I shouldn’t be surprised when I look back at the year overall, but in
terms of sci-fi movies and TV there was a lot going on. Some things
weren’t good, but an awful lot were, or at least they were interesting. I
keep thinking back to years ago when we’d be lucky to have one or two
interesting sci-fi movies a year and a handful of TV shows. Nowadays
there seems to be a sci-fi movie coming out once every few weeks, and
that’s not including superhero things since while I think they’re sci-fi
I’m not counting them here, and there are loads of sci-fi series on TV.
Random thoughts…
BBC America really killed it in 2018 as being the home for all things Doctor Who, The X-Files and classic Star Trek TV.
And let’s give props to TNT/TBS as well for airing marathons of Star Wars every few weeks. Have I see every episode of Star Wars many, many times before? Yep! Do I watch them again every time they show up on TNT/TBS? You bet’cha!
Along those lines… We now live in a world where there is a brand new Star Wars movie being released each and every year, this year was Star Wars: A Solo Story, which is always something to be happy about.
While BBC America was the home for sci-fi in 2018, Syfy, the old
SCI-FI Channel, was not. That network which barely airs any sci-fi
anymore actually cancelled the one great sci-fi show they had The Expanse.
That being said Amazon Prime picked up The Expanse where it will air a fourth season in alongside The Man in the High Castle, another sci-fi show on that platform.
Netflix released a whole bunch of sci-fi movies in 2018 including good ones like The Cloverfield Paradox and not so good ones like Mute. Hey, they can’t all be winners.
The sci-fi/horror film A Quiet Place did what not a lot of
sci-fi/horror movies have done in the past; it was very successful as
well as gained lots of critical acclaim.
That being said not everything sci-fi at the box office worked, both Pacific Rim: Uprising and Overlord underperformed here in the US, though Uprising did great business overseas.
While I absolutely did not understand the ending of the second season of Westworld, I have to say that the ride getting there was a lot of fun.
I mentioned that BBC America was the home for all things classic Star Trek, but there’s also new episodes being added to the Trek canon every year with Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access.
Okay, okay, okay, I like to rag on Syfy a lot, but I do have to give
them props for taking a big chance on the decent ten episode limited
sci-fi/horror series Nightflyers a few weeks back. It wasn’t great, but at least it was science fiction.
I’m a little conflicted over the new Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House.
Part of it is really good but part of it is just okay. But I could
easily see the “okay” part turning good if given enough time.
Based on the Shirley Jackson novel of the same name that was turned
into two films, one in 1963 and one in 1999, this new ten episode
version takes place over two time periods. The first looks to be about
25 years ago when a family moves into renovate and flip a large manor
house named “Hill House.” Father (Henry Thomas), mother (Carla Gugino)
and five kids are living at the house during the renovation when weird
things start happening. Doors are locked and refuse to open, youngest
son Luke draws a woman he sees everyone assumes is an invisible friend
while youngest daughter Nell is haunted by an apparition at night.
Cut to present day where the family, now grown adults, have adult
problems and don’t quite get along. Especially Nell (Victoria Pedretti)
who seems unstable and Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) who’s in rehab.
Nell’s never quite gotten over her experiences at the house, which
present day and past with the family at the house are flashed back and
forth quite a bit, and begins losing her grip on reality when the
apparition that haunted her as a little girl returns to her as an adult.
The part of The Haunting of Hill House I really liked was
all the stuff set in the past. Everything there from the acting to the
color choices to the design was really top notch, and scary too. I think
where things falter a bit in the first episode comes when the story is
set in modern times. To me that had the vibe of Six Feet Under: Paranormal Activity where a few of the characters were a bit too over the top for the
reality of the show that was set in the past. Of course Luke is addicted
to drugs and sister Theo (Kate Siegel) wears gloves all the time
because she’s a germaphobe — even if she doesn’t have problems bringing a
date home for a one-night-stand when we first meet her.
Present day in The Haunting of Hill House
It doesn’t help matters that all the time shifting in the episode got
to be a little confusing. At one point the family goes running out of
the house in the past when it seems as if things have gone all Amityville Horror on them one night and it’s either get out or die. But in the next scene
the family are back at the house and everything’s normal again since
that scene takes place sometime before the previous one. Even worse is
when part of the episode set present day flashes back a few years in
time, which left me scratching my head a minute until I was able to
figure out what was going on and play catch up with the scene.
