New STAR TREK rumoured to be set before 'The Next Generation'

I wrote something about recent rumours that have surfaced about Bryan Fuller's 2017 Star Trek TV series, so have a read over at Medium.com! Click here!

SUPERGIRL flies high in U.S ratings

I reviewed Supergirl in May as part of a summer preview, but just wanted to draw your attention to my archived review today, as the comic-book drama has just premiered on CBS in the U.S (to a whopping 12.9m viewers, making it the most successful new autumn series in the young adult demographic). It did have The Big Bang Theory as a lead-in, of course, which is the No.1 comedy in America, so how episode 2 fares is less certain. But I have a feeling this show's a real winner, and most other critics agree. Supergirl debuts in the UK on Sky1 this Thursday, 29 October @8PM.

Pilot watch: CBS's LIMITLESS

★★☆☆☆

What's the premise? Do you remember Neil Burger's 2011 thriller Limitless, which starred Bradley Cooper as a struggling author who takes a 'smart drug' called NZT-49 that gives him amazing mental agility and total recall? This is set in that movie's world, only now our hero's Brian Finch; a struggling musician who pops NZT and uses his augmented IQ to help the FBI find the killer of his supplier.

Frame Rated: 5 New U.S TV Shows to Watch this Autumn

A few days ago, over at Frame Rated: I wrote a rundown of the 5 New U.S TV Shows to Watch this Autumn: BLINDSPOT, ASH vs EVIL DEAD, THE MUPPETS, SCREAM QUEENS and SUPERGIRL. Please check it out and share with your friends, family and followers!

I'm watching: EXTANT • HALT & CATCH FIRE • HANNIBAL • HUMANS • JS&MN • MR ROBOT • THE STRAIN • TRUE DETECTIVE • WAYWARD PINES

Familiar preamble by now: I'm still watching lots of television every week, but have less time and inclination to blog about it all. Therefore, occasionally I like to offer brief thoughts on some of the shows I've made a weekly appointment to watch. Maybe you'll enjoy reading? Onwards!

Extant – Season 2 (CBS/Amazon Prime)
Look, I wasn't a huge fan of season 1, but sometimes you watch silly things in the summer. It's a symptom of heat stress. Extant looks gorgeous in 1080p on Amazon and is frankly of the few reasons I can justify paying for their Prime service. But I'm probably going to give up soon, because this is clearly yet another U.S series that doesn't warrant going beyond a single season. This year has Molly (Halle Berry) becoming more crazy-eyed cop than problem-solving astronaut (who's suddenly a gifted marksman!), and I'm less interested in her reshaping because it's so clichéd. Ditching sensible Goran Visnjic for swaggering Jeffrey Dean Morgan was a good move, though. David Morrissey doing his American Accent© in a clichéd military tough-guy role, and the ridiculousness of scientists designing the government a robot warrior who resembles, um, a beautiful catwalk model... less so.
★☆☆☆☆

Pilot preview: CBS's SUPERGIRL

★★★☆

I've always found gender-bending superheroes to be rather unimaginative, because if you want to appeal to a female demographic why put a woman in the same costume as their male counterpart (with an added skirt), and peddle the same story? Why not create something unique and compelling on its own merits? This is why, for me, Wonder Woman will always be more exciting than Supergirl—and not just because the latter character's best-known as the basis for a terrible 1984 movie, attempting to cash-in on the success of the Christopher Reeve-starring Superman movies.

TV Pilots I Want to See: 2015-16

It's time for the return of my annual feature that lists the 2015/16 U.S pilots I have an interest in. This year, to make it a bit more fun, I've split these potential new shows into loose groups with similar themes. Also, each one has a coloured star that denotes its development status:

★ = not picked up

★ = in development, or under consideration

★ = officially becoming a new series

As always, if you spot any errors, notice that something needs updating, or would like to recommend a glaring omission to my list, please let me know in the comments below. This post will update over the next few weeks, as the networks announces each pilot's fate and start releasing trailers/photos. And now, onward!

Review: THE LATE LATE SHOW with James Corden

Unlike the vast majority of critics online, I'm aware of who James Corden is. He's the slightly love-hate B-list British celebrity, who created and starred in hit sitcom Gavin & Stacey, before becoming a panel show regular and hosting the Brit Awards almost every year. He's also an award-winning stage actor, best-known for The History Boys. In the U.S, he's less known, although recently had the ostensible lead role in Disney's Into the Woods musical. That's about to change now he's taken over from Craig Ferguson as host of CBS's THE LATE LATE SHOW, which airs in a ridiculous post-midnight timeslot and yet can still book Hollywood elite as guests. Only in America.

TWIN PEAKS, 1.7 - 'The Last Evening'

TRUMAN: What are you getting at?
COOPER: The truth, Harry. Because that's my job.

It doesn't really deliver the cataclysmic, phantasmagorical shocks you may have expected to end this freshman season, but writer-director Mark Frost was always the more level-headed co-creator. "The Last Evening" is still a great finale that brought a few plot-strands together and left ample room for development in season 2...

Review: CBS's SCORPION • THE A-TEAM with A-Levels

★★☆☆

Created by Nick Santora (who wrote for the similarly ludicrous Prison Break), CBS's new action-thriller SCORPION is another U.S drama that feels like an assemblage of old parts than anything distinct, fresh, and exciting. It begins like the film Hackers, with a young Walter O'Brien being arrested by the U.S government (from his Irish country home), for hacking NASA looking for Shuttle blueprints to wallpaper his bedroom. Fast-forward a few decades and Walter's now an ethnic Zach Galligan lookalike leading a gang of misfit geniuses from a warehouse HQ, who are called into national service by Agent Cabe Gallo (Robert Patrick) when an airport software glitch puts passenger jets in danger of falling out of the sky.

