So I am really looking forward to this show. J.J. Abrams is up there with Joss Whedon for me in terms of creating stuff I want to watch (Trekkers moan that his movies are nothing like the original, all flash and no bang- but look at the state of the Trek franchise before he took the reigns, it was over-bloated with techno babble and weighted down with a history that no one writer seemed to get a handle on. Abrams and co. stripped Trek back to its essentials and injected a bit of Star Wars fizz and made it something that drew an audience not just a cult following).
Anyhoo back to Almost Human. It has Karl Urban in it. And if that doesn't grab ya then nothing will.
It's obviously too early to comment on the details. But considering its forebears were Lost and Fringe I have a good feeling about it.
Teen Wolf season three.
It is so rare for a television show to get past two seasons it seems nowadays. SFX Magazine described TW as "the little show that could." and did. There are a few reasons, I feel, for this. The first being MTV's unlikely status as a drama production studio. Like Doctor Who for the BBC, Teen Wolf has become something of a flag-ship show for MTV. And the ratings and reviews are high (comparatively) enough that the studio doesn't mind throwing a few thousand more dollars at it.
Admittedly it had a slow start. But (and here we have the second reason) it came at a time where the fervour for Twilight was strong. Adult audiences have their True Blood's and The Vampire Diaries but there was nothing aimed at the teen's and young adults. And now that the Twilight movies have finished the target demographic could undoubtedly grow!
And, I'm going to be a bit biased here, the cast are a great, fun bunch who don't just look good but actually make you like them. Kudos in particular for me has to go to Dylan O'Brien (pictured above). Most of the rest of the cast have at least three or four previous credits to their names (seriously Colton Haynes has an impressive profile on IMdB), but O'Brien had an independent film and a series of YouTube videos and not a lot else. And yet he always catches my attention with his performance. SFX called it "stand-out". This magazine knows its stuff, if a performance is poor it will call it out. And O'Brien originally read for the lead role, but felt Stiles was a better fit for him. And this season he will be contributing to the writing team. So it's not just the audience he's impressed with his performance.
Ahh Defiance. Thanks to SyFy's sloppy scheduling I missed the pilot (I missed the Goddamn spaceships!) BUT I haven't missed it since. I was a little slow to warm up to it, but I blame the above mentioned scheduling because by the third episode I was hooked! Jaime Murray's performance is fantastic! She is the true wielder of power in the Castithan encampment, Tony Curran is vicious as Datak Tarr but as his wife, Murray is deadly and smart. She knows how to play the other characters and she does it like a pro!
Grant Bowler (above middle) and Stephanie Leonidas (above left) also have an interesting relationship. He is the Marine who saved her from a horrendous death as a Irathient child sacrifice and adopted her as his daughter. She is also his Deputy (he having inherited the Sheriff-hood of Defiance), and that causes friction between them on a personal AND professional level, as they both have very different ideas on how to keep the peace amongst so many disparate species.
It's really these four characters and the relationships they share that have really caught my eye. But they are by no means the only reason to watch the show. The effects are neat- someone has clearly been given both creative freedom and money to make the not-quite-the-earth-we-know look, and it works for the most part. Except you do get the feeling you've seen the landscape before in the Stargate series'.(You have. It's filmed in Canada).
So there you have it. Shows I'm staying in for.
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