I’m assuming this is done since this is how the characters in the
present are remembering what all happened in the past, which makes
sense. I just wish it had come off a little less confusing. My biggest
concern for the The Haunting of Hill House is that I’m not sure how they’re going to sustain the story over ten episodes and not slow things down too much?
Still, I can’t get over how effective and scary some scenes in the
first episode were or how good the stuff set in the past was. I also
liked how effetely darkness was handled in the episode. Here, the dark
is like a fog where things are clear close but lose detail and shape in
the distance which I really liked.
At the end of the episode something happens that I don’t want to
spoil that seems to indicate that the story set in the present might be
more than people just sitting around complaining about their lives.
Doctor Who ⭐⭐
The cast of Doctor Who
The eleventh modern, 38th overall, season of Doctor Who debuted last week on BBC America here in the US. For the first time in
55 years the Doctor is being played by a woman, Jodie Whittaker and
because this current season of the show has a new executive producer
with Chris Chibnall, Stephen Moffat left the series last season after
having produced it since 2010, in many ways this new season of Doctor Who feels like a fresh, new start.
My question is, is this new Doctor Who too fresh and new?
If memory serves me correctly always before whenever the Doctor would
“regenerate*” his companions, essentially side-characters who travel
the universe with the Doctor, would remain between the seasons. So
whereas the face of the lead character would change, the side ones would
stay the same giving the audience at least some continuity between lead
actor switches in the show. But this time everything’s new, from the
Doctor to the companions to the series’ look and feel and the producer
as well.
In this first episode the Doctor comes literally crashing down to
Earth and into a train after having been dumped out of her Tardis at the
end of the last episode that aired way back at Christmas.
She’s confused from having regenerated and finds herself in the middle
of an intergalactic hunt where a random unsuspecting person is picked to
be stalked by a clad-in-black armored wearing alien. Helping the Doctor
are four people she meets on the train. Much like with just about every
other companion the Doctor’s ever had, these individuals go from
skeptical to helping someone they’ve just met on an adventure in no time
flat.
Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor
If there’s anything that hurts the first episode it’s this lack of
anything connecting it to the past seasons. It’s almost like when Doctor Who was relaunched in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston in the title role.
That show was an almost total reinvention of the series, updated for a
21st century audience and the 2018 Doctor Who feels very much
the same way. It’s not as a severe a change as the 2005 one was with the
classic series, but there’s certainly a change present in the 2018 one
from what’s come before.
Still, while I noticed this I don’t seriously think this is going to
affect the quality of the show in a real, meaningful way. The latest
season of Doctor Who is different, but Whittaker is a lot of
fun in the title role and I love it when every so often TV series change
things around, tries something new and shake things up a bit. Shows
that rely on the same formula over and over again can get a bit boring
and sometimes changes like those made on Doctor Who can keep them feeling fresh and new.
*Regeneration is a brilliant ploy by the producers of the Doctor Who to keep the series going whenever the lead wanted to leave the show. He’d regenerate and a new face would take his place.
Better Call Saul ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Bob Odenkirk in Better Call Saul
Most TV dramas these days have stories that wash over the characters
like the sea does over the shore. The story is the thing that moves
around and acts upon the characters who mostly remain unchanged. And the
characters are just that, characters. They are archetypes — the doctor
who’s biggest flaw is that she cares too much about her job, the cop
who’s out of control, the scientist who’s brilliant but lacking social
skills — and don’t feel like people whatsoever.
I think that’s why I love the AMC series Better Call Saul so
much. In that show it’s not the story that interacts on the characters,
it’s the character interacting between each other that generates the
story. And the characters in Better Call Saul don’t feel like TV characters, they feel like real people.
This fourth season of Better Call Saul has been a series in
flux. We all know that eventually the character of Jimmy McGill (Bob
Odenkirk) will one day morph into the sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman who was
a part of the series Breaking Bad. And I think everyone,
myself included, thought this transformation would’ve taken place by the
end of the first season, only it didn’t. What we got instead was a slow
burn of Jimmy, who’s spent his life trying not to disappoint big
brother Chuck (Michael McKean) but failing miserably while also trying
to keep his relationship with girlfriend Kim (Rhea Seehorn) from
crumbling. And with each and every failure and misstep throughout the
seasons Jimmy draws closer and closer to down the path to Saulhood.
