TV in 2013: Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Walking Dead, Homeland and more

I watched a crap load of TV in 2013. Films have always been my big thing and even with The Wire, The Sopranos and 24, I still didn't jump on the loving TV bandwagon. But this year, that really changed. I'd been slowly but surely getting stuck into a few TV shows and this year, two of my favourites finished forever; Breaking Bad and Dexter.

Helpfully my friend also showed me a way to keep up with TV shows without having to subscribe to ludicrously expensive TV services. More importantly I got sent a few TV boxsets to review for Filmoria and I also got lots of work writing for Yahoo on both The Walking Dead and Homeland.

These are all the TV shows I watched in 2013. If I reviewed them, then just click the titles to see my reviews:

TV shows I watched in 2013:

Unit One Season 1

'Unit One might not reach the heady heights of other recent Danish crime exports but has plenty to offer fans of the genre and will certainly please fans of both Mads Mikkelsen and Nordic noir with a healthy feminist streak.'

Jack Irish

'Jack Irish is a cut above many TV movies, injected with plenty of Aussie charm amidst the occasional stereotypes and distracting subplots, but shot, edited and scored very effectively. While Irish is the focus, the supporting cast offer just as much fun and help to illuminate the central character. Guy Pearce is a very welcome presence to the small screen and makes further Jack Irish adventures a welcome prospect.'

The Killing Season 1

'What I loved about The Killing is that there was a thick web of characters surrounding the case. They all felt very real and provided a great deal of interest and suspense into the events after the murder. The family of the victim, a politician and his campaign crew and more and more assorted suspects keep clotting up the case and providing fresh intrigue and fresh suspects throughout the 20 episodes.'

The Walking Dead Season 2

Better than the first season but I still hadn't fallen in love with the series yet despite loving the premise.

Black Mirror Season 2

The second episode of this season, White Bear, was one of the best bits of TV I'd ever seen. Check out my reviews of White Bear and The Waldo Moment here. 

Game of Thrones Season 1

Loved it so much, I started reading the books on holiday in Thailand. I got half way through the second season and then stopped so I could read the second book first. Now I've just finished A Clash of Kings, I'm going to finish watching the second season and then move on to the third books.

Arrested Development Season 4

Disappointing but still had it's moments. I also got a perfectly timed second free trial month from Netflix to watch it all. Not enough Job, not enough Tobias and a bit too convoluted and clever-clever for its own good!

Breaking Bad Season 4

Best season of the series yet. The dynamic with Gus Fring went to another level and dominated this season and I loved every minute of it. Ended with an absolute shocker too. Walt had descended to his absolute lowest and scummiest and suddenly I found myself caring for Jesse again.

Unit One Season 2

'Unit One series 2 furthers the drama of the first series and has a consistently fascinating array of mysteries and murders. The increasingly challenging relationships of the team might at first appear to take a back seat but by the end of the series, the members of Unit One are still the ones audiences will warrant worthy of further investigation in future series.'

Breaking Bad Season 5

Even better than the fourth season, this was pretty much perfect TV. Episode 14: Ozymandias was literally unforgettable and was the pinnacle of the show for me. Read how excited I got about it here. Then I wrote a piece for Yahoo on saying goodbye to two of TV's greatest anti-heroes, Dexter and Walter White. They will both be sorely missed although White went out on a massive high whereas Dexter kind of over stayed his welcome.

The Walking Dead Season 3

'It was an incredibly eventful season with Michonne getting to kick ass, The Governor becoming a truly terrifying threat and supporting characters like Glenn and Daryl finally really getting a chance to shine. With the deaths of Lori and Andrea, it even tugged hard at the heartstrings before all out war made for an action packed final episode. Season four will have a lot to live up to.'

Homeland Season 1

I had to race through this as I had to catch up with the whole show before season three started and I began my writing for Yahoo on the series. Loved season 1 but kind of wished it had ended with Brody blowing himself up and then that would have been that!

Dexter Season 6

The Colin Hanks starring series was ok but ended with the mother of all cliffhangers; Deborah finding out about Dexter. That was enough to keep me watching the next season.

Dexter Season 7

It all started losing the plot a bit here with Deborah knowing about Dexter's secret life. However, again it ended with an absolutely gobsmacking climax; Deborah killing LaGuerta. I personally think that would have been a pretty brilliant and bleak way to end the show.

Homeland Season 2

Not nearly as good as the first but much better than the third season. 

Low Winter Sun Season 1

'Low Winter Sun sits in the very long shadow cast by other far better dramas but is a success on its own terms, acting as an autopsy of a dying Detroit that would soon be declared bankrupt.'

