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Father Brown: The Serpent Within (2023)
Painful end to an awful season
Bad casting, bad acting, and bad writing summarize this season.
Claudie Blakley and. Ruby-May Martinwood may be decent actors, but both are woefully miscast in this program and their characters very poorly written. Martinwood's character is particularly bad with her overacting and silly accent poorly done making her all but unwatchable.
Blakley's character just does not fit as a member of Father Brown's "team" and the forced no-chemistry-at-all budding romance with Tom Chambers' Chief Inspector Sullivan is just cringe-worthy.
Speaking of Chambers, his return is a welcome improvement over (speaking of overacting) Jack Deam's Inspector Mallory. This stands out as the one re-casting bright spot of the season.
However, on balance, Father Brown has now become nearly unwatchable. Either the writing/character development need to SIGNIFICANTLY improve WRT Martinwood and Blakely, or the new cast members need to be ditched. If neither is done, I may be done with Father Brown. And, that would be sad.
Nature: Born in the Rockies: Growing Up (2021)
Sleepy narration
Why does PBS feel it necessary to hire actors to narrate in a boring, sleepy, emotionless monotone?
Uma Thurman may be a decent actor, but she is just going through the motions here. Just another payday for her, apparently.
Surely, she can fake some emotion, some excitement. She's a professional actor!
Even better, though, why not hire an actual naturalist who has some passion for the subject, some actual knowledge of the subject beyond merely reading a script?
The show itself was well done; videography was great. Spectacular scenery. Assuming you can stay awake for it, that is.
Show itself: 8 out of 10
Narration: 0 out of 10.
On balance: 4 out of 10.
Frankie Drake Mysteries (2017)
Time travel?
2020s women in a show set in the 1920s. This "21st century women in period dramas" seems to be a trend in shows imported by PBS. IMO, such shows are disingenuous. They would be much more effective showing how authentic period women characters would have achieved rather than trying to retcon history. This show, and the others of this ilk, are lazily conceived and lazily written.
I'd be more believable if the characters had entered a time warp in episode 1 (Life on Mars?).
As it is, pretty much unwatchable. Too many time period and cultural non sequiturs.
No thanks. I won't be watching any more of this tripe.
NCIS: Los Angeles: Fukushu (2021)
What happened to entertainment?
I don't watch these shows to be lectured. I don't watch these shows to be preached to.
I don't care who's "message" is being preached; lectures and sermons are not entertainment.
The first 10 minutes was all sermonizing. No investigation. No looking for suspects. No crime solving. Just preaching. And more preaching.
I wouldn't matter to me what they were preaching about. I don't watch for preaching.
I'm done with this show.
CBS can go pound sand.
Blue Bloods: Triumph Over Trauma (2020)
What's not to like?
Weak plot with the lost body story. No policing, just feelings.
Far too many plot holes in the Danny & Baez story. Apparently just to lay the ground work for another partnership romance and let us know Joe feels left out.
We get to hear Whoopi preach her defund the police nonsense.
As I said, what's not to like?
This show is teetering on me finding something else to do Friday night at 10 (9 Central).
NCIS: Los Angeles: The Bear (2020)
Apparently rushed, ragged story, many loose ends, in the end, lame
I realize the studios are dealing with a lot to try to get new episodes back on the air, but this episode was just a mess. Some of the issues:
1.Time wasting scenes. For example, the scene with Arkady. It served no purpose to the plot beyond provide an improbable name and code word for the team to bribe a Russian operative, and the scene was a way too long time waster. Obviously its main purpose was to fill air time. The idea that they could bribe a Russian operative for the information about the crew of the bomber with just a 3 minute conversation with a homeless man is absurd.
Second example, the long, over long, helicopter search looking at mountains and valleys with nothing happening.
2. The main plot element was the Russian bomber crew passing out, and the plane dropping below radar, and finally found having landed in a remote area. And yet, this plot was never resolved. The reasons, etc., were merely speculated on by our heros, but nothing resolved. Why was the Russian crew engaged with a gun fight among themselves? Again, speculation, but no resolution.
And, what's with bringing back Nell, no longer an employee of NCIS, and yet she is in charge? Ridiculous. And, we are to believe that the Russians would buzz US airspace with a novice crew on a training mission? Again, ridiculous.
I got the distinct impression the script was unfinished, had no ending, was rife with absurdity that should have been corrected in re-writes, but was rushed into production anyway with time-wasting scenes used to consume the required air time.
This was pretty close to the worst episode in this series, and I've seen them all.
Spy in the Wild (2017)
Expensive gimmick
The "spy" robots are a gimmick.
I ask: who is taking all the shots of the robots themselves? Who is taking all of the non-robot shots of the animals? It would seem that the "normal" camera shots were just as close to the animals as the robot shots.
The vast majority of the video in each show is NOT coming from the robots, but from ordinary camera footage.
Having said that, the show itself is a good wildlife show, with interesting information, although not much that is truly unique, and some of the robot shots are pretty impressive (such as the shots from within the mass of butterflies). This keeps the rating from being a "1".
Overall, I dislike the way the whole thing is based on a gimmick.