TV Review

It's become a clich for anyone writing about TV to proclaim that we're living through a golden age - but only vicariously. While getting even one half-decent adult drama on British channels seems like an achievement, they're churning them out in America: Mad Men, The Wire, The Sopranos, Treme, The West Wing, Breaking Bad, Sons Of Anarchy, Deadwood, Lost … some have come to an end, some have yet to make it over here, but they've all been acclaimed by critics, if not necessarily audiences.

No matter how many awards Mad Men gets, hardly anyone watches it over here - but those who do are obsessive. And there's a loyal boxed set-buying audience who only have to hear the signature hissing logo of the HBO channel to hand over their credit card.

And so, as you can hardly have avoided noticing, comes Sky Atlantic, new from Rupert Murdoch's ever-swarming behemoth, which promises to collect all that tasty quality drama from HBO and the other US cable channels and plop it all into one handy place, so that those who like to sink into a gritty drama need barely touch the remote control again (except, of course, for BBC 4 and the odd nature documentary, don't you know).

There's a catch, of course - several catches.

The price, for one, although they're offering it free to Sky subscribers at first to get them hooked. Then there's the fact that in-between its high profile shows, the schedule is suspiciously full of repeats which have already been rotating on Sky's other channels for years: Star Trek Voyager and The X Files three times a day, old ER and 24.

Funnily enough, the channel's hugely-hyped launch series is all about money too: episode one of Prohibition gangster drama boardwalk empire reportedly cost $18million, which would make it the most expensive TV pilot ever. And, oh my, it sure is fancy.

The money doesn't just show, it glows: you can see it dripping off the screen as the cameras constantly show off the lavish period sets including an entire recreation of the Atlantic City boardwalk of 1920. Hundreds of extras constantly dance or march past, just because they can, until even in a simple scene in a family kitchen you half-expect to see crowds around the sink.

Getting Martin Scorcese to direct must have cost a bob or two as well, even if it's only for the first one (from then on he's only in a producer role). Naturally, it's got his usual cinematic touches - freeze frames, ironic music, long tracking shots. He could direct this kind of gangster tale in his sleep, though, and there's a sense that he's almost serving up just what's expected.

The show's actual creator and writer, Terence Winter, has done this before too, on The Sopranos, though Nucky Thompson, the corrupt boss of this New Jersey resort town, is operating in a different time than Tony. Prohibition is just about to come in, which is great news for him as the price of illicit booze will soar. Crime is about to become a whole lot more organised - and lucrative.

The casting is a little odd. Steve Buscemi as Nucky brings a strange levity to some of his scenes - it's jarring to see the supposedly tough operator (and he can carry off the menace, when he has to) suddenly appear as a hapless putz, yet it suggests this could become a potentially more interesting character than the standard mob boss.

Stephen Graham, best known for This Is England, is good as Al Capone, but at least 20 years too old to play him as the young, ambitious kid he's meant to be at this point. Along with Kelly MacDonald's awkward Irish accent as a battered wife Nucky helps out, it all pulls you out of the story, which is hard enough to follow, having a lot of characters and the context of the time to set up, and an over-convoluted plot.

It's good, obviously, but not yet great. Once the hype settles and we can forget about the money, it might be something.

The new channel's other big new series has been rather less hyped and no wonder: blue bloods is a dopey mainstream show about a family where everyone is a cop, unless they're a lawyer, and they all get involved in each other's cases and then argue about it over Sunday lunch. Good old Tom Selleck is the dad and the chief of police (he still has the 'tache), whose cop son Donny Wahlberg arrests a suspect, then his daughter is the prosecutor, while newly-qualified cop son is recruited to investigate some sort of cop secret society which may have killed yet another cop son, which his veteran cop granddad may be involved in, but his fianc is a lawyer who doesn't want him to be a cop…

It's a pretty ridiculous attempt to combine Brothers And Sisters with Law & Order and enjoying it would involve turning off that part of your brain which is insistently saying: "Come on, as if that would be allowed!"

Frankly, it's far less likely than RASTAMOUSE, a new CBeebies series which is almost guaranteed to find as many fans among ironic students as under-fives. It is about a mouse that likes reggae and solves crimes and if that idea doesn't strike you as utter genius then I feel sorry for you, pal.

Rastamouse and his pals, the Easy Crew, greet each other with "Mi mouse!" "Ye cool?" "Sweeeeet." We've come some way from Bagpuss, haven't we?

This article first appeared in The Scotsman Magazine, Saturday 29 January, 2011