YourFamilyViewer.com

Dream Walker and Krysten Ritter, courtesy ABC

DON’T TRUST THE B— IN APARTMENT 23

Friendly Rating: Early teens and older

Safety Rating: Sex, drug use, an adult gets a kid drunk, language

Quality Rating: It all seems rather pointless

New series premieres tonight on ABC at 9:30 p.m.

It’s not that Don’t Trust doesn’t have its moments. They’re just not very interesting ones. Chloe (Krysten Ritter) is basically a remora, a parasite who fleeces her roommates before driving them out of the apartment. Problem is, June (Dreama Walker), a young woman who arrives in New York just in time to see her job dissolve, is a little on the desperate side and not one to be bullied in any case. So she turns the tables on Chloe who is impressed.

And just in case we don’t have enough unpleasant characters, we have James Vanderbeek (of Dawson’s Creek fame) playing an over-inflated version of himself as Chloe’s best friend.

The show opens with a sex scene with lots of tongue. There’s bad language. Chloe gets a young kid drunk on beer to get him to talk and he barfs. It’s the entire panoply of bad behavior, which in Chloe’s case is the point. She’s supposed to be bad – she has the morals of a pirate, according to James. The problem is, it isn’t funny. If it were, you might have a decent show for after the kids go to bed. Right now (and this may be the show’s saving grace, as in your kids won’t be interested) what you’ve got is only mildly amusing and all rather pointless. There doesn’t seem to be any plot to drive the series forward, just two women roommates living in New York, one of whom happens to be rather rotten and the other who can get back at her. Written well, that could be a good thing. As it is, well, meh.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Len Goodman at shipyard in Belfast, courtesy PBS

THE TITANIC WITH LEN GOODMAN

Friendly Rating: Elementary age and older

Safety Rating:  Very safe

Quality Rating: Pretty darned good

Special airs tonight on PBS, check your local listings for times.

Most of us know Len Goodman as the cranky judge on Dancing With the Stars. But he’s here to walk us through the stories of the people connected to and on the Titanic thanks to another connection all together. About 50 years after the Titanic sank off the Atlantic coast during its maiden voyage, on April 14, 1912, Goodman worked as a welder for Harland and Woolf, the company that had built the doomed ship, although Goodman worked in East London and the Titanic was built in Belfast.

The fun thing is the show is not unlike last night’s National Geographic Channel Special, Save the Titanic With Bob Ballard, at least at the beginning, and in fact, you might even recognize the same descendent featured in both. But Goodman goes further, looking at the stories of the full range of the people on the ship, from the emigrants whose chances of survival were pretty much nil simply because of their social status, to the waiters and the musicians, who played right up until the very end to help keep the passengers calm, even two wealthy men who survived by taking scarce lifeboat space – the women and children were meant to go first – and later were judged extremely harshly and had their reputations ruined because of their choices.

Goodman repeatedly asks himself if he would have made the same choices – and it’s an interesting question for you and your kids, if you’d like to pursue it. Ultimately, none of us knows what we’d do in these kinds of life and death situations and we’d like to believe that we’d do the noble and right thing. But it’s the discussion about what is the noble and right thing that makes these conversations worth having.

It is a film from the BBC, which accounts for its Anglo-centric take, but then a good many of the dead were from the British Isles, so it makes sense to look at the event from that perspective. Goodman is pretty engaging though a tad forced – almost too much attack on his presentation, as he might say. Which makes this an interesting and mostly engaging look at this great maritime disaster.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Courtesy National Geograhpic Channel

SAVE THE TITANIC WITH BOB BALLARD

Friendly Rating: Elementary age and older

Safety Rating: Mostly safe, kids worried about drowning might feel a little scared

Quality Rating: Interesting on the history side.

Special airs tonight on the National Geographic Channel at 10 p.m.

I will give this show credit for not being all about Dr. Bob Ballard whining about the Titanic wreckage being thrashed and looted. And he’s not whining – but he could have been if the show had taken the turn I thought it would.

Ballard, who discovered the wreckage of the ill-fated ocean liner that sank 100 years ago this coming Saturday, is feeling frustrated that there isn’t a way to build a fence around the debris field on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Tourist submarines are landing on the site and causing damage. Thieves are beginning to loot the wreck. It’s not a pretty situation.

But the special mostly focused on the lives of The Guarantee Group, nine men sent on the Titanic’s maiden voyage to help work out the kinks in the ship’s workings, and none of whom survived. Ballard has conversations with the descendents and other relatives of the men and it’s interesting because the wreck isn’t just a wreck – it’s a graveyard. Over 1,500 people died when it sank after striking an iceberg.

I suspect there really isn’t much Ballard or anyone else can do. The wreck is in international waters and given that it is that deep under the sea, it’s a little hard to patrol, although there apparently is some talk of sending robot drones down. So while there isn’t a very strong call to action – at least not as strong as implied by the title of the special – it is still interesting.

Just brace yourself, we’ve got lots of specials coming up this week to commemorate the disaster’s anniversary.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Ben Wiener starts his pitch, courtesy AMC

THE PITCH

Friendly Rating: Teens and older

Safety Rating: Lots of language issues, bleeping, etc. Some cut-throat negative attitude

Quality Rating: A lot more interesting than you might think

New series sneak preview tonight at 11 p.m. on AMC, series formally premieres on April 30.

I was particularly intrigued by this series mostly because one of parents’ big concerns is advertising and how that’s used to unduly affect our kids and how they think.

The Pitch is a fly-on-the-wall documentary series that has a couple of the trappings of a competition show, in which two advertising agencies go head to head, pitching ad campaigns to real marketing executives for companies you actually know, like tonight’s episode with fast food giant Subway.

Language is the biggest problem for younger viewers with this show. It’s not only bleeped, you can still read the lips in most cases, and bitch and ass are not bleeped. Some of the ad execs also display rather negtive attitudes regarding competition and the cut-throat nature of the game.

It is interesting looking at the process of how the ad campaigns become the TV commercials and billboards that we see, at least in their early stages. Advertising is all about changing behaviors – which can be a good thing – but too often is used to get us and our kids to buy things we really don’t need. As a show, this is pretty well-made. As a cautionary tale, maybe not so much.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Quick programming note – USA Network is airing the 1962 flick To Kill a Mockingbird in honor of its 50th anniversary Saturday night 8 p.m. There will be limited commercial interruption of this classic film starring Gregory Peck as lawyer Atticus Finch, a lawyer in a small Alabama town who defends a Black man innocently accused of rape. It is, of course, based on the novel by Harper Lee, whose biopic aired last Monday on PBS and can currently be seen on the PBS.org website.

Ordinarily, I would recommend renting the movie – seriously, is there any point to watching a movie with commercial interruption when you can easily rent or stream it? But President Barack Obama has taped a special introduction to the airing, so it might be worth giving it a look.

Be Sociable, Share!

•