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Apr. 27th, 2010 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nigeltdeoh, you guys, Southland got renewed!
If you're not watching Southland you're missing a very entertaining show that just sits in a totally different mood to most of television, in this kind of wearily oversaturated seen-it-all light that casts sharp shadows in the wrinkles of all the actors' faces. It's not that the show's not action-packed or funny or dramatic, it's just that the best bits of it are quiet sighs and glances and chats. Lidia Adams is such an amazingly sweet, grave, fearless, competent woman; I think Regina King is doing some of the finest acting on tv at the moment. And she is gorgeous. Michael Cudliz has a slightly showier role and he really enjoys Cooper's sarcasm, intensity, and intolerance for bullshit, and he's smart and fair and surprisingly gentle. Those two are just making extremely watchable television.
The show has a couple of weaknesses, namely an ill-advised first-last-scene voiceover, a propensity for shaky cam, and a large cast it can't quite reconcile coherently, but for me it's the same feel as something like Friday Night Lights or Treme (which y'all also oughta be watching), where the narrative throughlines are not as important as just watching these people tackle the shit that falls in their path with the best will and heart they can.
So that's good news.
If you're not watching Southland you're missing a very entertaining show that just sits in a totally different mood to most of television, in this kind of wearily oversaturated seen-it-all light that casts sharp shadows in the wrinkles of all the actors' faces. It's not that the show's not action-packed or funny or dramatic, it's just that the best bits of it are quiet sighs and glances and chats. Lidia Adams is such an amazingly sweet, grave, fearless, competent woman; I think Regina King is doing some of the finest acting on tv at the moment. And she is gorgeous. Michael Cudliz has a slightly showier role and he really enjoys Cooper's sarcasm, intensity, and intolerance for bullshit, and he's smart and fair and surprisingly gentle. Those two are just making extremely watchable television.
The show has a couple of weaknesses, namely an ill-advised first-last-scene voiceover, a propensity for shaky cam, and a large cast it can't quite reconcile coherently, but for me it's the same feel as something like Friday Night Lights or Treme (which y'all also oughta be watching), where the narrative throughlines are not as important as just watching these people tackle the shit that falls in their path with the best will and heart they can.
So that's good news.
