Endgame (2011)

This offering from the Canadians is about Arkady Balagan (Shawn Doyle) a russian champion chess player. When his wife is murdered he becomes unable to leave his hotel spending his time playing chess and drinking vodka. The plot: Balagan is a grand chess master, he solves crimes by looking at all the angles with his genius brain. He sends his offsiders to gather information and basically processes the information and solves the crime.

Its not a bad show, its just short of something I want to watch regularly. Balagan is the only reason i’ve hung in for four episodes that and the tragic tv dry spell at the moment. The characters are interesting, the crimes are interesting and its believable. The offsiders Sam (Torrance Coombs) who researches in return for Balagan playing chess with him and Alcina (Carmen Aguirre) the cleaning lady are entertaining and apple pie sincere.

The main issue for me is the flashbacks, OMG the flashbacks. For the first three episodes they replayed the same flashback of his wife over and over which was unnecessary and mind numbingly repetitive. I was starting to wonder if they only managed to film one scene with her. Then in ep four they started using different flashbacks. Sigh.

Anyways the show is enjoyable enough, its in there with Numbers and White Collar, solid but nothing brilliant.

Next Day Air (2009)

What happens when the UPS guy you got to unknowingly deliver your coke is too high to get the address right?

You get Next Day Air. Leo (Donald Faison) delivers the package to the wrong guys Guch (Wood Harris) and Brody (Mike Eps) who put the turn of events down to God. They revel in their score and find a buyer Brodys cousin Shavoo (Omari Hardwick) and Buddy (Darius McCrady). Bobby (Emilio Rivera) trys to find his missing coke and sets out with Jesus (Cisco Reyes) and his girlfriend Chita (Yasmin Deliz) to recover it. You’re left wondering who’s coming out of it alive. Its a bit Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels but you don’t have to think about it, you can just watch it and enjoy. The casting is brilliant Debbie Allen is hilarious as Leos mum and Mos Def is excellent as the jaded delivery guy who prefers stealing his parcels instead of delivering them stating, ‘Its America – steal something’.

There are some bloody scenes, some violence but its to be expected and its not overpowering. The film is enjoyable and very entertaining, I got a lot of laughs out of it.

Top 5 Crime TV Shows

Veronica Mars (2004) – You have to love this show! Veronica teenage detective sounds cliched but the acting, plot and characters made it a brilliant show.
Witchblade (2001) – Balsy female cop finds a mysterious ancient weapon and wields it well.
Hustle (2004) – English show about a group of con artists.
Psych (2006) – A guy fakes being psychic and scores a job helping the cops solve crimes, very funny and for the whole family.
CSI (2000) – The original one was great when it first started, its wearing a bit now, but I felt it should still be honored.

Dexter

I think I know what this show was trying to achieve but I don’t think it achieves it.  Dexter (Michael C. Hall) is the stereotypical charming, charismatic, guy next door, good cop type etc, who also happens to be a vigilante killer who takes extreme pleasure in torturing his victims.  Thus the amazing twist (SARCASM) of a man who himself becomes the enemy he is hunting.  I think it tries too hard to be grim and gruesome and instead of being intriguing or clever it just comes off as being fake and not believable.  He can be crazy as long as he’s believable.  I think this will struggle to find an Australian audience.