It’s “What have you been watching?”, your chance to recommend to fellow TMINE readers anything you’ve been watching this week
It only took about a week before WHYBW missed its scheduled slot, but given how much new stuff has recently arrived and how much old stuff has returned to Tuesdays and Wednesdays, please forgive me. Still, I was wondering what I was going to do on Thursdays…
Please peruse them at your leisure, whether you intend to watch the shows or not.
ABC’s Schooled
New shows
Coming up in the next week, I’ll be reviewing The CW’s Roswell reboot, Roswell, New Mexico. Season two of The Punisher will be hitting Netflix this Friday, so I’ll undoubtedly be watching that. And if anything else pops up I’ll review that, too, if I can.
After the jump, though, despite my already extensive viewing schedule, there’ll be reviews of two other new shows I managed to catch: Schooled (US: ABC) and Fam (US: CBS). Gosh, mid-season replacements that are also sitcoms. Cos they’re always funny, hey?
I’ll also be talking about series five of Cuckoo (UK: BBC Three), which I know isn’t a new show and it’s not even a show new to me, but I think it’s probably the first time I’ll have talked about it on the blog.
The regulars
Although Counterpart decided to take a break this Sunday, a whole bunch of other shows decided to return this week. That means that after the jump, there’ll be the season (and probably series) finale of the one remaining regular, HappyTogether, as well as new episodes of returning regulars Magnum P.I., Corporate and True Detective. Joining them will be the second episodes of both Cavendish and Project Blue Book.
And for reasons that will become clear, I’ll also be talking about every episode of The Orville that’s aired since I gave up on it after its third episode.
In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, Fox
In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, Fox UK
Remember the days when illnesses on TV simply made people sick? Happy times, huh? Now, they simply kill huge chunks of the Earth’s population (The Last Ship), turn huge chunks of the Earth’s population into zombies (The Walking Dead), turn huge chunks of the Earth’s population into vampires (The Strain) or turn a few people into weird immortals who want to kill everyone else (Helix).
Now we have The Passage, in which we have a virus that turns a few people into weird, immortal, definitely-not-vampires who want to kill everyone else. There’s new, hey?
Passing bad
It starts off with good scientist Henry Ian Cusick (Lost, The 100) heading off to South America to investigate a supposed 250-year-old man, hoping to find out the secret of his longevity. Unfortunately, it turns out that the secret is he’s a vampire – don’t say vampire – and he ends up biting Cusick’s fellow scientist Jamie McShane (Bosch, Bloodline). McShane rapidly heals and equally rapidly becomes a bit odd, so he’s shipped back home and locked up and experimented upon to see if the secret of his vampirism – don’t say vampire – can be replicated and maybe made less ‘vampirey’ (don’t say vampire).
After experimenting a lot on handy death-row prisoners, the scientists get their formula to the point that the vampires – don’t – still look human, even if they do have to drink blood from time to time. But that’s still not good enough and the scientists reckon that the problem is all their test subjects are too old. Stick the secret formula into a child and they might have a way of curing all diseases and death, all without the need to constantly crack open someone’s vein for some top O-.
When a new avian flu pandemic for which there’s no vaccine flares up in East Asia, morality about experimenting on kids quickly gets thrown aside as the Americans realise it might infect Americans. So they pick a test orphan (Saniyya Sidney) and dispatch ex-special forces soldier and Saved By the Bell star Mark-Paul Gosselaar to bring her in.
Unfortunately for them, he lost his own child three years previously and soon develops a bond with the girl. Despite not knowing exactly what they’re up to, he quickly decides his bosses are evil and decides to ignore his orders and go on the run.
Which is probably just as well, because the new creatures of the day, not the night, definitely not the night, might also have psychic powers and are filling people’s dreams with thoughts – thoughts that might include letting them out and infecting the human race with the new engineered strain of the disease.
However, given we’re told by Sidney in voiceover at the beginning that “this is how the world ends”, I wouldn’t put all my money on Gosselaar succeeding in his quest, if I were you.
