Friday, August 04, 2006

Tonight at 11: Shakespeare!

At the end of BBC America's session at press tour, one of the critics at my table said, "If only I could write about nothing but this channel all the time." After watching several of the "Shakespeare Re-Told" apdatations (including "Much Ado About Nothing," as seen above) on the heels of "Life on Mars," I'm finding it hard to argue. "Shakespeare" gets written up in today's column.

"Who Wants to Be a Superhero?" remains inordinately cheesey, yet fun. The attack dog thing started off silly (especially Cell Phone Girl's four second "No mas!"), but then turned cool with Monkey Woman's epic struggle to get to the porch. (I wonder, as I always must with shows this obviously phony: did she tire the dogs out after so long, or did the producers tell the trainers to get the dogs to lighten up just enough to let her finish?) On the other hand, I can only imagine what the Mark Burnett editing team would have done with that whole "Rudy"-esque sequence (reaction shots, stirring music, smash cuts), whereas the Nash folks seem to put the minimal effort into everything. And, for once, a reality show manages to turn the token "I didn't come here to make no friends!" a-hole to its advantage; Iron Enforcer is the perfect bad guy for this bunch.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Would you be able to repost the link to the Shakespeare review? I finally got this through netflix and was hoping to read your opinion on them.