What's on TV this week?

Every night this week we have Superstar on ITV which is the search for the lead of Jesus Christ Superstar, this is something we will not be tuning in for and it's unfortunate it takes up so much airtime.

Tonight on BBC1 at 9pm is the second episode of Wallander, an adaptation of a Swedish novel series starring Kenneth Branagh. 

If you missed The Newsroom this week it is being shown again tonight at 9pm on Sky Atlantic. You can read our review here.

Tomorrow night on BBC1 at 9pm we have the finale of Blackout starring Christopher Eccleston. We haven't been watching this but plan to go back and watch it and the reviews haven't been bad either.

Alan Partridge's Mid Morning Matters also continues on Sky Atlantic at 9pm. 

The Walking Dead continues on channel 5 at 10pm with only a few episodes to go of the current series.

Line of Duty is on Tuesday night on BBC2 at 9pm which we are thoroughly enjoying. This is immediately followed by the hilarious Twenty Twelve.

At 10pm we have the second episode of The Newsroom which we are super excited about.

There's not an awful lot of new drama showing on Wednesday but we do have The Sopranos and True Blood on Sky Atlantic from 9pm and Lewis is showing on ITV3 at 9pm.

Thursday we see the first day of the open on BBC2 all day (yawn!). We will be watching How I Met Your Mother on E4 at 8:30 which we are really enjoying at the moment and love the fact that the story is finally making progress. 

Friday night we have Match of the Day Live on BBC1 at 8pm showing the  warm up game between Great Britain and Brazil, which will be the first and only warm up game for Great Britain before the Olympics.

Did Linda La Plante really approve Prime Suspect USA?

As we were fans of the original Prime Suspect starring Helen Mirren, we thought we would give Prime Suspect USA a watch currently being shown on Universal. 

The first episode starts with Jane Timoney after a jog getting into a taxi and pulling a gun and her badge on the taxi driver to make him drive, we found this utterly ridiculous and unbelievable. The episode doesn’t get much better and Maria Bello who plays Timoney is annoying and unlikeable which is emphasised by the strange hat she fashions throughout the show.

"Hey everyone, look at my weird hat."

We didn’t want to write it off after the first episode as there is a lot of scene setting and character building in a pilot, so we gave it another go and I’m afraid to say it gets no better. 

The New York version has none of the grittiness or suspense you get with the original. Each episode is done and dusted by the end of the 45 minutes with no real “prime suspect” as the title suggests. The only similarity to the original show is the chauvinistic attitude of the men that work within the department which feels very forced.

Prime Suspect USA is yet another example of why our friends across the pond should not remake what is already a perfectly good show and I am frankly shocked that Linda La Plante approved it. As I’m sure you have guessed we will not be tuning in again.

The Newsroom review

Being massive fans of both The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, to say we were excited about Sorkin’s new series The Newsroom was an understatement. 

The Newsroom, a show based on the behind the scenes events of a fictitious US cable news channel starts with Jeff Daniel’s character, Will McAvoy, the unstable news anchor being asked why he thinks America is the greatest country in the world. After trying to avoid the question with bland answers he finally cracks and goes into a rant about how America isn’t the greatest country in the world. This controversial outburst causes his Executive Producer and the majority of his team to jump ship, along with much media attention.

McAvoy’s boss hires in Mackenzie as the shows new EP, a former girlfriend of McAvoy which instantly causes friction, division and an interesting dynamic which although at first felt very forced and highly unbelievable it seemed to bring an additional element of interest to the show, and the writing and script somehow seemed to make it work.

As you would expect Sorkin brings his political side to this show and from some quarters he has been criticised for doing so, but for us it just makes it a more enjoyable watch. 

As with The West Wing and Studio 60, The Newsroom is well written with a lot of dialogue, although the constant shouting in the first half of the show was over the top and a bit uncomfortable to watch. As with all pilot episodes there was a lot of scene setting and character introductions and the longer we watched the more we enjoyed it. 

The Newsroom didn’t have the quality of The West Wing but we spent the whole episode wanting to know what happens next and we can’t wait for the second episode. Although we have seen mixed reviews we are really looking forward to seeing how it develops and we hope we won’t be disappointed.