Tag: better call saul

The best TV series of 2018

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I find that it’s really tough to rank TV series in this “best of” list every year. Like I think Better Call Saul and The Haunting of Hill House were my #1 and #2 shows of 2018, but for the rest the order is kind’a arbitrary. There were lots of great shows this year and putting them in any reasonable order is at best guesswork and at worse however I felt the day I was generating this list.

Better Call Saul

I’m honestly surprised that after all these years I still love Better Call Saul on AMC as much as I do. Usually, after a few seasons of a show I start to lose interest but I haven’t so far with this one. I think that’s because Better Call Saul has evolved and changed each season, meaning that what is Better Call Saul in its most recent fourth season is very much different than what it was in its first.

Essentially, Better Call Saul is the story of Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) and his transformation from being a meek and mild attorney to the infamous cut-throat lawyer to the criminal underworld Saul Goodman. Maybe “transformation” isn’t the best word, maybe a better one would be “descent.” Where Jimmy is a guy who can’t catch a break, as he starts becoming more Saul-like ironically he starts catching loads of breaks and begins making money doing things like selling disposable cell phones to crooks and even getting his law license back by lying and playing the sympathy card.

Crime does pay for Jimmy, even if we as the audience know that the end of the road for Goodman doesn’t lead to a fancy house and lots of riches, it leads to hiding out as a guy named “Gene” a lonely manager of a Cinnabon in Nebraska, on the run and panic stricken constantly looking over his shoulder for a bullet that may never come.

The Haunting of Hill House

The Haunting of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill House

Each year there’s always at least one series a season that surprises me as to how good it is, and that show in 2018 was The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix. This horror series is the stuff of nightmares, and I mean that literally since watching it gave me real nightmares. While most horror shows follow the same tried and true path, there are monsters and they are out to get us, The Haunting of Hill House is quite a bit different. This series about a family set in two time periods, one in the early 1990s where mom, dad and their four kids are trying to flip what turns out to be a haunted house, and modern-day where this family now grown are still dealing with all the ramifications of what happened when they were living at Hill House, and especially what happened the last night they stayed there, is fascinating. Most horror shows rely on the scares first, second and last and while there are a lot of scares in The Haunting of Hill House, see my report about nightmares above, it also has this underlying core of sadness to it.

The family of the 1990s were this not quite perfect but happy together family unit, yet because of what happened to them, and what we find during the course of the show is still happening to them, have splintered and shattered. They’re not quite family anymore and are instead simply “acquaintances.”

And honestly, I don’t know anything scarier than that.

The Terror

What do you think this guy is eating on The Terror?

I never thought there’d be more than one horror series on my best of list yet this year there’s two. The second is another amazing AMC series The Terror about an expedition to the Arctic that went disastrously wrong in the 19th century. This fictionalized telling of a real-life event seems to either be set a night, or the equally scary time of gloaming where the sun has just set casting the world in a weird, mysterious glow. And since this expedition was to the Arctic, a place where the sun is either up for months at a time or set for an equally long period, it means that much of the show is cast in this weird etherial light.

Mr Inbetween

Mr Inbetween
Mr Inbetween

I hadn’t even heard of the FX series Mr Inbetween until I stumbled upon a poster for the show that was set to start airing the next day. I was suspicious at first about a series where the lead guy is a hit-man in Australia who’s got anger management issues since that sounds like something Tony was going through in The Sopranos 20 years ago. But Mr Inbetween is different and I was hooked right from the first scene. Starring and written by Scott Ryan, Mr Inbetween is the rare crime show that has fully fleshed characters, not character archetypes. The stories vary from Ryan’s character Ray Shoesmith trying to help out a friend who’s been beaten and put in the hospital while at the same time trying to keep his new girlfriend in the dark about where he slips off to at night when he goes out to hurt people.

The Expanse

The Expanse
The Expanse

The fourth season of the SyFy series The Expanse continued to deliver in the realm of science fiction in one of the most satisfying sci-fi series on TV these days. Wait, did I say “SyFy!?” Well, SyFy in their infinite wisdom decided to cancel The Expanse shortly before the latest superb season ended. I guess they must’ve needed its time slot for more appropriate sci-fi shows like the reality monster makeup series Face Off. Luckily, Amazon Prime quickly picked up The Expanse for a fifth season which is set to premiere there sometime next year.

Barry

Barry
Barry

The HBO dramety Barry about a depressed hitman (Bill Hader) who dreams of becoming an actor in LA was another surprise this year. Barry can go from hilariously funny to downright scary in the blink of an eye, and I can’t think of any other show that can do that without coming off cheesy. And the way Hader plays Barry, he comes off as a real, troubled guy the audience is rooting for at the start of the show but by the end of the first season might actively be hating because of some of the things he does throughout the episodes.

