When the Cardassian occupation of Bajor ended in 2369, the mining space-station Terok Nor was left abandoned, its systems ripped out. By invitation of the provisional Bajoran government, Starfleet stepped in to oversee the rebuilding and day-to-day operations of the newly christened Deep Space Nine. DS9 soon became a center of travel and commerce thanks to a newly found stable wormhole leading to the largely unexplored Gamma Quadrant.
The first season of the American television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which is based on the Marvel Comics organization S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division), revolves around the character of Phil Coulson and his team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, who are assigned to several dangerous cases.
From the creator of True Blood, this exciting new Cinemax action drama charts the twists and turns that follow Lucas Hood (Antony Starr), an ex-convict who improbably becomes sheriff of a rural, Amish-area town while searching for a woman he last saw 15 years ago, when he gave himself up to police to let her escape after a jewel heist. Living in Banshee under an assumed name, Carrie Hopewell (Ivana Milicevic) is now married to the local DA, has two children (one of whom may be Lucas’s), and is trying desperately to keep a low profile–until Lucas arrives to shake up her world and rekindle old passions. Complicating matters is the fact that Banshee is riddled by corruption, with an Amish overlord, Kai Proctor (Ulrich Thomsen), brutally building a local empire of drugs, gambling and graft. With the help of a boxer-turned-barkeeper named Sugar Bates (Frankie Faison), Lucas is able to stay on even footing with Kai and his thugs, and even manages to bring a measure of tough justice to Banshee. But eventually, Lucas’ appetite for pulling heists pulls him and Carrie into a dangerous cauldron of duplicity, exacerbated when Mr. Rabbit (Ben Cross), the NY mobster they once ripped off, closes in with vengeance on his mind.
[Note: Summary is for Season 1 of Banshee, not Season 3]
I’m going to get this out of the way right now, The 100 is the best show on The CW. Which is quite frankly something that I’d never thought I’d say even at the end of its first season, because that was when Arrow was really hitting home with some excellent episodes and we’ve had The Flash since then. However, Arrow started to drop in quality as Season 3 began, just as The 100 was really stepping up a gear. In fact, I’d not just call it as the best show on The CW, but one of the best Science Fiction shows on television period, matching up with the likes of the clone-drama Orphan Black, and the procedural-turned heavy serialized science fiction thriller Person of Interest. It’s something that I’d have never expected The 100 to do, and really rewards those who stick with it after the first few episodes aren’t unfortunately the strongest that the series has ever been.
The conclusion of season 1 left the characters in a very unexpected situation as it delivered one of the strongest cliffhangers that I’ve seen in a while. Following the battle against the Grounders, the 100, who have been captured by the Mountain Men who make their home in Mount Weather. It turns out that Mt. Weather (which was the original objective of the 100 to reach way back in the Pilot), is actually the home of humans who have survived the Nuclear War and retreated underground, trapped in the Mountain because to step outside would mean instant death. There, the 43, of which the number includes Clarke (Eliza Taylor), Jasper (Devon Bostick) and Monty (Christopher Larkin), find themselves adapting to life inside the Mountain, which is overlooked by President Dante Wallace (Raymond J. Barry, who played Arlo, Raylan Givens’ dad, very well on Justified – to the point where it’s now odd to see Barry in a role where he actually cares about people other than himself). However, Clarke is incredibly sceptical about the apparent safe haven that she finds herself in, wanting nothing more to be freed. With Bellamy (Bob Morley) and Finn (Thomas McDonnell) are presumed dead, things are made all the more complicated by the fact that Ark Station, and all its residents (aside from Thelonious Jaha (Isaiah Washington), who remains in space, has crashed down to Earth, with its inhabitants finding themselves on Earth for the first time.
So that’s basically where we pick off at the start of Season 2, and it’s great to see The 100 continuously developing and changing over the course of the extended sixteen episode count that we’re given this season. It continues to be heavily serialized, with hardly any filler episodes found within, which is rare for a show that has to use longer episodes like this. It also continues to be incredibly bleak for a show on The CW, feeling more at home with the likes of The Walking Dead in terms of tone than that of The Flash, for example. It isn’t afraid to put its characters through the wire and do things that the majority of any other show on network TV would shy away from. Deaths don’t just happen in the season finale, they’re scattered throughout the show, and those deaths don’t just happen to nameless characters – there’s a shocking moment midway through the season that really punches you in the gut and leaves you breathless. Alliances are made, forged, tightened and broken over the course of the season, with several unpredictable betrayals (the one in Blood Must Have Blood, Part One, is easily one of the most shocking moments of the show), and more. Those who hate the CW’s apparent mandate of creating love-triangles left right and centre will be pleased to know that romance will be pushed to the side here, although that said, there are few moments but none as out of place as last season’s seemed to feel.
