Utopia. Unexpectedly amazing. I'm not a big fan of long episodes, because of my short attention span (they normally lose me after forty five minutes), but it never feels long with Utopia. It is as exciting and mesmerizing as it is delirious, and its best feature is this incredibly bright, colorful, psychedelic picture, which drags you to the madness and ridiculousness of the story.
The Americans. Talking about long episodes. By the end of the pilot I didn't know what to do with myself. And all this time I kept thinking "Do we really need all these flashbacks?", "Do we really need to hear the entire In the Air Tonight?". The story is about two Russian spies, who "pretend" to be an American family from the suburbs. The guy leans toward betraying his motherland (what can you expect from a person with transvestite-ish eyebrows), while the girl stays firm, although I can't stop thinking that if she was a good spy, she'd get rid of him immediately. They are not allowed to say a single word in Russian (but there seems to be nothing wrong with drinking vodka) to avoid the risk of blowing their cover. The pilot rolls around the traitor they had to catch and deal with while not letting the FBI agent from counterintelligence, who moved into the next house, suspect anything. To sum up: if they manage to cut the crap, this series might actually get watchable, as of now it's a little boring and far-fetched.
Banshee. A masculine version of Revenge. If you like fights and don't care for the story to be in any way realistic, Banshee is the right show for you. Tough guys, sex, crime, torture and a much uglier version of Milla Jovovich as the heroine: that's pretty much what this series is about.
House of Cards. Yesterday Netflix released all the thirteen episodes of its first original series and I watched three of those. I recognize it's a big step for Netflix and I'm glad that they are trying to go in that direction, but objectively it's not particularly good. The essence of the story is fine and it's even shot quite OK, but I can't emphasize enough how poorly it's written. Especially the dialogues. They are not even pretentious, they're simply inhuman, people just don't talk like that! Even if they are politicians. And what's the deal with Kevin Spacey's character talking to the camera all the time? It just diminishes the effect of what's going on; when the character interrupts his supposedly emotional speech, which makes people cry (!), to notify us, the viewers, of his real agenda, I stop being inside the story, I'm suddenly above it. To sum up, this series just made me realize how much I miss Boss.(*bursts into tears*).
The Following. I think there's something fundamentally wrong about making the villain of the show more likable than the main protagonist, especially if your story is about a serial killer, who happens to draw inspiration for his murders from the works of Edgar Allan Poe. There's nothing original about how the story is told, and I fail to imagine a person who would like this series.
Cracked. After suffering from PTSD a police officer is forced to work with a psychiatrist, and together they dedicate their lives to catching literally crazy murderers instead of just shooting them, which apparently is the common practice in Canada. Trivial procedural.
1600 Penn. A "comedy" series about how the president of the United States is also human. His smartest daughter had one night stand and is now pregnant, his oldest son is clearly retarded, his trophy wife is self centered and the other two kids are irrelevant. Neither compelling, nor funny.
Deception. Boring Revenge with black people. Nuff said.
Legit. I'm not a fun of Louie (and stand up comedy for that matter) and Jim Jefferies's Legit is even worse. But I'm sure that people that watch it love it.
Way to Go. A Brittish black comedy about three young guys who are quite successful at wasting their lives. The irony of the series is that they start an assisted suicide business to help those terminally ill. It requires adjustment to the accent and it's not that funny (though I had a few laughs).
On a brighter note, Archer is back and it's hilarious!
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