4 posts tagged “tnt”

I had a moan about this yesterday on Twitter and Facebook, but seeing another ad for Leverage on the NZ City site brings it all back. Prime is promoting this TNT show a lot, but just as with TV One and Jekyll, they miss the fact that lead actress Gina Bellman is a Kiwi. Come on, folks, how about a bit of national pride? Our Gina is doing well!

I watched an episode of Leverage on a Chinese site, along with some promos, yesterday. It looks OK, but the best way to describe it is Hustle-lite. It’s not bad: apparently, the creators wanted to re-create some of the heist shows of the ’70s (shows? I can only think of Switch) and came up with this idea: an honest man leads a team of four reformed crooks to help innocent people get back what is rightfully theirs. Apart from having a “client”, the show is not unlike Hustle, with a bit of It Takes a Thief thrown in. (Summary, however: Hustle is better.)
   The surprise was seeing Jekyll’s Gina Bellman as the lead actress opposite Timothy Hutton. Bellman is a New Zealand-born actress, and it surprises me that not more mention is made of her—especially when we are so ready to champion other programmes and movies with an even more tenuous connection with this country. (It’s a bit like how Andrew Niccol is treated here.) Here is a promo for the show with Bellman and Hutton, which illustrates that they are quite humorous people away from their acting:

I am really impressed with New Zealand Customs. First, they acknowledged they received my complaint about the broken Ganesha figurine that I was gifted by Proton Business School. Then they enquired whether it came via surface or air. I was then told in a third email that the matter had been put to the relevant department. Then a fourth email to say the matter was under investigation. The last email detailed a response from the inspector who recalls the entire contents of my parcel and exactly how the figure was packed. The conclusion from the writer was that the figure was in one piece when it left Auckland, so the damage may have occurred in transit between Auckland and Wellington by TNT.
   These are my tax dollars at work and I am totally impressed by how the investigation was carried out, with great transparency. I have accepted this explanation and will be turning my sights on to TNT.
   The British High Commission, meanwhile, has failed to make even one single response to my Hong Kong Permanent Identity Card matter, which contrasts the professional behaviour of Customs sharply.
   New Zealand 1, UK 0.

British TV fans cited how ABC ruined Cracker when it remade it with the late Robert Pastorelli taking Robbie Coltrane’s role of Fitz, especially when news of a US remake of Life on Mars surfaced. (No twitters, meanwhile, on news that the Spanish are remaking the show; also the critics seem to be silent on the botched British remakes of Married with Children, Who’s the Boss? and Outrageous Fortune).
   Get ready for more mud-slinging heading westward across the Atlantic. The Americans are having another crack at Cracker, executive-produced by Robert Duvall (who isn’t called Robert in this?), as a TNT original production. No whispers yet in the article about whom will play Fitz. I actually hope it could be Coltrane himself, who has faked an American accent often enough.