Tuesday 10 November 2009

V 2009 : First Episode Exclusive Review


In a UK exclusive, I've been able to see the pilot for the remake of classic 80s sci-fi/horror TV show 'V' (Diana leader of the original Visitors, is pictured, right),and shall be sharing my thoughts ***PLOT SPOILERS FOLLOW****

While the 1983 TV miniseries 'V' was a clever allegorical stab at the dangers of countries falling for the romance, manipulation and propaganda of Nazism (the scary red jumpsuits were a giveaway), incfluenced by the 1935 novel Sinclair Lewis novel It Can't Happen Here, the writers of the ABC remake have given the new show a contemporary, 21st century spin, that is very distinctively now.The basic premise is the same ; an alien race hover huge flying saucers above the major cities of the world (a bit like Independence Day), before revealing their human faces, and telling the human race they come in peace, to trade supplies of water, etc., in return for their advanced technologies, and medical knowledge. The 'Visitors' set about gaining the trust of the earth's population, curing terrible diseases like cancer, and opening their spaceships to young teenagers of earth, encouraging them to form various chapters of a visitor "peace corp" around the world to do charitable work. They are all extremely good looking to boot, and set about a closely controlled media campaign to woo the earthbound public. But behind the facade of friendship and peace, they hide a terrible secret: they are in fact green lizards underneath their skin, and want to use the earth's population as food.

There are notable differences. in the 2009 show, the story is partly seen through the eyes of FBI agent Erica Evans (Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell, pictured second left), and her teenage son (Logan Huffman, pictured far left). Since it's the paranoid post 9/11 noughties, Erica is an agent who works on uncovering terrorist cells, and it turns out that a lead on one such cell reveals that the Visitors have been among us all along, in positions of power, waging wars, and causing havoc.

The conflating of the conspiracy theory reguarding the existence of the  Illuminati into the story is inventive enough, but the promise of Universal Health Care, the introduction of a peace corp, and the premiering of the show one year on from Barack Obama's electoral victory give clear indication that the show can be read as a allegory endorsing right wing paranoia and mistrust of liberal initiatives by the US President, suggesting behind these good intentions lies the creation of a New World Order. Evil Glenn Beck and Fox News must be loving it.

The appropriation of one of the greatest TV shows of the 80s by a right wing agenda somewhat spoiled my enjoyment of the show, as did it's underlying message that we should mistrust kind outsiders who are different from us as they may be hiding something- in modern day America, those strangers are most likely Muslims, and, so the Republican line goes, they're hiding bombs strapped to their chests.

In 2009 V is definitely still compelling, though, despite my reservations, and I shall certainly be tuning in to find out if the human race organises a resistance and survives the onslaught.

V will be showing in the UK  on the Sci Fi Channel in 2010, and it continues on ABC in the US for 3 more shows during November and December before returning in March.


Sunday 8 November 2009

X FACTOR: RESULTS SHOW #5 - LUCIE IS VOTED OFF


'Tis Sunday night, and it saddens me to say it, but Welsh teenage hottie Lucie Jones (pictured, right) has been voted off the X Factor, after going head to head with infamous Irish twins John and Edward Grimes, more commonly known to the world as Jedward.

The two acts were in Sunday night's "bottom two", going head to head against each other, with the terrible twins performing Robbie Williams' 'Rock DJ', and Lucie choosing to sing Whitney Houston 'One Moment In Time', both sadly rather cheezy. When fourth judge Simon Cowell came to vote, he decided to leave it to the public vote, knowing that John and Edward have a strong following and were likely to win, without making himself into a villain by sending the increasingly popular twins home. The blogosphere is therefore full of lots of angry Syco comments tonight.


Personally, I think Simon got it totally wrong from the begining with the lovely Lucie Jones, who had the potential to go on and be as good as Leona Lewis or Alexandra Burke, but it is my belief that a gullible public have a tendancy to vote whichever way Simon says. Did the judges get it wrong? Tell us what you think....

Thursday 29 October 2009

FlashForward


Ahhh, autumn, autumn. The leaves are going brown and falling from the trees, the days are shorter and colder, it's back to school and college for many of us, and the festive hat trick of Bonfire night, Halloween and Xmas awaits. Oh, and everyone is indoors, huddled around their TVs to enjoy a packed autumn schedule, which , aside from the X-Factor and Strictly, this year once more bring us another raft of big US TV dramas. This time it's Generation Kill (C4) from the makers of The Wire, ultra-cool vampire series True Blood (C4), Stargate Universe (Sky 1), with the return of much loved series Heroes and Lost to follow next year.


Then there's FlashForward, a new series premièring on Monday nights on Channel , which is based on a 1999 novel by Canadian writer Robert J Sawyer who devised the show along with co-creator David Goyer (writer of The Dark Knight, and Blade: The Series, amongst other things), and and Brannon Braga (24). The major league pedigree is complete with a cast which includes top notch British actors, as usual, this time in the form of Joseph Fiennes who plays FBI agent and recovering alcoholic Mark Benford, his wife Olivia (Sonya Walger, an escapee from Lost), somewhat bizarrely, Jack Davenport, best known to older viewers as posh toff Miles from ground breaking nineties drama This Life, and more recently the Pirates of The Caribbean movies. With American John Cho (last seen rolling an enormous joint as Harold in the Harold and Kumar movies), and, somewhere in the first season, an appearance by former Hobbit and hairy-faced Mancunian Dominic Monaghan also in the cast, the list of vaguely familiar faces is complete.

The show is clearly a contender hoping to follow in the footsteps of the televisual behemoth that is the ratings and critical success of Lost, and as such, it is centred around a “high-concept” premise ; everyone in the world has blacked out for precisely 2 minutes and 17 seconds, with many experiencing a dream like vision, which turns out to be a “Flash Forward” to where they will individually find themselves 6 months from now, at 10pm on 29th April 2010. Such an inscrutable mystery poses countless questions, which will no doubt be strung out over countless episodes with not much resolution and more questions than answers. Thankfully, frustrated fans of Lost will be glad to know that the makers promise it will be nowhere near as convoluted as the show it hopes to replace in their affections.

In the early shows, we have already found that the central character of Mark Benford has envisioned his descent back into alcoholism, the collapse of his marriage, and his future role as an investigator of the mystery posed by these visions. As the FBI officers struggle to make sense of the ensuing global crisis, they have set up a website, Mosaic, for people to describe and compile their visions, to see if they correspond. Meanwhile, Marks' surgeon wife Olivia is disturbed to find the man with which she has had visions of having an affair walk into the hospital where she works, and Benfords' partner Dimitri (Cho) is troubled that he has no visions at all : in this future, is he alive? Are these visions of the future “real”? And who is the mysterious man clad in black, caught on CCTV walking through a baseball stadium in Detroit, while all around him, and the world over, everyone else has blacked out?

Flash Forward continues on Mondays, 9pm on Five.