Homeland Season 3 

Opening episodes recap 

Episode 3 Review: Tower of David

Episode 4 Review: Game On

Episode 5 Review: The Yoga Play  

Episode 6 Review: Still Positive

Episode 7 Review: Gerontion

Episode 8 Review: A Red Wheelbarrow

Episode 9 Review: One Last Time

Episode 10 Review: Good Night

Episode 11 Review: Big Man in Tehran

Episode 12 Review: The Star

I am still currently watching:

The Walking Dead Season 4 which we are half way through and will start again in February.

Game of Thrones Season 2 which I am about half way through and intent to finish now that I have read A Clash of Kings.

Dexter Season 8 which I just have the final ever episode left to watch!

In 2014, I intend to get through Game of Throne season 3 and hopefully 4 when it comes out, finish The Walking Dead season 4 and watch Homeland season 4. I'm also tempted to start on Boardwalk Empire and Under the Dome.

What TV have you been watching this year?

Why don't you stay awhile? More 2013 lists from I Love That Film:

World Cinema in 2013

Best books I read in 2013

2013 List of Shame or 25 films I should have seen this year

2013 Top 10 Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction

2013 Top 10 So Far (written in July)

Best British Films of 2013

Top Documentaries of 2013

Top 25 Films to see in 2014

 

More popular posts at I Love That Film:

TV in 2013: Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Walking Dead, Homeland and more

Analysing La Haine

5 MUST SEE films at the BFI London Film Festival 2014

Valentines Day; Time for Romance

The Femme Castratrice in Horror

Why I Love The Hunger Games

Using Critical Approaches to Study Fight Club

  

Short Story: LIVING FOR THE WEEKEND

February Movie News and Reviews

This month has not been quite so hectic as January was fortunately but that also means there haven't been as many highlights. I've been busy writing the second chapter of my Blair Witch book and working on the second chapter of my thesis. In between that, there has been some time for writing movie news and reviews and even some stuff for Yahoo.

I've written a bunch of strange stories completely out of my movie comfort zone for Yahoo. You can check them all out by clicking on my profile. These stories are on education, fox culling, the NHS and even the flipping Girl Guides which I obviously know absolutely nothing about. However these things get read by a wide audience and so I like writing them!

Enough about that. On to the film stuff. This month I have watched all of the following and if I wrote a review then you can click the title and be magically transported to the destination of that review:

Hitchcock
Holy Motors
Shadow Dancer
Lovely Molly
Evidence
The Raid
Take This Waltz
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Cloud Atlas
Song For Marion
A Good Day to Die Hard (at Filmoria)
Stoker (at Filmoria)
V/H/S
The Paperboy
Our Children (review will be up on Filmoria nearer the release in May)
Django Unchained
Zero Dark Thirty
Broken
Rust and Bone

My reviews of Warm Bodies and Dangerous Minds also went up at Static Mass Emporium. My reviews of The Bay, No, Black Sunday, The Fall of the Essex Boys and Lisa and the Devil were also published at Filmoria this month.

I also watched and reviewed some great bits of TV: the first series of The Killing and two episodes of the second season of Black Mirror; White Bear and The Waldo Moment.

The news stories I covered for Filmoria are as follows:
Die Hard 6 Likely
How to Catch a Monster Casting
New Spring Breakers posters

I also did a top 5 funniest sex scenes for Valentine's Day.

It was a great month for winning stuff too. I won a copy of American Mary on Blu-ray from a competition on Flickering Myth and a trip to Paris on the Eurostar from StudioCanal by tweeting about I Give it a Year! I also placed £15 of bets on the Oscars and thanks to Argo, Django Unchained and Christoph Waltz I came out £3.30 up! Nice!

To conclude, the worst things I watched this month were The Fall of the Essex Boys (though I watched it last month, the review only went up this month) and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World or as I called it on Twitter seeking an acting class for the end of the world. Seriously how does Keira Knightley get work?

Best things I watched were Holy Motors, Cloud Atlas and Django Unchained. LOVED them! And of course Black Mirror: White Bear which was one of the best bits of TV I'd ever seen.

What were your best and worst of the month or thoughts on any of these?

Black Mirror: The Waldo Moment

The final part of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror series 2 aired last night, titled The Waldo Moment. I'll get this dash of negativity straight out of the way first of all by saying nothing could touch last week's episode White Bear which was possibly the best bit of TV I've seen since This is England 88. But The Waldo Moment was still smart satire; occasionally chilling, always clever but never quite hitting the highs of the previous two episodes of this series.

The Waldo Moment is all about a computer generated character voiced by a down on his luck comedian who finds that taunting and teasing politicians is the best way to grab attention. The character Waldo quickly becomes popular and the team behind him decide to put him in the running for the election. His knob gags, foul mouth and crude humour win the attention of the public and his putting down of the politicians makes him a refreshing alternative to their manipulative fakery.

