inkista

inkista t1_jec8o2n wrote

I'm enjoying it, and the fun the writers are having expanding the mythology. It's not as good as the OG show, but it's solid and getting better. But. I watched the OG show as an adult, not as a kid, so my feelings about the OG show were that I was a fan, I greatly enjoyed it, and Scott Bakula was a sweetie but it wasn't some kind of tv masterpiece for the ages. If you watched it as a kid, you could have a very different feel for the property. It's probably also why I like the Magnum PI reboot more than the average on this sub. :D

I think the new show is doing a good job of being respectful (instead of just taking the title and then graffiting all over it with whatever the hell they want), paying homage and maintaining original story, and not straying too far from the tone of the original, while still carving their own path with an interesting set of characters.

But I still think Fantasy Island's doing a better job on their reboot :D. [I'm a sucker for any former Mutant Enemy writer, and they've got two as showrunners (Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain), and another three (Jane Espenson, Ben Edlund, and Drew Z. Greenberg) in the writers' room.]

1

inkista t1_j6kqmdu wrote

Commentary tracks on the Leverage DVD sets. John Rogers basically decided to make them showrunning master classes. And there's a commentary on every episode.

Followed by the commentary tracks on the 1980s Twilight Zone S1-S2 sets (S3 was a different crew with a different showrunner when the production moved to Canada). My only sadness is that they didn't get GRRM to comment on his episodes so we could hear the story of how the stuntman lost his nose on his adaptation of Zelazny's "Last Defender of Camelot". (I once asked him if that might be why Tyrion loses half his nose in the Battle of the Blackwater (in the books, not the show), and he grinned at me and said, "You might be right about that...")

But the Harlan Ellison commentaries are cherce and solo (he also badmouths Danny Kaye in "Paladin of the Lost Hour", which is fun), while all the other ones are group commentaries. My fave is the one on my favorite episode: "Her Pilgrim Soul" where Philip DeGuere (showrunner) and Wes Craven (director) hear how Alan Brennert came up with the plot [>!it's a ghost story, and Brennert's then-partner had died at the age of 25 of leukemia, and he heard her voice saying "I left you too soon, my darling."!<] and they go, "Man, if that was my connection with the story, I'd never be able to watch it!" Also the part where they admit to being two middle-aged men in tears on a re-view before doing the commentary.

2

inkista t1_j6frzdi wrote

Not credited like that. I don't think there are other showrunners "like Sorkin".

Most showrunners don't take the "written by" credit on every episode. Those who do generally aren't using a room (e.g., Hugo Blick), or do their pass uncredited (e.g., Joss Whedon on Buffy).

And there are some showrunners who are the exact opposite; e.g., Jerry Juhl insisted on Fraggle Rock that every word that ended up on screen be written by whoever had their name on the writer's credit. If that meant they had to keep rewriting it themselves until he was happy with it, so be it.

Every writers' rooms breaks a story together as a group. But most aren't working for only one of the writers to pump out all the scripts, or for everyone to be heavily rewritten by that one writer every episode.

1

inkista t1_j630ivb wrote

>Why watch a TV show chopped up with 4-5 ad breaks, when you can watch it via streaming with none?

Because it's free with ads, and you have to pay a sub to get ad-free streaming? Also because you don't use any of your data if you're on cable. And you can FF through the ads if you DVRed the show?

Not to mention cable boxes all do VoD, much of which is ad-free, or where you can FF through the ads.

1

inkista t1_j62yesw wrote

Wow. I like the show for very different reasons and enjoy it most when it's being tongue-in-cheek. My favorite episode is s15e4 "Death and the Divas" Because it's a love letter to Hammer films—and boy does that crew loooove Hammer films, they had so much fun making up their own—and it guest stars Sinead Cusack and Harriet Walter. And Harriet Walter is Christopher Lee's niece.

2

inkista t1_j27z60i wrote

No, it's not back on yet, and S3 begins airing new year's day on BBC One. In the USA, however, AMC+ has not yet announced a drop date for S3 (sigh).

I meant 'right now' as in I tend to change my mind every five minutes or so. :-)

1

inkista t1_j25wreb wrote

You may also want to look into Trollhunters on Netflix. The creators/showrunners of ST:Prodigy, Kevin and Dan Hageman, have nearly all the story writing credits on Trollhunters. It's a fantasy cgi YA cartoon that was showrun by Guillermo del Toro and Marc Guggenheim. It ended up spawning a two-series (Trollhunters, 3 Below)/one miniseries (Wizards)/one movie (Rise of the Titans) franchise on Netflix, the "Tales of Arcadia".

3

inkista t1_j2329ed wrote

I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Dennis Kelly's Utopia and The Third Day, Paolo Sorrentino's The Young Pope/The New Pope, or possibly Tom Rob Smith's London Spy, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, or MotherFatherSon. The slightly surreal heightened stuff with kickass writing crowd. [grin].

All the Hugo Blick fans have mostly be waiting for The English ever since the first BBC press release on the series was issued, because we've all seen The Shadow Line (Roku, Hoopla, Pluto), The Honourable Woman, and Black Earth Rising (Netflix), and we know that if Hugo Blick's writing it, what it's going to be.

3

inkista t1_j231nh0 wrote

I've been pushing it in the Recommendation threads ever since the BBC issued its first press release on it about two years ago, because ZOMG! Hugo Blick made a Western?!!!

Just me, but right now in the wake of The English, the thing to be crying from the rooftops is the need for folks to go find the other shows in the Hugo Blick BBC2 oeuvre: The Shadow Line (Roku, Hoopla, Pluto), The Honourable Woman, and Black Earth Rising (Netflix).

Hugo Blick is a genuine television auteur. He does the hat trick of writing, directing, and producing every episode of his series.

1

inkista t1_iuh8yeg wrote

It's based on the Trenton Lee Stewart series of YA books, and they're basically adapting one book per season. Trailer here.

It is indeed YA, and Disney+ rates the show at TV-PG, but as a kidless age 50+ adult who still watches cartoons and reads the occasional comic book :), I love both the books and the show. YMMV. When S1 first dropped, a lot of people were likening it to Wes Anderson or A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Just me, but every now and then it's good to shower off the TV-MA dark-dark-dark spatter of most streaming shows with some lighter TV-PG or TV-Y7 kid stuff. Or hell, in the case of Bluey, TV-Y. :)

3