1-1-1-KsMIRT: A long day's January into night

K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month(ish) I step through the TV series I completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format. Behold, the rest of January.

This month:
Monarch Season 1 - AppleTV+ (10 Episodes)
Ghosts (BBC) Seasons 1 & 2 - CBC Gem (6 episodes each)
The Prisoner - Blu-Ray (2009 mini-series, 6 episodes)
After Midnight - CBS weeknights (multiple episodes)

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Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 1

The Plot 100:
In the 1950s two scientists and their military liaison investigate Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms (MUTOs) while also navigating tangled emotions and government bureaucracy in founding a formal organization to support their activities, Monarch. In 2015, in the fallout of "G-Day" (from 2014 Godzilla), a young woman goes to settle her father's affairs in Japan only to learn he had a whole other family, and she is part of Monarch's legacy. She stumbles upon sensitive documents that send her, her half-brother and his tech-savvy ex on the run from Monarch's forces.

(1 Great): I mean, freaking Godzilla. The show uses the MUTOs very sparingly (as do most Godzilla films) but extremely effectively. Every scene with Godzilla here has an incredible sense of scale and there's a potency in the juxtaposition between the creature and the real world events and people surrounding it. Godzilla and the other MUTOs are forces of nature, not characters here and really are quite the spectacle. 

(1 Good): The flashback sequences set in the 50's are exceptionally well done, both in story and in visual execution (the costuming, sets, technology, etc, all on point).  They really hit home the sense of discovery and the frustratingly limited mindsets of Western white men of the era. The main cast of characters in this age, played by Mari Yamamoto, Anders Holm and Wyatt Russell are an exceptionally appealing trio, with Yamamoto's Dr. Keiko Miura doing an exceptional amount of the heavy lifting, navigating post-war racism and suspicion of the Japanese, getting respect from peers as a woman in her field, and dealing with both Bill Randa (Holm - a character later played by John Goodman both in Kong: Skull Island and in this show's prologue) and Col. Leland Shaw (Russell). She needs to be the heart and soul of Monarch and I think they manage to establish that very well.  

(1 Bad): The modern day is a mixed bag. On the one hand there's a pretty wild journey that newfound siblings Cate and Kentaro Randa (Anna Sawai and Ren Watabe) need to go on, both emotionally and physically along with their friend May (Kiersey Clemons), but they're the weakest part of the show, mostly in how the writers don't seem to know how to incorporate their adventure with navigating very complex emotions. The drama of it all - including Cate's post G-day PTSD, Kentaro's daddy issues, May's secret past - all feel like distractions and not well integrated. These subplots often leave the characters acting petulant or standoffish in very unappealing ways.  Thankfully, they manage to hook up with modern day Leland Shaw (Kurt Russell in full-on KR charm mode) and the Monarch team they are on the run from, Tim (Joe Tippett) and Duvall (Elisa Lasowski) are exceptionally likeable, especially as we're never quite clear on where they stand on the threat level to our leads, and it shifts more than once.

META: The ten episodes are very digestible and constantly engaging with the only lag points being whenever they detour into our 2015-era characters' past. These diversions into their history, Lost-style, pull the brakes on the propulsiveness of this very globe-trotting, multigenerational adventure.  In general, I like all the characters here, but Cate, Kentaro and May all take turns being the wet blanket on the season, and those moments are my least favourite.

But the effects in this show look expensive and incredible, and obviously having the Wyatt Russell/Kurt Russell gimmick of them playing the same character in two generations is goddamn delightful and one of the best things on TV ever. The younger Russell at times seems to be intentionally channelling his father in scenes and line deliveries and it's a blast to watch.

In general, I was very surprised by this show. I was expecting a cheap, inconsequential tie-in to the Legendary Studios' Monsterverse movies, but this seems anything but that. In some ways, the attention to detail and the care of the lore and the characters seems of even better, more improved quality than some of Legendary's shakier films.

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Ghosts (BBC) Season 1 & 2 (2019, 2020)

The Plot 100: Alison learns she is the only living heir left in the Button family lineage. She has inherited Button House, a rural manor. She initially wants to pawn it off, but with her husband Mike, they decide to leave London behind and attempt to turn the space into a hotel/events destination. But when Alison has an accident and nearly dies, the near death experience results in her seeing ghosts everywhere, but especially on the Button House property. They're a mixed bag of souls but elated to have the attention of the living. This is about how they co-exist.

