Dig a hole and fill it up

To be honest the only reason Life turned up at my short-list after its cancellation was the prospect of a couple of episodes featuring Jessy Schram. The young and beautiful Jessy caught my attention during her short spell at Veronica Mars; a show I've made no attempt to hide my affection for. After watching about half of the episodes made of Life until being pulled, I've got few problems understanding why it lost its airing slot. It's just not very good. The never ending zen-stuff is nothing but annoying, the main characters are also more annoying than interesting and the recurring interview-repeats are beating their message into the viewer. It's just lazy work and sloppy TV.

Jessy Schram as Rachel Seybolt and Damian Lewis as Charlie Crews at Life

After watching The West Wing I wanted to get more Bradley Whitford. Taking a short break from Sorkin I'll save Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip a couple more weeks, so I decided to check out Burn Up. A mini-series about politic, climate changes and oil-interests starring Whitford, Neve Campbell and Rupert Penry-Jones. Taking a liking to Neve during her Party of Five days and at least getting to know Penry-Jones on Spooks, I had few doubts they had done their job with the casting at least. Politically motivated drama-thrillers are never easy to pull off. It's tough to find the correct balance in how to present both sides, it's difficult to get the amount of intense scenes vs informative once correct and they need to touch a string with their audience to really ever have any opportunity to accomplish their target.

 Neve Campbell and Bradley Whitford in mini-series Burn Up

They don't quite succeed in Burn Up, but Whitford is interesting in his part and Campbell does a better acting job than I've seen from her in a long time, if I've ever before. I wasn't that impressed by Penry-Jones, and he's unfortunately the main character. The first part of this series is also quite a lot better than the final half. I really don't care enough the last 20 minutes or so. They haven't managed to get me invested enough in the story, no matter how important the premise of the series actually is. If you get across Burn Up it's worth watching, but you don't exactly need to go out of your way to get a hold of it.

In pilot-news I've checked out The Forgotten. If you can't manage to make even the pilot more interesting than this, you should realize the idea isn't very good to begin with. I can understand what they were trying to accomplish, but they really should realize they stepped between genres in a way they could never become a winner. Also seen the pilot of Crash, and while it didn't quite catch me there's something there in need of exploring. I'll for sure at least watch one or two more episodes until making up my mind.

Aaron Douglas as Frank Leo at The Bridge

And finally there's a show at least managing to entertain me for the runtime of the pilot, even being a double episode, in the Canadian produced The Bridge. A highly entertaining pilot, but the second episode was a huge step down. I haven't gotten around to the third yet, but while the opening had some street-cop feel I fear it'll lose its footing with the union-take being their main point of view as it seems. Still a show I'll give at least a couple more episodes to convince me one way or the other.