A Few Things
I’ve been watching SyFy’s (I F-ing hate the name change btw) new hit show Warehouse 13. Essentially it’s a show about that “secret government warehouse” you’ve been hearing about all these years. All kinds of supernatural relics or advanced artifacts are acquired and stored here so the general public is kept safe. Every episode usually revolves around the lead characters tracking down an object after some weird/supernatural occurrence happens. It’s not a perfect show as the investigations are laughable but it has a Buffy-esque charm that plays well. W13 could easily devolve into an artifact of the week akin to a monster of the week show but thankfully it’s mostly a character driven program with moments of humor. Probably the best things about the show (besides the excellent casting of Saul Rubinek) is that W13 is one of the best possible ways to do a “fantasy show” with a limited budget. It’s had a few hiccups but I feel it’s on good footing for a first season. It’s interesting to note that 50% of the audience for W13 is female which is a huge jump for the SyFy channel. The first season hasn’t even finished its run yet and a second season has already been green lit. On a comic book geek note CCH Pounder who plays the government agent Amanda Waller in Justice League Unlimited plays a similar role here as Warehouse 13’s Shadowy boss.
I’ve also been enjoying the BBC’s Being Human about a Vampire, Werewolf, and Ghost sharing a flat together. It sounds really corny and it kinda is but like Warehouse 13 I like that fact that there is almost no budget for the show consequently so much relies on the dialog and the personality of the characters. It rips off tons from the World of Darkness games (among other things) but BH has a certain charm. The first episode was confusing though because I felt that I had missed an episode and indeed I had. There was a pilot that had two of the three major characters cast with different actors and of course that pilot was not shown in the states. Check it out if you like “Thrift Store Horror.”
I tried to think of something fun to give my niece last month and for some reason Galaxy High School popped into my head. Why I thought a 23 year old Saturday morning cartoon would entertain a modern high schooler, I’ll never know. But my intuition was on the money as apparently she’s been watching the DVD set over and over like crazy. It’s too bad it only had one season.
I saw program about exoplanets over the weekend on the science channel. What the was really cool is that the show nicknamed planets that orbit pulsars as Zombie Planets because they are dead worlds created from the debris after the destruction of a whole system. Hmmm…
-Swinebread
9 comments:
A friend gave us DVDs of Being Human including the test pilot episode. We watched the pilot and were ASTOUNDED! What an amazing show it was! At one point we looked over at each other and saw we both had a jaw-dropped smile on our faces; it was that good.
We decided to watch more right then (How could we not?) and queued up the next episode.
Man, what a disappointment. The casting in the pilot had been perfect. The photography and pacing had been delicious. The character interactions had been incredibly natural given the subject matter. The writing had a rhythm
In the 'first' episode, all that changed. The vampire was hunkier and duller, the ghost's backstory (unknown in the pilot) was a big yawn and while the werewolf was the same, his interactions with his fellow cast members felt stilted. The filming was flat and uninspired. The new writing felt heavy-handed and trite. It was as though it had already been re-made by an American studio.
We would watch the pilot over again, many times, but we couldn't bring ourselves to watch any more of the series proper.
I'm curious if anyone else has experienced this?
Thus ends The Rant.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that thinks Warehouse 13 ain't all that bad. Rubinek is great on it and if they give the show time to grow, I think it can shed it's typical first-year shortcomings.
I'll have to check out Being Human.
We just watched Torchwood Children of Earth. Holy shit it was good.
It still had some of those little Torchwood annoyances but when it worked it worked really well and it was dark, dark, dark.
Oh, Swiney- have you seen "Primeval" yet?
Warehouse 13 is fun enough to keep watching, though there are occasional facepalm moments that remind you that you are watching a SyFy production (I completely agree that the new name sucks, but look who we are talking about).
Saul makes the show. I thought the introduction of the new hacker girl character was a bust, though the episode that introduced her was okay.
Am I the only one who keeps calling it "Siffy"?
Ack! I wanna watch "Being Human"! I just set my DVR...
Arky – boy I sure glad that I didn’t see the pilot. I do have a nagging feeling that missed something and now I know I missed something really good. I’m enjoying the cheesiness of being human but it looks like the pilot was something more… wonder why the actors changed…
RG – A lot of folks like it. W13 had a good premise and has a lot of potential
Dean – I think you kids would like BH a lot actually. I haven’t watched torchwood at all myself so I take your word on it.
I have not seen primeval… maybe a review on Atomic Romance is in order…
Snab – What I like about this W13 is that it recognizes that it has a piss poor budget and that makes the slipups more tolerable. I liked that fact that a main character was introduced later than the pilot but hacker chick hasn’t been that interesting yet.
Arky – I call it siffy too
Dr. Zaius – Let me know what you think!
The cast of Being Human - Lenora Crichlow, Aidan Turner and Russell Tovey - along with producer Matt Bouch and creator Toby Whithouse will be at the Mayhem Horror Film Festival on the 31st October. The event includes a sneak peak at the 2010 series. For more details see http://www.broadway.org.uk/mayhem
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