Tomorrow night brings, at last, the "Better Call Saul" premiere, and another episode of "Grantchester"

Bob Odenkirk talks to Jimmy Kimmel about Better
Call Saul, and shows him some, er, surprising clips


Jimmy tells Bob he's really enjoyed the two episodes he was given to watch. Bob tells Jimmy he's only seen one -- but hopes the second one turned out well. "I spent 14 hours on my knees in the desert for that second one."

by Ken

Okay, friends, it's finally here: the two-night premiere of AMC's Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul, created and overseen by Breaking Bad mastermind Vince Gilligan and collaborator Peter Gould -- tomorrow and Monday nights at 10pm (or possibly some other time where you are -- you know about checking your local listings, right?). Then, as a commenter noted her previously, the show settles into the Monday-night time slot. (That's a great relief for me. Sunday is the one night of the week I can barely manage, even with the DVR at full throttle.)

In a more "normal" clip, the creative team and cast
introduce us to "The Characters of Better Call Saul"



BUT LET ME ALSO PUT IN A GOOD WORD FOR PBS
MASTERPIECE MYSTERY'S GRANTCHESTER


In Episode 1, the vicar of backwater Grantchester, Sidney Chambers (James Norton), has his seemingly inauspicious but in fact fateful first meeting with local police Inspector Geordie Keating.

It sounds like a scraping of the bottom of the British-mystery-possibilities barrel: In 1953, the vicar in an English backwater, who suffers nightmarish wartime flashbacks, teams up with the local police inspector to -- yes! -- solve crimes. (It's based on a series of Grantchester Mysteries by James Runcie.) And yet, three episodes in, out of a first series of six (Episode 4 airs tomorrow night on most PBS stations, but again, check your local listings), I'm not only enjoying it but looking forward to more.

Certainly an important part of that appeal is the interestingly delineated pair of central characters.


James Norton and Robson Green talk about the show.

Sidney, for starters, isn't just any vicar. Oh, he's totally serious about his job, but it's not lost on anyone, least of all himself, that he's a heartthrob-quality hunk with unconventional interests, at least for a vicar, including a soul-mate-type relationship with ravishing young Amanda (Morven Christie), the upper-crust daughter of a "sir" of some sort, a schoolmate of Sidney's scholarship-student sister Jenny (Fiona Button).

Although Sidney's relationship with Amanda showed signs in Episode 1 of significant degress of inappropriateness, there is of course nothing inherently inappropriate about an Anglican priest enjoying the company of women. In fact, a lot of Sidney's parishioners, not to mention the vicarage housekeeper Mrs. Maguire (Tessa Peake-Jones), seem concerned that he still isn't married, as a proper vicar ought to be. What's never stated, and took a slow-on-the-uptake viewer like myself a couple of episodes to puzzle out, is that a match between them is unthinkable on grounds of class incompatibility.

Despite Sidney's history of hobnobbing with his social betters -- it's not hard to see why he was so popular among Jenny's heavy-breathing schoolmates -- and his status as vicar allows him to fraternize, up to a point, as we see in this clip from Episode 2, he's treated by Amanda's father, Sir Edward Kendall (Pip Torrens), with a combination of long-time acquaintance and a condescension that borders on contempt. (It won't be long before we see Sir Edward's condescension cross theborder.) In the clip we see Sidney suffering through an engagement party for, yes, Amanda! The guests include his sister Jenny (the blonde) and her escort, Johnny Johnson (Uweli Roach), and insufferable other school friends.



Inspector Geordie, meanwhile, is thoroughly, defiantly, chip-on-his-shoulder working-class, and it's quite charming to see Robson Green in a role that makes no claim to stylishness or glamor. And I think he's quite terrific here. Geordie is as dedicated to his job as Sidney is to his, and once Geordie begins to discover that the vicar is almost as much an outsider relative to the area swells as he is, he mellows enough to allow for the possibility of a friendship. That friendship is handled much the way of one of the all-time great screen friendships, that of Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern: By the end of Episode 1, the possibility of a thaw was established, and by Episode 2 they were best friends.

The friendship between Sidney and Geordie is as intriguing and appealing as it is improbable. Now we just have to hope that the creative team continues to find crimes that can plausibly be solved by the copper-and-priest crime-fighting duo.

