“Hemlock Grove” is an oddly captivating series, less for its content – it lacks the blatant sexuality of “American Horror Story” as well as its hit-or-miss shock value – than the fact that Netflix is releasing it the same fashion as they did in the case of “House of Cards,” which is the entire series at once as opposed to a more traditional model.
This is a powerful new way of making television that I think other non-broadcast and cable networks will mimic because it almost guarantees viewership of the series, either over a period of days, or in one shot (I am a huge fan of marathon viewing) though I have no idea how they determine if the content is being watched.
Which is very important if you want to know if you’re going to create another series.
“Space Precinct,” arguably one of Gerry Anderson’s more controversial series, mainly due to the $1.5 million per episode cost, which made it the most expensive show in Britain at the time. Yet, despite all the money spent, the ratings were only average, which I suspect had more than a little to do with the terrible time slots the show was stuck in, as opposed to the series itself.
I witnessed this personally. It was one of my favorite shows growing up, and I recall trying to force myself to stay up till it aired, which was usually around 12:30 on Friday morning.
Besides the issue of times slots, the show’s greatest problem is that it didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be, which gave it an oddly schizophrenic tone. For instance, an episode would sometimes start off with hardcore scifi, then somehow end as a family drama.
Deadline has an interview with Gale Anne Hurd, who is an executive producers of AMC’s “The Walking Dead.”
She speaks about the controversy over Glen Mazzara leaving the show, though (not surprisingly), says little that we don’t know already.
I get the feeling that we haven’t heard the last about this matter.
Why is it that Hollywood, whenever it begins to run low on ideas, feels the need to plunder my dreams?
Perhaps I shouldn’t take such things so personally, but after the upcoming (?) reboot of “Space: 1999,” and now “The Tomorrow People,” I am beginning to wonder.
There’s a new trailer for the upcoming season of AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” the last with showrunner Glen Mazzara (who on some level I blame for Frank Darabont, the showrunner before him, leaving the show, despite the fact that I should know better).
I remain a fan of the series–after all, they haven’t got rid of the zombies (yet)–but the showrunner isn’t a minor position, and has a lot to do with the direction and feel of a particular series. For instance, I get the feeling that under Darabont there would be more of the original cast still on the show (some of whom decided to leave BECAUSE Darabont was treated so shabbily).
Then there’s the odd feeling that AMC management is killing the show gradually, by degrees, and we viewers are the frog put in a pot of water, with the heat turned up so gradually that it doesn’t realize that there’s a change.
Till it’s too late.
I also thought that I should mention that I don’t like the new poster, especially when you compare it those from prior seasons.
Part of being an adult is having the ability to know when not to say what’s on your mind, a skill lost on most children, whose nature lends itself to an almost brutal honesty. For instance, if you’re feeling vulnerable, don’t ask a child a question with an expectation that the answer will somehow buttress a sagging self-image, because very young people don’t always understand how words can hurt.
Now if an adult were to act in the same fashion–with any sort of frequency–then there’s a problem.
The point that I am meandering towards is that words aren’t free, and that there’s a cost to be paid for uttering the wrong ones.
And it doesn’t have to have to be “Fire” in a crowded theater to cause damage.
When I was growing up, the phrase “Sticks and stones may break you bones, but words may never hurt you,” was a popular aphorism, but as I got older I also came to realize that physical wounds healed eventually, while words could leave scars that follow one their entire lives.
I recently read, via the ever reliable Deadline, that “The Walking Dead” has a new showrunner, someone by the name of Scott Gimple.
I don’t mean to disparage Gimple, after all, he may be an awesome showrunner, but it seems to me that if he does the least thing that runs afoul of AMC brass (like asking for more money for one of the top shows on cable television), then he’s gone.
Why am I so cynical? Because Frank Darabont was an A-list writer/director, and they were able to remove him from the picture when they felt the need to do so. Glen Mazzara, while not quite as famous as Darabont, had made a name for himself as a showrunner on other series before ‘Dead.’
And look what they did to him.
And now comes Scott Gimple.
I give him a season, maybe two before he too decides to move on to greener pastures, or is released.
I am not quite sure what it is about old television shows (particularly British though I am also a big fan of some Quinn Martin productions, such as “The Invaders,” “Barnaby Jones” and “The Streets Of San Francisco,” as well as shows like “The Night Stalker,” Hawaii Five-O,” among others) that make them so appealing.
Perhaps part of my rekindling of the embers of the past has to do with the fact that I don’t watch too much television; partially because I haven’t gone digital, and partially because I don’t think a lot of it is worth watching.
I discovered, or should I say rediscovered, “Department S” when in a wave of nostalgia I was on YouTube searching for theme music from shows like “Baretta,” and the aforementioned “Barnaby Jones.”
Department S is a branch of Interpol (I assume that this is the case because in one episode Stuart Sullivan (Joel Fabiani) flashed an Interpol card one episode) that solves cases that others either have given up on, or can’t.
Though the most interesting thing about the show, beside the awesome theme music, is Peter Wyngarde, who played Jason King. King was a novelist that, as far as I can tell, wasn’t actually part of Interpol, yet somehow he’s given a lot of leeway to pursue clues and take action in the name of the department.
His performance is also very, very fey, despite being quite the ladies man.
Another interesting point is that the heard of “Department S” happens to be a black man, Sir Dennis Serete (Dennis Alaba Peters).
Pretty progressive for a series from the Sixties.
I was drifting around the Internet, when I found this YouTube post from Jace Hall (the guy who’s spearheading the upcoming (?) “Space: 2099”). The recording isn’t the best, and Landau (Commander Koenig from the original series) doesn’t say all that anything that most fans of the original series don’t already know, but it’s good to see him not only still in command of his faculties, but he actually brings up the upcoming series to his questioner.
Which I thought was really cool.
And I have to give credit to Hall because, while what little I know of the news concept doesn’t exactly inspire me, at least he appears to care about the original.
Snoop Lion Roars To Life!
That title was harder to come up with than it looks.
Let me begin by saying that I don’t care for soap operas, which isn’t to say that I have never watched any. In the day I used to watch “Flamingo Road,” and “Days Of Our Lives” but that was more of – in hindsight – an odd fixation I had with NBC (which is perhaps putting it mildly because, as a young person, I religiously followed NBC-related news to such a degree that I was probably one of the only teenagers who knew who Grant Tinker and Brandon Tartikoff were).
Though speaking of soap operas, “The Edge Of Night,” while not on NBC, had an awesome opening theme.
That being said I am genuinely curious as to why Snoop Lion (né Snoop Doggy Dog; né Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr.) would be doing the theme for “One Life To Live.” I mean, will the opening consist of some tragically unhip actors pretending to dig Lion’s sound or will he do something in the vein of the current theme.
Either way, it’s either the most brilliant idea ever, or the dumbest.
This is the opening as of two years ago (I couldn’t find anything more recent on YouTube, though admittedly I didn’t look too hard).
Snoop Lion isn’t enough to actually get me to watch the show, but I am genuinely curious (in the same way that natural disasters and automobile crashes tend to captivate me. I hope that no one is harmed, but that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy seeming cars in various states of wreckage).
Maybe when it hits YouTube…
Another interesting little factoid: Né is actually a word. It’s the masculine form of née.
It it isn’t blame my naiveté and Random House.
On second thought, just blame Random House.
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