American Civil War, comes back to Bon Temps to take up residence in the old house owned by his family and despite the antagonism of some locals to his presence he begins a relationship with Sookie. When a number of brutal murders occur, Sookie’s feckless brother Jason is implicated and it becomes clear that she is being targeted.

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In a nutshell, ‘True Blood’ is Tennessee Williams with vampires. The show premiered on the HBO premium subscription cable television channel on 7 September 2008. It was created for television by Alan Ball, who was previously responsible for the acclaimed ‘Six Feet Under’, another HBO show. The first season comprises twelve episodes and is based primarily on ‘Dead Until Dark’, the first ‘Southern Vampire Mysteries’ novel by Charlaine Harris, which was published in 2001. The opening episode was watched by 1.4 million viewers and the twelfth episode was watched by 2.45 million viewers. The second season of the show premiered on 14 June 2009 and marked a considerable increase in viewer numbers, reaching a high of 5.3 million for the tenth episode (the twenty-second in total). Reviews were initially mixed, but have become increasingly enthusiastic.

I had high hopes for the show, but when I finally had an opportunity to watch it I stalled at the first episode. It stayed that way for a few months, before I eventually decided to give it another go. I went straight to episode two and this time I quickly became hooked, watching the whole of the first season in a week (the days of ‘The X Files’ or ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ when I could sometimes watch five or six episodes in a row are very much a thing of the past).

How much does ‘True Blood’ owe to ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’? There is an obvious similarity between the relationships of Sookie and Bill in ‘True Blood’ and Buffy and Angel in the early seasons of BtVS. Sookie’s telepathic abilities might be compared to Buffy’s in the season three BtVS episode ‘Earshot’ and the cripplingly addictive and hallucinogenic properties of “V” (vampire blood) bears more than a passing resemblance to the affect that magic has on Willow in season five of that earlier show. However, apart from the general fantasy elements, that’s more or less where it ends, although clearly the novels would seem to have been influenced to some degree by the BtVS template and that has carried through into the television series.

Although Sookie and Bill’s relationship is the central focus, I didn’t find this particular enthralling, but equally it was not too distracting and there were plenty of other story threads that kept me watching. I did feel that various storylines were being raced through too quickly without being allowed time to breathe and develop, almost as though they were trying to throw everything into the first season just in case the show was not renewed. It didn’t adversely affect my enjoyment and there were a few genuine “I was not expecting that!” moments. The over-abundance of frequently rather silly sex in the episodes did sometimes become wearisome, largely because it often seemed to be there for no other reason than the fact that it could be, but I found myself becoming desensitised to it and there was the occasional incorporation of humour, some that worked and some that didn’t. One thing the show does not do is subtlety.

There is a degree of analogy between the campaigns on both sides regarding the acceptance of vampires into society and the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, something referenced in one episode by the character Tara Thornton, but the subtext is undoubtedly influenced by much more recent ideological conflicts. It is very noticeable that the vampires have a clearly aggressive hidden agenda that is evident to all just beneath the surface of the conciliatory public face presented in the constant television debates that we see in the show. There is also the right-wing Christian Fellowship of the Sun. What will be done with this sub-text beyond simple dramatic effect remains to be seen.

Three actors in the main cast are not American. Anna Paquin, who was the initial reason I paid some attention to the show when I first heard about it, was born in Canada and brought up in New Zealand. Stephen Moyer is English and Ryan Kwanten, who I can still remember from his days as Vinnie Patterson in the television soap opera ‘Home and Away’, is Australian. I cannot judge how accurate or otherwise their Louisiana accents are. Both Paquin and Kwanten seem fine, although Moyer’s does occasionally sound a little odd, but I have no real point of reference, so any inadequacies in this area don’t affect me and it could well be that, in fact, Moyer’s is the more authentic of the three.

Anna Paquin is quite a distinctive actress, with just a hint of quirkiness in her performances. That applies here. From a few comments I have read, not all fans of the show are fond of her presence. In fact, some seem positively hostile and consider her to be the weak link, although I am guessing that this is simply a vocal minority. I have always liked her in what I’ve seen and that doesn’t change here, although Sookie is not necessarily the most interesting character.