I noticed in the credits of the episode that this one was based on an original idea by Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker from when they were working on Nathan Barley. I never saw that show but love a lot of Chris Morris' old stuff like The Day Today and Brass Eye. Nathan Barley was on TV in 2005 and what immediately struck me about Waldo was that he was based on Sacha Baron Cohen's character Ali G from the 11 o Clock Show and his own later TV series.

The tackling of politicians with ignorance and silly humour, the idea that the character would not work if he was given his own show and guests knew what to expect of him, the comedian hiding behind a character and satire to attack politicians but without suggesting alternatives all struck me as an attack on Ali G. I personally loved Ali G and found his early interviews for the 11 o Clock show some of the funniest television I'd ever seen. It did all go down hill when he was given his own show and the guests were in on the joke from the start. Sacha Baron Cohen could also always be accused of hiding behind his characters and causing apathy by humiliating everyone from feminists, to Tories to foxhunters to hippies. No target is safe from his satire and its easy for hime to take the piss mercilessly out of any of them.

The Waldo Moment seems to suggest that the public are stupid and easily led enough to allow someone like Waldo or Ali G with no policies, no party allegiance and no clue to run our country. It shows how an icon can be manipulated by darker forces back stage who want to gain power and it shows how if people cannot trust politicians then they might just turn to the more entertaining and seemingly truthful option, even if he is just a silly big blue bear who keeps getting his computer generated cock out. All this might of course have absolutely nothing to do with Ali G and I might be completely wrong.

The ending was a bit too abrupt for my liking and went a bit far in its depiction of a disturbing dystopian future. Its warning seemed a bit too far fetched (I hope) and revealed Brooker's complete lack of faith in humanity.

I must add all the scenes on the high street were filmed in my home town of High Wycombe and I actually remember running past as they were filming one day. I wish I hadn't been in such a rush and had stopped to check it out now! The Waldo wagon had drew a little crowd and people certainly had been drawn to the big blue bear so perhaps Brooker's vision isn't so far fecthed!

The Waldo Moment may have been the worst episode in the series but it's still better than most TV and plenty thought provoking. If you haven't seen the second episode of this series, titled White Bear, go find it now! You can still watch it on 4oD right here for the nxt 20 days or so. The first season is also all brilliant and I recommend you watch it before Hollywood starts its production of remaking them! I hope they give Black Mirror a third series.

Did you see it? What did you think?

Black Mirror: White Bear

Last night, the second episode of Charlie Brooker's second series of Black Mirror hit screens hard with a nightmarish vision of what we might become in the future... and let's face it, aren't actually that far away from being already. If you didn't watch last week's episode or the entire previous series then you must sort that situation out immediately. Black Mirror is some of the best TV you will ever see, filled with dark ideas, clever twists on our dependency on technology and both terror and very black humour.

This week is the first time I have chosen to write about Black Mirror because last night's episode has provoked me and left me with a bit of a sleepless night. The title White Bear I thought might be a silly/funny play on the words 'the white to bear arms', as in this f**king crazy notion that Americans must carry guns because it's their right or something. Actually White Bear was much more about our right to bear camera phones and film every tragedy, every victim and every sensational thing that happens anywhere near us.

All Black Mirror episodes work on creepy, weird 'what if?' scenarios involving some aspect of very modern technology and where it is taking us. White Bear had a young lady waking up, not knowing who she was and finding that everyone she encountered refuses to talk to her, instead just filming and taking photos of her on their camera phones. It's a creepy enough set up, like something out of a mild nightmare and then it turns quickly much darker when a range of masked figures start hunting her with an assortment of weaponry.

All the while, even as she runs, screams and is even tortured after capture, the general public keep filming, smiling and enjoying the spectacle. It is every bit as frightening as it sounds. No matter how much she cries for help, the audience keep watching, filming, relishing the terror and the desperation.

It is a terrifying and bleak look at what we have become and that is before the last act twist which takes things infinitely darker. I was constantly reminded of all the footage I have watched on YouTube of 9/11, tsunamis and even the hours of documentary footage I have seen in the past where you want to scream at the camera operator to put their camera down and help the people we see in dire straits on the screen.

All that footage of people filming the burning towers, the people jumping and being swept away by terrifying waves makes you wonder about the people filming. Did they feel so hopeless that they couldn't even conceive of doing something to help? Did they want to make money out of their sensational footage? Does watching this kind of terror through the lens of a camera make it easier to watch? Do you create a distance between yourself and the victims? Do we enjoy the spectacle of others' misfortunes? Do we have an overwhelming desire to document these things so that people in the future will be able to see how it went down? Do we have no sympathy for those we film?