It should still be possible to catch up with the earlier episodes online or "On Demand." The PBS Masterpiece website has Episode 1 (through February 15), Episode 2, and Episode 3. If you miss Episode 4, I expect you can find it in turn in the same places.

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TV Watch: A weary nation wonders, "Is 'Mr. Selfridge' really over?" Well, yes and no

Jeremy Piven as Harry Selfridge

by Ken

It was a little nerve-wracking approaching last week's double installment of Masterpiece Classic's Mr. Selfridge. For weeks I had been assuming that the week's episode would be the last, but this time, what with the scheduling of that double episode -- Episode 47 (or 47-48, if you count it as double) by my unofficial count -- the prospects seemed hopeful. The thing was, to have hope of being home free, you had to wade through the whole thing (which I was able to do without pausing the thing more than 16 or 20 times) to find out whether, at the end, the announcer would announce upcoming scenes from next week's episode.

Well, there was no such announcement, and I had my hopes up, until PBS showed a feature in which Jeremy Piven, who plays Mr. Selfridge, talked about where the show would be picking up for Season 2. Hokey smoke, Bullwinkle, Season 2? For the record, Jeremy explained that they could have picked up right where they left off in the (now conclusively season-ending) previous episode, but instead they were advancing the action to 1914. (OMG, another World War I show?)

I trust that everybody has heard of the posh London department store Selfridge's, right? And it seems only logical that connected to the operation there was at some point somebody named Selfridge, right? Now if I were to tell you that the man in question, Harry Selfridge, was an American, and that -- in spite of overwhelming odds against him, based on his nationality, his personality, and of course the radical nature of his commercial vision -- he revolutionized the way Londoners shopped, you might think that there could be a TV show, maybe even a TV series, on the subject, you might think, well, sure, why not?

Writer Andrew Davies thought so, and whatever reservations may emerge in the comments that follow, it's important to bear in mind that I watched the whole damned thing. Maybe it was just the need to cash in on the expenditure of effort involved in getting to know the characters: Harry's family (mother, wife, and three children, transplanted with him to London; Harry's business associates and rivals; the large and assorted roster of people employed in the store itself once it actually comes into existence; and Harry's extracurricular romantic associates.

There's no doubt that there's something intriguing about the basic story of the creation of the store, and Harry's vision for it as a place for people of all classes to make the shopping experience itself an activity for their personal pleasure -- that's kind of interesting. The kind of leadership he establishes in the store, with its ups and downs, and the way the staff, from management down to clerks and laborers, fits into that vision -- that's kind of interesting. The streak of incredibly self-destructive self-indulgence in Harry, and the way it intersects with his home life -- that too is kind of interesting. The large roster of supporting characters certainly holds the viewer's interest, up to a point.

After a while, though, it settled into a kind of routine, like the succession of celebrity appearances in the store arranged by Harry, reaching up in the Season 1 finale to the King himself. Meanwhile the large number of plot lines established among all those supporting characters are developed dutifully, even doggedly. Periodically Harry's self-destructiveness reaches a flash point, most dramatically in the climax of the Season 1 finale.

I might note that the brief features about the making of the show which filled some of the gap between the show's 50-minute run time and its hour time slot were often quite interesting, showcasing some of the actors talking about their characters and also taking us behind the scenes. We learned, for example, that production required the building of a staggeringly complex (and no doubt expensive) set that comprises the store itself. Probably that set itself accounts for at least some of the momentum carrying the show into a second season -- they need to get more return on their set-creation budget.

If you haven't seen the show and have an opportunity to do so -- via repeats, "On Demand," or eventually DVD -- I'm not sure how to advise you. There are, I'm sure, worse ways to spend your time. Whether you're going to consider that time well-spent, I'm afraid you'll have to determine for yourself.

The final episode of "Any Human Heart" (on "Masterpiece Classic") is shaping up as an event

Watch the full episode. See more Masterpiece.

The final episode of Any Human Heart airs this week on most PBS stations. In the New York area, for example, it's tomorrow night on channel 13 and Monday night on channel 21. I'm hooked enough that I may actually watch it in real time tomorrow night. (Episodes can be viewed online, by the way, so if you've got some free time, you could get caught up in time to watch the finale in real time too. Or you can watch the whole thing online, of course -- through March 22.)

