Reviewed: The Big C
(Wednesday, Channel 4/Thursday, More4)
American cable channels are really putting it up to more traditional Stateside broadcasters such as ABC and NBC. HBO famously started it all by producing shows of the calibre of ‘Oz’, ‘The Sopranos’, ‘sex and the city’ and ‘The Wire’. Other companies followed suit, and in recent years viewers have enjoyed a variety of superbly crafted cable programming such as ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Mad Men’ (AMC); ‘Damages’, ‘The Shield’ and ‘Rescue Me’ (FX), ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’, ‘Entourage’ and ‘John Adams’ (HBO).
Another cable channel, Showtime, has been delivering on impressive levels with the likes of ‘Dexter’, ‘Brotherhood’, 'Weeds’ and ‘Nurse Jackie’. One of its newest shows is ‘The Big C’, which began recently on More4 and Channel 4, and is due sometime soon on RTÉ Two.
The basic idea behind ‘The Big C’ isn’t far removed from ‘Weeds’ in that both shows are about a woman in the suburbs who has a drastic life change. In the latter, Mary Louise Parker plays a housewife who doubles as a drug dealer to get some money after her husband dies. In ‘The Big C’ the circumstances are much more realistic and relatable (well, unless you are a suburban, widowed drug dealer) as Laura Linney plays Cathy Jamison who - like Bryan Cranston’s Walt in ‘Breaking Bad’ – is a schoolteacher diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Anyhow, the premise of ‘The Big C’ is that Cathy feels somewhat emancipated by her bad news, and decides to start living a little now that time is very limited. So far she’s looked to put a swimming pool in her front garden, splashed out on a flash car, initiated an affair with the school handyman, and kept her illness from the rest of her family, which includes a separated well-meaning-but-immature husband, a teenage son, and a hardcore environmentalist brother.
While it has its moments, something about ‘The Big C’ just doesn’t wash. The characters are really caricatures, and Cathy is just too damn straight and nice to be anything other than sensible in the face of her terminal illness. Is her character really in denial?
And while it’s streets ahead of most of the major network shows featuring women in lead roles (bar, of course, ‘The Good Wife’), ‘The Big C’ suffers in comparison with fellow female-focused cable shows such as ‘Weeds’, ‘United States of Tara’ and ‘Nurse Jackie’, all of which are both funnier and more leftfield.
We’d file season one so far under P for promising, but can’t picture ‘The Big C’ ever becoming essential viewing.
New this week
The Hunks (Tuesday, Sky Living)
Is there no limit to the rubbish we’ll watch under the ‘reality’ tag? Here’s another bunch of ‘Jersey Shore’ types willing to make complete tools of themselves on telly: ten lads on the rip in Newquay (arf, arf) in Cornwall, enjoying a summer of sun, sea and saucy shenanigans. We are surely living in the new Dark Ages.
Dirty Old Towns (Wednesday, RTÉ One)
If there’s one thing we Irish love doing, it’s looking at ourselves. From ‘Nationwide’ to ‘Reeling in the Years’ to ‘The All Ireland Talent Show’, we just can’t get enough – and here’s another one. ‘Dirty Old Towns’ is a new show presented by garden guru Diarmuid Gavin, with the ultimate aim of making Ireland’s towns and villages look a little smarter. Best of luck there, Dermo. First up, Charleville in County Cork.
Back this week
Doctor Who (Saturday, BBC ONE)
Deadly! When David Tennant quit the TARDIS I feared for the future of this great, great show. But Matt Smith came in and, with the help of Karen Gillan as new sidekick Amy Pond, made ‘Doctor Who’ even better than before. As well as returning next Saturday for Easter, this first episode of seven sees River Song (the wonderful Alex Kingston) and Rory (Arthur Darvill) reunite with the The Doctor and Amy in the Utah desert, where ‘a terrible secret’ is revealed.
Worth waiting up for
Bad time. Great show.
The Event (Monday, RTÉ Two)
Back this week after a lengthy hiatus (it went off our screens just before Christmas), ‘The Event’ may feel a lot like this year’s ‘FlashForward‘ (great concept, confusing time jumps, impenetrable plot), but it's pretty good fun all the same. And you’ve just got to root for Jason Ritter’s Sean Walker as he tries to unravel the deepening mystery. Damn! That wounded-and-confused puppy dog expression on his face gets me every single time.
Like ‘FlashForward’, it was given a lengthy mid-season sabbatical to get its act a little bit more together, and this second half of the first season promises to be less dense and more straightforward in its delivery.
Fans who had watched it on Friday nights at around 9.00pm on RTÉ Two will be understandably ticked-off with the new, post-midnight slot, but Blair Underwood (who plays US President Elias Martinez) has some good news.
He says: “We are now telling the story straight through so people can track it and follow it easier. We have some great stuff planned and have revamped a few things. I do know the general plan of where it is headed by season finale time. The first ten episodes was all about setting the stage and now we can tell the story.”
Now, you wouldn’t be into calling the US President a spoofer, would you?
