Green Guide's Critical View
The Age
Monday June 4, 2007
Television previews: Boston Legal; Scrubs; MTV Movie Awards; Secret Agent (1936)
FREE TO AIRBoston LegalChannel Seven, 10.30pmAN AMERICAN series set in the world of law that requires no steady commitment from the viewer is a result partly of the peculiar cartoonish qualities of its protagonists. When the firm's head honcho, Denny Crane (William Shatner), announces this week that he imagines God would look just like him, perhaps thinner, it is a reminder why being an occasional tourist to the land of Boston Legal is worthwhile. Although it's not the kind of show any law student would be wise to take too seriously in its points of law and procedure, the David E. Kelley creation has his trademark flights of fancy about the quirks of everyday life. Thus, while some viewers may not see beyond the sad decay of former golden boy James Spader into puffy middle age, others will admire the way his refusal to be typecast by those early John Hughes films into a coke-snorting frat boy has resulted in one of the small screen's most intriguingly complex characters whose natural mendacity is tempered by something that can only be called a heart. This week's episode, subtitled "The Good Lawyer", finds Spader's character, attorney Alan Shore, competing in a courtroom against the Asperger's syndrome-suffering Jerry "Hands" Espenson (Christian Clemenson), whom the previous week he had tried to help rid of the jury-distracting tics of his condition. For all intents and purposes, this week it's a James Spader, William Shatner two-step - and that is a mighty fine thing. -- LARISSA DUBECKIScrubsChannel Seven, 11.30pm"I LIKE your old stuff better than your new stuff" is a refrain that keeps cropping up when it comes to the sixth season of Scrubs. And the fifth, and even the fourth. The quirky medical series set in a teaching hospital - hence the good-looking young medicos - just can't win when it comes to pleasing the many fans it won in its first two series. Perhaps it's a case of rose-coloured glasses because even they were occasionally patchy affairs with plenty of dross among the comedy gold. Series six is a different matter altogether, with early episodes showing all the promise of a two-wheeled tricycle, but there's been a resurgence in the past couple of weeks. The paucity of the storylines is still evidenced with an overreliance on the bit parts - who have gone from the status of hospital furniture to central characters - there are a few too many reveries from JD (Zach Braff) and good-looking girls are introduced with an annoying slow-motion soft-porn treatment. But stay tuned for Dr Cox (John McGinley) refuting Laverne's Christian-led belief that everything happens for a reason with a list that includes AIDS, New Orleans and Hugh Jackman. -- LARISSA DUBECKIPAY TVMTV Movie AwardsMTV, 7pmAND the nominees for Best Fight are: Jack Black and Hector Jiminez v Los Duendes in Nacho Libre; Sacha Baron Cohen v Ken Davitian in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan . . . No, it's not exactly the Oscars but it is recognised by James Lipton of Inside the Actors Studio. -- BRAD NEWSOMEMOVIESSecret Agent (1936)Movie Greats, 10.15pmW. SOMERSET Maugham's Ashenden: or the British Agent (1928) is universally acknowledged as having pioneered the espionage genre and Ian Fleming's James Bond in particular. This early Hitchcock is visually and aurally damaged. But the biggest problem is John Gielgud as Ashenden; it is an offhand and unappealing performance. (Hitchcock and Gielgud quarrelled during filming.) But Peter Lorre is at his most energised and Madeleine Carroll is incandescent. -- SCOTT MURRAY
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