thirtyframesasecond wrote:I think it's finished in the US, but is Hostages worth bothering with? Channel 4 has picked it up in the UK and the first episode, despite its daft conceit, didn't really bode that well.
domino harvey wrote:I haven't seen it but the reviews and comments section for it at the AV Club were hilarious-- apparently it was so bad that it drove the reviewer to the point of madness! I've literally never heard one good thing about it from anyone, but I haven't seen it with my own eyes so it could very well be genius. I wouldn't place bets though!
Oddly, it's also appeared as AV Club's top pick for "what to watch tonight", but maybe that's because they want people to comprehend the lunacy on display. I haven't bothered watching it since it's premise looked fairly ridiculous to sustain for more than a few episodes (then again, the same thing could be said about 24, and it lasted forever).
I haven't watched it, but I'm thinking of driving the co-worker in my office who constantly raves about how fantastic Homeland is (and how dreamy Damian Lewis is) crazy by saying "I don't watch it but what about that wonderful Hostages show? Truly gripping, and by far the best political thriller on TV right now!"
FAMILY TREE was never quite as good as I hoped it would be. HELLO LADIES wasn't nearly as good as FAMILY TREE, but I thought it improved as it went along.
Still, GETTING ON is a real gem and I pleased to hear it will probably be renewed.
Danny Boyle's latest film is a television drama for Channel 4, Babylon, co-written by Jesse Armstrong (Four Lions, The Thick of It, the "Entire History of You" episode of Black Mirror) and starring (domino alert) Brit Marling!
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It's sad to see my TV guilty pleasure, the US Being Human, is on its last legs and just a few episodes away from its end. The show had a Gen-Y sense of humor, with characters joking with that ironic glibness anyone whose spent time with twentysomethings is familiar with, that never quite matched the show's dark tone. The AV Club had a hilarious pan of it, with the reviewer giving up on it somewhere early in its third season, and the points s/he brought up were all sound. Still, having watched my fair share of fantasy/supernatural trash (something just about every show about vampires/werewolves/etc. inevitably turns into) I found it rather endearing how Being Human managed to check the boxes of all the subgenre's cliches that date back to the Buffy days: alternate timeline, check; convoluted mythology that the writers simply add onto to fit any given plot, check; flashback to vampire's past where he's a heinous murder-machine, check. I'm sure there's plenty more to add to that shortlist.
And yet, as a seasoned viewer of supernatural trash high and low, there was something watchable about the show, at least in its early seasons where it was largely aping the UK original. It had something that so many shows dealing with creatures that go bump in the night lack: a sense of humor about its characters' circumstances. It didn't veer into True Blood's silliness but instead was much like an ensemble comedy at times. The recent explosion of these types of shows is an interesting cultural phenomenon, and even notable examples like the near-decade old Supernatural perpetuate themselves to the point of redundancy. I guess it's just that this subgenre is a TV writer's dream, a goldmine of endless stories that can be conjured up with little more explanation than "a wizard did it."
Anyway, ignore my stream of consciousness appreciation of the show, and don't take this as a full-blown recommendation of what amounts to a halfway decent show. I'm merely lamenting the end of a show I can go either way on, if that even makes sense.
It's telling that the first string of comments are all about the Sopranos, the Shield, and Breaking Bad, the very kind of modern hits the piece is arguing are being bolstered in a feedback loop by those with no exposure or familiarity with older series
So nobody else has seen the Turn pilot? I'm cautiously optimistic. Pilots, which always have an overfull and often contradictory agenda are hard to judge, but this one set up a world that I'm interested in following, one that upends the sanitized version of American Revolutionary War history we're taught in school, and that proves that the essence of a good spy thriller is replicable in any context that sufficiently understands its dynamics. The pilot's got quite the pedigree, with good performances from Jamie Bell and the rest of the cast and solid direction from Rupert Wyatt.
It's telling that the first string of comments are all about the Sopranos, the Shield, and Breaking Bad, the very kind of modern hits the piece is arguing are being bolstered in a feedback loop by those with no exposure or familiarity with older series
But isn't that whole article and your endorsement of it kind of hinging on denying the distinction that "best show ever" boosters of the current TV renaissance are making? Those who are new to really loving TV, including some of the oldsters who remember plenty of the so-called classic shows that article references, aren't loving it so much because it's the best TV (with TV defined as "stuff between commercials meant to keep eyeballs on commercials -- pre-DVR -- heavily censored by the networks and the government, and ultimately responsible to advertisers") as it seems to them the best TV (with TV defined as "longform serialized cable network or Netflix/Amazon.com narrative largely free of outside interference in terms of subject matter or content, and meant to get and keep subscribers"). The possibilities and the business models have changed so much that it's hardly worth comparing what was produced in decades past with what's being done now, the best examples of which really do feel more like novels than like anything that used to be permitted on television.
That said, I do think there's more of a continuity than the article admits, if not among fans, then certainly among the current generation of TV producers. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan has repeatedly stated that his favorite TV show is The Twilight Zone, and he seems to see a very clear continuity between its impact on him and his work on The X-Files.
Given that I'm a fan of slasher movies and Jason's no exception, I'm excited. Especially if it means Freddy Krueger's not long behind. Suffice to say, I think Bates Motel and Hannibal may have started a new trend of Horror movie icons getting their own TV show.
Last edited by Movie-Brat on Thu Apr 24, 2014 7:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Given that I'm a fan of slasher movies and Jason's no exception, I'm excited. Especially if it means Freddy Krueger's not long behind. Suffice to say, I think Bates Motel and Hannibal may have started a new trend of Horror movie icons getting their own TV show.