The final act switches everything around, suggesting that the girl we have watched being chased endlessly is not as innocent as we first thought. But then the implications of our desire to watch, to film and to witness torture take on new meanings. It becomes even more harrowing and hard to watch. Like A Clockwork Orange, ideas about punishment and persecution become warped and difficult and our sympathies are twisted and disturbing.

Black Mirror: White Bear is an absolute must see. The second series of Black Mirror concludes next Monday at 10pm on UK TV so make sure you are sitting at your screen, ready for the onslaught.

2011 List #5: TV

I don't watch much TV.  Sometimes it gets in my line of sight and grabs me but generally I'd rather be watching a film.  Occasionally if I've heard great things about a TV show, I'll rent the boxset.  But this year I have had the pleasure of some of the best TV I have ever seen.

 
This is England 88 soared above everything else.  It was absolutely perfect, except for one (likely improvised) fight scene that went on slightly too long.  The performances and the writing were captivating.  I have banged on about it enough this year in these two posts here and here.  But it came out of nowhere (I had not heard that there would be a TIE88 until I saw the TV advert about a week before it aired) and slapped me round the face.  It was grim but not nearly as depressing and shocking as TIE86.  There was a slightly hopeful ending that leaves me desperate for the next installment, TIE90, that Shane Meadows has promised.  The show was Meadows at his best; warm, real, complex, sad and funny.  All this and more.  Go watch it.

I kept hearing so much about John Lithgow in Dexter Season 4 that I decided it was time to give this show a go.  So far I've made a start by watching the first two series.  Dexter is played by Six Feet Under's (a show I have been forced to sit through but actually admired a great deal) Michael C. Hall and is an interesting if slightly silly character.  The first season was pretty good but the second season took it up a notch with a brilliant character coming to an unexpected end at the climax of the series.  I hope the show can maintain it's appeal for me through the third season despite the loss of a great character.  I'm definitely going to stick with this one just to see what all this fuss is about Lithgow in season 4. 

This year I watched season 7 of Entourage.  It's still painfully sexist but wierdly Sasha Grey, the actual ex-porn star, playing a version of herself came out as quite an interesting and vaguely complex character.  The guys still make me laugh but deep down I still hate them for not being grateful enough of their blessed lives.  Jeremy Piven is consistently brilliant as agent Ari Gold, a character you love to hate or hate to love.  I'm still not sure.  Looking forward to the final season and movie in the near future.

The Walking Dead should have been the ultimate TV show.  Finally a TV series following the lives of characters stuck in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.  But the first season underwhelmed me.  I like that it had a great deal of focus on the characters and not so much horror but I felt that the characters are not brilliantly written and some of the acting didn't seem spot on for me.  I still find it hard to accept Andrew Lincoln's American accent and if you asked me to name any of the characters I couldn't.  However I look forward to Michael Rooker (minus one hand) coming back into the series at a later date.  And from the first couple of episodes of season 2, it looks like this series is going to get better and better.

I finished Lost this year.  As much fun as it was, the ending was bloody terrible.  I really enjoyed it's absolute ridiculousness and it's a shame they tried to provide answers in the end.  Lost had it's ups and downs but consistently made me jump up and down going WTF???  But by the end I wanted it to get lost.

Two more series I started but decided not to invest any more time in to were Rescue Me and Mad Men.  The former was quite good and I watched the entire first season.  I like Denis Leary and was keen to see how the writers would tackle the aftermath of 9/11 and it's impact on New York firefighters.  But the show seemed to just want to show that these guys are politically incorrect assholes just like most other people.  The characters are sexist and homophobic and despite their clearly heroic job, I didn't feel the need to spend any more time with them after the first season.  Mad Men seemed intriguing but just didn't grab me.  It looks amazing, the acting is fantastic and the creation of the near-past is faultless.  However I don't think it's for me. 

Finally Black Mirror, created by Charlie Brooker is a fantastic three episodes of wierd, technology-obsessed dystopian tales.  Beginning with an episode where the Prime Minister is forced to have sexual relations with a pig, the show just got wierder, cleverer and more prescient as it continued.  The episodes all featured a new cast, new characters but similar themes; the dangers of our reliance and obsession with technology.  It is an absolute must-see.  Sharp, serious satire from a cynical, sarcastic genius.  Find a black mirror and watch it.

Next year I will be continuing with Dexter and The Walking Dead and should probably try and get round to starting The Wire.  I'm also desperate to start Breaking Bad which I have heard very good things about.  Anybody want to recommend me any more TV to dip my toes in in 2012?  Anyone see any of this lot?