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Haven’t seen it yet, but it seemed like the kind of show that’d be fine as a one-off.

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Todd

Christian wrote:

Haven’t seen it yet, but it seemed like the kind of show that’d be fine as a one-off.

Unfortunately, it does end on a bit of a cliffhanger.

Indeed it does. Netflix are idiots.

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Todd

That’s pretty moch every netfilx show apart from Sandman that I watched on netfilx cancelled after one season.
And I’m not fussed about Sandman.
Time drop them.

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Ben, Todd

It’s just so dumb to cancel these shows so early, because it actively disincentives people from watching them and stops shows from gradually building an audience through word of mouth. I was still halfway through the first season of Kaos and enjoying it, but now likely won’t bother finishing it in light of this news.

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Martin Smith, lorcan_nagle, Todd, Ben

Todd wrote:

Unfortunately, it does end on a bit of a cliffhanger.

Ah crap.

I’m still going to see it when I re-activate my Netflix account for a bit, but honestly at this point, it’s like Dave says – Netflix aren’t building any shows that I am particularly interested in anymore, so the time period when I do have a Netflix account grow shorter and shorter. I’ll have a month to watch Kaos and… well, right now I wouldn’t even know what else to watch there. Finish Baby Reindeer, I suppose.

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lorcan_nagle, Ben

The other aspect to this is Rings of Power. First series was OK, not great, but the second series was far stronger, in large part due to the pieces in place from the first series.

Kaos was heading in the same direction, but Netflix lost their nerve and hit the cancel button

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lorcan_nagle, Todd

Dave wrote:

It’s just so dumb to cancel these shows so early, because it actively disincentives people from watching them and stops shows from gradually building an audience through word of mouth. I was still halfway through the first season of Kaos and enjoying it, but now likely won’t bother finishing it in light of this news.

And the irony is that some of the biggest attractions on streaming services are old network series with 20+ episodes per season and ran for 5+ seasons. An old show may have had literally hundreds of episodes.

Typically, with streamers, their seasons are around 7-10 episodes and if they are fortunate, may last 3 seasons. Then you throw in the wait time between seasons. It may be two years or more between seasons, and some of those shows aren’t even FX heavy spectacles. But that all assumes the show goes past one season.

When you have issues like that, it can make it difficult to want to try any new series on a streamer.

Dave wrote:

It’s just so dumb to cancel these shows so early, because it actively disincentives people from watching them and stops shows from gradually building an audience through word of mouth. I was still halfway through the first season of Kaos and enjoying it, but now likely won’t bother finishing it in light of this news.

It’s incredible that they’ve gone from being the place that would recommission network shows to give them an ending to being a turbo-charged version of the US TV industry that instantly kills shows before most people have had chance to watch them.

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lorcan_nagle

[Sean Robinson]

Been seeing commercials for a TV show called Hysteria – Wiki and Bruce Campbell is in it (as Chief Dandridge) as well as Garret Dillahunt (as The Reverend), and Julie Bowen.

I’ll get it weekly starting next week, but all 8 episodes were released on Peacock in the U.S. on Oct. 18th.
Have no idea if it’s any good or not, but I’ll give it a try.

Hysteria! is an American horror-thriller[1] television series created by Matthew Scott Kane.

Set during the Satanic panic of the 1980s, a beloved varsity quarterback’s disappearance causes whispers of occult activity and Satanic influence throughout the town. Dylan Campbell, Jordy, and Spud, a trio of outcasts in a struggling heavy metal band called Dethkrunch, decide to capitalize on the town’s sudden interest in the occult by rebranding themselves as a Satanic metal band, which leads to them becoming the targets of the town’s witch hunt.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 3 weeks ago by Sean Robinson.

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Uncle Retrospective, Martin Smith

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Uncle Retrospective

This really sucks. I hope the conclusion is satisfying.

‘Good Omens’ To End With One 90-Minute Episode As Neil Gaiman Exits Following Sexual Assault Allegations

Good Omens is getting a final send-off, albeit a truncated one.

The Amazon fantasy drama will end with one 90-minute episode in lieu of a full third season with creator Neil Gaiman exiting after allegations were made against him by a slew of women.

Michael Sheen and David Tennant, play the angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley, respectively, will return for the one-off television movie, which will begin shooting in early 2025 in Scotland, after pre-production was paused due to the allegations.

Gaiman contributed to the writing of the series finale but will not be working on the production and his production company the Blank Corporation is no longer involved. A new writer is expected to finish up the work, although insiders said that deal has not been closed.