(1 Great): Ghosts is deliriously charming. Each Ghost is a delightful comic trope that the show leans into but also allows little glimpses of depth into. 
There's Julian, the conservative MP from the 90's who died having an affair in Button House (he has no pants on). He was an awful human being, utterly selfish and self serving and not much has changed as a ghost. He's also the only ghost who can physically manipulate objects in the house.
There's Pat, the former scout leader, who was accidentally killed in the 80's on Button House grounds by a scout with an arrow through his throat.
There's The Captain, a WWII-era officer who likes things ordered and tidy and is still repressing his homosexuality almost a century after his death.
There's Fanny, the uptight, prim-and-proper Lady of the house who was murdered and whose PTSD has her reenacting her death nightly. She's constantly offended and turns her nose up at almost everything modern.
There's Thomas, the laughably romantic poet who died in a duel, who has the hots for Alison.
There's Kitty, the stuntedly naive, immature, and sexually curious noblewoman who desires nothing more (and nothing less) than being Alison's best friend.
There's Mary, an uneducated servant who was burned at the stake during witch trials. If someone passes through her, the smell of sulphur emanates. 
There's Robin, the caveman, whose speech is stunted, but he seems, more than any of the ghosts, to have evolved with the times. He can manipulate electricity and the lights.
There's also Sir Humphrey who was decapitated and whose head and body are often never in the same place, much to the head's chagrin.
And finally there's the plague victims, all confined to the basement, who seem a pretty cheery and helpful lot, despite their unsettling appearances.

Within two episodes, I loved all these characters and the performers who play them. With such short seasons, and such a large cast, the tropes of the characters don't really wear thin, and the teases of their backstories don't really have that much runway to get tired.  Watching how each of these different personas out-of-time react to modern day events is really what the series is all about.

(1 Good): Not to be outdone, Alison and her husband Mike are an adorable couple. Alison is a people pleaser so once she gets over the fact that she's seeing ghosts, she's very keen to keep the peace and help them out however she can. Mike is super chill, but also a little inept and very self-conscious about it. It's a hilarious mix for a sitcom, but it means Mike is constantly making tiny little mistakes into big freaking disasters. Alison, in trying to please everyone, often winds up in these same disasters with Mike, which is basically the situations in this situation comedy.

(1 Bad): Seriously, this is basically a perfect sitcom. Incredible set-up, incredible cast, and so many possibilities. If there's a quibble (and it's not even really a quibble) it's that it's not a "binge-worthy" show. There's no ongoing narrative thrust to it that drives you to absolutely must watch the next one. But that's not truly a bad thing. I like having a show I can just pick up and watch an episode of when I have a half hour to spare and not feel the urge to jump into another one. I like a show that has a status quo that changes so minimally, it might not matter too much to watch them out of order.  It's sort of an old school sitcom in that regard.

META: I had already seen many of the cast on different seasons of Taskmaster (maybe my favourite show ever?) - like Charlotte Ritchie, Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Lolly Adefope, Katie Wix - so I was already charmed by some of the players in Ghosts before I even started watching it. Everyone is truly great.

My only problem was in access to viewing. In Canada all four seasons are on CBC Gem (a public, free streaming service) but it's so bogged down with ads that a 30 minute episode takes almost 45 minutes to watch. Some commercial breaks have 14 commercials. During the holidays in December, CBS was airing the first two seasons, but my PVR was having a headache in recording it. I think it's also on whatever BBC America or whatever streaming service is out there for British programming but I'm not getting yet another service.

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The Prisoner (mini-series)

The Plot 100: Number Six is new to "The Village", a remote desert location with seemingly no connections to the outside world. Six's memories play tricks with him, the villagers play tricks as well as all seem to be in on The Village life and its quaintness. There's a cheery facade of perfection to it all, but underneath everyone is afraid of stepping out of line, of Number Two's wrath. But Six seems to get away with more than anyone else in the Village, of pushing boundaries, and it's not like Two isn't watching. He watches everything.  Two is trying to break him specifically, but why? And why is he here? 

(1 Bad): There's more than one bad in this, but the part that I had the most trouble with, honestly, was the editing style. It really took to that post-Bourne series, Paul Greengrass quick-cut editing and ran with it. It drove me nuts in the opening minutes of the first act through to the final moments of the show. I know a lot of the intent behind the editing was to establish for the audience a sense of confusion that Six feels in the show, and to a very limited extent it did the trick, but it was also unpleasant viewing and more aggravating than immersive. I think I would have enjoyed the series maybe 70% more with cleaner editing and camerawork.

(1 Good): The flavour of The Prisoner was there enough to keep me watching. The Rovers popped up a couple of times (though not enough for my liking), and every time this version of the show got away from Six's backstory and focused more on the village and its strangeness, the more intriguing (yet familiar) it became. Unfortunately the story within the show is completely tied to Six's history, to the point that the finale gets muddied as to whether the backstory is actually the present or not (again, the editing here is a real hindrance to enjoyment).

(1 Great): Ruth Wilson. Can you ever go wrong with Ruth Wilson?

META: Look, I love the 1960's Patrick McGoohan-starring The Prisoner series. It's an incredible 18 episodes of espionage-tinged mind-fuckery. It's got surface level action-drama-intrigue appeal as well as deeper philosophical undercurrents to be picked apart: questions of identity, sanity, values, morals, society, authoritarianism, liberty, and on and on and on. It's a concept that has seemed ripe for a remake for decades since McGoohan shut it down (at 18 episodes, he felt the series was twice as long as it needed to be).

