Nick Kyme

I’ve been thinking about what I can blog about, having once again been lured away by my other social media mistress, Twitter.

I’ve got a few topics ‘in the bank’, as it were. A bit on dwarfs (the Warhammer, not the circus or primordial kind) and a piece on writing in the labyrinth (the intellectual, creative kind not the one with Bowie in as the Goblin King doing his dance, magic dance). They keep glaring at me, these two, from my drafts folder. Well, glare all you like pal, I’m not going down that road yet.

I also considered writing something about the fantastic artwork that’s been released recently on a trio of Horus Heresy projects I’ve been working on (two down, one big ass mutha to go), and genuinely wanted to do that but my Mac wouldn’t play ball with the pictures (that is to say it was being rubbish, or, more likely, Sky Broadband was, and they were taking a freaking dog’s age to download. Bah!).

So, here we are with a back-up topic. It’s all about entertainment and, not wishing to be self centred but, hey, this is my blog and so a certain amount of self centring – that even a word? – is to be expected, specifically my entertainment.

Lately, I’ve been a little big crocked with a dodgy back (it’s bronchitis related, some to do with me almost coughing my ribs apart – read about it on Twitter). I’ve been staying in more than going out (oh yeah, writing a novel to a tight deadline will do that to you too) and so the small screen has become my world as far as entertainment goes.

A while back, I wrote a piece on the blog about damn good television and proceeded to divvy up the shows I watched into discrete categories based on what I thought about their production values, story, acting and so on. I suppose this is the spiritual sequel to that post.

My frustration is this: to the casual observer, it might seem like we’re in a golden age of television. Production values and the greater access and availability (financially speaking) on special effects, plus the fact that lots of Hollywood actors that don’t frequent the silver screen so often are getting in on the act, means TV land has never been rosier. Or has it?

Take Sky Atlantic’s offerings, for instance (oh, and Sky and Fox are totally leading the way as far as great TV is concerned at the moment). Apart from Games of Thrones and Madmen, I can’t think of another show that I really, really look forward to watching on this uber, stellar channel of kings. Arguably, it’s TVs top dog as far as shows are concerned and has shedloads of money it can throw around to get the very best.

Both those aforementioned shows (which are great, in my opinion, combining great story telling, characters and production values together) are back in April, so thank crimminy (still trying to bring it back) for that. But what else? Okay, I’ll confess that Boardwalk Empire is worth putting on a never miss too. Let’s check out the more recent line up of new shows… Vegas. I had high hopes for this and still do enjoy watching it. Dennis Quaid and Michael Chicliss (sp?) are great leads and that guy from the god-awful Terra Nova is pretty good too, but something is missing. I like ‘period’ stuff, and Vegas in the ’60s should be awesome (I loved X-Men: First Class) but it doesn’t seize me like Madmen or GoT does. What else? Well, there’s The Following. Now that show had some promise, aside from Kevin Bacon who isn’t great in it, but has become more and more ridiculous as it’s gone on and now I’m starting to lose patience with it. And if someone doesn’t punch that annoying nanny-turned-nut bag in the face soon I may just switch off in protest.

Sky’s got a pretty big slate at the moment, lots of new stuff or shows that are still in their first season. Unlike Atlantic, this is mainly bubblegum but here’s where they’re winning the war. Arrow, for instance, has grown from a fairly episodic slightly dodgily shot hero show to something with a deeper, more interesting storyline that really draws on some cool, fan-pleasing aspects of the DCU. More of that please.

Admittedly on Sky Living, another show that has surprised and impressed me is Elementary. Holmes’ purists aside, this is a great detective drama and delivered convincingly and entertainingly by Lucy Lui and Johnny Lee Miller.

Switching my gaze to other channels, 5 has the rather silly but still rather good, Person of Interest. Not a big fan of Calviezal (sp?) in this role, he doesn’t quite convince me of his badass credentials with fairly crap fighting skills and a raspy voice, but still it’s very entertaining and the rest of the cast and story telling make up for JC’s shortcomings. Again though, it’s bubblegum.