The characters, most of whom have already been pushed through hell and back, are pushed to the limit again. They make choices that you won’t like and actions have consequences. Nobody is the same at the start of the season as they are at the end and it’s great to see these characters constantly changing and developing. Octavia (Marie Avgeropoulos), one of the most problematic characters of early Season 1, really becomes one of the show’s strongest in Season 2, undergoing a total transformation. Jasper and Monty become far more than just the comic relief characters. Murphy (Richard Harmon) and Jaha both undergo transformations that you would have never expected their characters to take as the show puts them in an unlikely partnership midway through the season. And Bellamy steals the show in the final few episodes as he gets to Die-Hard his way through the tunnels underneath Mt. Weather on a solo mission that’s very awesome to see. And that’s before we get to Clarke, the main character, who gets some incredible development, as the show isn’t afraid to do things to its main character that others would avoid. So it’s safe to say that the show knows what to do with a lot of its characters and balances them very well with some excellent pacing throughout most of the season.
Despite the large increase in quality, The 100 does still have a few flaws. A few scenes here and there feel rushed and the ending cliffhanger doesn’t feel as jaw-dropping as the first season’s was (even though it features a very cool use of Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London), and there are a few episodes that aren’t quite as good as most of the season. However, that said, there are no unwatchable episodes here, and I’d still rather watch an episode of the second season of The 100 rather than most of anything else on TV. This show (which has an excellent new title sequence, by the way), really establishes itself as the next Battlestar Galactica in this season and if you’re a science fiction fan who hasn’t watched it yet, what are you waiting for? Go check it out now. Season 3 can’t come quickly enough.
VERDICT: 9/10
The first season of Sleepy Hollow was one of my favourite new series of 2013. Mixing funny dialogue, an excellent chemistry between the lead cast and some excellent, bonkers plots that weren’t holding anything back, blending history with fantasy in several great ways over the course of the tightly plotted thirteen episodes runtime. It was compulsively addictive and ended on one of the best cliffhangers that you will quite possibly ever see on television, and given Fox’s habit for cancelling shows that have had excellent first seasons (Almost Human, Firefly) I was really glad to see that the show had earned another one. However, with the extended episode count, problems began to take ahold of Sleepy Hollow, as it adopted a more case-of-the-week based approach than before, sacrificing season-long arcs in favour of telling standalone stories that were often underwhelming (which was mandated by FOX, who never learn). The cast was still good (save for one notable exception), yes, and the start and end of the season was great, but on the whole, it was fairly disappointing especially given the rather weak take on one of the series major characters.
The first season ended with the revelation that Henry (John Noble) was in fact the son of Ichabod (Tom Mison) and Katrina (Katia Winter) and had been manipulating them the whole time and was in league with Moloch and the Headless Horseman. To make things more dramatic, just moments after Katrina had been freed from purgatory, which was the main goal of Season 1, she was given to the Horseman by Henry as part of their deal. And the rest of the team found themselves in complete jeopardy – Abbie (Nicole Beharie) was banished to purgatory, Captain Frank Irving (Orlando Jones) confessed to the murders of the police officer and a priest and was promptly arrested, Jenny (Lyndie Greenwood) fell victim to a car crash, and Ichabod was imprisoned, trapped in a wooden box beneath the ground with seemingly no chance of escaping. The biggest question was – how could they possibly resolve this? It seemed like the bad guys had won, but in the best possible way it seemed, Sleepy Hollow answered all of those questions, delivering a really strong premiere that was handled incredibly well.
However, it wasn’t long after that that things started to go downhill. Sleepy Hollow introduced the character Hawley (Matt Barr) in the third episode where he quickly became the most annoying character on the show, not really offering anything to his role. The show also unsuccessfully introduced Captain Irving’s replacement; Reyes (Sakina Jeffrey) who wasn’t fleshed out as well as she could have been, serving as a rather forgettable character. There were also various other standalone characters who failed to impress, such as the Angel Orion (Max Brown). But the biggest culprit of all was Katrina (Katia Winter), who was underwhelming for most of the season. This was partly because the strongest thing that the series had going for it was the chemistry between the two leads, Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison, and when Katrina was finally freed from the Horseman’s captivity, she only broke up that chemistry that had made the show so great, and wasn’t really given enough to do. The show tried to fix that with the final few episodes of the season, which whilst were still pretty good, felt that her arc was underdeveloped with her character making several choices that were out-of-character.
However, that’s not to say there were some good moments as well. The Nicole Beharie/Tom Mison chemistry was excellent as always and John Noble absolutely killed it in the role of Henry, with the revelation concerning his identity at the end of Season 1 gave him plenty to do this year, even though his end was somewhat anti-climatic.