Looking back over the season(s) I think I know what went wrong with Jimmy, why he became a “bad guy” in Breaking Bad.
He always took the wrong lessons from his failures. Last season he
ended up losing his law license and rather than buckling down and doing
the right thing to wait out the mandatory period before he can get it
back by getting a normal job, he got a job at a cell phone store where
he realized the best way to make a little money was to sell “burners,”
disposable phones, to criminals for a markup.
If he’d only done the right thing I don’t think Jimmy would’ve ever
become Saul. Again and again Jimmy does the wrong thing, even if it’s
little wrong things, and because of this he edges closers and closer to
becoming the person from Breaking Bad.
Jonathan Banks
And that’s not to mention the wonderful Jonathan Banks as Mike
Ehrmantraut (I love that name) who’s going down a slippery-slope of his
own. He started out as a retired cop working as a parking lot attendant
and then graduated to becoming a member of a criminal organization led
by Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). He’s a guy who’s great on details and
the small stuff and genuinely loves figuring things out for Fring. But
in the final episode of the season he’s asked to do something to someone
he genuinely likes which will cement his place in the organization and
get his nickname from Breaking Bad as the “Cleaner.”
Star Wars Resistance ⭐
Star Wars Resistance
The new Star Wars Resistance show on Disney Channel is a fun series that’s set right before the events of the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Fighter pilot Kazuda Xiono (Christopher Sean) joins the Resistance and
becomes an undercover racing pilot in order to spy on the First Order.
Unfortunately, whereas the last Star Wars series, Star Wars Rebels,
had a lot of depth in terms of story and characters, even if it also
had elements that would appeal to the younger generation, Star Wars Resistance is a show meant to appeal to kids and not really adults. Which is fine, not everything Star Wars has to appeal to middle-aged men. But at the same time I really can’t see myself investing much time in something as lite as Star Wars Resistance in the long-run.
Mr Inbetween ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Scott Ryan in Mr Inbetween
The wonderful “blink and you’ll miss it because we’re gonna air two
episodes back to back at 11:30PM and blow through this one in less than a
month” series Mr Inbetween wrapped up its first season last
week after having debuted just a few weeks ago on FX. This Australian
show, written by and starring Scott Ryan, is about Ray Shoesmith who
does unsavory things for unsavory people and is quite good at his job.
While this sounds like a lot of other shows out there, especially ones on FX that’s a network know for over-the-top dramas, Mr Inbetween doesn’t feel like the typical FX show. To me the series it matches the most is Breakind Bad but through the lens of an Australian. Ray feels like a real person,
with problems, an ex-wife, daughter and girlfriend. And for the most
part he’s a guy who, other than some anger issues, is pretty normal.
It’s just that every so often he’s called on to hurt someone who owes
someone money, or even sometimes kill.
He’s a complex character and Mr Inbetween is a complex show I don’t think FX has ever seen the likes of.
The first season, just six episodes long, was mostly about Ray
dealing with his screwed up life. Be it explaining to a girlfriend why
he bashed two guys during a road-rage incident or stringing along two
hitmen out to kill him. It’s not really about any season-long story like
is in vogue with so many shows these days. Instead, Mr Inbetween is about characters first and story second.
Because this show was so different and so off-brand for FX, and since
they seemed to be trying their hardest to burn this one off as quickly
as possible, I figured Mr Inbetween was going to be one of
those “one and done” series that are here today and forgotten tomorrow.
But surprisingly it did okay for FX considering they didn’t air new
episodes until after 11PM and they decided to renew the show for a
second season.
Horray! Sometimes the good-guys do win, even if they’re bad-guys.
Deutschland 86 TV commercial
Movies
Pet Sematary trailer
Glass trailer
What To Watch This Week
The Old Dark House
Sunday
The follow-up to last winter’s James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction is the new Eli Roth’s History of Horror that premiers on AMC tonight.
