Semi-losers and 'Inbetweeners' checking the British pulse

Given such promising elements, I regret that Copper resorts to cheap titillation in its plotline about sex with little girls. That’s not a good way to distinguish yourself from the pack.

Flip Men (9pm Sun, Spike)
In this reality series, profit-crazed Doug and Mike buy broken-down houses, fix them up on the cheap, and flip them. I don’t usually get much pleasure out of watching someone rewire a house, but it helps that Flip Men finishes its renovations in a brisk 30 minutes (compare to Bravo’s hour-long house-renovation shows), and that Doug and Mike go about their work with nutty intensity.

The one thing I don’t understand is why Mike talks so loudly in his on-camera interviews. It’s possible to make a profit while speaking in a normal tone of voice, dude.

Major Crimes (9pm Mon, TNT)
Though I praised The Closer’s series finale last week, I admit that Kyra Sedgwick’s intensity could be insufferable at times. As deputy chief of an LAPD homicide division, she always turned it up to 11 — crying, carrying on, tearing suspects a new one. But now we get to see what The Closer would have been like without Sedgwick around to make trouble. Major Crimes is a spinoff series with the same setting and characters, except that Mary McDonnell takes over for Sedgwick.

In contrast to her predecessor, McDonnell is a blank. She speaks in a monotone and registers no convincing human emotions. This week’s episode focuses on the power struggle between her Capt. Raydor and G.W. Bailey’s Lt. Provenza, which has all the urgency of a bureaucratic spat.

What I wouldn’t give right now for some insufferable intensity.