Year: 2016

Fox’s upfronts 2016-7 – a rundown and clips from the new shows

17 May 2016 Rob Buckley 11 Comments

If you play the fabulous game that is ‘media word association’ and say ‘Fox’, invariably the associated word everyone comes up with is ‘News’. However, it’s worth remembering that ’20th Century’ is an equally valid response.

So that’s why no one should be too surprised that Fox’s Upfronts 2016 (you can see elsewhere what NBC and USA are up to this year) is chock full of ‘synergy’ with Fox’s established ‘brands’. In other words, spin-offs, adaptations and remakes of things you’ve already seen and have heard about.

Brace yourself then because, after the jump, on top of the almost original sounding Making History, The Mick, Son of Zorn, Shots Fired, APB and Pitch, we also have another music drama from Empire‘s Lee Daniels (Star), an ‘event remake’ of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, sequels to Prison Break and 24, and TV series adaptations of Lethal Weapon and… wait for it… The Exorcist.

The power of Christ will not compel you to watch that last one.

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NBC’s upfronts 2016-7 – a rundown and clips from the new shows – Timeless, The Good Place and This Is Us

17 May 2016 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

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.

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US TV

This week’s Containment moment: Matthew 10:16

17 May 2016 Rob Buckley Post a comment

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.

USA’s upfronts 2016-7 – a rundown and clips from the new shows – Shooter and Falling Water

17 May 2016 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

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.