New reviews on Television Heaven

 After something of a hiatus, I am back on a more regular footing with my reviews. (Big things occurring in real life I'm afraid, you know how it is). As such, there are a whole bunch of new reviews up on Television Heaven:

The X-Files comes to a close with its tenth and eleventh seasons - the revival years.

Buffy season four and Angel season two keep us moving in the Buffyverse.

Another long-running season-by-season review begins with DC's Legends of Tomorrow.

And a mere six months after Christmas, here's the David Tennant version of Around the World in 80 Days.

While you're there, check out these great reviews of Picard season two and Philip K. Dick anthology series Electric Dreams by John Winterson Richards.

Lots more to come in the near future!

REVIEW: BLADE RUNNER 2049

To be honest, I think Blade Runner - the original, from 1982 - is a little overrated. It's a great film, of course, hugely influential, but it's not, in my opinion, the mighty classic that people think it is. Still, it is a beloved film, and the announcement of a belated sequel over thirty years later left a lot of people uneasy. Critics were gunning for this film, ready to pounce on it and declare it a hollow remake of a classic. So I was surprised to see almost unanimously positive reviews.

They were deserved. Blade Runner 2049 is excellent. With the original being set in 2019, there was no point pretending that this was representing our future. Instead, the filmmakers take the noir-ish, dirty but ultimately very cool future America and extrapolated what it would be like thirty years down the line: toxic, broken and dying. Replicant technology has been refined by Wallace (a very sinister Jared Leto), a bioengineer who has saved the world from famine during this ecological collapse. The last elements of free will have been purged. Ryan Gosling's character, generally referred to as K, works for the LAPD to hunt down the last of the previous generation of replicant rebels.

Gosling is perfect as K, completely laconic and emotionless until the scene demands his resolve crack. K's only friend is Joi, a holographic companion provided by the same corporation that created him, although he has earned a measure of respect from his superior, the steely Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright), in a world where most humans spit at "skinjobs." The inclusion of Harrison Ford as Deckard is, of course, a huge draw, but he has far less screentime than expected, which is very much a positive. Gosling's character is well established as the centre of the story by the time he finds the older Blade Runner, so Deckard's inclusion comes at the right time to fully tie this story to its predecessor. It's also a nice touch that Edward James Olmos makes a brief reappearance as Gaff. The film also leaves the exact nature of Deckard uncommented upon, which allows much of the mystery of the original to remain.

There has been some discussion about the feminist aspect of the film. While many of the most powerful characters in the film are female (Joshi, Sylvia Hoeks as the deadly replicant Luv), there are also several female characters who are literal or figurative sex objects. Joi exists purely at the whim of K; Mariette (Mackenzie Davis) is a replicant prostitute in the manner of Pris of the original. They are still significant and powerful characters in their own way, and to dismiss the film because of their objectified status misses the point. The film is about the commodification of human life. People - replicants, holograms, children - are owned and utilised in one way or another. People are property, as ever they were, in a future where the leading industrialist laments that society has lost its stomach for slavery.

Blade Runner 2049 represents a lost, unreachable future, but it is still relevant today, and in some ways surely prescient. Beautiful in its ugliness, gripping and exceptionally directed, this is a sequel that's as good as people say the original is.

REVIEW: Electric Dreams - The Hood Maker

Philip K. Dick - famously troubled, gloriously creative, gifted - or cursed - with a unique way of seeing the world. His novels are well known, and have been adapted many times before. Indeed, it's no doubt the recent success of Amazon's adaptation of The Man in the High Castle and the upcoming release of the sequel to Blade Runner that have spurred the creation of this new series. While I've read a number of Dick's novels, I'm mildly ashamed to say I haven't read any of his short stories. The only ones I could name immediately would be "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," the basis for Total Recall, "The Minority Report," and "The Adjustment Team," adapted as The Adjustment Bureau. A quick check reveals more that have been adapted - I hadn't realised the fairly woeful Paycheck started as PKD short story - but still, it's clear that there's far more of his work out there than I have made time to explore.

Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams seems set to remedy that, putting Dick's various short stories through the adaptation process and turning them into hour-long TV episodes. There will no doubt be some significant changes to be made; Dick wrote the bulk of his material in the fifties and sixties, and things have moved on quite significantly since then, both technologically and socially. However, it looks like the ethos of the work will remain. I certainly intend to look up these originals and see how the new and old compare; hopefully the series will encourage more people to look into the original works. While showing on Channel Four in the UK, the US, and one imagines, eventual world rights, have been taken by Amazon.

Electric Dreams kicks off with a series of generically sci-fi-ish images, the sort of immediately arresting but ultimately nonsensical stuff that was used for the title sequences of The X-Files and the 90s version of The Outer Limits. The sort of thing Rick and Morty parodies. This wasn't particularly promising to me, but thankfully, once that was over, the first episode itself was stylistically brilliant. "The Hood Maker," adapted from the 1955 story of the same name, has a dirty neon, rundown look that isn't a million miles away from Blade Runner's aesthetic, although the city we visit here is distinctly low-tech. This gives the production something of a feel for the '50s origins of the story, although the impression here is very  much a post-electronic society, rather than one in the past. (The actual setting and background for the story are barely even sketched in, which cuts down on exposition and maintains a palpable air of mystery.)