I look forward to the return of Supernatural, of course I do, but that shows is getting on in years and running short of ideas. I’ll like it but I won’t love and follow it with the same vim and vigour as I did at the show’s creative apex of seasons four and five.

Then there’s True Blood. Let’s face it, this show has always been ridiculous, it’s unashamed about that but I’ve been watching the season 5 (?) rerun on Sky One and it’s just shit. Seriously, I am not sure I can take much more of Sookie Stackhouse’s nonsense. It’s a bit like Ally McBeal in that you really aren’t pulling for the main character at all but are actually much more invested in the secondary ones.

Ripper Street was a nice diversion on the BBC. Really enjoyed that, and our British Broadcasting Corporation should be investing more in shows like this with shorter runs and syndicating the bejesus out of them. That said, even Ripper Street was a little ropey in places but was carried along by strong performances from it’s three male leads. Looking forward to seeing more of that, though.

Currently, my other half loves Nashville and Smash (when it returns), both musical shows like Glee but for adults (less singing in Nashville, admittedly) and both these shows are in the early days on their life so hopefully they’ll continue to develop.

So, why is it I am feeling so jaded? Well, a lot of older shows in their fifth, sixth or successive seasons are showing their age in terms of the plots and characters. I used to love Dexter and that seems to be falling off a cliff as well. Most of these hardy perennials of the TV world jumped the shark long ago (The Following did it in its first season, during episode 3 or 4) and are kind of paddling for dear life. Running out of air and life, methinks (no more mixed metaphors, I promise).

Bubblegum is alive and well, chewy as ever, but the really compelling stuff, the I cannot wait to see it because my world depends on it stuff is tough to find. And it’s tough to see what’s going to replace those shows that once occupied these vaunted positions when they were new and still interesting.

There is one exception, I think, and that’s The Walking Dead. Man alive (or dead, I suppose), who would’ve thought a zombie-based show could be so compelling. I hear that Zombieland is getting a pilot/season too, which should be fun. But TWD is such a good show, even in its third season and getting better.

I could name a slew of other great shows that are still running but a little on fumes, if I’m honest. I always loved (and still do, like an old teddy bear with one eye missing and its stuffing coming out) Sons of Anarchy but I’m not desperate to see it each week like I was. The Killing is another example of a show that had a great opening season (if a little teasing at the end) that really didn’t pick up much (if at all) in its second outing.

So, to the future then. Revolution? Hmm, not sure – a bit like Last Resort, I have a feeling this will end up being ephemeral pap. That Shield show I keep hearing about? Dunno, super hero type stuff does tend to struggle a bit and how on earth can it match up to Avengers? Da Vinci’s Demons? Looks like it might be cool, I suspect it’ll just be a Spartacus clone (oh, and I should really mention Spartacus as an enjoyable romp. Loved Vengeance and I’m enjoying War of the Damned but glad this is the last season).

It could be the fact I’m feeling grumpy because my back aches and I haven’t drunk enough coffee this morning, or it could be that TV land needs some fresh ideas and less conservative, lowest common denominator money men to help make it happen. Oh, and no more f**king vampire shows, please. Every time I see an advert for Twilight and the final chapter in that heinous movie franchise and think about the lagoon of crap it has deposited on the world because of its very presence, I shed a little tear of pain and anger. It’s very confusing.

Well, they say all good things must come to an end, and that’s certainly true of 24 which producers announced was coming to a close in its eighth and final season currently airing on Sky One.

As a huge fan of Jack Bauer’s increasingly ridiculous adventures (and please don’t miss understand me, I mean that as irreverantly as possible), my first reaction was something along the lines of ‘balls!’.

No one likes it when one of their favourite shows disappears, and I remember fondly my University days when 24was first airing and the concept of a real-time based (well, sort of, if you factor in time for ad breaks – always thought that was a bit of a shame given it kind of rubbishes the show’s central conceit) action drama was new and shiny.

It’s old hat now, and one can’t help feel sorry for the character played by Kiefer Sutherland. Poor old Jack Bauer is about the unluckiest bastard on the face of the earth given all the shit he’s had to wade through over eight seasons.  I’ve lost count of the number of times he’s been shot, stabbed, tortured, beaten up and then tortured again. So far (because Season Eight has yet to be resolved) he hasn’t got the girl and kept her (in fact, most the time, she either ends up dead, is a traitor or loses her mind – don’t think that murky trend is set to change, either…).

