New Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Show - Revolution

With the Walking Dead about to return for a third season (that hopefully doesn't bore us to tears like season two) and Falling Skies having finished not so very long ago, it seems that the post-apocalyptic genre is in favour and here is Revolution to jump on the bandwagon.

The start is one of those horrible, badly written scenes that only ever happens on film or TV. Someone rushes home and makes an urgent phonecall - in this case, a husband and father rushes home and calls up his brother and knowing that time is short, starts in the middle of a sentence so that instead of imparting useful information to his brother, he can waste time spouting lines for use in the trailer. Needless to say, that "EVERYTHING IS GOING TO TURN OFF!" is probably the least useful thing to tell someone thirty seconds before the "The Blackout"occurs - pretty sure your brother would have worked that out.

Anyway, this isn't just a power cut or EMP or anything like that but rather something that leads to ALL electrical devices (and even car engines, apparently) no longer functioning. So, as one might imagine, electricity being the basis of all modern society, things go to hell pretty fast and within a decade massive numbers of people have died due to starvation, government has collapsed and now an agrarian society has arisen - with militias pushing people around.

The show starts with the idiot from the start getting killed because his son is even stupider than him. For no particular reason, the militia take him instead of his dead father. Well, obviously his father is dead so he wouldn't be much use but as this pertains to the power going out - why exactly would he be useful given that the reason his father is being taken is because the head of the militia suspects his complicity in the Blackout? Not only that but as we find out at the end of the first episode, the head of the militia is not just friends with the protagonist who got a call from his brother about the Blackout but was RIGHT NEXT TO HIM when he got the call, seconds before the lights went out... and yet it took him YEARS to piece this together?

Also, granted this IS a post-apocalyptic fallen society and it's established that only the magical USB necklaces are somehow able to activate technology but the producers of this show DO realise there's a lot of technology in-between medieval and modern day, right? Granted, there's the small fact that we've had the apocalypse and to restructure society but surely this is a great fucking excuse for steampunk? Or at least SOME use of steam? It has been over a decade and apparently the militia has thousands of men in it... you know what would give them advantage? TRAINS!

Not to mention how unspeakably awesome that would be, to combine the post-apocalyptic and steampunk genres. Granted, this is a TV show and I get the impression that it's probably already horrendously expensive and that having a steampunk theme in it would make it crazy but this is one of those issues that needs to be addressed. OK, maybe they can't get electricity working - they're a little fuzzy on why car engines don't work but just kind of toss it in - but there's a LOT of stuff that's relatively easy to make that ISN'T electronic... and it's not as if they burnt all the libraries down.

Anyway, the main protagonists are the cynical swashbuckler (because bullets are rare and people have resorted to the use of muskets) that shall be named McGuyver (he seriously looks like his brother... no mullet though) and the plucky daughter that is trying to save her brother. The brother gets his own story too, being abducted by Fring from Breaking Bad and there's also a former tech millionaire and mother who lost her kids who are hiding the magical USB necklace and serve to forward the mystery plot.

Perhaps the nicest thing in this show so far is that in the second episode, McGuyver is about to ice some guy that is after him because of the bounty on him (basically, he's now wanted for the same reason his brother was and Plucky dun goofed and blew his cover) and of course, Plucky goes "YOU CAN'T KILL HIM!" In a lot of shows, we'd get shown that of course, Plucky was right... somehow the guy would help them later on or something and we'd all learn the "love thy enemy" stuff.

What ACTUALLY happens is that not five minutes later, he's escaped and has set up McGuyver and is going to haul him off for his reward. Naturally, this leads to the guy ACTUALLY getting killed and Plucky having to realise she dun goofed. Also, the episode rounds out with her killing a guy in cold blood - flashing back to a scene during the first weeks after the Blackout where her mother killed a guy who was stealing food from her family.

So, if there's any hope for this show, it's that it's not going for the usual cookie cutter morality tale. Or at least, that it has the potential to be something other than that. The militia have certainly been established as the bad guys but we'll just have to see how that goes... the mystery plot has already shown us that people secretly with technology are being stalked by someone... and really, the people behind the Blackout are the worst mass murderers in history... so, we'll have to see how that goes.

BBC's "Hot" New Cliche Wrought Spy Thriller - The Hunted

Since the worst excesses of the James Bond era -  where over the top gadgets, ridiculously oversexualised names and an abundance of one liners, it feels as if the spy genre has been trying relentlessly to purge itself of anything like that... unfortunately, the pendulum has really swung too far the other way and has created a tiresome sea of similarity, into which the BBC has now hurled another wretched offering - The Hunted.

From pretty much the first moment of the show, you're going to notice the washed out colours and you should get used to it because it's constant. As is the cutting of the camera, the director and or editor are seemingly unable to allow a shot to last for more than three seconds at the best of times and as soon anything remotely interesting happens (don't worry, these moments are few and far between) the cuts start to become so rapid they mean you've little idea of what's going on. With one notable exception, where we see a gratuitous shot of someone having a syringe stabbed in their eye... but this is from the people that made Spooks, a show most people will remember for having a rather graphic death by deep fat fryer, so presumably this is attempting to ape that.

Washed out colours and ham fisted directing and editing aside, the story has our main character get shot TWICE in the first twenty minutes and yet, at no point is anything other than dull. A first episode really needs to grab you and yet, this was as dull as dishwater. The camerawork is so terrible that the action scenes - far from being exciting breaks from the awful dialogue are more likely to induce an epileptic seizure than actual tension.

And the dialogue really is poor. Another spy thriller cliche box ticked with the terse dialogue by various tight lipped characters... and it might be acceptable if it was just used occasionally to highlight stress and the rest of the time they talked like ACTUAL humans but these characters can't help but talk in soundbites and cliches.

There's no chance this can be a slow burner either, it's an eight parter... one doesn't really have time to burn anything but quickly when one is limited to eight one hour episodes... Really, there's just nothing to say about this show other than "don't bother". It has been done better in every conceivable way by others, so... there's no point in wasting time on this.