After airing on CBS for a season before moving to The CW where it became one of their more-popular series, Supergirl begins its fourth season today.
The new HBO series Camping about a family forced to get along together on a vacation to the outdoors debuts this week.
Monday
The only sci-fi movie to star Pee-Wee Herman, even if he’s listed in the credits as Paul Mall, Flight of the Navigator airs tonight on TCM.
Tuesday
Insomniac Theater: The mostly forgotten 1979 post-Star Wars Disney gem The Black Hole airs on TCM very early today.
Roseanne minus Roseanne The Conners premiers tonight on ABC.
Wednesday
TCM is set to air a whole slew of horror movies starring Boris Karloff including one of my favorites The Old Dark House tonight.
Friday
The third season of the Netflix hit Daredevil drops today.
Set 40 years after the original, Halloween premiers in theaters today. Though if we’re really picking up 40 years
after the original, wouldn’t that make Michael Myers a 60 to 70 years
old dude?
Saturday
Insomniac Theater: The totally trippy Dreamscape from 1984 about people traveling within other people’s dreams airs very
early Saturday morning on TCM. DVR this one for the “Snake Man” scene
alone!
It’s going to be a long fall. Usually, when the weather starts
changing and the nights start getting longer I look forward to staying
in and checking out the new series on TV. But this fall isn’t looking
too good. Sure, there’s a few things to watch, but not enough for my
taste and only a handful of series on network TV. The template the
networks have taken for the 2018–2019 season is to debut a lot of
lame-looking sitcoms and tired cop/hospital/lawyer procedural dramas
that all seem to have been done before.
The good news is it isn’t all bad, there are quite a few new
series on cable and streaming services to look forward to. The bad news
is that most of these series don’t start airing until much later in the
year and even then quite a few not until 2019. Oh well, there’s always
horror movies marathons come Halloween to fill the gap.
New series
The Passage
On FOX the vampire thriller The Passage starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar is set to put a lot of stakes into the
hearts of the undead ghouls in the one network show I want to check out
in January. While the novel the series is based on took place mostly in a
future overrun with the blood-suckers, this new TV show looks to moved
things back a bit to the pre-apocalypse when these vampires were just
being created in the lab.
Manifest on NBC about a plane that takes
off one day but lands five years later with everyone on board not
realizing the time-jump departs September 24. I think I’d be more
looking forward to this show if it didn’t look like a clone of many
other series before it, especially Lost.
Matt Weiner’s follow-up series to his uber-successful Mad Man entitled The Romanoffs is set to debut on Amazon Prime October 12. I’m not totally sure how
this one’s going to go, but reportedly this anthology series will focus
on characters who think they’re related to the Russian royal family the
Romanoffs.
After the animated Star Wars: Rebels series on Disney ended earlier this year comes the new series Star Wars Resistance also on Disney October 13. This one is set to take place around the time of the current film series but before the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Nightflyers
SYFY is once again trying their hand at traditional sci-fi series with Nightflyers,
based on the George R.R. Martin book of the same name. Not at all
looking to cash in on Martin’s name and the fact that he wrote Game of Thrones and therefore SYFY can promote Nightflyers as such, here, it’s the near-future and as the ship of the same name
explores the solar system it uncovers something that threatens everyone
abroad the ship. Nightflyers does sound a bit derivative of things like Event Horizon (1997), except that the novel the series is based on was written way back in 1980.
The Netflix series Another Life has an
astronaut (Katie Sackhoff) leading a mission to find the origins of an
alien artifact, but this artifact might be deadly and the mission
one-way. Maybe the cast of Another Life and Nightflyers can team-up since their two shows sure sound a lot alike.
The iconic comic book mini-series then film Watchmen will become an HBO TV series of the same name sometime next year.
There’s not a whole lot that is known about this one, other than
apparently it doesn’t totally follow the story of the comics but instead
takes place in the same comic universe.
And as for new shows this season, that’s about it. I’m sure I’ll
checkout some of those lame-looking sitcoms hoping to be surprised with
something interesting, but I’m not holding my breath.
Returning series
Fortunately, there are a few returning shows this year to look forward to.
