tee vee

[chronovore]

Guilty Pleasures, or "Ways that the Writers' Strike is Making My Non-Complainably Brief Commute More Boring"

• Life - professormass is the cat what hepped me to this series, and I thank him. A beat cop who was framed and spent 12 years in prison returns to work as a detective, equipped with a tweaked spiritual outlook, an affection for fresh fruit, and an undisclosed settlement which is so large as to make people question his motivation for a return to work. The actor playing the lead, Damian Lewis, is fantastic at projecting at turns childlike enthusiasm, trained curiosity, and utter menace.
  
• Burn Notice - Another tale of a security professional who's been done wrong. Originally I'd planned to hate this show, since it's elevator pitch sounds suspiciously like Warren Ellis' comic Desolation Jones. Instead, this show is sort of Magnum P.I. meets MacGyver, or maybe the A-Team, but with a marginally reptilian, dysfunctional spy as the lead character, Gabrielle Anwar as his sociopathically violent ex-girlfriend, and Bruce Campbell as his mouthy-but-charismatic pal. The series ostensibly has an ongoing arc, but the portion devoted to it is crammed into less than the last minute of each episode. Someone could make (and probably has made) a YouTube video telling the whole backstory over the course of 8 minutes. Even so, it's good natured fun that would make a neat RPG.
• Bionic Woman - As noted earlier, after the "by the guys who brought you BSG" buildup, this show's pretty much a disappointment.
  

As of right now, I've reached the end of all three series. This is due to the writer's strike, isn't it?

I've been given a box set of a BBC series called Cold Feet, which I'll be ripping to iPod soon. I have also been pointed at the Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood, which I can bag at Tsutaya (the local equivalent of Blockbuster, except with teh pr0nz), and am also looking into the recent re-imagining called Jekyll.

Comments

[stevenkaye.livejournal.com]

Second season of Burn Notice was supposed to happen this summer, even before the writer's strike IIRC. I'm curious to see where it goes. I'd like to see them subvert the romantic subplot by actually showing the audience why Michael and Fiona breaking up was a good thing, but I doubt that will happen in any serious fashion.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm wondering how they'll handle it. There was one ep where Michael says it was for her own good, to keep her safe. The rest of the time it's clear that they are a wretched, bad couple, not suited to each other.