Just for fun, you understand... and because I often end up writing about the TV shows and movies I've seen sooner or later... This year's autumn season has been quite surprising in its diversity, and by the sheer number of new shows that I'm actually interested in. I'm probably not watching much more TV than usual, but I'm certainly setting things up to record more often, on the off-chance that I'm too engrossed in something else (read: pointlessly surfing the interwebs) to switch on in time.
That said, and before I get into specific shows, I've also been impressed that the new shows are actually being repeated more frequently so, on the rare occasion that I miss something (or, for example, accidentally cancel a series linked recording because my Freeview box is weird), I can generally pick it up again in the following couple of days... or just watch it on the channel's web service, if available.
But onto the shows themselves...
We'll start with Under The Dome, based on a Steven King novel, running on Channel 5. The story can be summarised as "small town America gets cut off from the rest of the world by a mysterious, invisible dome. Shenanigans ensue." and, based on what little I know about small town America (whatever turns up on the news), some of the shenanigans wouldn't even require the presence of a mysterious, invisible dome cutting them off from the rest of the world. Hell, I've known people from small town America who would happily admit that those kinds of folks would probably never go as far as the next small town, so they may as well be living under a dome anyway. The characters are horribly stereotypical, even down to the interracial-lesbian-couple-with-rebellious-daughter who were caught under the dome while 'just passing through', and the town has accepted them far too willingly, especially when you consider that one of them is the only black character I can remember seeing. On the upside, their sexuality isn't the centre of their characters - one is a lawyer, the other a doctor, and they come across very well as individuals. Most of the other characters are a pretty motley crew and most of their actions are predictable. Still, it's just about watchable enough to continue... and the series is halfway through at this point.
Next we have BBC3's new Friday night headliner, Orphan Black. Billed as a sci-fi show, it took three episodes to actually introduce its sci-fi angle. Up till then, we had the central character - some kind of con artist - taking over the life of a woman who jumped under a train... and who just happened to be physically identical to her. Complications arise because she's a police officer (and initially under investigation for the fatal shooting of a civilian), then the full plot kicks in, and she finds that the woman who killed herself is not her only doppelgänger. The side-story, of the protagonist's desire to be reunited with her daughter (currently in foster care) doesn't add a great deal of character, and the main story has been pretty slow-burning so far - all the audience has is questions, because that's all the characters have. Sadly, it's another show with a comedy gay sidekick (the protagonist's fellow-orphan 'brother') who seems to fall into the 'gay dude trying to make all the dudes gay' stereotype (including introducing a pair of suburban pre-teens to crossdressing and picking up a morgue attendant while identifying a body)... which is a shame, because the actor makes him seem pretty charismatic for such a one-dimensional character... Though, is it me, or is his hair never the same from scene to scene? The doppelgänger angle is certainly very interesting, and it seems to be an investigation into 'nature versus nurture', in that what is ostensibly the same person is very, very different in each case... but, even having identified itself as sci-fi, there's very little science fiction going on in the story.
Then, of course, we have Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on Channel 4... which is a bit of a coup for them. Now, I've only seen the pilot, and they're never the best indicator of quality (other than in the exceptional case of Chuck), but it seems "so far, so TV". There are things one would expect to see in a TV series based in the Marvel universe and centred around Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement & Logistics Division, and the pilot certainly showed potential for lots of that... but it also showed far too many of the 'ensemble cast genre drama' clichés that have been part of US TV series for many years. You've got your 'mysterious backstory' character, you've got your 'bad attitude' character, you've got your 'nervously babbling scientist' characters and you've got your 'implausibly good with computers' character... And you know from the moment you're introduced to Agent Grant Ward that he'll be slowly learning 'people skills' throughout the series, softening up those hard edges and generally becoming less of a dick. You know that the two babbly, bickering scientists will be the key to saving the day on more than one occasion. You know that Agent Melinda May's past will catch up with her, and she won't just be 'driving the bus'. You know that superhacker and Rising Tide insider Skye will be playing both sides until she realises S.H.I.E.L.D. are the good guys after all (probably around the time Rising Tide turn out to be Bad Guys rather than just concerned whistleblowers). You also sense there's something amiss with the story of Nick Fury faking Coulson's death, just from the dreamy way Coulson talks about Tahiti using exactly the same phrases every time. In many ways, this isn't Joss Whedon at his best... but that's still far better than most of the dross on TV these days.
And on the subject of dross, I gave the BBC the benefit of the doubt with their new home-grown fantasy series, Atlantis... but it's basically the same crap as their interpretations of Robin Hood and Merlin. It looks like something thrown together in a studio and features passable CGI, but plays very fast and loose with its source material, sending a contemporary Jason back in time. There, he becomes an ancient Greek superhero (somehow speaking ancient Greek so fluently there aren't even any jokes about his accent, and allowing everyone to speak English with British accents), meeting up with Pythagoras (who, y'know, spent time in Atlantis perfecting his triangles, obviously) and a boastful and possibly cowardly Hercules. Like its predecessors, it's cut from the same TV cloth as Power Rangers, though it aspires to be more like Sam Raimi's TV series about the mulleted demi-God and that one about the warrior princess... And you know where it's going from the first moment the hero draws a flirty look from a local princess. I might give this a couple more weeks to find its stride, but I'm fairly confident that its stride will be identical to the BBCs other 'early Saturday evening fantasy drama' shows, so my expectations are very low.
In other news, I've applied for two permanent jobs recently... One picked out of a newspaper's online jobs section, the other via my regular agency. I'll also be dropping a line to yet another agency, because they seem to have a fair few jobs going. Not sure when I'd be likely to hear back on my two current applications... but it'd certainly be nice to have some full-time, permanent work again. If nothing else, a bit of interview experience would be useful.
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