The remake debuted in 2009, from an ITV/AMC British-American co-production. While I don't remember any exact statements from the time, my recollection of the reviews I had read said the show did not live up to its predecessor, and, as such, I gave it a pass.  But after a rewatch of the McGoohan series recently, as well as doing a writing exercise recently of trying to recreate The Prisoner in another setting, and then seeing this come out on Blu-Ray for the first time recently, I decided to pick it up, as much as I didn't want to be seen as backing Caviezel and his right wing take on the world. 

It transfers The Village from the picturesque Portmeirion in Wales to a desert town that has a mix of downtown USA and Baltic architecture (it's Swakopmund, Nimibia, and much of the influence is traced to German colonialism). It's an place with some interesting details that are at times nicely shot, but it's flatter and more sprawling environment than the 60's set, and it does rob the modern of some of the original's sense of confinement. 

McGoohan's Six was a very stoic, some might even say cold blooded protagonist in the original series, and I can see why they went with Jim Caviezel in trying to find a similar match, but McGoohan's prickliness had the sense of "the only sane man in an insane world", while Caviezel just seems lost in his environment. Unlike McGoohan who was the key creative force behind the original series, I don't get the sense that Caviezel was all that engaged by the role, or he wrestled a bit with the directions. He's not a very charismatic lead regardless, and scenes where he's being "romantic" with Wilson or Hayley Atwell are painful to watch. They might as well be kissing a log.

I watched Caviezel in 5 seasons of Person of Interest and his performance on that show is fairly one-note, but it's pretty much exactly what that show needed. It debuted after this mini-series, but I wish that, like how McGoohan's spy series Danger Man led indirectly into The Prisoner, that PoI had led indirectly into this interpretation and he could have transferred that one-noteness here. But then this interpretation isn't really about a spy who has quit his job with no explanation, instead it's about someone working for a data collection and processing firm and quits when he discovers a secret about the firm, and the show wants us to be invested into what he discovered about the firm, but it's really hard to care.

SPOILERS, but in the end it's about a virtual reality simulation that is being used to help people with extreme mental health disorders (dissociative identity disorder, PTSD, depression) escape into a more controlled, healtier world for them (though most are unaware).  I really did not mind the reveal for the show, but I really dislike it for The Prisoner branding. And if you think about it too much it reveals a lot of complex questions around treatment of mental health and its representation thereof. 

I think about other shows or movies who had "VR" reveals in their finale and the ones I can recall (the American Life on Mars sticks out the most, but also 1899) and it doesn't bother me as much here, but maybe if I was enjoying the show more fully, it would have. I think maybe I was just resigned to the show going wherever it was going. 

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After Midnight

The What 100: A remake of the old Comedy Central series @Midnight, a comedy game show where three contestants (stand-up comedians or comedic performers) compete for comedy points by having snappy answers to stupid questions about trending topics on social media.

(1 Great): I knew of comedian Taylor Tomlinson but can't say I've ever seen her stand-up. The first episode of After Midnight I thought she was fine but also suspected she was fake laughing to hard. Turns out that's just how her laugh sounds, and she's very quickly settled in as a fake gameshow host where the points don't matter. She's very good at taking the piss out of herself, the show, producer Stephen Colbert, and their CBS corporate overlords, and she's pretty damn charming. Favourite bit is the "talk show portion" of the show that comes after the first act break. I love Taylor's absurd or faux banal questions.

(1 Good): What I really liked about the Chris Hardwick-hosted @Midnight was that it would introduce me to funny people who I didn't know before. So I fully expect After Midnight to do the same, in the easy and comfortable format of a competition/panel/game show (it's no Taskmaster, but then nothing is).  So far, I've only seen faces I already know, but most are very welcome faces, including a lot of familiar recurring panelists from the old show like Marcella Arguello, Doug Benson, and Milana Vayntrub. 

(1 Bad): The show has moved from 30 minutes to 1 hour, but really it's only about 36 minutes as they plug a LOT of commercials in between. Frustrating if you're not used to commercials (or at least being able to click past them).
But thankfully the episodes are all on youtube. The first couple episodes were presented in full, but later they partitioned them out in segments based on ad breaks. The only problem was they weren't labeled for viewing order so it was frustrating to watch that way too. But now they've assembled daily playlists so it is better.

META: The hit-to-miss ratio is only about 1:4 which, given that the bits are delivered at such a rapid-fire quip, is still a pretty high laugh-per-minute ratio.

I watched the first two weeks daily (usually next day) as matter of priority. Since then I've already fallen off daily watching, mostly because of the longer format.  It's easier to slot in a sub-1/2 hour show into the daily schedule than a 40 minute show. But I'm very happy it's back.