New telly shows thread

[Darkflame]

Just saw Flash epp2.
Bloody fun. Very silver age.
Hard to believe its from the Arrow folks as its closed to New Adventures Of Superman tonally.

[merman]

Peaky Blinders is back and as brutal as ever. Good stuff!

[fog]

The Leftovers - more interesting, not read the book or anything. Seems to me more about the effects of the aftermath rather than Why.

Just finished series one of The Leftovers and absolutely loved it. Nothing like the other disappearance shows at all, pretty much skipping the incident and immediate aftermath, skipping forward 3 years, and focusing on how people have adapted to losing someone, religious exploitation of the event and the cults that spring up around it. It has a very Twin Peaks style surrealism at times.

Then I made the mistake of falling for the hype surrounding The Strain only to find out that much like Extant they've just thrown every sci-fi cliche imaginable into the plot in the hope some of it works. Terrible.

[Jonesey]

Yeah - digging The Leftovers as well. It's miserable as feck.

I have to say, though I'm enjoying The Strain as well. I mean it's del Toro's (natch) slightly twisted contemporary spin on Stoker's Dracula. It's refreshingly ugly. Anything else with vampires on the telly these days looks like a gay Goth's wet dream, frankly..

[fog]

I have to say, though I'm enjoying The Strain as well. I mean it's del Toro's (natch) slightly twisted contemporary spin on Stoker's Dracula. It's refreshingly ugly. Anything else with vampires on the telly these days looks like a gay Goth's wet dream, frankly..

Well I've tried about 6 episodes of The Strain now and I'm still not feeling it. There's certainly no lack of things happening, it still just feels like a bit of a mess.


I've just finished the first 6 episode series of Rectify and loved that. Every bit as gloomy as The Leftovers and not exactly fast paced, but so far brilliant.

Daniel Holden must put his life back together after serving 19 years on Georgia's Death Row before DNA evidence calls his conviction into question.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2183404/?ref_=nv_sr_1

[Firefox]

By chance, I caught the pilot episode of a new series called Scorpion the other day on ITV-2, and found myself liking it a lot more than Agents of SHIELD.

The premise is simple: stern fed recruits team of supergenius nerds and puts them to work defeating major terrorist plots. And there's a plucky (not to mention very pretty!) waitress that ends up on the team to do the relating-to-humans stuff.

Some of the science was very dodgy (in the pilot, at least), but overall it was a lot of fun and quite refreshing! Sort of like Dweebs meets MacGuyver meets Alias [but not shit like Alias].

I think the next episode's maybe on on Thursday.

[Darkflame]

Alias wasn't shit!
It was...umm...aaa..

..ok it was shit.

[Kelloggs]

I've just laughed so hard, I nearly went dizzy - and it was due to a scientist.


This is probably the best thread for this, being about New TV, and I've just watched part 4 of 5 (ok, so maybe not strictly new...) of "Human Universe" from last Tuesday on BBC2, presented by Professor Brian Cox. There've been a couple of bits that have annoyed me about it, mostly along the lines of "life can only arise with these conditions" (e.g. liquid water) where I believe "life as we understand it" or somesuch would have been more precise, and probably more educational, but hey, them's the breaks when you're doing TV Science.

He's walking across an access gantry on the Arecibo radio telescope, in Puerto Rico, looking for all the world like he's on the set of a scifi movie, with the massive 1000ft dish below him and the receiver ahead. Half way across, he turns around, notices a building a distance away over the cameraman's shoulder, and, pointing to it, says:

"When we come back, we should destroy the shield generator..."

I thought I was going to need oxygen.

[Harlequin]

It would appear that they have not deprived John Constantine of his Silk Cut after all. It still grates whenever he mispronounces his name, though.

And I have just compared the pre-release and aired versions of the pilot. I find it interesting how they changed the ending give his identical actions an opposite purpose with the opposite outcome, both versions being portrayed as a success (in whether John would continue to partner with that character).

[Darkflame]

I enjoyed the second epp.
Something a bit off with the horror elements though. Cant quite place it. Mix of practical and CG as you expect, nothing too bad technically for tv...but the actual horror/scare factor doesn't come across that good. Something with the directing I think.
Still, its good too see the more "practical" magic aspect from the comics, rather then the random pig latin and glowing beams tv loves to default too.

[merman]

Peaky Blinders series 2 finished on a high, and there's more next year.

Plus BBC Four's Detectorists - written, directed by and starring Mackenzie Crook - was an absolute gem. A truly gentle comedy with a British heart.

[Darkflame]

The Librarians - Sequel series to Jonathan Frakes series of films, its very similar to Warehouse13 in concept, with smatterings of The Lost Room and Doctor Who chucked in. It stars people who you may have seen in stuff chasing around stuff that does stuff.

Fun enough though. Some creative ideas. Some very silly stuff too.

Spoiler: show

I liked the historic back-story of magic being sort of mined from laylines into artefacts as the explanation as to why there was so little magic around today.

People that dont like Doctor Who's music volume will hate this though - its "background" music is so loud at times as to almost be a parody. It gets this trait from the films.

[phattslagg]

Having almost decided against watching it, thinking "where can it go from Season 3?" I have to say I'm mightily impressed with Season 4 of Homeland, so far.

[fog]

Having almost decided against watching it, thinking "where can it go from Season 3?" I have to say I'm mightily impressed with Season 4 of Homeland, so far.

I gave up in season 3. After loving the first series and liking the second, what I saw of the third series was terrible.

[pogo]

Amazon are re-running their pilot programme again. Watch and vote !

If you go to the US site as I did the videos are region locked but they’re also on the UK site, here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/b/ref=Hero_AIV_ ... 5687768031

Watching the pilot for The Man in the High Castle which is very well done and already very interesting half way through.