I don’t know if ‘True Blood’ is as good as some critics have suggested, but although I have a few minor niggles, I am semi-hooked on it. In fact, it is fast becoming addictive.

Review posted 14 November 2009


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Dollhouse: Briar Rose (season one, episode eleven)

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Rating 1½

Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Jane Espenson

Directed by Dwight Little

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Amy Acker (Dr Claire Saunders), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (November), Liza Lapira (Ivy), Aisha Hinds (Loomis), Hannah Leigh Dworkin (Susan), Judith Moreland (Renee) and Alan Tudyk (Stephen Kepler)


Echo is imprinted to help a young girl called Susan who is in a foster care programme. Paul Ballard tells Mellie (aka November) that he is leaving and then follows her when she is taken back to the Dollhouse, finally discovering its location. He goes to Stephen Kepler, an environmental architect who worked on the building when it was first being designed for construction, and forces him to help to gain entry into the “invisible” underground portion of it. An encoded memory stick is delivered to the Dollhouse for Laurence Dominic. Victor is imprinted with his memories to obtain the password to open it. Adelle DeWitt had supposed it to be from the NSA, but it is actually from Alpha, the rogue Doll. Sierra is imprinted with the memories of an FBI forensics expert and dispatched to Tuscan to investigate further.

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Oh good, another boring fight scene. This one is between Paul Ballard and Boyd Langton and takes place inside the Dollhouse after Ballard has gained entry into the supposedly super top secret establishment, achieving this extraordinary feat with next to no difficulty whatsoever. Perhaps they allowed it to happen, although I can think of no reason for this at the moment. I have to admit that I was paying very little attention during this episode, constantly unable to keep my attention from wandering elsewhere. I found the whole thing decidedly uninvolving.

The episode opens with a metaphor, providing a parallel between the fairytale ‘Briar Rose’ (the Brothers Grimm variant of ‘Sleeping Beauty’) and what we are about to witness. It is delivered in such a heavy-handed and leaden manner that it is tempting to assume it must be joke. In fact, the writers (or writer, if Jane Espenson, who wrote some excellent episodes of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, is responsible alone for this) clearly could not even be bothered to think of a credible reason why Echo would be imprinted to help the girl suffering from traumatic experiences in her short life. So we have the ludicrous and wholly unconvincing conceit that it is the altruistic endeavour of Topher Brink, approved and authorised by Adelle DeWitt. It is never explained what Echo’s qualifications are supposed to be or how she comes to be working / helping out in the young children's care unit.

There is a neat twist towards the end when we discover that Alpha has infiltrated the Dollhouse and we encounter him for the first time. It held my interest for about 20 seconds, but then I lost interest again, perhaps because by this stage I had become increasingly irritated by the performance of Alan Tudyk, who had previously been excellent in Joss Whedon’s short-lived but much loved television series ‘Firefly’. Tudyk is undoubtedly a very talented actor, but I didn’t enjoy his performance here at all, although perhaps it is a reaction to the episode itself rather than his acting.

In one of the early episodes, the third one I think, I had guessed that Claire Saunders, the Dollhouse doctor, would turn out to be a Doll. Although not yet confirmed, I suspect I am right. There is a moment in ‘Briar Rose’ when Victor (imprinted as Laurence Dominic) refers to her as Whiskey, although there is a horribly clumsy piece of writing that attempts to deflect attention away from this, or perhaps direct us to it.

There is now just one episode to go, not counting the unaired and allegedly superior pilot episode and / or the thirteenth episode, one that was not broadcast by the FOX network, but was commissioned, I think, specifically for the DVD box set. I do not have access to these two episodes and, such is my rather negative response to the episodes I have seen, I do not feel that I am missing out on anything.

Review posted 26 July 2009



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Dollhouse: Haunted (season one, episode ten)

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Rating 1½

Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Jane Espenson, Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon

Directed by Elodie Keene

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (November), Ian Anthony Dale (Jack Dunston), Gregg Henry (William Bashford), Jordan Bridges (Nicolas Bashford), Aisha Hinds (Loomis) and Rhea Seehorn (Jocelyn Bashford)


When Margaret Bashford, a close friend of Adelle DeWitt, dies, apparently in a tragic riding accident, her memories are imprinted into Echo to allow her to visit her own funeral and, so it turns out, investigate her murder. Back in the Dollhouse, Topher Brink is allowed to imprint memories into Sierra, supposedly for an important test of the system, but actually to create a friend he can share his birthday with. Paul Ballard attempts to find out the real identity of November/Mellie, getting an old friend and colleague to run her fingerprints on the FBI database, but the record is wiped the moment it is accessed.