Has to be said, though, that Kiefer Sutherland was a total legend in this role, and even if the later seasons didn’t quite live up to the Golden Age of the President David Palmer years (including Alan Dale as vice-president – holler! Let’s big up the Dale!), it was still a very cool show that crapped on its emulators (in terms of tone, if not concept) from a great height. Eight seasons is no mean feat.

I, for one, shall greet the end of 24with a fair amount of sadness and also relief that it didn’t just roll on until the axe fell. In truth, I reckon it might have had one more season in it but this’ll do I reckon.

So, there were have it. I salute you Jack Bauer. You were a heady blend of both Frank Castle and John McClane. You didn’t have a skull on your chest, nor did you wear a grubby, white vest but you kicked celebrated ass and wowed us all with your crazy, if slightly unbelievable, antics.

And, 24 fans of all shapes and sizes, here’s a cheeky link to a rather short but fairly self-explanatory article on IGN about the show’s final bow.

A brand new SF show debuted in the UK on Channel 5 last Monday night.

FlashForward is the story of a global event, when the entire population of the world fall unconscious at exactly the same moment (and that’s transcending the mundaneity of time zones) for exactly 2 minutes and 17 seconds (137 seconds if that’s significant in any way – it might be…).

It happens unannounced and understandably causes widespread panic (and carnage, especially in downtown LA, where the main story is set). But, and here’s the kicker, not only does the entire world pass out, they are also shown a glimpse of the future – six months into the future, to be precise. The really scary thing: it’s the SAME future they are all seeing.

Why? No one knows. How? That’s what the Feds and every other law enforcement and intelligence agency across the globe are trying to find out. There is one final surprise, the cliffhanger from the first episode, but that’s a terrible spoiler so I won’t reveal it here.

FlashForward, already, is an intriguing show. I like mysteries and this one’s a doozy with just the faintest hint of menace and impending disaster thrown in.

It opens well with a sort of ‘advance prologue’, doubtless riffing on the show’s prescient theme. There’s an horrific pile up in the centre of LA, a real bad one. The show’s main protagonist Mark Benford (played by Joseph Fiennes, doing a pretty good American accent) is crawling from the wreckage of his flipped car, bloody and dazed. It’s chaos around him: people are screaming, there’s dead bodies piling up and even some poor guy on fire. As he staggers to his feet, he’s calling for someone – ‘Demetri!’ Who the hell is Demetri? We go to black and the story picks up four hours earlier…

It’s then a case of listening in on the lives of a small group of people. We start to establish character and setting. Benford is an LA Fed with a drinking problem, seemingly confined to the past. He has a wife, Olivia Benford (played by Sonya Walger, another Brit putting on an American accent, who genre fans may well recognise from Lost - she played Penny Widmore), and a young daughter. Bryce Varley is depicted as a man planning to end his life whilst standing on a pier overlooking the ocean.The scene culminates in Benford and his partner, Demetri Noh (played by John Cho), in a high speed chase, tracking down some terrorists of unknown origin (Eastern European?). It’s hair raising stuff with crashed cars flying all over the place and dodging in-coming traffic whilst driving by the seat of your pants. Just as they’re gaining on the bad guys the brown smelly stuff really hits the fan when Benford (who’s our POV character) blacks out.

Now it really gets interesting. Benford gets a vision of the future. He’s working on something, a pattern, a mystery – he’s slaving over a board covered in Post-it’s, evidence photos and other clues. Who else knows what he knows? It’s obviously pretty incendiary information: two guys with night-scopes and infra-red rifles are inside his office and trying to take him down. Benford wakes up (after 137 seconds) and we are full circle to where we started off – it’s carnage in downtown LA. Except, this time we get to see just how widespread the damage is. EVERY car has crashed, buildings are on fire, things are exploding, a helicopter nose-dives down the side of a skyscraper, ripping out glass windows and bursting into flames. It’s an impressive, if alarming scene. Everyone has blacked out. Not only that, but when our feebs get back to the office they discover it’s happening all over the world.

