Surprisingly decent reboot of the classic 80s private detective series remains faithful to the original while making it more diverse. In a world of cop and medical procedurals, a private investigator procedural also feels surprisingly fresh. The first episode is a bit too Fast and Furious for its own good, but fortunately, it settles down soon afterwards to become a solid piece of light fun.
Netflix original created by and starring Idris Elba. Charlie (Elba), a struggling DJ and eternal bachelor is given a final chance at success when he reluctantly becomes a manny to his famous best friend’s problem-child daughter. Also stars Piper Perabo, and features JJ Feild, Angela Griffin, Guz Khan, Jocelyn Jee Esein, Jade Anouka, Cameron King and Dustin Demri-Burns.
It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week
Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas! Yes, just before TMINE goes off on its week-and-a-half-long Christmas break, I thought I’d leave you with one final present – a second WHYBW! Yes, it’s a Christmas miracle.
This week’s reviews
There was a decent release of new boxsets this week, but season 3 of Travelers was the only thing I managed to both watch and review, as I was away at a wedding last weekend. I do hope to catch up with season 2 of 4 Blocks, the rest of Plan Cœurand a few other shows at some point, but I’m not 100% sure that’ll be over the Christmas break, seeing as I’m not a member of the Royle Family. But we’ll see.
There’s also some good stuff out today on Netflix, including TheProtector, so I might end up watching something surprising. And Hulu’s just boxsetted the entire second season of Marvel’s Runaways, so I’ll probably watch at least a few episodes of that before we’re reunited in 2019.
Plus Syfy (US) has just released a preview of the first episode of Deadly Class, so I’ll have that to talk about when I get back. It’s US only, but it’s here, if you want to watch it, too, and can:
The Timeless finale
New shows
But that doesn’t mean I’ve watched nothing else but Travelers. YouTube Premium’s Chicago ILL came out recently and I’ll be talking about that after the jump. Oddly, this year, US TV has been taking a leaf out of UK TV’s book and has given us some Christmas specials. Timeless came back for a feature-length conclusion and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina also gave us a suitably festive tale of cannibalism and ritual sacrifice for the solstice. Praise Satan. We can talk about that after the jump, too.
And the regulars… sorry, regular…
Most shows have already had their mid-season finales, but there are a few stragglers left. Frustratingly, Titans‘s final episode is tonight, so that’ll have to wait until 2019 before I talk about the final arrival of Batman to the programme. That means, I’ll be talking about Happy Together… and that’s it. Huh.
And no, I’ve still not watched the final two episodes of Doctor Who.
I foresee a future where ultimately, only Netflix makes TV. All TV you want to watch will be on Netflix and that will be the only TV you get to watch.
How can we stop this? More importantly, should we stop this or is the alternative future so much worse?
Gosh, what a smooth segue into this review of season 3 of Travelers. You barely noticed the bump, did you?
When Travelers started, it was a surprisingly decent, low-key Canadian series on that country’s Showcase channel. Yes, it had some funding from Netflix, but as the show’s star and producer Eric McCormack (Will & Grace) pointed out when interviewed at the time, it was still a show that was proudly Canadian and “Canadian first”. Sure, the rest of the world would get to watch it on Netflix sooner or later, but everyone in Canada would get the chance to watch it first.
However, here we are hitting season 3 and it’s now Netflix-only. No initial Canadian airing first any more. Netflix has assimilated Travelers and made it a true original, rather than a ‘Netflix Original’.
Soon, all TV will be like this. But should this future be avoided? Is season 3 of Travelers any different or worse from the previous two seasons?
Well traveled
Season 3 of Travelers picks up where the previous season left off, more or less. There’s a bit of a time jump but not a huge one and the gaps are filled in pretty quickly.
If you recall, when last we left Travelers, our gang of time travellers had been outed by the very first of their number, Traveler 001: they had been forced to confess to camera that their consciousnesses had been sent back in time by an AI called ‘The Director’ to replace those of present day people who were about to die, in order to prevent the terrible future they’d all come from. Yes, they themselves were about to do what they’d tried to avoid for two seasons and expose their mission to the world – and their new, present-day loved ones. What would happen next, could they stop it and how would it affect their mission? And how would being on Netflix affect the storytelling?