With this show currently on the bubble, it’s not really certain whether or not we’ll see Season 3 just yet. I was kind of happy to let Sleepy Hollow go after several underwhelming episodes, but the two-part finale arc, which is certainly worth sticking around for if you’re put off by the lack of quality of some of the standalone episodes, really made up for it. The brief time-travel arc was among the best that the show has ever done, making use of a fantastic cliffhanger for the penultimate episode. (Thankfully, there wasn’t one in the finale, as it probably wouldn’t be able to Top Season 1’s). We also got to listen to an incredible violin cover of The Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil.
So despite quite a lot of flaws then, Sleepy Hollow Season 2 never really became unwatchable and whilst it lacked the sheer entertainment value of Season 1, I’d still rather watch another season of this than sit through mediocre, generic crime series (looking at you, ABC’s Secrets and Lies). Because when Sleepy Hollow gets it right, it gets it very right indeed.
VERDICT: 7.5/10
“Years ago, Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a mysterious and demonic supernatural force. Subsequently, their father raised them to be soldiers, teaching them about the paranormal evil that lives in dark corners and on the back roads of America. And he taught them how to kill it. This haunting series follows the Winchester brothers as they travel the lonely and mysterious back roads of the country in their ’67 Chevy Impala, hunting down every evil supernatural force they encounter along the way. At the start of the fourth season, Dean has been freed from Hell, but he can’t remember how or why, or what happened while he was there. It soon becomes clear that Sam has secrets of his own, including what happened in the four months Dean was gone. As the brothers answer these questions, they also face a dire threat. There are whispers that an evil demon will soon be freed from its prison.
I’m going to start this review by saying that actually haven’t yet seen The Americans’ first season, diving into the second last year and despite a few problems once I worked out who everybody was I got into the series pretty well. Unfortunately, I never managed to get back around to watching the first season, which is something that I intend to remedy when I can – it’s looking likely that it’ll be after the conclusion of Season 3, however. Because this show is one of the best dramas on television, with a captivating cold war period drama that showcases the lives of two Russian Agents living undercover as part of an American family, with their lives so secret that their own children don’t know who they really work for, Matthew Rhys plays the husband, Phillip, whilst Keri Russell impresses as Elizabeth, the wife. Their children are 10 year old Henry and 13 year old Paige.
FX is rapidly turning into one of the most reliable networks for me as of late, giving us some awesome shows like southern cop drama Justified, biker/family saga Sons of Anarchy, comedy You’re The Worst, crime anthology Fargo, and horror anthology American Horror Story. In fact, The Strain remains the only disappoint from the network that I’ve seen so far, but even that had some good moments such as the eighth episode. And it says something that on a network with shows like the ones above, The Americans manages to come out on top, with a stunning second season that knocks it out of the park and makes it one of the best series on television period, not just on FX.
The first episode of season two gets us into the swing of things pretty fast when Elizabeth and Phillip quickly find another family in the same situation as them murdered. And to make matters worse, Paige, their daughter, is quickly growing more and more suspicious of her parents, whilst at the same time become more distant herself. The child actors of both Henry and Paige, Keidrich Sellati and Holly Taylor especially, put in a good job in their respective roles. It’s hard to get a good child character across on a show dominated by adults, but Paige’s storyline this season has been pretty good.
The atmospheric period setting of the cold war is pretty great. There are very few shows on TV that explore the Cold War nowadays and even fewer that explore it from the Russian’s POV. Yes, Phillip and Elizabeth may be technically the ‘bad guys’ in this situation, but both Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell deliver captivating performances so that you can’t help but get behind them and want them to succeed. Their performances are among the best on television right now, which is in part what helps make this show so good, with everything about it being very strong indeed.
Yes, The Americans may not be an all action blockbuster, with many slow moments that separate it from the fast paced action of the likes of James Bond. However, the slower paced moments often allow for greater character development and the end result is very awesome indeed. The perfect blend of attention to character and story with little information dumping to be found makes The Americans one of the more compelling shows on television.
Taking place over thirteen hour long episodes, like most shows on FX, The Americans’ second season is mostly serialized and there are hardly any standard ‘case of the week’ episodes that you would typically find on CBS or NBC. It’s an all story approach here and that makes this show perfect for binge watching, because you’ll want to move onto the next episode as soon as possible.
It’s hard to pick out a standout episode form The Americans’ second season. They all blend so well together with some good pacing structure that will keep you invested. Whilst Stan (Noah Emmerich), the FBI Agent’s storyline struggles at the beginning of the season, there isn’t many problems with this show that remains consistently good. There’s just enough time to start catching up on Season 1 and 2 if you start watching now, provided you don’t have anything else planned until January 29, because let’s face it, there are many worse things that you could be spending your time watching instead.
