TV notes: BORGEN, PACIFIC HEARTBEAT, and more...

The best dramatic import of last year is going to unspool again online (at the green or gray hotlinks below--depending on your browser!) and on station Link TV (mostly visible on DirecTV and Dish Network, but also broadcast overnights in the San Francisco Bay Area on KRCB); I'm definitely ready for the second season:

Borgen Season 2 Premieres Sunday, June 3!

Borgen Season 1 Marathon

This Memorial Day weekend, catch up with your favorite Danes in back-to-back episodes of the entire first season of Borgen, May 26-28, 2012 (all episodes online for 2 weeks from airdate):


Saturday, May 26: Episodes 1-3
Episode 1 - 8pm ET and 8pm PT
Episode 2 - 9pm ET and 9pm PT
Episode 3 - 10pm ET and 10pm PT

Sunday, May 27: Episodes 4-6
Episode 4 - 8pm ET and 8pm PT
Episode 5 - 9pm ET and 9pm PT
Episode 6 - 10pm ET and 10pm PT

Monday, May 28: Episodes 7-10
Episode 7 - 7pm ET and 8pm PT
Episode 8 - 8pm ET and 9pm PT
Episode 9 - 9pm ET and 10pm PT
Episode 10 - 10pm ET and 11pm PT

Pacific Heartbeat:


I have been very busy, and thus unconscionably late in reviewing this fine series of documentaries, most focusing on Hawaii but also touching on other aspects of Polynesia...the two episodes dealing primarily with music are about as different as two works dealing with Hawaiian music might be. Waimea ‘Ukulele & Slack Key Guitar follows the goings-on at an annual convention in the town on the Big Island (as opposed to Waimea on Kauai, the default choice for the prettiest of the Hawaiian islands), that draws together Hawaiian and curious folk, acoustic, and country musicians to chat, workshop, and perform together. It's an utterly relaxed and informal film, where the only drawbacks are in usually only hearing snatches of some of the songs. Keola Beamer: Mālama Ko Aloha (Keep Your Love) is a slightly more formal and at times somber affair, as we hear of the inspiration for and the composition of an extended work by Beamer, one of the grand not yet old men of Hawaiian music these days, with jazz and other influences mixing with traditional Hawaiian folk motifs. The other three episodes involve a sort of Tuskegee Experiment and Trail of Tears rolled into one for some unlucky young Hawaiian men ("Under a Jarvis Moon"), the Pacific Ocean rising to drown Takuu Atoll ("There Once was an Island: Te Henua e Nnoho") and the famous 1974 voyage of the Hōkūle‘a, the traditional Hawaiian sailing craft in which a modern-day crew showed how the original Hawaiians might've sailed from islands to the south, by using traditional navigation techniques to sail to Tahiti from Hawaii ("Papa Mau: The Wayfinder"--titled for the Micronesian man who taught them the old-style navigation techniques). The page linked to above will tell you when local public stations have informed the packagers when they will be running the individual episodes, but watch for local listings or query me in comments and I'll try to find out when the series might be playing in your area...it has played in April on the small public network World and was made available to all US public stations in May; a second season of the series is hinted at.

So...CBS tried, half-heartedly, a run for the Richard Price-created rookie cop show NYC 22...but despite Price's involvement, it not only wasn't compelling, it was almost a note for note recapitulation, a little southerly, of the Toronto-based Canadian series Rookie Blue, which ABC has now run successfully for two summers...one suspects that CBS asked for their own version, or at least as likely had Price's series reshaped to fit. CBS has cancelled 22, but will be burning off remaining episodes Saturdays at 9p ET...just before the ABC repeats of Rookie Blue at 10p, for compare and contrast purposes.


(left, Missy Peregrym in Rookie Blue; below, Judy Marte and Adam Goldberg in NYC 22)