This comes after Tortoise Media released a podcast that chronicled accounts of two women, with whom he was in consensual relationships, who accused him of sexual assault. Another two have since come forward. Gaiman denies the allegation.

Deadline revealed last month that Gaiman offered to step back so that Good Omens would be able to finish its story.

Sheen plays Aziraphale, a fussy angel and rare-book dealer, while Tennant plays the fast-living demon Crowley. Jon Hamm, Miranda Richardson and Frances McDormand also star. It is based on Terry Pratchett’s 1990 novel.

The series was renewed for its third and final season last year. Gaiman had served as writer, showrunner and exec producer. He is the latest high-profile member of the crew to leave the show after co-showrunner Douglas Mackinnon, who also served as a director and exec producer left after the first two seasons.

In August, Sheen said that he was “excited” for what’s in store for the show and said that “season three will be a satisfying experience for everyone”.

Rob Wilkins of Narrativia, representing Terry Pratchett’s estate, as well as BBC Studios Productions’ head of comedy Josh Cole will executive produce. The new season is produced by Amazon MGM Studios, BBC Studios Productions and Narrativia.

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lorcan_nagle

At least there will be some kind of conclusion and they’re not pulling a Netflix.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

Yeah, this is probably the best-case scenario. Hope they’ll make a good last episode, then.

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Todd

‘Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent’ Lands A (Rather Limited…) UK Release

Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent‘, the Canadian spin-off to the L&O franchise has landed a UK home, albeit a somewhat limited release, as it’s airing on “LG Channels” which are only available on LG TVs.

The drama is a gripping psychological thriller woven into a complex criminal investigation, centring on a team of detectives from the Specialized Criminal Investigations Unit, an elite squad in the fictional Toronto Police Department. Tasked with uncovering high-profile homicides and exposing corruption, these detectives navigate the dark underbelly of metropolitan Toronto.

Based on the classic series created by Dick Wolf for Universal Television, ‘Law and Order Toronto: Criminal Intent’ showcases original Canadian stories written and produced by, and starring Canadians. The series stars Aden Young (Rectify) as Detective Sergeant Henry Graff, Kathleen Munroe (FBI) as Detective Sergeant Frankie Bateman, K. C. Collins (Lost Girl, Saving Hope) as Deputy Crown Attorney Theo Forrester, and Karen Robinson (Schitt’s Creek, Star Trek: Discovery) as Inspector Vivienne Holness. The recurring cast includes Nicola Correia-Damude as Dr. Lucy Da Silva, Araya Mengesha as Mark Yohannes, and Tammy Isbell as Detective Alice Riley.

When the series premiered in its native Canada on Citytv earlier this year, it quickly became the number one prime-time drama of 2024, attracting 1.1 million views on the first episode. Citytv renewed the show for seasons two and three, both of which are set to air in Canada in 2025.

As I mentioned at the top of the article, the UK release is somewhat limited at the moment, as LG has brought the exclusive rights for its “LG Channels” which come bundled on all LG TVs running LG’s latest webOS software (that’s mainly 2019 LG Smart TV models onwards running webOS version 4.5 and up.) If you have a compatible TV, you can find this service by clicking HOME on the remote control, navigating to SETTINGS, and then selecting LG CHANNELS.

Weird.

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Sean Robinson, Todd

Now there’s a stupid precedent to set – TV brand exclusive channels.

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Sean Robinson

Ben wrote:

Now there’s a stupid precedent to set – TV brand exclusive channels.

Samsung has something similar:

Samsung TV Plus
Offers exclusive, owned and operated (O&O) channels, including:
Absolute Reality by WE tv: A channel featuring real moments, stories, and drama
Ride or Drive: An auto-focused channel
Samsung Showcase: A channel featuring concerts, events, and special programming

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Todd

‘Dune: Prophecy’ Review: HBO’s Somber ‘House of the Dragon’-Style Prequel Could Use a Bit More Spice – Hollywood Reporter

Emily Watson, Olivia Williams and Mark Strong lead the cast of a sci-fi drama set over 10,000 years before the events of the Denis Villeneuve-directed movies.

When it premieres on HBO Sunday, Nov. 17, Dune: Prophecy will take the place of The Penguin on the schedule. It’ll also continue the premium cable giant’s recent run of odd corporate integration, in which it takes blockbuster Warner Bros. film franchises and retrofits them as new television versions of popular HBO series.

Just as the creative team behind The Penguin looked at the opportunity to do a standalone show focused on Colin Farrell’s waddling crime lord and delivered The Sopranos with more latex, the developers of Dune: Prophecy apparently looked at the opportunity to do a prequel tied to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and delivered House of the Dragon with (a very few) sandworms in place of (an awful lot of) dragons.