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I was, there is no doubt, biased coming into this series, but I did try to keep an open mind. I suspect I am more biased now, simply because I don’t like it very much and perhaps because I think that, despite some unenthusiastic reviews early on, it has been critically over-rated, something of a trend with Joss Whedon’s post-Buffy work.

The story of Margaret Bashford returning to her palatial home and stables and discovering some unpleasant home truths about the way her two adult children think of her is so clichéd that it would be tempting to assume the writers had their tongues firmly in their cheeks if the whole thing were not so determinedly flat-footed. The murder mystery is taken straight out of an episode of ‘Murder, She Wrote’ or the ‘Father Dowling Mysteries’, without the silly but not dislikeable verve of those shows. I have come to the conclusion that the writers must have an ongoing bet to see which one of them can include the most boring and unrealistic fight scene in their episode(s).

I am fast losing interest in Paul Ballard, who is going through all kinds of two-dimensional angst because, now that he knows that Mellie is actually an Active of the Dollhouse, something that she doesn’t know, he is turning into a client of the Dollhouse by proxy. As for the storyline in this episode revolving around Topher, it wasn’t interesting and I wasn’t interested.

There have been episodes in this first season that I think are worse than ‘Haunted’ and there have been episodes that I found a whole lot more objectionable, but this was such a mediocre and uninspiring 45 minutes or so. I got nothing out of it at all – I couldn’t even build up the energy to dislike it. However, it was the first time I came away thinking that Eliza Dushku’s performance was detrimentally below-par, having previously thought that the criticism of her acting in ‘Dollhouse’ by some critics has been a little unfair.

Review posted 24 July 2009



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Dollhouse: Man on the Street (season one, episode six)

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Rating 2¼


Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Joss Whedon

Directed by David Straiton

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Amy Acker (Claire Saunders), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Kevin Kilner (Joe Hearn), Miracle Laurie (Mellie), Liza Lapira (Ivy), Mark Sheppard (Tanaka), Aisha Hinds (Loomis) and Patton Oswalt (Joel Mynor)


Paul Ballard suspects that Joel Mynor, a very rich and successful businessman, is a client of the Dollhouse and interrupts an engagement involving Echo. Sierra starts acting strangely and it is discovered that she has had sexual intercourse inside the Dollhouse. Suspicion points to another Active, Victor, although it should be impossible for an Active who has been de-programmed to act in this way. Ballard continues to get closer to his next door neighbour Mellie and confides in her about his investigation.

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Many fans have pointed to ‘Man on the Street’ as the moment when ‘Dollhouse’ makes a giant leap forward and begins to genuinely compare to Joss Whedon’s best work. Whedon himself has pinpointed it as an important step up in quality in this first season. It is well done and has many of the hallmarks of a typical Joss Whedon scripted episode, with the action interspersed with soundbites of (actors playing) people on the street, interviewees in a television news exposé, expressing a variety of different opinions about the Dollhouse, whether it exists or not and how they view the service it is alleged to provide to its clients. I didn’t really engage with this, although I guess it is a clever enough conceit.

Paul Ballard gets much closer to the Dollhouse in this episode, actually encountering Echo (or Caroline, as he knows her) and also getting to interrogate, after a fashion, one of the clients, with an excellent performance by the stand-up comedian Patton Oswalt as Joel Mynor. This was all fine, except that it indulged a tedious fight scene early on when Ballard takes on several of Mynor’s bodyguards and security team. However, this paled into insignificance when compared to the truly dreadful fight scene involving Ballard and Echo later in the episode. It was utterly ridiculous and embarrassingly asinine and it went on and on and on for a mind-numbingly interminable length of time. Maybe this would not have bothered me so much if I was not already somewhat less than impressed with the show generally, but it definitely took this episode down several notches for me.

