Canadian TV

Review: Aftermath 1×1 (Canada: Space; UK: 5*)

4 October 2016 Rob Buckley 1 Comment


In Canada: Tuesdays, 10e/7p, Space
In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, 5*. Starts tonight

Sometimes, this year has felt like the End of Days. So many famous people dying, Brexit, Turkish coups, Aleppo. The list goes on and we haven’t even reached the Trump White House yet. Or the raining fish. Or the flying zombies.

Those latter two are coming soon, though, along with meteors, earthquakes and all manner of other disasters, according to Space’s Aftermath. It stars real-life couple Anne Heche (Save Me, Hung) and James Tupper (Mercy), who met back in Men In Trees, as a couple with three kids who have to somehow survive the apocalypse. Heche’s former USAF, while Tupper is a professor of old things, the former therefore being handy at shooting the ‘skinwalkers’ that rise up, Tupper useful for explaining that all the earthquakes have freed these ancient creatures trapped under the Earth who need to possess people to interact with the world. Mayan prophecies are in there somewhere, too, and skinwalkers aren’t the only things coming their way, either.

When skinwalkers drive the family out of their house, Tupper and Heche have to go on a road trip to find their errant elder daughter, but soon discover that that’s easier said than done when civilisation is falling apart.

The trouble with Aftermath is that it’s diabolically, laughably bad. It’s stupid, cheaply made and badly directed. Skinwalkers (aka ‘fever heads’) can fly – badly. Giant meteors that should destroy everything for a good 10km only knock out a few city blocks. Civilisation may be collapsing but mobile phone networks are doing just fine. And Tupper and Heche aren’t so much terrified as ‘Huh. The end of the world? Flying zombies? Watcha gonna do, hey? Pass me the shotgun.’

I had to turn the programme off after a quarter of an hour to let the effects of the preposterous rubbish leave my system before I could continue with the rest of it. Don’t bother trying even that much of it.

The CW’s superhero fight club is back

4 October 2016 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Last year, The CW put together a nice little team-up trailer to show off its roster of superhero characters in a make-believe training ‘fight club’. Of course, that was back when the network had a mere two superhero shows to its name: Arrow and The Flash. Can you believe it was ever so superhero-poor?

Now, though, it’s not only launched DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, it’s picked up CBS’s Supergirl and made it its own. Yep, we’re up to four shows – one every weekday night, except for the desert wasteland that is Friday. That seems much more sensible, doesn’t it?

To show off the new characters, as well as the old, here’s the sequel to that trailer: Fight Club 2.0. It’s not as much fun as the original and it goes on way too long, but it’s clearly got a bigger budget and it’s nice to see nerdy Supergirl and Flash sparking off each other again.

What have you been watching? Including Ash vs Evil Dead, Impastor and The Fall

3 October 2016 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

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 possible that Peak TV peaked last week, given how many more new shows launched, and there’s a few more coming our way this week, too. Last week, I (p)reviewed:

I also passed a third-episode verdict on Quarry (US: Cinemax; UK: Sky Atlantic).

On top of that, later this week, I’ll pretty definitely (well, you know me…) be reviewing:

  • Westworld (US: HBO; UK: Sky Atlantic)
  • Graves (US: Epix)
  • Aftermath (US: Syfy; UK: 5*)
  • Falling Water (US: USA)
  • Deep Water (Australia: SBS; UK: BBC Four)
  • Hyde & Seek (Australia: Nine)
  • Luke Cage (Netflix).

I’ll also definitely be passing third- and fourth-episode verdicts on:

…probably on:

…maybe on:

…and quite improbably on:

Internet streaming services being a little elusive at times in terms of telling you what they’re showing, if I’ve the time (!), I might try to play catch up with Easy (Netflix) and Start Up (Crackle), too, but I suspect they’ll get pushed to next week again. For starters, there’s bound to be other new shows this week that I’ve missed, too – I’m pretty sure Hayley Atwell’s new ABC show Conviction is on the way, but I’m too lazy to check the schedule.

Before all that, though, after the jump, reviews of the latest episodes of Designated Survivor, The Exorcist, Halt and Catch Fire, Lethal Weapon, Notorious, Pitch, Speechless, This is Us and You’re The Worst – if you do a quick bit of correlation with the list of shows above, you’ll probably be able to guess which ones I’m dropping. We also have the return of Ash vs Evil Dead, Impastor and The Fall to entertain us. 

Did I mention I watched a lot of tele this week? Because I did.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Ash vs Evil Dead, Impastor and The Fall”

Events

Intu Bromley really, really likes HG Wells now

3 October 2016 Rob Buckley Post a comment

In June, my current home town of Bromley decided it was going to start celebrating HG Wells again, after getting rid of the mural to him that used to be here the best part of a decade ago. Well, I say Bromley but it’s actually huge corporate giant Intu, which took over the Glades shopping centre a few years ago and renamed it Intu Bromley. 

Since then, things have progressed. The Lego Time Machine has now been given a permanent home in a glass case at the foot of the ground floor escalators. 

And this weekend, in a probably temporary display, we got this:

The Intu Bromley HG Wells exhibition

HG Wells Time Machine

HG Wells war machine

So well done to the greedy giant corporate for doing what the council arguably should be doing. At least this weekend. I imagine it’ll be Santa’s Grotto  next week.