Monday 23 November 2009

I hang up Hung, Defying Gravity defies my axe, but my iris closes on Stargate Universe

Monday 23 November 2009
There never seemed to be much appetite for Hung reviews around here (seriously, am I the only one watching?), so I've decided to retire the show from weekly review. I'll still tune in every Thursday on More4, but it's not really worth my time putting a review together that nobody appears interested to read. I still quite like the show, but it's perhaps not that conducive to episodic review. Anyway, the time will be used to instead review BBC1's new five-part sci-fi thriller Paradox, which starts tomorrow at 9pm.

"On the bubble" for me is Defying Gravity, which I'm primarily watching because a few commenters insist it gets really good around episode 8. Its timeslot has now moved from 9pm Wednesdays to 11pm Saturdays, which isn't a good sign, but at least the BBC are unlikely to just pull it off-air. Anyway, thanks to the wonders of Virgin+, I tend to watch it on Tuesday.

Not that I ever reviewed it, but I've also stopped watching Stargate Universe now. Six episodes is more than enough time to know if a show's worth sticking with, and SGU just isn't. My patience snapped during the scene where Eli (in someone else's body, using a "communication stone") went back home to see his mother. It just suddenly dawned on me that I have no interest in Eli, his mother, his predicament, or anything else going on aboard Destiny.

It'll be interesting to see if it gets a second season, though. It's received a critical mauling and the venerable fans don't seem impressed. For a show that was supposed to draw in new audiences, it appears to have bored newbies to tears very quickly and simultaneously alienated the existing fan-base. Good move, guys! It is a shame, though, as I could change four things about the show that would make it immeasurably better overnight (1, get rid of those "stones"; 2, take the autopilot off the ship; 3, write some decent female characters; 4, involve more 'gating and aliens.)