Could it be that this fight scene was supposed to be comic in nature and its setting, in the kitchen of a Chinese takeaway, alerts us that it is a parody of martial arts films? Maybe I am just not in on the joke, although if there is any possibility at all that this is what was intended, which I don’t really believe, it would make it even more awful.

A twist involving one of the regular characters, occurring near to the end of the episode, did not come as a surprise to me. I had already guessed this. Equally, I also knew the identity of the person responsible for having sex with Sierra before it was revealed, although in this case I think perhaps I must have inadvertently read about it at some point previously. The character Topher Brink is starting to become increasingly annoying, without becoming any more interesting.

Once again I found some of the dialogue clunky. In one scene Paul and Mellie have just had sex (he, of course, gives her an orgasm) and he says, jokingly, “So... can I borrow a cup of sugar?”, to which she replies, “I don’t think I’ve got any sugar left.” This is quite a typical Joss Whedon line, but it had me cringing.

I cannot deny that this was a good episode, the fight scenes excepted, and the unfolding story is beginning to throw up some interesting twists and turns, but while I can watch it, I don’t really care, which I would think rather defeats the point of it all.

Review posted 14 June 2009



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Dollhouse: True Believer (season one, episode five)

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Rating 2


Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Tim Minear

Directed by Allan Kroeker

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Amy Acker (Claire Saunders), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (Mellie), Brian Bloom (Jonas Sparrow), David Alpay (Seth), Brad Hunt (Jesse), Rebecca Field (Kris), Aisha Hinds (Loomis) and Mark Totty (ATF Agent Lilly)


Echo is made (temporarily) blind and implanted with some kind of imperceptible high-tec camera and sent in to infiltrate a religious sect in Arizona as part of an ATF operation to gain access to the cult’s compound and find out what they are really up to. FBI agent Paul Ballard continues to try to identify the mysterious young woman named “Caroline” in the photograph he was sent and now receives a disc containing a piece of film of Caroline.

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This fifth episode was a vast improvement on the previous two, or at least I did not find it anywhere near as irritating and dislikeable as those episodes. However, I still struggled with it, perhaps because my generally negative reaction to the show so far is making me increasingly biased against it. While I would be hard pressed to admit to having enjoyed the episode, I certainly did not find it as tedious as previous ones.

For once, Echo was not called on to be full-on fantasy fodder and that made a pleasant change. The excellent and often insightful Charlie Brooker, writing a negative review of the show for the Guardian newspaper, said, “You’re supposed to want to screw the lead character, because the lead character is the impossibly gorgeous Eliza Dushku.” This comment caused some reaction when fans of Joss Whedon discussed it amongst themselves, with Brooker being accused of, amongst other things, being anti-feminist. That is one thing I do not think he can be accused of, although I don’t especially agree with what he writes here. However, I did very quickly get profoundly bored in previous episodes watching Echo riding a motorcycle very fast while looking hot, huntin’ and fishin’ and screwin’ while looking very hot, being hunted while looking very hot, breaking into a high-tec vault while looking very hot, ad infinitum. As Gareth McLean had suggested, it was teen boy fantasy fodder and I am obviously attracted to other forms of fantasy fodder.

Eliza Dushku’s acting has been commented on a great deal, with the suggestion that she doesn’t have the necessary range needed to successfully pull off this role. Lucy Mangan, also writing in the Guardian, in her weekly ‘Cable Girl’ article, was generally favourable towards the show, but asked, “Can Eliza Dushku act? As the alternative vampire slayer Faith, she was always the weakest link in Buffy – an ass-kicking sexbomb, yes, but in scenes that required her to do more than scissor-kick, toss her hair or undulate suggestively, she was agonising to watch.” I personally don’t think Dushku has been a problem so far, even though she has been hamstrung by some terrible writing, or at least very up and down writing, and horribly hackneyed storylines.

To return to episode five, we were invited to note the parallels between the Dollhouse and the religious sect. It wasn’t exactly subtle. In both cases, people have their individual identities taken away and are programmed to behave and conform to the wishes and demands of those whose motivations are unclear and highly suspect. I got the symbolism of Boyd Langton carrying Echo out of the burning building at the end, although it was surely hardly very helpful to the apparent super-secrecy of the Dollhouse that he walked straight towards television news teams and camera crews.

