Tag Archives: series

Series premiere: The Order

The PolyBlog
July 3 2019

Wow. I’ve been going through a whole bunch of premieres of various shows, and for a lot of them, my initial reaction is often that it is a quirky premise, not much plot, and nowhere to go. I just watched The Order (Netflix) and it has plot, room to grow, and a whole of mystery out the wazoo. Holy cow, it’s awesome.

So here’s the basic premise. A secret society known as the Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose selects 7 pledges each year from a private university, of which 3 are then invited / selected / winners of entry. The other 4 forget all about it. And success in the contest / selection process leads to power to unlock your potential. With a key element being magic.

Jack Morton is a young man, ready for college, and hoping to go to the special college and join the Order so he can help his grandfather solve the murder of his daughter (Jack’s mom) at what was believed to be the hands of the father, a member of the Blue Rose. The nature of her death and the mystery isn’t exactly clear, but it seems like the gist. Grandpa is a bit obsessed to be honest, and Jack is heavily focused on figuring it all out. But first he must make it into the Order. In Ep1, he arrives on campus, gets selected, gets some hints, makes it to the finals, and then, just for fun, gets attacked by a werewolf. Yes, a werewolf. Which has been killing other pledges (with 2 dead already).

Jack is played by Jake Manley, and I vaguely remember him from Heroes Reborn. Here he is great. Very serious, very friendly, a fantastic lead to keep the mystery alive and grounded in a motivated fish out of water take on the new happenings. Meanwhile, an upper year member, Alyssa Drake has taken a returned-interest in him, and she is played by Sarah Grey. I’ve seen her in small roles on Lucifer and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, but didn’t recognizer her here. She’s pretty great, has the girl-next-door thing going on that is the classic look and love interest of every show ever written about guys in college, and she’s pretty dang good. I’m amazed at how comfortable the two of them seem together. Like best friends, not work-buddies on a new show. There isn’t much sexual chemistry yet, it’s early days, but they sparkle together.

Grandpa is played by Matt Frewer, and whether he was Max Headroom or running a #CloneClub, Frewer does an amazing job on simple emotions or seeming like a grade A whackadoodle. Awesome here for both. Love his character, even if the first EP doesn’t really give you full insights into him or where he fits in.

Some other members of the cast include Sam Trammell (True Blood) as an ethics professor, Katherine Isabelle (Being Human) as the Chancellor and local head of the Blue Order for students, Jedidiah Goodacre (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) as a jerky head of initiation, and Hiro Kanagawa (Altered Carbon) as the police detective trying to figure out who’s killing college kids. All four are relatively solid.

And did I mention plot out the wazoo? There is so much room for this show to go, and the lead actors were good, so I have to predict RENEWAL.

Series premiere: Pure

The PolyBlog
July 3 2019

I somehow missed the premiere last year of the show Pure, about the Mennonite mob (yep, that’s a thing) running drugs all the way from Mexico to Canada. The show is a quirky take on the popular themes in many shows where they show a small-town hood running drugs. Maybe big time hoods. But always the “personal” day / life of the drug runner. Basically showing all the stuff they have to deal with in the business, as opposed to the classic deals going down where they usually only show the police role.

This one has a new take, where the people dealing and moving the drugs are doing so under the cover of Mennonite colonies. In a sense, it’s an ideal cover — people who already naturally avoid outsiders and therefore are unlikely to tell anyone of their problem or what’s going on around them. Even when they don’t want the scourge in their colony, they are unlikely to talk to the police. Natural protection for a drug-running predator.

Except there’s a new pastor in town, and while he is not Clint Eastwood from Pale Rider, he does glow with the righteousness of God. And he intends to avoid the drug problems and just be a pastor. Until the drug runners kill a Mennonite family from another colony in Mexico, except for a son who escapes. Now the kid turns up at the colony, and the pastor wants to protect him while the drug runners plan to kill him.

The lead charactor, the pastor Noah, is played by Ryan Robbins and he is awesome. I like him in almost everything he is in, even when I don’t always like the character. Small parts like The Collector and Stargate: Atlantis, bigger parts like Continuum, and now leading here. He has a wife with views, and two kids in school, but the opening EP has little for them to do. His wife is all over the place as a character — wanting him not to be pastor, wanting him to keep the family safe, wanting him not to go to the police, wanting him to go to the police, etc. I found her annoying, honestly…pick a view!