The Good Place
Returning network shows that will premiere this year include The Good Place,
the sitcom about a group of people lead by Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen
Bell) stuck between heaven and hell returns to NBC on Thursday,
September 27 and The Orville on FOX that is Seth MacFarlane’s love-letter to the classic series Star Trek squeaks into 2018 with its second season debut on Sunday, December 30.
Two Netflix superhero series return this year too. First up is the second season of Iron Fist which drops September 7. Then, sometime later in the year, comes a third season of Daredevil who appear last season on The Defenders. I honestly don’t really remember what happened in the second season of Daredevil since it aired more than a year and a half ago at this point. Weren’t there lots of ninjas?
Doctor Who
Doctor Who returns for its 11th season of
the modern incarnation of the character October on BBC America here in
the US. The big news with Doctor Who is that after 55 years and
more than a dozen versions of the character, this time the lead will be
played by a woman, Jodie Whittaker. Personally, I still like Peter
Davison’s version of the character the best, no matter how many Matt
Smith fans out there I have to go all “Sharks and Jets” with.
The Sundance series Deutschland 86 will
return for its second season October 25. The first season was about an
East German spy played by Jonas Nay infiltrating West Germany in order
to steal military secrets and had tinges of The Americans to it. The third season looks to pick up three years from there and just a few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The British sci-fi series Black Mirror will
serve up more creepy goodness sometime this winter on Netflix. Even
after four seasons I still really dig this show and I think it’s
partially because even though there’s already been those four seasons, Black Mirror is an anthology series so each episode is a story unto itself. And to
date there’s been just 20 episodes of it produced in total, which is
less than how many episodes of a modern network series are produced in
just one year, so the show is still fresh.
Star Trek: Discovery
A second season of Star Trek: Discovery returns to CBS All Access this January. The first season of Discovery got good enough reviews from Trek fans, if those were the only people seemingly watching it, and the
second season looks to bring in the big guns to the show, namely the USS
Enterprise along with its Captain Kir… errr… I mean Captain Pike (Anson
Mount).
The Netflix phenomenon Stranger Things will
return for its third season summer of 2019. Last time we left the
plucky kids of Hawkins, Indiana seemingly having beaten the evil forces
that had emerged from the “upside down,” but if other sci-fi shows have
taught me anything it’s that every victory against evil is just
temporary. Until the final episode of the series, that is.
My favorite superhero series The Punisher also returns to Netflix sometime next year. The first season ended with
Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) having totally accepted the mantel of the
skull wearing vigilante by blasting all the baddies to smithereens with
the second season looking to pick up from there.
The Terror
A surprise to me this spring was just how much I dug the first season of the AMC series The Terror about an ill-fated expedition to the Arctic the 19th century. The
second season will reportedly have a new story and focus on Japanese
Americans during the second world war since the first season ended with
pretty much the entire cast dead. That’s not a spoiler since the first
season was based on a real-life expedition that ended in tragedy and I’m
not sure you can consider a historical fact a “spoiler.”
A third season of the critical darling then critically derided True Detective will debut on HBO sometime next year four years after the second. The
third season looks to “one-up” the first since that told a story over
two time periods by telling a story over three.
Shows that I think will premiere sometime in 2019
Mindhunter
My favorite series of the 2017–2018 season , Mindhunter is set to begin its second season on Netflix next year. This show about
the creation of a serial killer hunting unit within the FBI in the
1970s was one of the most well-written and acted shows on TV in recent
memory. Plus the series is co-produced and had a few episodes directed
by David Fincher which is always a good thing.
The sci-fi drama The Expanse will leave its
home of three seasons on SYFY and move over to the Amazon Prime service
next year. The third season ended on a high note, so I’m extremely
excited to see where the show will go from here.
Another sci-fi drama, this time Westworld,
is set to debut its third season on HBO. Now, I won’t even pretend to
say that I understood what all happened in the second season finale of Westworld, I don’t think it was quite on the level of the final episode of Lost or anything, but I suppose time will tell.
I didn’t realize the TV series In Search Of… which was hosted by Leonard Nimoy had such a long life. I only discovered the show which originally ran from 1977 to 1982 in syndication when History Channel began airing old episodes of it in the 1990s alongside things like Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World. But while there were just 13 episodes of the Arthur C Clark series, there were more than 140 of In Search Of….
