Did you love Alien? Or did you prefer Aliens? They are, of course, two films with a lot of similarities, including the fact Sigourney Weaver and the same HR Giger-created alien feature in both of them. Yet they also have quite different sensibilities: Alien is a haunted house movie in which a danger that the protagonists have to avoid might be round every corner; Aliens, on the other hand, is a war movie in which the dangers keep coming at the protagonists who have to do what they can to survive, largely by running away.
I point this out for a couple of reasons. The first is that Stranger Things is back. Netflix occasionally likes to dump shows like The OAinto our laptops with zero fanfare and so it was with Stranger Things, which popped into our ‘New on Netflix’ queues way back in July 2016 without so much as a kazoo to announce the fact. Indeed, all I managed to get to say about it before I went on holiday was:
I might do a longer review of this when I get back since although I paid almost minimal attention to it while it was in production and only reluctantly decided I’d give it a try this week for the sake of completeness, I’m so glad I did, as it’s an almost painfully beautiful, near-perfect recreation of the 80s, as well as 80s genre movies and TV, taking in everything from ET and Goonies through to The Thing and D.A.R.Y.L. I loved pretty much every second of it, from its title sequence and music through to the plot itself, which even though you can probably guess most of it just by extrapolating from other shows or anything by Stephen King, is delightful, with an innocence you just don’t get any more. One of my favourite TV things this year, give it a go, as it’s only eight episodes and Winona Ryder’s in it. A second season has already been commissioned.
Now we have Stranger Things 2 (not just ‘the second season’ of Stranger Things in case you’re wondering why you can’t spot it on your Netflix iOS app), which arrives with vastly more trumpeting following the success of Stranger Things. The show follows on a year after the original with the same cast as before and the same plots as before, too. Our heroes are still at middle school in Hawkins, Indiana (that’s probably somewhere near Eerie, I’m guessing). Will’s back, of course, as is the thing he coughed up at the end of Stranger Things. Psychokinetic lab experiment Eleven isn’t back, but she’s not too far away, it’s safe to say, given she’s front and centre in the poster and the trailer.
The hole in the world that leads to the parallel dimension known as the ‘Upside Down’ is back, too. That’s not good, mind, because although the ‘demogorgon’ of the first season is deceased, there’s a whole lot more on the other side of the Hawkins gateway to the Upside Down and it wants to come through. Worryingly, not only can Will see it, it can see him, too.
But it’s also the start of a new school year, and there are new arrivals in town, including a couple of uber-cool siblings from California, one of whom is called ‘Mad Max’ and soon draws the boys’ attention. Will our young heroes and heroines survive not just whatever comes out of the Upside Down for them but the social inequities of middle school life and first loves? And will they ever tell everyone what happened to poor old Babs?
Some spoilers (although I’ll do my best to avoid them) after this lovely trailer and the jump.
It would be tempting to think of S.W.A.T., CBS’s new mid-mid-season replacement drama, as the latest and last of the current trend in military shows that’s so far given us The Brave, SEAL Team and Valor. After all, watch any cop movie or TV show and you’l have quickly gleaned that S.W.A.T. (Special Weapons And Tactics) are a sort of militarised version of the US police who dress in black, have lots of guns and grenades, drive army-grade vehicles and burst into buildings to shoot criminals who also have lots of guns.
The truth is actually a little different, of course. The US and even Los Angeles aren’t so violent that they can justify having a bunch of dedicated armed ninja on staff, doing nothing but hanging around all day waiting to shoot things. So for the most part, SWAT officers are regular cops who receive specialised training but go about doing regular police work until they get the call – they usually carry their SWAT gear around in the backs of their cars, in fact.
Knowing this fact doesn’t actually make S.W.A.T. that much less mystifying, though. Even knowing that it’s an adaptation of a 1975 TV series that starred The Baron‘s Steve Forrest and Vegas‘s Robert Urich isn’t going to help you either, although it will help to explain the music played over the pilot episode’s final scene.
Because firstly, it’s actually not all that violent. More weirdly, though, rather than being a reboot of the original TV show, this new S.W.A.T. is really CBS’s answer to Marvel’s Luke Cage.
Every Friday, TMINE lets you know the latest announcements about when new imported TV shows will finally be arriving on UK screens – assuming anyone’s bought anything, of course
No acquisitions this week. Oh dear. But we do have one – yes, count them… it – premiere date.
The Orville (US: Fox; UK: Fox UK)
Premiere date: Thursday, December 14, 9pm
Ostensibly Seth MacFarlane’s parody of the Star Trek universe, in which he plays a mid-tier captain of a mid-tier vessel with a definitely mid-tier crew that includes his ex-wife (Adrianne Palicki). However, it’s not actually funny and every episode is actually just an an old Star Trek episode that MacFarlane wanted to cos-play in. If you like Star Trek, that may be just what you’re looking for, though, and given it’s just been renewed for a second season in the US, it’s safe to invest in it a little.
