Following on from USA’s mere two shows, here are NBC’s Upfront 2016 reveals. Now NBC has rather a lot of new shows on the way:
Taken (prequel to the Liam Neeson movie franchise)
Chicago Justice (lawyer spin-off of NBC’s ‘Chicago’ TV franchise)
Emerald City (‘reimagining’ of the Wizard of Oz)
The Blacklist: Redemption (spin-off from NBC’s The Blacklist)
Midnight, Texas (adaptation of Charlaine Harris’ book series)
Great News (TV producer and intern mum comedy)
Powerless (DC Comics insurance workplace comedy)
Trial & Error (mockumentary about a small town murder trial)
Marlon (co-parenting comedy based on Marlon Wayans’ childhood)
However, they’re all mid-season replacements so won’t be hitting our screens (if at all) until 2017. So that means we only have three shows to look at today: Timeless, The Good Place and This is Us.
This week’s ‘Containment moment‘ is prosaically and quite dully a quote from the Bible. Of course, it’s a truncated quote since firstly, Jesus does rattle on quite a long list of instructions to his apostles at this point and secondly, in context, it’s all quite specific:
1 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.
2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4 Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy,[a] drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.
9 “Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts— 10 no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep. 11 Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave. 12 As you enter the home, give it your greeting. 13 If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. 14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. 15 Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.
16 “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. 17 Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. 18 On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. 19 But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, 20 for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
You’d have thought Containment of all shows would have kept in the bit about driving out impure spirits and healing ‘every disease and sickness’, wouldn’t you, though? He sounds a bit vengeful and Old Testament at this point, mind.
It’s that time of year again – the ‘upfronts’. It’s when all the US networks reveal to advertisers the new shows that are going to be hitting the TV screens sometime from September 2016 through to nowish 2017. However, this isn’t the same as the international screenings, where buyers from TV networks around the world turn up to see what they’d like to acquire, so we won’t know what will be heading our way for quite some time.
First up, because it only has two shows and I’m lazy, is the USA Network. That’s no different from last year, where USA only gave us Mr Robot and Complications; what is different is that we’ll actually have to wait a few months to watch the new shows this year, rather than one month, since these will be airing at some mysterious undisclosed point in the 2016-2017 cycle. Or even later than that, since Complications was actually first shown in the 2014 Upfronts – it took a whole year to emerge.
This year, in keeping with USA’s return to dark and moody in the past couple of years, we’ve got Shooter and Falling Water. Shooter is an adaptation of the Mark Wahlberg movie that stars the slightly more implausible Ryan Phillippe (Secrets and Lies) as an an expert marksman living in exile who is coaxed back into action after learning of a plot to kill the president. I quite liked the movie, although it didn’t exactly push the IQometer, and it doesn’t look like they’ve changed the plot much, beyond adding Omar Epps (House, Resurrection) to the mix as the Fugitive-esque FBI agent who’s chasing after Phillippe, but presumably begins to believe he’s innocent.
Falling Water, meanwhile, looks a bit more interesting, with three unrelated people (David Ajala, Will Yun Lee and Lizzie Brocheré) slowly realising that they are dreaming separate parts of a single common dream. Each of them is on a personal quest – one is searching for his missing girlfriend, one is searching for a lost child, one is looking to cure his catatonic mother – and the clues in their collective dream come to guide them. However, the visions found in their dream might also hold the key to the fate of the world. Hmm.
Visually, while there’s a hint of Inception in there, as well as (oddly enough) Jacob’s Ladder, the most obvious similarities are with Dreamscape. Either way, hopefully it’ll be more like those than like Sense8.
It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.
The usual “TMINE recommends” page features links to reviews of all the shows I’ve ever recommended, and there’s also the Reviews A-Z, for when you want to check more or less anything I’ve reviewed ever.
It’s been another quiet week for new TV, as the various networks around the world let their older shows run their course, so they can leave the field clear for the newbies to wow us in just a week or two. That doesn’t mean a few shows haven’t tried to jump the gun and show us what they’ve got ahead of the others. I’ve already reviewed Raising Expectations(Canada: Family), but over in the US, there’s also been Submission on Showtime (so inevitably will be coming to Sky Atlantic at some point). Why haven’t I reviewed it yet? Well, here’s the plot synopsis:
Beautiful but unfulfilled Ashley has her eyes opened to the tantalizing possibilities of BDSM when she discovers the popular erotic novel SLAVE by Nolan Keats. But her fascination with the mysterious Mr. Keats leads her into a sexy but dangerous love triangle, and tests the boundaries of her own sexual limitations. Part romantic drama, part mystery, this tale of seduction, obsession and sexual power from acclaimed adult writer/director Jacky St. James will leave you breathless and begging for more.
Yep, it’s lady porn. You can rely on Showtime, can’t you?
But I have watched one other new show:
Wolf Creek (Australia: Stan) Based on hit Australian horror franchise of the same name and with John Jarratt reprising his role as outback serial killer Mick Taylor, Wolf Creek is a pretty effective but overly gory thriller in which the poorly accented Lucy Fry (11.22.63) plays an American teenager on holiday with her family in Australia, who are trying to help her get over her drug addiction. Unfortunately, pre-credits they bump into Jarratt, who slaughters everyone except Fry, who then goes on a quest to bring Jarratt to justice, helped and hindered along the way by cop Dustin Clare (Spartacus).
Never having watched the movies and not being a huge fan of horror, I don’t know how much the series has in common with the originals. For the most part, it plays like a standard crime drama and it’s nice to have the reversal of the ‘last girl’ becoming the one doing the chasing. But whenever Jarratt shows up, it becomes something else almost comedic at times, part mockery of the Crocodile Dundee stereotype that people hold of Australians and Outback denizens in particular, part embracing of that stereotype, almost in the style of Ronnie Johns’ Chopper impression, with Jarratt hacking to death anyone who needs to harden the fuck up, particularly anyone who does yoga.
Horror ain’t my scene and the first five minutes of chainsaw and machete misery almost made me want to switch off. But when the action is focused on Fry and her quest, it’s actually pretty good. Not for me, might be for you.
After the jump, the dwindling regulars: 12 Monkeys, The Americans, Arrow, Banshee, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash, Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley and The Tunnel (Tunnel). When will something new be along to join them, I wonder?