In Search Of… covered everything in the pseudoscience arena, from UFOs, to ghosts, the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis… and everything in between. Most of episodes asked a lot of questions but didn’t provide a lot of answers. Hence pseudoscience.
Ironically, where In Search Of… was an oddity on a channel in the 1990s that aired lots of documentaries and series about historical things, nowadays the simply titled History instead aires a lot of reality series like Forged in Fire and Mountain Men along with pseudoscience series of their own like Ancient Aliens. So I suppose it makes a lot of sense to reboot In Search Of… for a new generation.
Hosted by Zachary Quinto — who ironically like Nimoy also played Spock in Star Trek — this new 21st century version is essentially the old series all over again. The first episode covered UFOs and had the ubiquitous interview with three people who claim to have been abducted; one failed a polygraph test about his experiences, the other had an “implant” in a toe that turned out to be a rock while a third built a contraption so non-abductees can feel what it’s like to have that experience. There were also interviews with scientists too who were searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. Spoiler alert, nothing found… yet.
There’s nothing new in this overly long and drawn-out at an hour 2018 version of *In Search Of…” that hadn’t already been done before 40 years ago in the old. Since we’re living in 2018 and not 1977 the questions I would’ve liked answered are — if we live in a world that’s increasingly being constantly recorded from security cameras outside businesses to cameras within people’s doors and if essentially everyone on the planet are carrying around cameras in their mobile phones 24/7, then why aren’t we recording evidence of UFOs and abductions on a regular basis rather than less than before? To me that would’ve made an interesting episode, not the same thing that’s been done over and over and over again for decades now.
So far the new In Search Of… is just that, a lot of looking but not a lot of finding.
Doctor Who “Shada” animated special
I don’t think people are ever going to uncover a “lost” episode of Star Trek. All of the episodes of that show that were ever shot have aired, are available in many home media formats and it’s not like there were any episodes that were aired once and never seen again. Sure, maybe they’ll find clips of episode or reels of henceforth unknown behind the scenes footage of DeForest Kelley eating a hamburger on the bridge of the Enterprise, but not a whole episode people haven’t seen in years. However, that’s not the case for classic Doctor Who series. That show has nearly 100 episodes that are considered lost that aired a few times but the original archival tapes either went missing, were destroyed or taped over.
Shada
But just because those episodes are lost today doesn’t mean that they won’t be found tomorrow. In fact just a few years ago a batch of episodes were uncovered in Africa. However, not all episodes like this can be found, case in point “Shada” which originally was set to air during the 1979–1980 season. That episode, written by Douglas Adams, yes, that Douglas Adams, was partially shot but never finished due to a work strike. So with “Shada” it’s the case of BBC having some completed footage but not enough for a whole episode. What they’ve done is to put together an episode that’s partially composed of these already filmed live-action elements as well as portions of the episode that were created via animation like “The Power of the Daleks from a few years ago to fill in these gaps.
“Shada” is interesting if a bit difficult to watch for a non-Doctor Who fan. In fact, I think even fans of the modern Doctor Who series probably wouldn’t dig “Shada” — Matt Smith obsessives probably need not apply here. “Shada” is difficult to watch partially because the classic stories were always a bit slow — there’s a part of the episode that features the Doctor and his companion taking a long, leisurely boat ride down a river — and also because the switch from live-action to animation can be quite jarring. Because TV shows aren’t filmed in order means that a character can be outside one second in a live-action scene and walk through door into an animated scene.
“Shada” is for die-hard Doctor Who fans only, and luckily since I’m a die-hard Doctor Who fan it means “Shada” is for me.
Killing Eve
Can I talk about Killing Eve for a moment? This series has won loads of critical acclaim and an Emmy nomination and was a show I was excited to see before it premiered. That was before BBC America advertised it into the ground for me. Before the first episode aired BBC America began promoting the show like most networks do for new and upcoming series. But they didn’t just promote it, they promoted it several times each commercial break. Which meant that every time I watched an episode of The X-Files or Star Trek I’d see ten commercials for Killing Eve every hour. Watch a few episodes of anything on BBC America and you can see why I quickly grew tired of Killing Eve before it ever aired. I can still hear that, “I have to kill you, I’m really sorry,” song echoing around in my head from hearing it so much on the commercials.