VERDICT: 9/10
In its third season, “Supernatural” continues taking viewers on a terrifying journey into the world of the unexplained. Brothers Sam and Dean Winchester were raised to be soldiers. Now, as they join other hunters traveling the country to track down the evil fugitives from Hell hiding in the darkest corners of America, they must also battle their internal demons. Experience the thrill ride in year three of “Supernatural.”
As a general rule, I tend to avoid horror. Or at least, I did tend to avoid horror, and whilst that rule applies to a certain extent to movies still, I’ve really increased watching the genre when it comes to television. Supernatural, Sleepy Hollow, Constantine, The Originals (all to a certain extent, as they rely more on action), American Horror Story, The Strain and Penny Dreadful have all been horror shows that I’ve been watching and I suppose you could probably include Buffy in there as well. One of the strongest of the shows that I’ve recently branched out towards has been Hannibal, which serves as proof that US network television can produce masterpieces once in a while (I also point people who have lost faith in US network TV to Person Of Interest as another example), and if you end up watching this show, you’ll be surprised to see that it’s come from NBC, a network that has given us The Blacklist, Chicago Fire/PD, and the like in the past and continues to do so. It’s clearly more at home on a network like FX or Cinemax, but that doesn’t stop Hannibal from being able to pull off all the stops when it comes to gore and horror, with it being one of the most gruesome shows on television (along with The Knick).
The show is essentially a prequel to Silence of the Lambs, a movie which sadly to this day I still have not seen all of, and frankly, I don’t want to until this show finishes in order to have the ending unspoiled. I’m going in dark, and not knowing who will survive,(apart from a select few characters) and now that I’m caught up I can avoid spoilers altogether, making the experience a lot more awesome and unpredictable, because damn if this show isn’t one of the most unpredictable series on network television right now, with it not being afraid to kill off major characters.
Our main protagonist in the series is Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), a gifted criminal profiler who has a unique way of breaking down crime scenes, and can emphasize with anybody including serial killers. He’s recruited by Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) to aid him in cases, which are often gruesome and gory in nature. Whilst yes, this is technically a case-of-the-week show, at least in its first season, there is a main ongoing narrative arc that runs over the course of the series, making each episode unmissable. In fact, each episode is too good to be unmissable, with a spectacularly high level of quality.
After the introduction of Will and Jack, it doesn’t take us long to meet our third major character, Hannibal Lecter himself. Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen), most people will know even if they haven’t seen The Silence of the Lambs is a cannibal who eats human flesh and constantly leads the FBI on a wild goose chase as they hunt for the main, mysterious villain of the series, the enigmatic Chesapeake Ripper, who remains elusive and uncaught for most of the series. Hannibal himself sees an opportunity in manipulating both Will and Jack to suit his own needs, and as we progress through the course of the series we get to see the extent of Hannibal’s methods and tactics unravel before our eyes. It’s great to watch, and the characters really do grow and develop over the course of the season, and by the end, it’ll be easy to see how they’ve changed from episode one.
The cast is fantastic and the acting talent on display is one of the finest I’ve seen on TV. Combining a veteran cast of movie and TV actors, the likes of Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale), Hugh Dancy and Laurence Fishburne (Black-ish) all put on a fantastic performance and there’s some very good acting on display here. The chemistry between the lead cast is great, and there’s also some great interplay with the rest of the characters as well. We meet a variety of characters over the course of the series, including the likes of Dr. Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavemas), Beverly Katz (Hettienne Park) and Freddie Lounds (Lara Jean Chorostecki) who all play pretty good roles in the series. There’s no weak link in the show, which is fantastic when you consider how common that is on most shows nowadays.
The visuals and effects are superb. The gore and blood effect never feels cheap and everything is handled spectacularly well. The series creator, Bryan Fuller (Dead Like Me) gives Hannibal lots of room to grow and continues to make it one of the best shows on television with some great creative work in play. The various murders that Jack and Will chase after never feel repeated and there’s always something new to uncover.
The repercussions of the ‘cases of the week’ always feel relevant and as a result there’s never anything that feels like a filler episode. They’re always exciting and always of good quality as well, as the series continues to build to a fantastic ending that really is one of the strongest cliffhangers that I’ve seen. I know how it is resolved as I have seen Season 2 whilst typing this (in fact, I finished it only recently) but I won’t spoil it here for you. It’s darkly compelling and incredibly well executed.
Hannibal then, is probably one of my favourite shows on television and certainly in the Top 10. If you don’t mind gore and violence (that really works, trust me), then this show comes with a high recommendation. At only thirteen episodes long, each roughly 45 minutes, it shouldn’t take you too long to get caught up before the start of Season 3 next year.
VERDICT: 9.5/10
The Fictional Hangout 