Stuff I Watched: 15th Oct – 19th Oct 2009

Football Behind Bars: Sky One (Recorded 12th Oct Watched 15th Oct)

This was the final episode of a six-part, Sky One documentary series, presented by Ian Wright, about young offenders playing football.  It was bound to be awful, wasn’t it?  Well, you’d be forgiven for thinking so, but it was actually rather well done.

It followed Ian Wright’s attempts to set up a football academy in a young offenders institute, in an attempt to help them learn some life skills, and hopefully make it possible for them not to re-offend.  It would have been easy for the programme makers to either overly sensationalise the criminal pasts of the inmates, and\or give a rose-tinted view of the outcomes of the scheme; to their credit, they did neither.  Nonetheless, the academy clearly had a positive impact on those involved, and it was good to see a ‘celebrity’ trying to make a genuine difference.

Curb Your Enthusiam: More 4 (R 15th Oct W 16th Oct)

I was actually genuinely exciting for the return of Curb, and couldn’t wait to see this first episode.  We’re now in to season 7 and it shouldn’t still be funny as it’s essentially the same every episode. Somehow, though, it’s still hilarious.  If you’ve never seen an episode, then I seriously recommend that you do.  Larry David is my hero (the fictional one and the real one).

Eastbound and Down: FX (R 12th Oct W 17th Oct)

I didn’t like the first episode, but I went in to this one trying to like it.  The first few minutes saw a weird Will Ferrell cameo, which could have made things a but more watchable.  It didn’t, I lasted five minutes before deleting it.  I have this nagging feeling that everyone’s going to be raving about this in a few months time and it’s going to make me sad inside.

Caravans: A British Love Affair: BBC4 (R 17th Oct W 17th Oct)

I really don’t know what it was that made me watch this, but don’t judge me.  It wasn’t the most amazing documentary I’ve ever seen, but I mention it because I thought it was only fair to give a fair reflection of all the programmes that I watch.  And sometimes I just want to watch a documentary about caravans.  It’s all too easy to scoff at caravanners these days, but this documentary at least explained what a feeling of freedom that owning a caravan gave people in dull post-war Britain.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: Channel 4 (R 12th Oct W 18th Oct)

It’s two or three years since this originally aired and I was ambivalent about it the first time around; it was well written and acted but I felt it was deeply flawed.  Since it was first shown, I’ve seen the whole of The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin’s previous show, so, when I saw this as a late night repeat, I thought I’d give it another go.  Would my opinion by any different a second time around?

No.  The script was still good and the Matthew Perry\Bradley Whitford double act was as likeable as ever, but, there were also a lot of buts.  I picked out lots of flaw, just in this pilot alone, but I’ll try and keep them as brief as possible.  I think you can lump many of the problems in to the category of ‘unconvincing’: I’m not convinced by Jordan McDeere, I’m not convinced that the ‘big 3′ stars of the show-within-a-show have any talent, and I’m not convinced that ‘Studio 60′ was ever a hit show.  Most embarrassing of all is when they try and show some of the comedy sketches – let’s just not talk about it.  It’s a very strange show that is both really good and excruciatingly bad in equal measure.  For that reason alone, I’ll probably watch them all.

Modern Family: Sky One (R 15th Oct W 19th Oct)

The latest highly acclaimed US comedy show arrives on Sky One, so of course I was watching.  It’s a mockumentary following the fortunes of three (yes, you guessed it) modern families.  I didn’t think it entirely worked; some of the jokes seemed a bit too obvious, and the ‘feel’ wasn’t quite right.  That said, it did make me laugh a few times, and it was only the pilot, so it can’t be all bad.  The main thing I took from the experience though was how much it made me want to watch Arrested Development again.