‘Tis a rare and special occurrence, the day that this blog sees a post about the new fangled device that they call the “Television box.” But as I have recently abused my brain with a good dose of the stuff here one is:
For the sake of remaining a good person, I will attempt to avoid spoilers…I said attempt!
Lets start with AMC’s The Walking Dead. I have resisted this show purely on the “Bored of Zombies now!” basis for over two years. Lets face it the popular entertainment market is saturated with the blood of Zombie victims splattering the walls of movies, video games and now TV.
But after countless nagging from friends, well acquaintances well…people I cornered and forced to speak with me, I finally relented and tried a bit. Weirdly I wasn’t disappointed – at least not prior to Season 3’s not quite cliff hanger ending – so that was a nice change.
The show is well written with normal characters in an extraordinary setting, acting appropriately for their differing personalities. There are some likable characters and some truly despicable characters – talking about you Carl (actually pronounced “Coral”) – and the writers mostly manage to keep the excesses to a reasonable level, given the circumstances of course.
The show also attempts to tackle many of the wider concerns that actually matter in this feeble Zommer-free version of Earth. There is a little trace of dictatorship on both sides of the later episodes, social issues, friendships, betrayal, coping methods in tragic circumstances and a fair old slice of Zombie killing (the latter is very important for surviving the tie in Video Games).
So, if you haven’t sampled it, give it a go, it might surprise you like it did me.
Another show my ears have received a constant pounding about the awesomeness of is Breaking Bad. Well, maybe my cynicism is washing away, but I would have to recommend this one too.
The whole thing centres around a man who, having been diagnosed with terminal cancer, decides to put his knowledge of chemicals to use by making awesome grade Crystal Meth, in order to provide for his family after his death.
Another great show actually, with again really well written characters and a real knack for exploring the subtleties between family life and criminal escapades. Although I can only speak for the first season in this case, Breaking Bad has thus far gotten better and better with each episode.
The story is well constructed and believable, if again, extraordinary, but the lead character of Walt evokes both sympathy and awe for the trials that he is enduring whilst going through chemotherapy and simultaneous starting to set himself up in the drug trade and not being afraid to turn a few heads while he does.
Great show thus far, highly recommend you check it out if you haven’t already!
And finally, I am going to talk about one of my favourite tele-based-vision based programmes…Doctor Who. I don’t want to be one of those people that says “Come back Russell T Davis” or “God, this show has gone downhill in the last two years.”
But, he should and it has.
Momentary flashes of brilliance aside, I can’t help but feel that series 6 of the new Doctor Who wasn’t quite up to scratch and neither has all but two (ish) episodes of series 7 – and no I don’t mean the pointless sacrifice of the worlds most boring couple – that blew chunks.
I was very enthused with the re-introduction of Clara in an interesting new adventure that seemed to start a new ark of interesting Doctor.
This ark came crashing down in the last episode though. The most boring drawn out Who episode ever/so far this year. A whole Episode of a child singing! Argh! Who’s idea was that? The resolution of the singing was possibly even worse – basically the Doctor attempts to moan an evil planet to death!
Yes, that’s right, the doctor did his “I’ve seen everything and my head is like a dirty laundry basket filled with the soiled pants of history so fear me” speech and all was almost better. Then Clara polished the whole thing off with “the most important leaf in human history!” God dammit!
Ah, there’s that cynicism. but of…oh…cynicism melting…melting….
This picture is still “stain my underwear exciting no matter what my brain thinks of this and the previous series!
cynicalcyclical 