In the US: Mondays, 10/9c, A&E

Psycho was of course Alfred (and Alma) Hitchock's greatest triumph, a 1960 horror masterpiece that has become embedded in popular culture. It sees Janet Leigh steal money from employer and run away with the swag. Unfortunately, along the way she stops at 'the Bates Motel', where despite being a big star of the time, she's murdered in an iconic shower scene by the mother of the motel's owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) - it's a trick Scream repeated several decades later.  

Eventually (spoiler alert), it's discovered that the disturbed, schizoid Bates has been murdering women in the motel while dressed as his mother, believing that his actually deceased mother wouldn't like his being sexually attracted to the women in question. I say spoiler alert, but pretty much everyone knows this much already. 

So powerful a movie is it that as well as the Bates Motel being preserved by the studios, there were two sequels made in the 80s, with Perkins reprising his role as Bates.

There's even been a movie this year about its making. It's got Scarlett Johansson in it. You should watch it.

Now along comes Bates Motel, a prequel starring the marvellous award-winning actress-director Vera Farmiga (returning to TV nine years almost to the day since my beloved Touching Evil debuted) as the still-living Mrs Bates and Freddie Highmore (Charlie Bucket from the Tim Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) as the still-teenage Norman. It attempts to explore what could have made Norman into such a fruit-cake in his later years.

What's interesting is that the show attempts to emulate Psycho with a completely different twist shortly after the beginning of the first episode, one I really didn't see coming. And just like the original, it takes about half an hour before anything at all happens, so you've really got to stick with it to get to the good stuff.

And so far, do we have an explanation for Norman's craziness? We do. And, for the sake of avoiding all spoilers until after the jump, I'll just say it rhymes with 'anger'. Here's a trailer that does, unfortunately, spoil the twist.

Continue reading "Review: Bates Motel (A&E) 1x1"

Read other posts about: Lost, Scarlett Johansson

In the US: Tuesdays, 9pm ET/8pm CT, The CW
In the UK: Mysteriously acquired by an unnamed network

Cults are really big right now on TV. The Following is on Fox and now we have Cult on The CW. Intriguingly, both shows were thought up years ago, The Following as the script for Scream 3 and Cult as a show for the now-defunct predecessor to The CW, The WB.

The two shows both have good pedigrees. The Following comes from long-time writer Kevin Williamson (Dawson's Creek and The Vampire Diaries) but Cult comes from the even older pen of Rockne S O'Bannon, who started out on The (New) Twilight Zone, before going on to create Farscape, Alien Nation and seaQuest DSV.

So perhaps it's appropriate that Cult is a trickier, more knowing beast than The Following. The Following, of course, has all kinds of degrees of Scream-esque meta, but Cult takes things a step further. It begins seemingly as a somewhat stupid, tacky The CW show in which a young blonde cop, Kelly Collins, (Alona Tal) and an older, fatter, blacker cop have to investigate the cult run by Billy Grimm (Robert Knepper) to which Collins used to belong.

But just as they find somewhat buried in a wall and he utters the somewhat ludicrous and unfathomable "'Well hey. These things just snap right off," we discover we've been watching a TV show within a TV show. Collins is really actress Marti Gerritsen and Knepper is actor Roger Reeves and they star in The CW's Cult.

With me so far? Good. Anyway, so far, so Pulaski/30 Rock. But rather than being a spoof or send up of the making of a TV show, Cult is a far darker creation that focuses on the nature of cult television and its fans. This Cult has fans and it's created web sites and all kinds of other clues for them to seek out to discover more about the show. Except perhaps it's not all fiction. Because when one fan seems to work it all out, he disappears. When his journalist brother Jeff Dean Sefton (Matthew Davis) comes looking for him, he starts to discover the same messages in the show that his brother did, and with the help of a researcher on the show, Skye Yarrow (Jessica Lucas), they begin to investigate Cult, to see if they can find out what's really going on and what's happened to his brother.

Here's a trailer that gives away all the good bits from the first episode.

Continue reading "Review: Cult 1x1 (The CW)"

Read other posts about: 30 Rock, Lost

Time for another one of those College Humor fake 16-bit video games based on TV shows. This time, it's Lost that's getting a go.

Read other posts about: Lost