Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Last Resort
With the cancellation of Awake there's precious little top-notch genre television on the airwaves now, but I'm very intrigued by Last Resort, in which the crew of a US Navy sub goes renegade and founds their own nation. The concept sounds ridiculous, but the trailer - which you can view here - is quite taut and exciting, and the show comes from Angel writer and The Shield creator Shawn Ryan. Combine his writing chops with a cast that includes the T-1000 and Frank from Homicide: Life on the Streets and you have a potential winner, at least creatively. I doubt it will last longer than a half season, unfortunately; the public seems to have little appetite for high-concept dramas, and this looks like it will be pretty expensive to produce.
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3 comments:
Ever watch 'Life on Mars'? Or Game of Thrones?
I've seen the British version of Life on Mars and have yet to see Game of Thrones. I really enjoyed Life on Mars, but I'll probably wait until I've read all the books before watching Game of Thrones.
You put much more stock in the superhero genre and in network television serials than I do.
I'd suggest that HBO generally picks up the slack for high-end television in North America. I typically don't watch series TV, since after a few seasons I usually get the sense that the writers are struggling to make things up or make things work ***cough cough *Lost* cough cough ***. There's not much chance of closure. I can only think of three series with great endings: MASH, St. Elsewhere, and Newhart. I'd throw in Sledge Hammer!, except that the great ending came one season too soon. Homicide got an ending with a TV movie after the fact. And, embarassingly enough, I have yet to watch the final episode of The Wire. The Sopranos ending fails to make my cut.
A miniseries tends to have a more satisfying story arc in my opinion. HBO does some tremendous miniseries work.
British TV, on the other hand, operates on a different structure than our TV. There are more episodes, with a very different production schedule and workflow for the crew. Life On Mars was brilliant.
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