Watching – and thoroughly enjoying – The Grinder has prompted me to think about sitcoms and their use of ‘gimmicks’ as both a set-up for an entire series as well as for singular jokes. The Grinder is built around the gimmick of lampooning tropes ...
Read More »Love: We’ve all been there
It feels like cable channels and other alternative programming arenas are embracing the anti-Hollywood love story. With shows like Girls and Californication, we’ve seen all kinds of self-destructive, narcissistic behaviour of young twenty-somethings and even older generations. The new Judd ...
Read More »Why pseudo-documentaries continue to appeal
I wanted to capture the… the sights, the sounds… the smells of a hard-working rock band, on the road. What is more interesting than the bizarre stories that grace our television news programs? I remember loving the song ‘Horror Movie’ ...
Read More »Shadowhunters: Completely unwatchable trash
I’m not surprised that Shadowhunters, the second screen incarnation of Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments, is utter shit. But I had hoped that after 2013’s film adaptation was such a commercial and critical failure, the creative team behind the series ...
Read More »The Golden Girls: Breaking boundaries and challenging prejudice
Fans of The Golden Girls are proud of the show’s boundary breaking premise. Even now, pitching a primetime series featuring an entirely female regular cast all over the age of 50 would be laughable. And yet, the series was an ...
Read More »Consistency is king: Magic and powers in fantasy stories
Fans of SFF works have a bad reputation for being nit-picky, especially when it comes to the details of world-building. Strong world-building, however, is a big part of why readers are drawn to science fiction and fantasy. If we were ...
Read More »Ash vs Evil Dead: Ok good, I was about to feel like a huge dick
When a series is picked up for a second season before the first episode is aired, the show better be bloody brilliant. Lucky for Starz, Ash vs Evil Dead is – with emphasis on ‘bloody’. Having never seen the original ...
Read More »Supergirl’s death rattle
Well, that didn’t take long. The pilot was oh so promising with it’s fun silliness and feminist mentality. What happened? The third episode, ‘Fight or Flight’ sees Supergirl take on one of Superman’s villains, Reactron. As already well established, much ...
Read More »Supergirl: It’s not a bird. It’s not a plane. It’s not a man. It’s Supergirl.
If you are already a fan of Arrow or The Flash, likelihood is you will have already started tuning in to watch CBS’s latest DC series, Supergirl. Thankfully, Supergirl embraces the silly rather than brooding in dark corners; the series ...
Read More »The uneasy dichotomy of hero and villain
I have been reading the Bendis run of Daredevil and noticed something that is apparent – though not so openly addressed in many forms of fiction: that the hero and the villain need each other. In the comic, Daredevil notes ...
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