Cue images of Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower on fire (okay, so that was a bit cheesy). Typically, mankind is trying to eat itself already in what some obviously believes is the end of days and martial law is declared across several states to ward off looting and other criminal behaviour. The mystery remains, though: what caused the black outs, why did it happen and will it happen again?

The root of this story and the answers therein is told by a core list of characters. There’s a sense that these people are linked, that somehow their fates and the fates of those around them are entwined in some cosmic way, but perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself – we’re only one episode in.

The cast, as it happens is strong. Fiennes has obvious pedigree and there are a fair few actors that genre fans will know: Genevieve Cortese played ‘Ruby’ in Supernatural, Alex Kingston was in ER as Mariska Hargitay, John Cho is ‘Hikaru Sulu’ in the new Star Trek movie, Jack Davenport was in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, of course, as Commodore Norrington – this is to name but a few. Famous names like Gabrielle Union (Ugly Betty) and Dominic Monaghan (Lost) are also set to star. Apparently, Seth McFarlane (creator of Family Guy, amongst other shows) had a bit part in the pilot as an unnamed Federal agent!

The pilot for FlashForward was written and directed by David S Goyer (who also wrote the screnplay for The Dark Knight and Batman Begins, so we’re in good hands here…) and the concept for the show came from the 1999 novel Flashforward by Canadian science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer.

There are mutterings that like Fringe is to the X-Files (and if you don’t believe me watch the season two opener and listen out for the blatant reference to the 90’s show), FlashForward is the spiritual successor, or ‘companion show’ as it’s also been referred to, to Lost. Whether or not this is true I guess time will tell. There was, just out of interest, a rather provocative billboard advertising Oceanic Airlines in a throwaway shot in the pilot episode though… (Oceanic is the airline that loses one of its planes and starts that whole bizarre ball rolling when it crashes on Lost’s mysterious ‘island’).

Personally, I love this crossover stuff, even if the joined-up thinking is all in our imagination. Little references and the odd bit of teaser on the internet or embedded within an episode that may or may not mean one thing or another, no matter how vague, is why Twin Peaks was so popular in the 80’s. There was even talk, when J.J. Abrams was about to release Cloverfield in cinemas, with all the viral build up and so on that came with it, that this feature-length movie had something to do with Lost too. How cool (albeit crow-barred) would that have been?

Rewind to Flashforward, though. This is a show that has me interested. As I say, I love mysteries and this one is a tough hombre. So far, there’s not that much to go on, and I suspect clues will be slow going in the initial episodes as the key cast of characters and how their various visions of the same future intersect are explored, and the effect it has on their lives and the lives of those around them (be that a good or bad thing, so far it’s mixed).

Certainly, I shall be tuning in next week. This is what serialised TV was made for.

There are few shows of late that have caught my attention to such a rapturous degree as Mad Men.

If you keep an eye on ‘Culture Shocks’ in the footer you’ll have noticed I’ve been watching this show for a few weeks. Well, I’ve recently finished season one (with season two rapidly on the way – can’t arrive soon enough) and I’m smitten.

Set in the 1960’s in the glory days when male machismo was at its height, misogamy was the standard practice in society and the last care free years of smoking was reaching its end, Mad Men is about a firm of advertising executives in New York’s Madison Avenue (from which the term ‘Mad Men’ is derived and, historically, coined by those self same men who were its namesake).

It’s a period drama in every sense – the sets, the costumes, the language, the entire vibe of the show screams capitalist America in the early sixties. The advertising angle, surprisingly, is actually quite light and the accounts tackled by Sterling Cooper (named for Roger Sterling and Burt Cooper the firm’s senior partners) are used as a frame for the insidious and wonderfully misogynistic hi-jinks of the ‘Mad Men’ themselves.