GLOW

GLOW
GLOW

I’m not quite sure how they do it, but a TV series about women’s wrestling in the 1980s is one of the best things on Netflix right now. Mostly about the behind the scenes lives of the women who star in this show-within-a-show, GLOW chronicles how hard it is to make something, even something as silly as a women’s wrestling show, especially if you were a women in the 1980s.

Black Mirror

Black Mirror
Black Mirror

Black Mirror is one of the most disturbingly accurate shows on these days about what it’s like living in our 21st century where it seems like we’re constantly crashing into the future where people controlling the technology don’t always have our best interests in mind, or even realize the ramifications of what they’re doing, while our world constantly shifts around us and not always for the better.

Little Drummer Girl

Little Drummer Girl
Little Drummer Girl

Another limited series that ran on AMC this TV season was the adaptation of the John Le Carré novel Little Drummer Girl. I totally dig these spy series, especially ones by Le Carré like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley’s People and now Little Drummer Girl too. I just wish AMC had given this one a little more time for people to catch it, rather than burning its six episodes off in a three night “event” the week of Thanksgiving.

Direct Beam Comms #150

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TV

The Haunting of Hill House ⭐⭐

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
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 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
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 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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
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
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 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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
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!

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

  • The Bermuda Depths
    The Bermuda Depths
  • Hellboy
    Hellboy

Direct Beam Comms #140

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

Better Call Saul season 4

The crux of the AMC TV series Better Call Saul is that its lead character Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) will one day become the titular Saul Goodman — a lawyer for drug dealers and other bad elements in the Albuquerque, New Mexico of Breaking Bad. Ever since the first season the creators of Better Call Saul have teased that one day chipper Jimmy McGill will cease to exist and be replaced by not so good Saul Goodman, and every season too there’s been more teases about characters from Breaking Bad also crossing over to Better Call Saul, in which a handful have. Now I can’t imagine we’ll ever see Aaron Paul or Bryan Cranston sharing the screen again with Odenkirk, though stranger things have happened, but that seems to be the focus of all the online chatter before each new season of the show.

Maybe it’s because I was never a fan of Breaking Bad but I’m perfectly okay with this. In fact, I think Better Call Saul is a better show because of this.

While there are some ties with Breaking Bad, for the most part Better Call Saul is its own show. Sure, there’s Jimmy and Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) who are the leads of Better Caul Saul and who were players in Breaking Bad, but I don’t think you need to have watched a single minute of that show to understand Better Call Saul. The characters are different here, less set in their criminal ways if at all.

But some of this is changing, it does seem as if both Jimmy and Mike are becoming more in-line with the criminal element than they have in the past with this latest fourth season of the show.

In fact, I’d go as far as saying that Mike’s “crossed over to the dark side.” Whereas Jimmy does have some criminal elements to him, Mike’s now taking a paycheck from bad people to do bad things. And if Mike’s “broke bad,” then how long will it be until Jimmy fully becomes Saul Goodman?

The first episode of the fourth season of Breaking Bad was a little slow, but I find that first episodes of established shows usually are. Much of the episode deals with a very big ramification from something that happened in the final episode of the third season which has left Jimmy a distraught, and nearly destroyed man.

That is until he isn’t distraught or destroyed anymore. There’s a scene at the end of this episode that left me wondering, was this the real debut of Saul Goodman, a man only interested in his self willing to do whatever’s necessary, to hurt anyone for his own gain?

Only time will tell.

Lodge 49
Lodge 49

Lodge 49

Another AMC series premiered last week, this time the brand new Lodge 49 — NOT another zombie show, shock! Starring Wyatt Russell (Black Mirror), AMC has been promoting this series as the TV version of The Big Lebowski. Heck, Russell’s character even goes by “Dud” which is a lot like the “Dude” from The Big Lebowski. Yet to me Lodge 49 was a lot more like the working-class movies and TV shows of the 1970s and 1980s than The Big Lebowski, though there was a little of that for flavor.

Here, Dud is twenty-something that’s drifting after his life came crashing down before him. He got bitten by a snake and the wound hasn’t yet healed, his dad drown while surfing and he and his sister Liz lost everything from their family home to their family business afterwards. Now, Dud metal detects on the beach for what he can and borrows what he must at high rates from a pawn shop. Until one day he finds a ring on the beach and finds that it’s from a fraternal lodge, of which he’s interested in joining if only to find a way out of his spiraling life.

Lodge 49 really isn’t what I thought it was going to be. It’s a lot more quirky and funny than I was expecting, though there is a dash of darkness to it too. I was intrigued by this show and really liked the characters within it.

