30 Days of television: Day 11

[hnpcc]

Day 11 - A show that disappointed you

Hm. I'm presuming they mean "went into with reasonable expectations and then was disappointed."

Well V on one level - having seen what they did with Battlestar I was hopeful for V. I mean the original miniseries had some pretty strong story themes in it, and they could have been very successfully re-imagined. Which... didn't really happen. On the other hand, my tolerance for extremely bad television is fairly high, particularly if it's making me laugh, so I've been sticking with it. Not least for all the guest appearances by ex-Battlestar and Firefly cast members. I'm holding out for Mary Masterton to make an appearance now.

Sadly, I have to admit I had... well, OK, low hopes for PirateMaster which was a very short-lived reality show. It sounded like it could be entertaining on paper - a cross between Survivor and Love Cruise with a pirates theme! And with a Daddo hosting it! But it really was quite bad. Funny, yes, but still... bad.

Survivors. I love a good post-apocalyptic miniseries, and have a high tolerance for bad television. This most recent version of that series tested that tolerance quite a lot. Seriously guys, do some basic epidemiology before writing your series premiere please. It does not bode well when I'm arguing with the initial premise of your apocalypse for purely technical reasons, even when I know you have to get past the apocalypse in order to get to the post- bit. Even so, that was a really stupidly badly written apocalypse that could have been so much better. Meh.

The Andromeda Strain, most recent remake. The initial opening scenes of this were actually really good, and very, very creepy. It went massively downhill from there though. Not that that stopped me watching the entire thing; which turned out to be worth it for the sheer levels of badness it descended to. When they got to the "we must abseil down the enormous air vent to save the world!" moment I was in hysterics.

Super Comet: After The Impact Normally I quite like a good speculative documentary. This was a half-good speculative documentary. The half that was good was the talking heads half, where they went through the scientific side of what was likely to happen if a comet the size of the one that struck Earth 65 million years ago hit us again today. (Short answer: nothing good.) The other half unfortunately was bloody awful. No, really, bloody awful. The acting was appallingly bad and looked to have been extremely badly dubbed at points; the scenarios they devised - which were supposed to be based on the science, dammit! - were unbelievably stupid, and really obviously so once you'd listened to the talking heads, and overall it was just awful. It was like they didn't want to kill off any of the main characters they'd come up with, so everyone survived (except one poor bloke) which required more and more implausible situations for them to do so. Prime examples: they'd just finished explaining how limited resources would lead to competition between groups. The group including the French father and daughter promptly encounter another group. There is tension... and then they decide to work together, effectively halving their limited resources. The hell?! (And then they met up with the mother, from whom they'd been separated in the confusion of the comet hitting. For some extremely stupid reason she'd decided to flee Paris and land in the exact same part of the French coastline as they did. No, there was no "this is their home village" explanation - everyone was just fleeing Paris. *eyeroll* And this was after they'd nearly died of cold in the post-comet snowstorms, but fortunately all the rail infrastructure remained intact and apparently un-snow-covered so the entire group could get to the coast where it was warmer. *mega-eyeroll*) Hawaii couple escape on a yacht - she falls overboard and is rescued in the nick of time from a hungry shark. Talking head explains that the food chain would be disintegrating and high level predators (including us) would be starting to feel the effects. There is a massive storm, the yacht sinks and the Hawaii couple then spend several days on a raft drifting to shore. Lucky all the sharks died in the interim then! After drifting to shore they're promptly welcomed into a local community where they don't speak the language. Which part of kill the foreigners and resource competition did the scriptwriters not understand?!? Everyone had a happy ending (except the poor Mexican bloke, who walked to where the comet hit only to find that his family had turned into a giant hole in the ground. Yes, he made it to the edge of the crater, looked down and died, again despite the talking head explaining just how hot the ground would be for quite a long way around this and despite him having no bloody water.) Even the jungle tribe in Cameroon (which I took as being similar to Bushmen or Twa) who the heads pointed out were better equipped to survive in some respects as they were used to having to hunt for food apparently suffered no ill-effects from the collapse of the ocean food chain or the sudden climate changes. Meh. Double meh. I think I watched this one to the end out of sheer disbelief at just how bad it actually got.

There are more shows - there's another drama one that I can't think of the title or enough details to work it out that I'll probably edit to include later.

Comments

[vestalvagrant.livejournal.com]

We gave up on Survivors after two episodes when it became clear how heavily the network were editing it to fit into the timeslot. Entire scenes were deleted, taking with them all character motivation and a lot of explanation of the action. The characters kept randomly appearing in different locations with new unexplained plans. We'll probably watch it on DVD some day (because it has Johnson from Peep Show!) but will most likely still loathe the central mother character who keeps forgetting about her lost son for days at a time while she's distracted doing other stuff. "My son was last seen three miles from here? May as well have a nine hour sleep first."

[sand-l.livejournal.com]

Yep only stuck with survivors for one episode, a lot of my problems where due to that fact that I REALLY dislike Julie Graham...talking of JG & disappointing TV, Bonekickers was dreadful...