So I never watched an episode of Killing Eve. And again, it’s getting great reviews so it’s my loss, but I figured that once the first season ended in May BBC America would be done with it until next year. Except they weren’t/aren’t. They’re still airing promos for the show only this time telling views to “binge” Killing Eve this summer and ones congratulating Sandra Oh for her Emmy nomination.
I give up, BBC America, you win. If I publicly say that Killing Eve is the best show on the planet even though I’ve never seen an episode will you please stop airing commercials for this show?
I was impressed a few years back when a friend of mine watched an entire season of 24 in a single weekend. Without commercials that’s about 18 hours of TV in two days, which is a whole lot of “butt in the couch” time. Which got me thinking — in this day and age where people binge TV series all the time, if Mount Everest is the hardest mountain to climb, then what are the hardest TV series to binge?
These are the TV Mountains.
Difficulty: Easy
The Walking Dead
These TV mountains can be climbed in around a week of TV binging.
The Walking Dead: This series originally debuted back in 2010 but doesn’t have seasons that are too long so there’s only been around 100 episodes produced so far, or around 75 hours of TV to date.
Lost: Lost ended its run a few years ago at 121 episodes or around 90 hours of TV.
Difficulty: Moderate
These TV mountains can be climbed via few weeks of TV binging.
The Simpsons
The Simpsons: Airing new episodes since 1989, to date there’s been more than 620 episodes of the series produced. But since each episode of The Simpsons is just 30 minutes long, less minus commercials, you could make it through all of The Simpsons to date in about 205 hours.
Supernatural: This long-running series is currently in its 13th season and has aired more than 280 episodes or about 210 hours of TV. But like The Walking Dead and The Simpsons, Supernatural is showing no signs of stopping, so even if you finish all of Supernatural there’ll be more to watch later.
Difficulty: Difficult
These TV mountains can only be climbed via many weeks of TV binging.
Dark Shadows
Law & Order: Airing since 1990, the Law & Order franchise has produced more than 450 episodes of TV. The series is so popular new episodes are still being produced and the various Law & Order series airs in syndication on many outlets. So far there’s been about 335 hours of Law & Order created. Or, if you did nothing but watch Law & Order back to back and didn’t sleep, it would still take you more than two weeks to make it through all the series.
Dark Shadows: This classic gothic soap opera aired more than 1,200 episodes between 1966 and 1971. Each episode was only 30 minutes long, minus commercials, but still makes for more than 405 hours of TV.
Difficulty: Severe
These TV mountains can only be climbed via months of TV binging.
Tom Baker as Doctor Who
Star Trek: Counting all the various incarnations of Star Trek there are more than 725 episodes of this series or more than 540 hours of TV and counting. To put that number into perspective, doing nothing but watching Star Trek 40 hours a week it would take you more than 13 weeks to finish. Assuming you’d be able to make it through the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, that is.
Doctor Who: There’s been more than 835 episodes of Doctor Who created since the series began in 1963 which makes by my estimation more than 555 hours of time and relative dimension in space TV viewing.
Difficulty: Extremely Severe
This TV mountain can only be climbed via years of TV binging.
General Hospital
General Hospital: General Hospital is the longest running US soap opera and has been producing new episodes on a weekday basis since 1963. Back in 2014 it entered the record books as having the most episodes of any TV series at more than 13,000, or, around 8,600 hours of TV. If Star Trek would take you 13 weeks to finish at 40 hours a week then General Hospital would take you more than FOUR YEARS to finish at the same rate!
The most difficult part of watching all of General Hospital, the Mount Everest of TV shows that’s still growing, would be finding all the episodes. My guess is that in the intervening more than half-century since the show debuted some of the early episodes would have been lost because of time and shortsightedness. But even if most of the episodes are still around finding them would be difficult. First is the huge amount of episodes, so at some point cost acquiring them is going to be an issue. Then there’s the fact that for the most part only seasons of General Hospital that are just a few years old are available making full seasons that aired even prior to 2010 hard, if not impossible, to find.
I take it back, General Hospital isn’t the Mount Everest of TV series, it’s Mount Impossible of TV series!