The one thing that concerns me about Lodge 49 from promos I’ve seen online is that it seems like there’s quite a bit of mysticism in the series. There is a bit of that in the first episode, but what could be mystical could easily be something else. I could be totally wrong or this might make the show stronger than I think it is, but I hope Lodge 49 stays on the level and doesn’t go all John from Cincinnati or anything.

Disenchantment
Disenchantment

What To Watch This Week

Avengers: Infinity War – Tuesday
The biggest hit of the summer, and one of the biggest movies of all-time, Avengers: Infinity War is available on DVD and Blu-ray this week.

Patient Zero – Tuesday
This movie about a world overrun with zombies and the one guy who can speak zombie (Matt Smith) was originally due out two years ago but was shelved until now and is getting an on-demand release this week.

Disenchantment – Friday
The first season of the Matt Groening created animated fantasy series Disenchantment debuts this Friday on Netflix.

Red Dawn – Saturday
The commies invade Calumet, Colorado in this classic red-scare World War III movie that I’ve seen waaaaay too many times to count on HDNET MOVIES.

The Reading & Watch List

Cool TV Poster of the Week

Project Blue Book poster

Direct Beam Comms #137

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TV

In Search Of…

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
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?

If this works for you contact me via this website. I am not joking.

Doctor Who season 11 commercial

Stranger Things season 3 teaser

Titans commercial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5dIwGAYcWk

Nightflyers series promo

Better Call Saul season 4 teaser

Young Justice: Outsiders promo

Star Trek: Discovery season 2 promo

The Orville season 2 promo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiDvo-n2j38

Movies

Patient Zero trailer

Overlord trailer

Glass trailer — aka Spilt 2 or Unbreakable 2

Godzilla: King of the Monsters trailer

Aquaman trailer

Shazam! trailer

The Reading & Watch List

Astronomers discover 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter – one on collision course with the others

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Direct Beam Comms #135

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, FeaturePosted on

Rumor Control

There’s nothing on TV to watch these days. Of course I jest, mostly. But whereas a few months ago I was watching loads of shows, and even a few weeks ago my DVR was still recording several things to watch each week, these days it’s mostly barren. I mean, when all you’re recording in a week are old episodes of This Old House and NOVA you know you’re in trouble.

It doesn’t help matters that the start of July is a sort’a dead-zone for TV here in the US. Most of the series that debuted last fall are done and those that weren’t cancelled are in hibernation. And while there are a few new things here and there premiering on streaming services — for the most part the new shows that will premiere on cable and network next fall TV have just gone into production and won’t start airing episodes for months.

Whereas before I’d spend the week looking forward to checking out new shows, for the most part in the heat of summer I’ve been watching reruns of things like The X-Files and Doctor Who.

One interesting thing about The X-Files… When the series originally ran I was all about the episodes that dealt with the series spanning conspiracy story that ran through the show. And while I also dug the stand-alone “monster of the week” episodes, back then they were second best to Mulder and Scully finding out who was really behind all those UFO abductions. Nowadays that’s flipped. Whenever there’s a conspiracy episode on I usually change the channel, but adore the “monster of the week” ones. I’m not sure if it was because at the time The X-Files originally aired those conspiracy episodes felt timely and I was dying to learn the truth that the truth really was out there or if in the intervening years after having watched hundreds of hours of the show and two films I realized there wasn’t anything to the conspiracy story. It was a bust, so why watch them all again today?

Which makes me wonder. If part of the reason shows like The X-Files are still airing in syndication today is because of the stand-alone “monster of the week episodes,” where does that leave most modern series today that have no stand-alone episodes and are all series spanning stories?

Anyway, there’s not a lot on TV these days to watch. In addition to watching episodes of old sci-fi and horror series I’ve already seen before I’ve been watching films too. Well, “films” might be too fancy a word — I’ve been watching “movies” like Total Recall and Bright Lights Big City that I’ve just happened to catch on TV, recorded and watched later. I do that quite a bit.

Looking out the next few weeks TV-wise it doesn’t look like there’s much relief in sight. I’m still working my way through GLOW and should probably go back and finish up The Santa Clarita Diet and Lost in Space, but as for new shows in the month of July there’s really only the reboot of In Search Of on History that I’m looking forward to and perhaps Castle Rock on HULU. I mean, Castle Rock is a show based on the works of Stephen King that’s being executive produced by J. J. Abrams which sure sounds interesting to me. The big drawback is that it’s on HULU. Which I don’t get. And I’ve made a commitment to myself not to subscribe to any other streaming services just to checkout a show or two.

Even if this summer when there’s really nothing on TV and Star Trek: Discovery is practically calling to me on CBS All Access saying, “There are new episodes here!” makes it really hard to not pull out my credit card and subscribe for a month or two and binge watch some Starfleet action.

 

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