I’m not saying that when HBO’s Harry Potter series finally emerges from its endless gestation, it will be a stealth reboot of Arli$$. But I’m not not saying that.

Excessive familiarity aside, The Penguin wasn’t bad, with Cristin Milioti’s performance serving as its primary draw. Nothing in Dune: Prophecy rises to a Miliotian (trademark pending) level of greatness, and the show fails to live up to most of what is so technically astonishing about the Villeneuve films. But as an overstuffed meditation on the struggles of female agency in a patriarchal society — one in which names like “Harkonnen” and “Atreides” are occasionally tossed around to pander to an imagined base — it offers moments of handsomely produced, morally murky scheming and backstabbing.

Adapted by Diane Ademu-John and Alison Schapker, Dune: Prophecy is ostensibly an elaborate origin story for the Bene Gesserit, the franchise’s influential sisterhood, though it’s only somewhat based on the novel Sisterhood of Dune. The general foundation is exhaustively set with roughly four minutes of voiceover from Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson, plus Jessica Barden in frequent flashbacks), whose goal is to use the power of the Sisterhood — and the powers of the Sisterhood, since you may remember that members of the Bene Gesserit are able to do lots of supernatural things — to achieve some level of galactic control and to help restore her family’s good name.

It’s established in those opening minutes that Valya did a very bad thing and, as she admits, “I knew then, the name Valya Harkonnen would forever be damned to the wrong side of history.” But was the bad thing done for good reasons? Or is there no such thing as a good reason to do ambitious things in the name of power? And is it perceived differently when women do those things instead of men? Good questions!

Valya most trusted sidekick is her sister Tula (Olivia Williams, plus Emma Canning as a younger woman). They’re overseeing an entire school of novices or acolytes or whatever, from whose ranks we meet a few, including martyrdom-obsessed Sister Emeline (Aoife Hinds), antiauthoritarian Sister Jen (Faoileann Cunningham), secretly gifted Sister Theodosia (Jade Anouka) and youthful Sister Lila (Chloe Lea), who may be the most remarkable of all.

The Sisterhood is about to add some status in the form of Emperor Javicco Corrino’s (Mark Strong) daughter, Princess Ynez (Sarah-Sofie Boussnina), who hopes to dabble in Truthsaying — the Sisterhood’s initial primary ability is that they’re trained to be human lie detectors — while waiting for her arranged husband to come of age. But things are about to go topsy-turvy at the royal palace, with the arrival of soldier Desmond Hart (Travis Fimmel), the only survivor of a spice harvesting disaster down on Arrakis.

What ensues is something of a game of thrones, so to speak, as the emperor, the Sisterhood, several ancient families and the enigmatic Desmond all start to make moves in hopes of controlling the Imperium and the flow of spice. Because as Posh, Ginger, Sporty, Baby and Scary — the Bene Gesserit of ’90s pop music — once sang, “People of the world, spice up your life!”

There’s a very real sense that somebody cut and pasted lines of dialogue from a Game of Thrones template script and just added the word “spice” at random intervals like, “We are all just pieces on the board, to be played in the pursuit of power and spice” or “Ho-spice-dor.”

The story is set some 10,148 years before the birth of Paul Atreides — a far larger gulf than in similar current prequel series like House of the Dragon or Amazon’s Lord of the Rings thing — and it’s mostly set on planets that aren’t Arrakis, so don’t expect many direct connections to the Villeneuve films. Which factions will ascend to power many millennia later isn’t much relevant here, but the drama underlines the core characteristics of its famous families as they play games with each other’s lives, make tenuous alliances, execute heartbreaking betrayals and engage in schemes and counter-schemes, all infused with a moral ambiguity which, honestly, leaves the whole series a thematic mess.

I get “ambition is dangerous” and “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and “religious zealotry is scary.” But any takeaway that might make the narrative more timely, like about the threat of powerful women in a post-Kamala universe or the encroaching dangers of artificial intelligence, tends to be contradictory.

Still, this is clearly a chance for some world-building that, despite a combined running time of over five and a half hours, Villeneuve’s features could not approach. Dune: Prophecy is no slouch in the running time department, either. Each of the four episodes sent to critics exceeds an hour, which is too much, but is at least enough for a whole lot of context into the war with “thinking machines,” the political structure of the Imperium and the origins of elements from later in the plot, like the Voice.

The very real question of whether viewers actually want all of that context may be answered in the negative by those who enjoyed the movies for the epic visuals achieved by Villeneuve and cinematographer Greig Fraser. Though the first picture does not want for spectacle, the sequel in particular is as expansive and vast as any theatrical experience in decades.