In this distorted version of Britain, society is run by the Union, just as stratified as it is today but now with a new underclass: the Teeps, telepathic mutants who are physically distinguished by facial birthmarks. The Teeps are a feared and downtrodden minority, living in ghettos and used for both official and illegal purposes. It's a disturbingly believable set-up. While the hatred for Teeps is clear, with protests on the streets against their very existence, the police use Teep agents to hunt down and interrogate suspects - in one of the most disturbing scenes in the programme, a supposed terrorist is forced to relive trauma and shameful memories as part of a torturous interrogation. Meanwhile, the elite visit Teep brothels, where seeming psychic sex sessions lead to emotional and physical abuse, all while officially maintaining the segregation.

The stars of the programme are Richard Madden, best known as Robb Stark on Game of Thrones, and Holliday Grainger, who has had various TV roles and is surely destined for greatness based on her performance here. The two have previously appeared together in the 2015 adaptation of Lady Chatterly's Lover, and have strong chemistry. Grainger plays Honor, a Teep who is assigned to work with Madden's Detective Ross in an investigation into rising disruption in the city, both by "Normals" and Teeps. Someone is making hoods that block out the Teep's abilities, and civil unrest - including a possible Teep uprising - is on the cards,

While Madden is excellent and charismatic as Ross, it's Grainger's haunting performance as Honor that is the star call here. She is powerfully sympathetic, from her introduction to the heart-wrenching conclusion. Also impressive is Anneika Rose, who plays Honor's friend Mary, a Teep who is left working in a telepathic brothel and earns abuse for her troubles. In a powerful scene, Mary's emotional and physical pain echo through all the Teeps in the ghetto, linking them together in trauma in a way the "Normals" could never understand. The story raises important and evocative questions, about our rights to privacy, autonomy and freedom, both from the point of view of the Teeps and their frightened targets. There's an undercurrent throughout of abuses of power on all sides, and it's very clear that, one way or another, this society is due for violent change.

I understand the original story is significantly different both in specifics and the general direction, and look forward to investigating it. Here, though, Matthew Graham, creator of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, creates a story that poses many questions, answers few, and makes us think about how people treat each other and how power is shared out. Towards the end there are revelations, including a retelling of an earlier scene with distinct differences, that make us question everything we've seen so far. Not only is this exactly how Dick liked to make his readers question reality, it puts us firmly in the shoes of Honor in her betrayal and confusion. This is an excellent start to a series that promises much, and I look forward to the remaining episodes and will be sure to delve in to the stories that inspired them. (Channel Four are missing a trick if they don't republish them themselves.)

TV REVIEW: The Man in the High Castle

As part of Amazon's new run of pilot episodes, The Man in the High Castle is so far just one small part of a much larger story that is begging to be told. I'll be candid: I've not actually read the original novel by Philip K. Dick (it's on the list, OK?) Dick's works are notoriously difficult to capture successfully on film. Ridley Scott was, of course, responsible for altering the acclaimed novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? into the even more celebrated film Blade Runner. How extensive his work is here, as executive producer, isn't clear, but The Man in the High Castle does capture the astonishing attention to detail and visual panache that made Blade Runner such a masterpiece of world building. The script, by Howard Brenton and Frank Spotnitz, is remarkably utilitarian, with little of the flashy dialogue we've come to expect from shows trying to make an impression. It feels very natural and is all the more powerful for it. We spend only an hour in this world, but the vision of America we experience is entirely believable, recognisably the sixties America of a thousand movies but skewed and leached of hope. Unlike the original novel, this is a period piece, and therefore has a certain amount of further work to do in creating its world.

While any adaptation is bound to alter certain details, I understand that fans of the novel have, for the most part, been pleased with how little has been changed. As yet, this is set-up that, if Amazon have any sense, will be expanded into a full series which may, of course, move in unforeseen directions. As someone who is new to the story, I wonder if I am actually at an advantage; able to be surprised by developments. The revelation of one character's loyalties at the episode's end came as a surprise to me, although, in retrospect, it was hinted at by a cheeky bit of Scott set dressing. (Hint: you'll think Blade Runner again.) As with much of Dick's work, we are encouraged to question everything we see, and I'm sure there are more surprises to come.

The concept of a world in which the Axis won WWII is a cliche, of course, but only because it holds such endless fascination in our culture that it has been used time and time again, and will continue to be so. The conquered and divided States here are a little one-sided; the Japanese Pacific States seem too pleasant on first exploration, although the existence of a ruthless police force show how this is only surface deep. Nonetheless, while I applaud the representation of the Japanese people as varied in culture and attitude, I wonder if they are being made to acceptable as an occupying force here. Life for those under Japanese occupation in the War was horrific, and I wonder if things would have been so much better by this alternative 1962. The Nazi-occupied side, on the other hand, has the feel of occupied France all through it, right down to the resistance. A Nazi-ruled America is familiar enough from fiction, and this is perhaps the best and most believable depiction I have seen. Nonetheless, the Nazi forces come of far less attractively than the Japanese; they are, so far, villainous through and through. Hopefully further episodes will illuminate and explore all sides of the conflict more equally.

All that said, this is a masterful depiction of life under foreign rule, where ordinary people are pushed to extremes by the harsh political realities of their world. Huge praise is due for the cast, all of whom sell this world convincingly. In particular Alexa Davalos as Juliana, a wonderful but underused actress; Luke Kleintank as Joe, who carries much of the episode just driving in near silence and remains absorbing; and the great Rufus Sewell, who is terrifying as the calmly cruel Obergruppenfuhrer John Smith. We need to see more of them and the torn apart world they inhabit. More please, and soon.