The active mid-level drug runner, Gerry Epp, is played by Patrick Garrow and he is always menacing. Whether as Turin in Killjoys or in 12 Monkeys, there’s always something a bit sinister with him. However, in the other shows, he often has a slight lapse / grin / comedic failing that takes a bit of the edge off…here, he is pure aggression. He’s flat out awesome.

Gerry’s boss, Eli, aka Uncle, is played by Peter Outerbridge and he is appropriately ruthless. Just seeing him, you can believe he’s a perfect bad guy, even without the black cowboy hat.

The other main character in Ep1 is A.J. Buckley as the police detective, Bronco Novak. The vibe is kind of broken down cop, not the best representation of the city’s finest, which is in line with one of his previous roles on Justified where he was on the other side of the law as Danny Crowe. Total sleaze pit, but at least he seems competent in this incarnation. Before he was just a loser. I was thinking I knew him from somewhere else, and I totally did NOT recognize him from CSI: NY. Wow, what a change.

So, here’s my challenge. Four decent performances by four of the leads in the show. Or at least by 2 of the main leads, and two important characters. So I should be watching, right?

Well, no. I am not really interested in the storyline. There is very little about the Mennonite community storyline that attracts me, nor the life of drug dealers. I just don’t care, and never watched Breaking Bad for example for similar reasons. Not stories that interest me. There was a huge twist at the end of Ep1 to take it into a new direction, but not enough to hold my attention.

But I recognize it’s decently done and would predict RENEWAL if I didn’t already know it was renewed. For me, I’ll pass.

Series premiere: Miracle Workers

The PolyBlog
July 1 2019

The only thing I knew about the show Miracle Workers was that it had Daniel Radcliffe in it. You know, #HarryPotterForLife. Now that I’ve watched Ep1, I have to say, it is the strangest show I have ever watched.

The premise is that Steve Buscemi, playing God, runs a company called Heaven Inc., a giant factory that basically runs/serves Earth. Making animals. Monitoring dirt. Controlling volcanic pressure. And a lot of the people who work at the factory are about as smart as Homer Simpson.

Anyway, God isn’t too happy with the whole Earth situation, he’s depressed, hates his job and his life, and is thinking of blowing up Earth and starting a restaurant in space based on a lazy Susan design.

Enter Geraldine Viswanathan as hopeful Eliza. She’s been working in the Department of Dirt for a long time, and wants a transfer to a job with more responsibility. She ends up in the one-man Department of Answered Prayers, where Daniel Radcliffe as Craig is turning into Robin Williams Castaway role. He’s a hermit, no friends, and unable to do much about most of the prayers. So while he gets 2M a day, he answers 4 or so. Mostly people looking for lost keys. Anything more complicated, and he sends it upstairs to God who ignores it.

She’s young, she’s vibrant, she wants to make a difference. So when she sees what’s happening, she barges into God’s office and challenges him to solve everything. Which God agrees to do. By blowing up the Earth and moving on. In order to save Earth, Eliza bets God that she can answer one “impossible” prayer — two Earthlings who like each other wanting to “make it happen” and fall in love. If she wins, he spares Earth; if she loses, Earth is gone AND she has to eat a live worm in front of everyone and pretend to enjoy it. Yeah, God is a bit of a childish dick. But, whatever, the bet is ON!

Buscemi is mildly amusing. The people around him, not so much. The other workers, not so much. Yawn. But Eliza and Craig? They have some spunk. And I’m likely going to tune in for seven episodes to see what happens.

If it was just this premise, and it’s not a “prayer of the week” plot, I would predict CANCELLATION. If they answered a different prayer each week, could be like God Friended Me, and I might give it a bigger chance. Like Touched By An Angel but with an irreverent view of the cosmos. But apparently the show has an anthology idea behind it, i.e. each season will be something different. Okay, I guess I’ll go with RENEWAL then? Because it is more like a new pilot each year.