Dune: Prophecy is not that. It is dark, gloomy and, despite the size of some of the palaces, citadels and whatnot, frequently claustrophobic. The endless horizons and undulating dunes of the films are replaced with twisty hallways, perplexing catacombs and smoky spice hookah parlors. This is fully intentional, offering both aesthetic contrast within the storytelling and, presumably, a more manageable budget. But however by-design it is, there’s a difference between “jaw-dropping” and “generally well-produced.”

And this isn’t just a movies versus TV thing. There’s a gap between Pierre Gill and company’s photography and the varied sets delivered by production designer Tom Meyer in Dune: Prophecy, and something like Foundation or Silo on Apple TV+, which represent the current peaks of the medium’s current cinematography, effects and set design. On a practical level, the Dune: Prophecy directors, starting with Anna Foerster, are more invested in the contours of the actors’ faces than in whatever was set up on a soundstage in Budapest.

The double-casting of Watson/Barden and Williams/Canning is the center of the show, and all four actresses are excellent and impeccably on the same page in their characterizations. My favorite of the early installments was the flashback-heavy, genuinely twisty third, with Barden and Canning in the spotlight. That was the only episode to include anything that made me genuinely surprised.

Among the familiar veteran actors, Strong is a savvy choice to play an emperor who conveys the appearance of domineering authority, but is being pushed around this chessboard by his wife Natalya (Jodhi May) and possibly by Desmond, a part that lets Fimmel supply his usual mixture of movie star charisma and character actor weirdness.

As long as the chapters are, so far there hasn’t been enough time for the younger actors to really stand out as individuals. Notwithstanding an helpful expositional sequence in which Valya and Tula look at pictures of each acolyte and debate their pros and cons, very few of their personalities are really distinctive or consistent.

I spent most of my time scratching my head about what the show wants to tell us about Princess Ynez and whether or not Boussnina, who seems far older than the character is supposed to be, was simply miscast. She’s stuck in the least interesting side of the story, with an extremely bland love interest, Keiran (Chris Mason), who would be completely forgettable if his last name weren’t “Atreides,” and a dreamy half-brother, Constantine (Josh Heuston), who contributes Game of Thrones-y discussion about legitimacy in royal bloodlines and gets to be part of the season’s one extremely gratuitous and extremely Game of Thrones-y sex scene so far.

Even though it’s part of a brand, Dune: Prophecy has lots of elements to introduce, and the series is already a slow, sometimes lugubrious build. But I found myself becoming increasingly invested as it went along. Maybe by the end of the first season, I’ll be hooked. As of now, though, everything could use just a bit more spice.

Well, that was a rambly review that frequently had more interested in being snarky than in the show it was reviewing.

Still, so there’s some good and some bad about the show. I’ll definitely watch some of it when it hits some streaming service over here (there’s still no HBO over here).

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Todd, Sean Robinson, Uncle Retrospective

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Todd

Javier Bardem to Star in ‘Cape Fear’ TV Series for Apple – Hollywood Reporter

Nick Antosca, who created the true crime dramas ‘A Friend of the Family’ and ‘The Act,’ is writing and will showrun the series that is based on the iconic 1962 and 1991 movies.
…
The 10-episode series is described as a tense, Hitchcockian thriller and an examination of America’s obsession with true crime in the 21st century. The broad strokes of the story and the characters remain the same as the film versions as happily married attorneys Amanda and Steve Bowden face a growing storm when Max Cady (to be played by Bardem), a notorious killer from their past, gets out of prison.
…
more in link

Sean Robinson wrote:

Amanda and Steve Bowden face a growing storm when Max Cady (to be played by Bardem), a notorious killer from their past, gets out of prison.

It would be great he plays Max with an Anton Chigurh haircut.

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Todd, Sean Robinson

Yes!
Of course we just need to add the Love & Hate finger tattoos.

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Todd

The 32 greatest animated TV shows (that aren’t for kids) – GamesRadar/Newsarama

Had enough of sing-alongs? These shows will satisfy R-rated cravings

I haven’t seen half on the list. Maybe it’s about time I try Bojack Horseman.

But very nice to see Scavengers Reign high on the list. I loved it.
Sad that it’s doubtful to get a season 2 or even get a physical release of season 1.

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lorcan_nagle

Sean Robinson wrote:

Maybe it’s about time I try Bojack Horseman.

Bojack Horseman is fantastic. But keep this in mind: The first half of the first season is not it’s best. But after that, it finds its footing and just takes off. I highly recommend this series.

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Sean Robinson, lorcan_nagle