Guest star of the week
It’s hard to beat BBC TWO’s ‘Later Live . . . With Jools Holland’ on Tuesday (and the extended version as usual on Friday) as this week’s guests include ‘House’ star Hugh Laurie, currently taking a break from acting to pursue a singing career with his blues album, ‘Let Them Talk’, which features guests such as Dr John and Tom Jones. The lower-case queen of country crooning, kd lang, is also in to perform songs from her new ‘Sing It Loud’ collection, while Fleet Foxes plug their second album, ‘Helplessness Blues’.
In contrast, controversial commentator Christopher Hitchins – recently diagnosed as terminally ill with cancer – is the guest on Thursday’s ‘In Confidence’ on Sky Arts 1. On the same night ‘The Good Wife’ on More4 has Ken Leung (Miles from ‘Lost’) guesting as a man who sues a social networking site for failing to protect his privacy.
Casting Couch Corner
Who’s heading to what show
Haven’t seen a lot of Laura Dern (‘Jurassic Park’, ‘Wild at Heart’) in recent times, but herself and mother Diane Ladd (‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’) will reunite for HBO’s ‘Enlightened’. It’s a comedy about a formerly self-destructive woman who, after a spiritual awakening, becomes determined to live an enlightened life, creating havoc at home and work. Expect it on Sky Atlantic . . . ‘The Shadow Line’ is a new seven-part drama coming soon to BBC TWO and tells the story of drug dealers and moraly ambiguous cops (wasn’t that called ‘The Wire’?). If the plot is as strong as the cast – try Chiwetel Ejiofor (‘2012’), Christopher Eccleston (‘Doctor Who’) and Stephen Rea (‘The Crying Game’) for starters – it should be worthy of investigation . . . Due soon on this side of the Atlantic, new comedy ‘Happy Endings’ began last week on American TV. It stars Zachary Knighton (‘FlashForward’) and Elisha Cuthbert (‘24’) as a couple who split on their wedding day, causing a rift amongst their friends. The pilot drew mixed reviews and a very healthy 7.27 million viewers . . .
Sat Nav
Satellite Highlights
Arrested Development (Tuesday, FX)
Originally broadcast in Britain on BBC TWO in a graveyard timeslot, the smarties at FX wisely show this superb comedy about an absurdly dysfunctional family two episodes a time, starting at a very reasonable 10.00pm. This week’s double bill finishes off season one with the long-suffering Michael looking to escape his family.
Treme (Friday, Sky Atlantic)
It’s the season finale of David Simon’s sprawling and inspiring drama about New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurrican Katrina. Amongst other things, Davis returns to the radio station and attempts to persuade Janette not to trade New Orleans for New York by showing her the perfect day in the Big Easy.
What You Watched
RTÉ’s top 20 programmes (viewed as live) for the week ending 13.03.2011
RTÉ One
1 The Late, Late Show Friday 739
2 Fair City Wednesday 659
3 Fair City Tuesday 574
4 Fair City Sunday 573
5 The All Ireland Talent Show Sunday 550
6 Prime Time Thursday 549
7 The All Ireland Talent Show Sunday 548
8 Prime Time Wednesday 523
9 Dragons' Den Sunday 518
10 Winning Streak Saturday 512
11 EastEnders Tuesday 511
12 The Saturday Night Show Saturday 500
13 EastEnders Monday 482
14 Fair City Thursday 481
15 EastEnders Thursday 480
16 Nationwide Wednesday 480
17 The Naked Election Monday 476
18 Off the Rails – On Tour Wednesday 435
19 EastEnders Friday 433
20 Dermot's Secret Garden Thursday 422
The Late Late retains top spot as the most-watched show, with an week-on-week viewer increase of 45,000. Meanwhile Fair City maintains its great viewing figures – bar the weekly mystery of Thursday’s relatively poor figure, this time trailing by nearly 100,000 from the rest of the episodes. Weird.
Elsewhere, The Saturday Night show rose by five places and 40,000 viewers, while Dragons’ Den also went up five, to ninth, picking up 30,000 more viewers. As usual, EastEnders is the only non-Irish show on the chart.
RTÉ Two
1 Six Nations Rugby Saturday 497
2 Desperate Housewives Tuesday 477
3 Champions League Live Wednesday 270
4 Grey's Anatomy Tuesday 266
5 Katherine Lynch’s Wagons’ Den Tuesday 240
6 Anonymous Monday 238
7 Home and Away Wednesday 232
8 Home and Away Thursday 220
9 Home and Away Tuesday 215
10 The Republic Of Telly Monday 208
11 Six Nations Rugby Saturday 197
12 Home and Away Monday 192
13 Six Nations Rugby Sunday 186
14 Home and Away Friday 179
15 The Longest Yard Saturday 167
16 Criminal Minds Monday 167
17 Hunt for Red October Saturday 141
18 Big Fat Liar Sunday 130
19 The Simpsons Wednesday 126
20 Anonymous Sunday 126
Six Nations Rugby knocked Desperate Housewives off the RTÉ Two summit, with the Champions League some distance behind their totals in third place. Grey’s Anatomy took a dip of around 26,000 but remains one of the channel’s most-watched shows.
Criminal Minds returned after a break for the Oscars with a disappointing 167,000 while Katherine Lynch’s Wagons’ Den drew an impressive 240,000 to come in fifth. Republic of Telly also did well, denting the top ten with 208,000.