Series premiere: Manhunt

The PolyBlog
June 30 2019

I saw some write-up awhile back for a new British series called Manhunt, and I thought it was a running series. Nope, just 3 episodes. And based on a true story, the hunt for a killer of a young woman in the middle of a park. Not my usual fare, honestly. I don’t often do mini-series and true crime rarely interests me. Truth is often in the eye of the beholder in a lot of the fare, and I prefer it not try and tell me “this is how it really happened” in a creative non-fiction.

But I watched the episode, with a relatively newly transferred Senior Investigating Officer, Colin Sutton. His wife is a behavioural analyst, but he doesn’t put a lot of stock in her psycho mumbo jumbo. Instead, he prefers boots on the ground going door to door.

What bothers me a bit with the protrayal is that he seems to be latching on to the direct route to the killer almost immediately. Hey, there’s a clue over there — nope, rubbish. Here’s a clue over here — nope, rubbish. Here’s something — yes, that’s the lead we need. Really? Seems a bit self aggrandizing to me, turning the lead into a super cop with a nose for crime. More divination than Sherlock Holmes’ deduction.

In the opening, he is dealing with possible links to other murders, internal politics as to who gets to be his second in command or not, lost evidence in earlier cases that might be linked, and a heavy reliance on CCTV footage that may or may not lead anywhere. I also find it bothersome that there is almost zero drilling down on the victim. Nothing about her life, possible suspects, they immediately decide it was someone random. I also can’t quite figure out how you kill someone in relatively broad daylight/nightime in a park — it is so obvious to see her that a passing pedestrian sees her lying on the ground and calls it in. Which means the victim and her killer could also have been easily seen, and the killer would have been seen by the victim coming too from quite a distance away. Plus there were people in the park not long before, so not exactly deserted either.

The lead actor, Martin Clunes, is awesome…very understated, very simply presented, and very compelling. He seems like a soft-spoken plodder and he is calming to watch run the case. There are good supporting characters, and they seem more like reporters working on a story than cops hunting a murderer.

Nobody in the EP really stands out except Clunes, and I would normally be on the fence for the future of the show. As soon as I saw it was 3 EPs only, I assumed that meant it was a mini-series. Nope, they’re bringing it back for Season 2. I have NO idea what that will be about – same characters? Different cases? This one is over in 3 EPs. And if it wasn’t so short, I might have gone with CANCELLATION. I’ll watch the other two EPs just to see what happens, but it isn’t really my kind of show, even with great acting by Clunes.

Series premiere: L.A.’s Finest

The PolyBlog
June 29 2019

The initial premise of L.A.’s Finest is two hard-edged female cops kicking ass and taking names in the City of Angels. Hard-drinking, hard-loving, hard-working, busting heads and kicking butt, all while giving each other a hard time. One black, one white, one street, one almost a soccer mom. This isn’t Cagney and Lacey, more like Lethal Weapon with women.

What do you need to make it work? Gravitas in the main actors.

First up is the white soccer mom who can flip people around and shoot up a store, all while cracking jokes. Jessica Alba plays Nancy McKenna. I like Alba, I do. Even as Storm in the Fantastic Four. Not as much as I loved her as butt-kicking Max on Dark Angel though. There, she was young but the moves gave her an edgy feel to her. Here? She’s a caricature. It seems almost like a comedy, not an action show. Her husband as a prosecutor is fine, but nothing to write home about, while her daughter steals every scene she’s in (Sophie Reynolds, hope to see you again some time!).

Her partner, the black street gal, is former DEA with a secret (she was captured and tortured, and she’s on the hunt for her bad guy). Gabrielle Union plays Sydney Burnett, who sleeps with anything that moves (she even has “to go” cups for them to take their coffee with them the next morning). And like Alba, she has a wisecracking grin on her face most of the episode.

And it is hard to get a handle on the show. Is it supposed to be a comedy? Because it isn’t funny. Is it supposed to be a drama? Because it isn’t serious. Is it supposed to be good? Well…

Pilots are notorious for being uneven, mostly as the actors haven’t found their groove yet. But this show? I felt like I was almost watching a spoof of every bad show with gung-ho cops. And what did I say they need? Gravitas. What don’t they have? Anything worth holding your attention.

Even in a really scary take-down scene, I never felt any tension. Nada. Zip. There was nothing invested because there was nothing to invest IN. Pass. And I’m predicting CANCELLATION.