Monday, 22 August 2011

TV highlights 23/08/2011: Falling Skies | Harry's Arctic Heroes | The Hour | Nurse Jackie | Random | Wilfred

Falling Skies | Harry's Arctic Heroes | The Hour | Nurse Jackie | Random | Wilfred

Falling Skies
9pm, FX

Strange how this show makes the aliens so interesting but completely fails at getting the human stuff right. Tonight Weaver gets a whole subplot that appears from nowhere, like they found a season's worth of character notes they forgot to include earlier. The self-preserving Pope is also no longer a bad guy ("That was so three weeks ago") and is bizarrely teamed up with that annoying cute kid to develop an anti-alien weapon. But the aliens get all the good stuff, as Dr Glass uncovers more of the harness/bugs powers and we catch a tantalising glimpse of what may be behind the whole invasion. Phelim O'Neill

Harry's Arctic Heroes
9pm, BBC1

The clumsy billing of this programme is an attempt to alert viewers to the involvement of Prince Harry. As he would be doubtless swift to concede, he is not the reason to watch. The programme films the efforts of four shockingly injured veterans of Afghanistan to undertake the first unsupported trek by wounded soldiers to the north pole (Harry, who served in Afghanistan, joins them for the first stage). Captain Martin Hewitt, captain Guy Disney, sergeant Steve Young

and private Jaco Van

Gass, all in their 20s, confront their disabilities and the road ahead with predictably inspiring fortitude.

Andrew Mueller

The Hour
9pm, BBC2

In among the tawdry affairs and secret service murders, the actual news programme that everyone's been working on hasn't really had much of a look-in. That's about to change in this series finale, as the team prepares to defy the government gag rule over Eden's increasingly unpopular handling of the Suez crisis.

It hasn't always been smooth, but it's built to a solid soapy drama.

Rebecca Nicholson

Nurse Jackie
10pm, Sky Atlantic

Despite being weighed down by her faltering relationship with husband Kevin and continuing addictions, Jackie still somehow manages to retain her preternatural gift for character assessment. New nurse Kelly, who Jackie alone had doubts about when he first sauntered into All Saints, plays to expectations by flirting with a pair of drunken patients, and receives a sharp dressing down. Of course, Jackie is in no position to crow; her antics this week include having to choose between catching her daughter's performance in the school pageant and getting a much-needed fix. Gwilym Mumford

Random
10pm, Channel 4

Translated from the stage to the screen, Random was originally produced by director Debbie Tucker Green for the Royal Court Theatre. The brilliant Nadine Marshall reprises her role as Sister, the play's narrator, deftly embodying all the play's roles as well as her own, that of the mother, the teenage boy and the father of an ordinary family going about what seems to be an ordinary day before a random act of violence smashes the fragile domesticity to shreds. Splicing interior and exterior scenes with those shot with just Marshall alone on a stage, Tucker Green stays faithful to her arresting theatre production.

Ben Arnold

Wilfred
10.30pm, BBC3

Sociopathic Australian man-in-a-dog-costume Wilfred (the excellent Jason Gann) persists in his attempts to ruin his troubled neighbour Ryan's life in part three of this intriguingly odd sitcom. Fear is the theme as Ryan, played most likably by Elijah Wood, is railroaded into an unlikely alliance with his psychotic, pot-growing, porn-loving neighbour Spencer, scarcely a week after Wilfred persuaded Ryan to break into Spencer's house, steal all his pot and take a dump in his boot. BA


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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/aug/22/harrys-arctic-heroes-tv-highlights

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