The main cast members (from left to right) - Roger Sterling, Peggy Olson, Don Draper, Joan Holloway and Pete Campbell

The central character is Donald Draper, super smooth, super cool but troubled soul play expertly by Jon Hamm. In the ad world, this man is the equivalent of a modern day rock star. Women love him, men want to be him. Though Don has a wife and child, he also carries something of a tortured past which is slowly (exquisitely) revealed  through the show’s met-narrative. Don’s wife, Betty Draper (played by January Jones) is the epitome of the perfect, wrapped in cellophane, cherry pie eating housewife, but she too has some pretty serious issues that end up seeing her go a little Stepford towards the end of the season (no further spoilers, I promise).

The man who puts the 'Don' in Don Draper...

Their relationship and the relationships they have with the people around them form the lynch-pin of the show’s drama. Described as ’stylish and provocative’, Mad Men has an array of acting talent that includes the likes of Vincent Kartheiser as the toadying and slightly annoying Pete Campbell, a young upstart with a wealthy family and some serious issues to boot (the show’s not called Mad Men for nothing). John Slattery plays Roger Cooper, one of the senior partners, a slightly older guy who sees in Don something of his youth, but are his salad days over and he just doesn’t know it? The other two main cast members (they are a lot of characters in this show and they are all played exceptionally well – it works because the blend is just right) are Christina Hendricks in the role of Joan Holloway, a curvy, busty and vivacious red head who is the office matriarch as far as the secretarial pool goes and has all the men drooling whenever she sashays into a room; and Elisabeth Moss, who plays the slightly odd but strong-willed Peggy Olson.

John Slattery brooding over a strong beverage as Roger Sterling

I have to make special mention of both Anne Dudek and Maggie Siff, who play Francine Hanson and Rachel Menken respectively. Anne Dudek was in House as Amber Volakis (aka Cutthroat Bitch) and Maggie Siff starred in Sons of Anarchy as Tara Knowles. I love both these shows so much that it’s nice to see some of the cast cropping up in my other favourite shows.

Maggie Siff plays Jewish department store owner Rachel Menken

Mad Men is an excellent show well worth the praise and hype it gets. The writing is top notch and a little like the Wire, relies on the intelligence and understanding of its audience to discern what’s going on sometimes. It’s not paint by numbers television and it’s a slow burner, a real examination and analysis of the times and the people it uses to portray it. It drips with 60’s decadence and the rampant capitalism that saw it as a boom time for America.

Special mention must also go to the dialogue. If you want a study in great, natural, pithy dialogue then this is it.In advertising hidden meaning within dialogue (i.e. the one that occurs between the ad and the consumer in order to sell the product) is everything. The back and forth in Mad Men from the overt advertising speak in one of the many brainstorming sessions Don has with his team, to the more occluded dialogue between characters in the dissemination of their complex personalities and relationships, it’s all a study in reading between the lines and trying to guess what someone is really saying or really means. Hidden truths and hidden lives are at the core of what the show is about.

I honestly can’t praise this show enough. From capturing the early 60’s zeitgeist, the sumptuous sets and costumes, the innate symbolism and snappy dialogue – even the opening sequence is a semiological tour de force – Mad Men is simply the best thing I’ve seen on TV in a while. It ranks alongside the likes of The Wire, Dexter and Sons of Anarchy for its sheer brilliance. Watch it!

Discussing Sons of Anarchy yesterday, I also name checked another of my favourite TV shows of the moment – Dexter.

As part of their ongoing coverage of the San Diego Comic Con, IGN have published an interesting and insightful video with two of the stars of the show, Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter. They discuss some of themes of season four and the fallout attached with that from season three. In particular, Michael C. Hall (who, incidentally, I’ve been watching in Six Feet Under – a great show, but talk about departure!) answers questions about the domestic balancing act Dexter is forced to perform in the next season given his new familial obligations.

Jennifer Carpenter hints at some forthcoming material concerning the direction of her character, the foul-mouthed but extremely watchable, Debra Morgan.

The video interviews are only just under six minutes in length, so don’t expect anything too ground breaking, but intriguing all the same.

There’s also a rather natty trailer for season four here, too. This actually has a lot of great hints as to the direction of season four. There are old and new faces, plus the ongoing narrative that makes the show so compelling. Looking forward to what’s coming in the next season…