Carell’s cosmic comedy may yet crash and burn
Space Force Netflix Monkman And Seagull’s Genius Adventures BBC2, Monday Marty And Bernard: On The Road Again RTÉ One, Wednesday
WE’RE used to seeing lots of repeats in summer, but this year is going to be the all-time record holder. Already, Virgin is re-running all of Red Rock, while RTÉ is showing Love/ Hate from the very start, episodes so old every one of the gangland kids have accounts on Bebo. Remember that? No, you’re probably too young.
Virgin Three is showing the Australian version of I’m A Celebrity, which is quite a challenge. Let’s be honest, there are years I know only a handful of the celebs on the UK version, so how would I know the Aussie ones? They could easily rope in random strangers off the streets of Brisbane, Hobart and Darwin and I’d have to take their word for it.
It is, trust me, a terrible time to be reviewing television, so thank heaven for the streaming services. On Friday, Netflix dropped the entire first series of Space Force, but I’m not a binge watcher. I still prefer the stately pace of a weekly series, so while I probably will watch it all, today I’m talking only about the first episode. It didn’t exactly take off like a rocket but there was enough to keep me interested.
It opens with General Mark Laird (the ever-watchable Steve Carell) being appointed head of the new Space Force. Its mission, according to the president, is to put boots on the moon again by 2024, though in a very obvious nod to the current incumbent of the White House and his misspelled tweets, his original message was that he wanted ‘boobs’ on the moon.
A year later, Laird and his wife Maggie (great to see Lisa Kudrow, Phoebe in Friends, back in a decent role) and their teenage daughter are living in backwoods Colorado, the Space Force base, though not together; for reasons yet unknown in episode one, Maggie is in prison, and urging Mark to find intimate comfort should he need it.
Meanwhile, his new $6bn satellite project is in jeopardy from Congressional budget cuts, and when a delegation arrives to Space Force HQ to witness the launch, just as Laird is advised the conditions to do so are not good, he has to make a decision – to go ahead or not. It all was very gentle to start with, but there were good running jokes about his personal assistant allowing anyone and everyone access to Laird’s secure office, including a young Russian astronaut who is dating his daughter but quite clearly is there only to rip off all the technology possible.
Some of it is sharp – the Congressional delegation includes women clearly modelled on Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – and there’s a nice turn, as always, by John Malkovich, who lights up any screen. That said, its odd mix of the serious and the screwball (Laird calms his nerves by retreating to his office to sing and dance to
Kokomo by The Beach Boys), hasn’t quite gelled with me yet. I’ll stick with it but it may yet crash and burn on the launch pad.
A few years ago, University Challenge viewers were captivated by rival team members, Canadian Eric Monkman and British Asian Bobby Seagull. The two became friends in real life and have presented radio and television shows, the latest of which is Monkman And Seagull’s Genius Adventures on BBC2.
The premise is simple, as they traipse around the UK to the sites of some key scientific discoveries, such as the Royal Institution, where Michael Faraday conducted his experiments in electromagnetism, paving the way for the first electricity generators, and Rainhill on Merseyside, where George Stephenson demonstrated that his Rocket was the best locomotive for the Manchester to Liverpool railway, the world’s first inter-city link. Sadly, while there were nuggets of interest, Monkman and Seagull are more suited to children’s programming than to adult viewing. Every time they met someone new, we excruciatingly were shown them introducing themselves, and there’s only so many times ‘hi, I’m Bobby’ can be uttered before you want to do someone physical harm. Geeky to their fingertips, their song about cement, sung in the car, was as irritating as listening to primary kids singing The Wheels On The Bus, and I very quickly tired of it.
Nonetheless, there were some interesting facts in the mix. Before railways, most people in Britain lived their entire lives within a 15km radius. Once they became mobile, the move from country to city became possible, as did the chance to form relationships with total strangers, a fact one contributor argued made Britain healthier because the gene pool expanded beyond those who might have shared forebears from earlier generations.
The railways also led to another unexpected consequence, the need for synchronised time and a more accurate way to measure it, since the one thing every railway needs is a timetable even if, more recently in the UK in my experience, timetables are merely advisory.
Our own Marty Morrissey and Bernard O’Shea are a much more engaging duo, and in the last of their On The Road Again series on RTÉ One, they were back in O’Shea’s home parish of Durrow in Co. Laois to help raise funds for the local fire and rescue service.
They suggested a firefighter calendar, and even brought two male stripers to the fire station to show the lads how is should be done. As the two visiting gentlemen whipped off their trousers to reveal the skimpiest of smalls, the slack jaws of the fire crew were TV gold.
‘I’ve never spent a more awkward five minutes in my life,’ one of them said. Hmm, maybe he should watch Bobby Seagull introduce himself for the 15th time.