TV Shows...What are you following?

I have spent the last few days watching the first two seasons of The Following, a show which went into a third season before being cancelled this year and which has attracted a good deal of negative comment. It took me a while to get into it, but I never could believe much of it and although it is one of those programmes in which a suspension of belief is essential, that applies to most tv series these days -in fact I can't think of any that bear much comparison to life as it is lived, let alone the way the police and the FBI or for that matter the CIA and MI5/MI6 actually work.

There was a mix of good acting and bad acting, some good writing and some so bad it was risible -how many times in season 2 does Max ask Weston Are you okay? as if there was nothing else to say. I am aware that in the real world there are serial killer groupies, I am not sure why serial killing like paedophile crime (sometimes together) risks becoming the staple 'evil' in cop shows unless it is because they involve repetitive events to justify 30 episodes of tv. Moreover, I was unable to make sense of the violence unless I matched it to the stereotype of the crazed Islamic fanatic who kills people in plain sight and doesn't care if he or she gets killed as a result. It also had the obsession (in fact a cop out, excusing the pun) with death as a route to a better life, although this is also common in Catholic doctrine and plays a key role in Graham Greene's study of the criminal Pinky in Brighton Rock. It does have some splendidly creepy characters, mostly played by English actors, but in the end this went on far too long and crossed too many boundaries of credibility, yet it was watchable for all that, and unlike some I do like Kevin Bacon, be it in 1 or 6 degrees of empathy.

Waiting for Penny Dreadful, Sherlock and Doctor Who to start up again!

I spent most of Saturday watching The Night Of...an HBO show that aired in the US earlier this year. It is derived from a BBC series Criminal Justice which I had not heard of, and gets off to a good start with impressive credits and an opening episode in which a young man through a sequence of unexpected events finds himself standing next to a murdered woman. This should set up a drama with much more tension and twists and turns in the plot than it did, even though it does have an experienced but sloppy detective and a prosecuting attorney who when presented with the possibility that someone else might have been the murderer sticks with the accused they have. And again it does a good job of showing how incarceration badly affects the accused, but in the end I wasn't that bothered, and found the sub-plot around the health of defending lawyer played by John Turturro irritating. The woman playing the prosecuting attorney was poor and there was a lack of depth in the other characters, so in the end this was disappointing. The box set goes to the charity shop. I give it 6/10.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2401256/?ref_=nv_sr_1

I finally finished watching the second season of Marco Polo. Loved it.

However, as much I was into From Dusk 'Til Dawn during the first two seasons, the third isn't doing it for me.

Ever vigilant for True Detective Season 3. Just read that the writers have been told to start figuring out various possibilities, so there is a start.

the man in the high castle.

I have just caught up with the 2011 first season of The Bridge which was one of the first 'scandi noir' tv series that has encouraged a lot -probably too many- more. I persevered with it even though I thought the script and the acting was poor, and the plot predictable and without interest. I didn't care about the people involved and often did not know if the action was taking place in Sweden or Denmark, but I will concede that in architectural and engineering terms, that is a mighty fine bridge.

Shut Eye

Lucifer
Peaky Blinders
SW Rebels
Travelers
The Blacklist
Dirk Gently
Shameless
Doctor Who
Longmire
Game of Thrones

Major Crimes
Dirk Gently
Orville
The Good Place

Ozark....Longmire...walking Dead