How can a man in the bloom of youth, pursuing writing and sex with equal vigor, end up grizzled, old, and surrounded by piles of boxes and paper, the detritus of a life? The answer is the story of Logan Mountstuart, who believes, "Every human being is a collection of selves...we never stay just one person." And the twentieth century provides the perfect backdrop for Logan to live out his lives, drinking absinthe with Ernest Hemingway, initiated into intrigue by Ian Fleming, and embroiled in the arch expat world of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. A novelist, war correspondent, father, spy, prisoner of war, art dealer, husband, and many times over, a lover — an Everyman of sorts -- Logan is played at three junctures of his life by Sam Claflin, Matthew Macfadyen (Little Dorrit), and Jim Broadbent. An intimate take on a sweeping century, Any Human Heart is based on the bestselling book by William Boyd and also stars Kim Cattrall (My Boy Jack), Gillian Anderson (Bleak House) and Hayley Atwell (Mansfield Park).

-- PBS's (pretty accurate) descriptive blurb for
the Masterpiece Classic series Any Human Heart

by Ken

I really wasn't expecting much (anything?) from Any Human Heart, in part because the promotional materials place such stress on the "historical" figures who litter the screenplay, written by William Boyd based on his own novel. I have to say that, two episodes in, the series has gripped me to the point of making me curious about the book.

Those historical figures actually do matter, but they're not used in the way you might expect from description like that in the above blurb, though the portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (Tom Hollander and Gillian Anderson), whom we meet first as the prince of Wales and his mistress, is scabrous enough -- and deservedly so, I gather -- as to be worth the price of admission by itself. But, just to give you a sort of example of how the material seems to me to work, the chief takeaway from our protagonist Logan Mountstuart's acquaintance with the Duke and Duchess is his head-on encounter with the concept of betrayal, being branded a Judas when for one of the few times in his life he is actually behaving in a competent and scrupulous fashion.

Perhaps I should explain the narrative format of the show, which shows us Logan at the various stages of his life: as a child in Uruguay (his mother was Uruguayan), as a university student and up-and-coming graduate (played by Sam Claflin), as a mature adult (played by Matthew Madfadyen -- Tom of TV's MI-5, or Spooks, if you want to be pedantic), and as an old man (played by Jim Broadbent). Mostly what we're seeing is the aged Logan literally going through and burning that "detritus" of his life cited in the PBS blurb, and in so doing, with an assist from the journals that seem to be the closest thing in his life to an honest accomplishment, reviewing that life.

Since, apart from bits of voiceover, Jim Broadbent as the aged Logan is given no dialogue, at least in those first two episodes, any sense we get of what the scenes from his life mean to him or add up to him has to come from watching his late-life reactions. In general, those reactions seem to range from distressed to appalled.

Matthew Macfadyen, Jim Broadbent, and Sam Claflin as Logan

If you're at all susceptible to this kind of material -- that is, attempting to encompass the totality of a life in a single large gulp -- Any Human Heart is fascinating, and devastating. Again going only by those first two episodes, what we see is mostly Logan stumbling through life, mostly unaware of anything except his urges of the moment, under the pretext of living according to the principle passed down to him by his ailing father: that life is just a matter of luck, your good luck and your bad luck. (It's worth considering that those words had a distinctly different import coming out of the mouth of a man who, however tedious his career path to running a highly profitable food-processing company may seem, actually worked, and worked hard, for everything he got in the way of a living.)

Mostly, Logan enjoys good luck, but he does as little to deserve that as he does to deserve the stroke of hellaciously, cosmically monstrous luck that in time befalls him. Which again is why his encounter with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor seems so tragicomically appropriate. Though appallingly ill equipped for the mission that puts him in their semi-royal company in the Bahamas, he tries for once in his life to act responsibly, and is treated like . . . well, like a Judas, as the Duke and Duchess put it so graphically.

I have to admit that on one count I've overstated a bit. I've been claiming to have watched the first two episodes. In fact, I haven't quite finished the second. I've had the DVR on pause while I wrote this. I'm going to go back now and finish up the second episode, and as I wrote in the caption for the above clip, there's a good chance that I'll watch the final episode in real time tomorrow night.

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