TV review: Carlton gang go out on a high
Tuesday was a red letter night for filth on the box with the final of Underbelly and the second episode of Outrageous Fortune.
There was no better example of the saying, live hard and die young, witnessing the brief lives of the monumentally stupid Carlton gang, and Carl Williams and his psychotic cohorts in the dramatised story of the Melbourne gang killings.
Any young dude with a yen for walking on the wild side would have been impressed with the amount of sex and drugs the lads indulged in episode after episode.
After a beating or a killing, the chaps were in the habit of retiring to a knocking shop to white powder their noses - snorting it up large on the bellies, breasts and buttocks of glamorous hookers as they got down and dirty.
No need for that four-eyed git from How to Look Good Naked for those comely lasses. One could be forgiven for thinking that the special cop team assigned to stem the carnage were just letting mayhem run its course till the thugs snuffed each other out.
The final scene of the team proudly walking over the rise of the hill to arrest Carl Williams in dark suits and glasses looking like the Blues Brothers en masse was risible. How they could pat themselves on the back for that bumbling effort was, to quote Victor's One Foot In The Grave chant, "unbelievable".
Meanwhile the strip joint scene in Outrageous Fortune where Wolf took his elderly son-in-law, Milton, to enjoy the health benefits of lap dancing was so sexually explicit, it would have put the wind up many a bride-to-be jittering about stag nights.
It was possibly the worst episode yet, not just because of the gratuitous sex scenes - if I have to see Wolf getting his end away one more time I'll take up knitting - but there were bum notes all round.
Post bust-up Cheryl and Wayne shouldn't even be speaking to each other yet, for if they are to get back together then the tension between them at present is all wrong.
The Pascalle-Milton union is plain silly and Loretta is so strident in her anti-baby, lack of bonding, she lacks plot and purpose.
One gets the feeling the series is laying on the padding thick so it can go another series, and another and another. Hopefully South Pacific Pictures isn't trying to make this adult soap into Shortland Street 2.
Bring back Shane Cortese's character to claim his nipper, or give Van a brain transplant, but don't give us the divvy-up in the tedious pre-divorce settlement threats betwixt Cheryl and Wolf.
I do hope drama schools have made provision for sex instruction in their curriculum as every apres- 8.30pm show now comes with a fairly lengthy coital exchange.
You can imagine the poor drama student exhausted from completing a month of Authentic Humping 101 trudging off to the shower rooms happy in the knowledge that they have got through the course, only to be hauled back to sit their orals, as it were.
If you like Maxwell Smart and 99 in Get Smart then you will be disappointed with Chuck (TV2, Wednesday 8.30pm) because Chuck, the lead, isn't sufficiently nerdish or geekish, and Morgan, his best friend, is an irritating, rather than amusing, sidekick.
I won't bore you with too many details but the scenario is top secret government information has been downloaded into Chuck's brain and now two intelligence agencies are at pains to protect and exploit him.
The best thing about this show is the exquisite fight sequences that reek of Kill Bill and have the timing of a snappy Broadway production.
Sarah, from the CIA gets a job at Wienerlicious, where she poses as a fast-food short order cook in a shorty-short dress.
This is so she can be close to her pretend-boyfriend Chuck, who continues to work as a loser salesman at the Buy More Store just around the corner.
When she bends over at the counter to get the wieners, the eyes of clusters of admiring small boys pop out as they queue around the block to buy her burnt offerings.
Meanwhile, trigger-happy Casey, from an opposing "intel" outfit, gets a job on the shop floor at Buy More where he roughs up shoplifters with the over- enthusiasm of an assassin.
Suspicious of each other's MO, Casey and Sarah engage in armed combat at Wienerlicious as Sarah employs kebab skewers and floor mops in the fray, in a wonderful dance of danger that would make Gene Kelly grin.
Actor Zachary Levi, who was perfect in Less than Perfect, is far from perfect in, and as, Chuck and the literal sidekicks - Sarah and Casey - are left to kick, punch and bite this show into action comedy.
Still it has had big shoes to fill replacing the dazzling Lost. No wonder it seems lame.
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posted by adamargitwagner @ 22:51
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