Was impressed with the first two episodes of S3 True Detective. It's another slow burner but for the first time in this series, they concentrate on the "Detective" element which is a plus for me. Great visuals as always & the acting is first-class, especially Stephen Dorff who is surprisingly good.
Also enjoyed the first episode of Deadly Class. Great 80's soundtrack, some solid crunchy action & an interesting premise. Some poor acting was my only minor gripe...
First episode of Project Blue Book was promising. If the prospect of an old school, UFO conspiracy X-Files episode set in the 1950's, gets your juices flowing, this is the show for you. Good FX, decent production values & solid acting. I'm a sucker for anything UFO-based, so i'll stick with it for now.
Anyone watched the new comedy show, Black Monday yet?
Opening episode of The Passage was passable but bland. I've read the book which I enjoyed a lot but they've already rushed through probably the first quarter of the novel & skipped a lot of good character stuff...
Location: Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs
Posts: 7,260
Thanks: 333
Thanked 458 Times in 270 Posts
Project Bluebook didn't do much for me. It had a couple of welcome familiar faces in Aidan Gillen & Neal McDonough, but the whole thing looked & felt like something someone made in the late 90s & had been sitting on a shelf ever since.
New sitcom Fam stars Nina Dobrev in a series of generally unflattering outfits as she gets engaged, lets her half-sister move in with her & reveals her supposedly long-dead dad is still alive. Gary Cole as the deadbeat dad is pretty much the only highlight of the pilot.
Canadian crime drama Coroner, about an ER doc becoming a coroner after her husband dies is fairly generic stuff, but leading lady Serinda Swan is incredibly cute & enough to keep me watching.
& not a new show, but it was nice to see Brooklyn Nine-Nine made its way to its new network completely intact with no sign of any changes.
there's a couple of interesting shows coming up that I'm keeping eye on:
The Boys - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190634/ - based on the Garth Ennis comic about a time where there are loads of superheros and somebody has to keep them in check. Not sure how closely they will be allowed to stick to the comic as it was pretty outrageous but it does have Karl Urban in it, so there's that going for it
Location: Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs
Posts: 7,260
Thanks: 333
Thanked 458 Times in 270 Posts
Black Monday was highly entertaining. Pretty much The Wolf Of Wall Street shot through a comedy '80s lens, with Don Cheadle giving it his all & a decent supporting cast. Hope they can keep the energy up for the rest of the season.
Roswell, New Mexico is a reboot/remake of the nineties show, with a slightly older cast (so no more high school) & a heavy focus on immigration & border control (yawn). I vaguely recall enjoying the original series, but short of bringing up a few distant memories, the first episode of this did very little for me.
Enjoyed episode 1 of The Passage. Interested to see where it'll go.
Black Monday was highly entertaining. Pretty much The Wolf Of Wall Street shot through a comedy '80s lens
You had me at Wolf of Wall Street... Will give it a go this weekend.
Just watching the trailer for the new Roswell put me off. I mildly enjoyed the original (mostly due to the lovely female cast) but I saw nothing attractive or appealing to make me even try the opener...
Wasn't that impressed with the Black Monday opener. The premise is intriguing & the various excesses on display were fun, but overall it was just a noisy mess of a show for me. Will give it a few more to see if it calms down a little & starts to make some kind of sense...
Second episode of The Passage was as bland as the opener. Already resorted to having flashbacks to provide character motivations, but just felt like padding. Will give it a few more, only because I loved the book & hope they somehow retain some of the novel's interesting elements...
Location: Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs
Posts: 7,260
Thanks: 333
Thanked 458 Times in 270 Posts
Not really new 2019 shows, but I couldn't think of anywhere else to put this.
FYI, Sons of Anarchy spin-off Mayans MC is getting a UK showing, starting on with a double bill in Saturday night at 10.40pm, BBC2.
I also noticed Pamela Adlon's rather excellent comedy Better Things has snuck on the Beeb completely unheralded. Thursdays at 9pm, BBC2. Also on the iplayer.
Mayans MC is worth a watch, even if you never watched Sons of Anarchy. It takes a few episodes to get used to the huge amount of characters, but once the plot kicks in proper, it gets really good with lots of dark, nasty twists & turns...
Second episode of The Passage was as bland as the opener. Already resorted to having flashbacks to provide character motivations, but just felt like padding. Will give it a few more, only because I loved the book & hope they somehow retain some of the novel's interesting elements...
The Passage seems like a real opportunity missed. It should be great but instead it lacks all style and subtlety. The whole thing was pretty much explained in the first 10 minutes killing all mystery and suspense.
Enjoyed the 2nd episode of Black Monday. The dialogue is excellent, but it comes at you so fast, it requires full attention. Probably why I didn't enjoy the first episode so much as I recall it was very late at night & I was tired. Might give it another watch....
I just finished Nightflyers on Netflix, and I'm disappointed overall. There's some cool science fiction here, but the storytelling is a complete let down. It doesn't help that a large number of the cast members completely lacked any charisma, making them wholly uninteresting to watch (and unfortunately Karl is right at the top of that list).
I blame the writing more than the actors, though, it all became very stupid. Too many of these characters were unhinged or damaged, making them the most ridiculous choice to participate in a mission like this. There are weird leaps in logic and bizarre occurrences, to which most of the characters don't seem to respond to or care about. Indeed, most of the episodes seem to consist of people randomly wandering around the ship being able to do pretty much anything they want and ignoring problems while lost in their own worlds.
It lead up to a very disjointed ending that didn't do enough to let us understand anything that was happening. The pure selfishness of these insane characters only adds to how confusing the whole thing is.
There were some good points scattered throughout. The whole sequence with the spider-bot was effectively creepy and very well put together. Visually, it was mostly impressive and realised some nice sci-fi concepts well. Gretchen Moll was the standout cast member, while the character of Thale was easily the most interesting. I also enjoyed the range of accents throughout the crew.
I look forward now to reading the original novella by George R.R. Martin, which I have to assume is considerably better than this.
Linear Mode