I noted the various twists, as I have done in all the previous episodes to date, although I still struggle to build up any great interest in them. The Dollhouse is a hotbed of intrigue and double-dealing, but the show is still not interesting enough to me to care about it all that much at the moment. Part of the problem, apart from the style of the show, which just isn’t my thing, is that I have next to no interest in any of the characters. On the plus side, I have been impressed by the performance of Amy Acker in a recurring role that is not guaranteed to continue into season two, because of possible budget constraints, although I believe that Joss Whedon wants her back.

‘True Believer’ was okay, if still not convincing enough to me to indicate that this is anywhere near the quality of Whedon’s best work. However, for all my complaints, I am still watching, so there must be something here that is keeping me onboard.

Review posted 7 June 2009



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Invasion

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Created by Shaun Cassidy

Written by Shaun Cassidy, Juan Carlos Coto, Michael Alaimo, Becky Hartman-Edwards and others

Starring Eddie Cibrian, William Fichtner, Kari Matchett, Lisa Sheridan, Tyler Labine, Alexis Dziena, Evan Peters, James Frain, Elisabeth Moss, Aisha Hinds and Ariel Gade


This 2005 science fiction show lasted for one season of 22 episodes on the ABC network before it was cancelled. It was broadcast immediately after the ratings hit ‘Lost’, but failed to hold onto the audience for that show. It was put on hiatus twice, eventually being broadcast over a period of 34 weeks between 21 September 2005 and 17 May 2006. The average audience numbers per episode was in the region of nine or ten million.

A hurricane leaves a small Florida town called Homestead cut off afterwards. Many people in the town went missing during the storm and when they turn up again they start to behave strangely. Dave Groves (played by Tyler Labine), a beer-drinking conspiracy theorist, believes it is the work of aliens. He involves his sister’s partner, Russell Varon (Eddie Cibrian), the park ranger, in his theories. Varon’s former wife, Mariel Underlay (Kari Matchett), a doctor at the local hospital, is married to the local sheriff, Tom Underlay (William Fichtner, in a fantastic performance). These people, and their children, have an uneasy relationship, which becomes increasingly strained when Varon begins to investigate further and becomes concerned about the sheriff’s suspicious behaviour.

It’s a variation of ‘Invasion Of The Body Snatchers’. The story unfolds quite slowly, although not unduly so, and allows plenty of time to explore the lives of the main characters, who are all interconnected by family ties, but equally are in conflict because of these ties. It’s nicely written, with very good production values and excellent acting.

On first viewing I found Larkin Groves (the character played by Lisa Sheridan) rather irritating. That dissipated when I watched the episodes again. Whilst I was baffled first time around by her insistence that Eddie put the safety of their unborn baby above that of his two children from his first marriage, her seemingly selfish and sometimes unreasonable behaviour made more sense second time around. It is also interesting to contrast the reasoning of various characters for investigating the strange happenings taking place around them.

Dave is driven by the fact he is convinced he has found proof of the existence of extraterrestrials - and this obsesses him. Eddie is concerned about the town. Tom (the sheriff) also claims the safety of the people is his first priority, but the motivation for his actions often suggests a hidden agenda, and he and Eddie are constantly at loggerheads. Larkin is an ambitious news journalist working for the local television network. She begins to independently investigate the strange occurrences, hoping for a journalistic scoop. Although she talks about being concerned for the safety of her family, it is not, initially at least, the real reason for what she does. It can also be said that Eddie’s suspicions about Tom, the husband of his former wife and, therefore, the stepfather of his two children, is as strong a reason for his actions as any concerns about the town itself.

The premature cancellation of the show was a shame. It would have been interesting to find out where creator Shaun Cassidy intended to take the story. However, it still works very well as it is and the ending is actually rather satisfying.

One last thing of note, unimportant as it may be, Rose Varon (played by Ariel Gade, who is also featured in the film ‘Dark Water’), the youngest child of Eddie Varon and Mariel Underlay, is surely the cutest child ever seen in a television show.



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