Guess who wins.
Guess who wins.
BAFTA seems to be adding precisely events to its February line-up at the rate of precisely 1 event/week, so add to the previous two events (Matthew Hall on Writing and a look back at Manhunt) this new one, which is a preview of ITV’s The Widow. I should point out that when I posted a trailer for it on Tuesday, I billed it as Amazon’s The Widow – it’s actually a co-production between ITV and Amazon and will air here on ITV, but the trailer (which you can see below as well) is Amazon’s for overseas audiences.
A preview of the new ITV drama followed by a Q&A with the creative team.
From BAFTA nominated screenwriters Harry & Jack Williams (Liar, The Missing), The Widow tells the story of Georgia Wells (Kate Beckinsale) who has her life turned upside-down with a phone-call in the middle of the night. Her husband of over 10 years, Will, has been reported dead after a plane crash in the Congolese jungle.
Three years later, with her old life now a thing of the past, Georgia learns something shocking. Something that will take her to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, looking to uncover the truth about his disappearance.
The eight-part series is a Two Brothers Production directed by Sam Donovan (Humans, Liar) and Olly Blackburn (Donkey Punch, Glue). With Kate Beckinsale playing the lead role, key cast also includes Alex Kingston (ER, Doctor Who), Charles Dance (Game of Thrones, Godzilla), Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Trapped, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald) and Louise Brealey (Sherlock, Clique).
Sometimes, two TV shows turn up at the same time and you wonder why. Are the networks stealing from each other? Are they tying into a trend? Or is it simply coincidence?
In the case of YouTube Premium’s Origin and Syfy (US)’s Nightflyers, I’m going to assume that it’s just coincidence that they’ve turned up within the space of a fortnight of each other. I mean two expensive-looking sci-fi/horror shows set on spaceships that slowly see their international, largely British casts slashed away by something gruesome? That’s not a trend. And why would you steal that idea?
Equally, Nightflyers is based on a novella written by George RR Martin (Beauty and the Beast, Game of Thrones) in 1981 and Origin is essentially Paul WS Anderson ripping off his own Event Horizon and Alien Vs Predator, so it’s not like there’s any real inter-show plagiarism going on. But there’s still a lot more in common than I’ve already mentioned, suggesting either a paucity of ideas in the world or a general consensus we’re heading towards a future dystopian nightmare.
Nightflyers is a generally superior affair compared to Origin that sees the world 50-odd years from now generally going to pot thanks to disease outbreaks and the like. Fortunately, there are spaceships and, equally interestingly, aliens, who might be able to help save us from self-destruction. At least, we think there are aliens, since a spaceship has popped into our solar system. However, despite our bombarding it with signals and probes from afar, the aliens haven’t said so much as a dicky bird in response and are merrily getting on with their lives instead.
Eoin Macken (Merlin, The Night Shift) therefore suggests sending a spaceship off to meet them, the only one within range and ready being the Nightflyer. He populates it with various futuristic sci-fi people: Jodie Turner-Smith (The Last Ship), who’s been genetically engineered for space travel; Maya Eshet, who communicates with the ship’s computer cybernetically; xenobiologist Angus Sampson (Shut Eye) and psychologist Gretchen Mol (Life on Mars, Chance).
However, there’s already a ship’s crew, including engineer Brían F. O’Byrne (The Last Ship, The Magicians, Brotherhood) and captain David Ajala (Falling Water), who for reasons best known to himself only appears as a hologram. Said crew isn’t too chuffed by the new arrivals and having their mission changed; they’re even less chuffed by having a “L-1 Teke” on board (EastEnders‘s Sam Strike) – a telepath who can make you think whatever he wants you to think, whether you like it or not, unless Mol administers him some suppressing drugs. But since the alien spaceship is giving off TK energy, it seems a good idea to take along someone who might be able to communicate with them.
Well, seemed, anyway. Because its not long after Strike turns up that everyone starts having nasty visions. And seeing as the first episode starts with a flashforward to Mol warning no one to rescue the Nightflyer and then slashing her throat, it seems it’s all going to go pear-shaped at some point. But why?
Continue reading “Review: Nightflyers 1×1 (US: Syfy; UK: Netflix)”
© 2018 Rob Buckley