review of FlashForward, True Blood & Generation Kill

in the last week, i've seen the opening episode (or 2) of 3... just 3?... yes, 3 i think...

3 new tv things, all american, 2 on channel 4, one on 5...

Flashforward
True Blood
Generation Kill

flash forward first:

it's the only one of the 3 programs that hasn't already been shown in america...

this is nice...

i watched it on the internet, because demand5 is not yet on virgin V, unlike all the other terrestrials, (4 on demand, BBC i-player, ITV...thing)...

demand5 delivers adverts, at a few points in the show, which you can see as dots in the line at the bottom, also they have adverts before the show starts...

the 2 adverts at the beginning are repeated at least once in the show...

this is shit...

and to think i could be downloading this nonsense and not watching any adverts...

so to the show itself... it's made by the makers of lost... and i remembered this midway through the 2nd episode and i laughed at myself for watching it...

it has a good premise, and the story looks promising, and it good in it's way,

but there were a few too many moments where the cheese got grated a little too much... the main male character, whose wife saw a future in which she was loving another man... keeps giving her a hard time about this... he's dumb therefore... his side-kick / another important male character, spends ages being down on our main characters theories because he didn't see anything in his future and therefore might well be dead...

so already, within the 1st 2 episodes, drama is being inserted with no good reason to insert drama...

in this current world we live in, too often we are expected to sift through flaws in TV shows to find the good that is in them... i don't know if i have the patience for flashforward...

ok True Blood:

which i watched on the TV as it was broadcast, with dinah, after our turkish resaurant/police with large guns event earlier...

HBO made which counts for alot...

great so far, but a little too much "local colour" here and there, something heroes did with it's new orleans characters...

not only from black characters, but mostly from them, larger than life, sassy, performances which distracted a little from the story i found... not that i'm faulting the acting, it's the writing i'm unhappy with,

but not too unhappy, this is a smaller complaint than i had with flashforward and i think it'll be worth sticking with true blood... the magic, the sense of real connection the main woman feels for the vampire... and already a good story...

i loved buffy the vampire slayer and so i was always going to like true blood anyway,

it's quite explicitly rude for TV which is nice... the characters are coming along nicely, no 1 dimensional people as far as i can see, although there's time...

so to Generation Kill...

watched last night on catch-up, on the TV, after a mental few days of not enough sleep, a few pints and some smoking (which is exactly the right idea after a mental fews days on not enough sleep)...

then watched again this afternoon, again on catchup, after a lovely night's rest..

made by the team that made the wire... and just fantastic, no flaws to speak of... (as indeed the wire was flawless)... a huge cast of characters that it's quite hard to follow, and no easy explanatory TV, which is a strength in my world...

i'm curious who wrote it, as in, which character is the writer, it's from a book and it seems likely that the reporter in the story wrote the book... but not for sure...

it shows a side to the tank loving boy audience, lots of hummvees... in formation rolling through the desert... a nod towards the glory of the mechanisms of war... while showing the stupid choices of the military...

just as in the wire there are people in the military world of this show who are willing to do a good job, and there a people who are motivated by other things, greed, power, and for many different reasons do not do a good job...

a great character who wistfully pisses on the desert while talking about the destiny of the white man... a curious mix of racism in a seeming lovable character...

a seemingly true account of what it was like in that unit... with porn magazines, chewing tobacco of some kind, drugs, well almost drugs... homophobia, racism, comradery, stupidity..

hasn't put a foot wrong yet...

so that's what i think x