TWIN PEAKS, 1.6 - 'Realization Time'

AUDREY: I can't believe you were ever my age.
COOPER: I've got the pictures to prove it.

Thursday 2 March 1989. Currently, there are three separate investigations attempting to find Laura Palmer's killer: Agent Cooper (Kyle Maclachlan) and Sheriff Truman's (Michael Ontkean) official murder investigation; Audrey Horne's (Sherilyn Fenn) plucky attempt to solve the mystery; and the trio of James (James Marshall), Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) and Madeleine (Sheryl Lee), who here probe into Dr. Jacoby's (Russ Tamblyn) relationship with their murdered friend. What's interesting about this penultimate episode is how this triptych of sleuthing all result in undercover missions...

TWIN PEAKS, 1.5 - 'Cooper's Dream'

LOG LADY: Fire is the Devil hiding like a coward in the smoke.

Wednesday 1 March 1989. The honeymoon period is over. Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) is awakened by rowdy Icelandic businessmen who have arrived for a junket at the Great Northern, and their presence is the first uncomfortable bump for a murder case that our Fed has hitherto appeared to almost relish...

TWIN PEAKS, 1.4 - 'The One-Armed Man'

DR JACOBY: Laura had secrets and around those secrets she built the fortress that, well that in my six months with her, I was not able to penetrate and for which I consider myself an abject failure.

Tuesday 28 February 1989. There are plenty of developments in the murder case during this episode, in a story that plays more like a typical investigation with a soupçon of quirkiness—best exemplified by a moment where Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) comes face-to-face with a llama in a vet's waiting room. Importantly, we come to realise that Cooper shares visions with the deceased's apparently psychic mother, Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie), after he confirms that her sketch of the long-haired man crouched at the foot of her daughter's bed is the mysterious "Bob" from his own dream...

TWIN PEAKS, 1.3 – 'Rest in Pain'

TRUMAN: There's a sort of evil out there. Something very, very strange in these old woods. Call it what you want. A darkness, a presence. It takes many forms but... its been out there for as long as anyone can remember, and we've always been here to fight it.

A weird duality licks at the edges of this third episode, as the citizens of Twin Peaks come together for Laura Palmer's funeral. After the extraordinary events of Cooper's (Kyle McLachlan) trippy dream, our intrepid investigator calls Sheriff Truman (Michael Ontkean) and Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) to his hotel's dining room, only to throw cold water on their belief he knows who killed Laura Palmer. Unfortunately, Cooper forgot the most important part of his dream (whodunit), but is convinced that his reverie is a code that can be cracked...

TWIN PEAKS, 1.2 - 'Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer'

THE ONE-ARMED MAN: Through the darkness of future past / the magician longs to see / one chance out between two worlds / Fire walk with me.

Until now, Twin Peaks hasn't really been as off the wall as its reputation would have you expect. Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) is definitely eccentric, some of the townsfolk are oddballs, and there's a pervasive strangeness in its auburn aesthetic and droning soundtrack, but it's generally more quirky than wilfully bizarre. Maybe we've just become accustomed to peculiar TV since Twin Peaks first aired? However, "Zen, or the Skill to Catch A Killer" is undoubtedly the moment when Twin Peaks embraced its famous surrealism, creating diehard fans with a taste for the fantastical, while possibly losing those less receptive to a murder-mystery with supernatural overtones...

TWIN PEAKS, 1.1 – 'Traces to Nowhere'

COOPER: You know, this is, excuse me, a damn fine cup of coffee. I've had I can't tell you how many cups of coffee in my life and this, this is one of the best. Now I'd like two eggs over hard. I know, don't tell me, it's hard on the arteries, but old habits die hard, just about as hard as I want those eggs.

Saturday 25 February 1989. It's reassuring to watch FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) investigate the murder of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), even though we're first acquainted with him suspended upside-down wearing gravity-boots, detailing the minutiae of his progress into his trusty micro-recorder. He's a weirdo, for sure, but his eccentricities pale in comparison to some of the Twin Peaks residents (not least the iconic Log Lady who cradles a piece of timber like a baby), and at least Coops peculiarities include the ability to judge strangers with incredible accuracy. The Bureau actually sent the perfect man for the job...

TWIN PEAKS, 1.0 - 'Original Pilot' (aka 'Northern Passage')

written by Mark Frost & David Lynch | directed by David Lynch | 8 April 1990

PETE: She's dead. Wrapped in plastic.

Twin Peaks, Washington, "five miles south of the Canadian border and twelve miles west of the state line"; population 51,201. On 24 February 1989, a beautiful amber morning finds lumberjack Pete Martell (Jack Nance) discovering the dead body of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee); laid on a river bank, naked, wrapped in a sheet of plastic. Welcome to Twin Peaks; population 51,200..

TWIN PEAKS - is it time to resume television's weirdest mystery?

Oh God, I've just taken a photo of a mass-produced inanimate object! #TwinPeaks pic.twitter.com/wceBGMqBxO
— Dan Owen (@danowen79) July 30, 2014

Longtime readers will know that I reviewed the first season of TWIN PEAKS five years ago, but didn't continue into the second. Is now the perfect time to resume those reviews? I've just purchased the gorgeous 'Entire Mystery' Blu-ray box-set, and feel drawn back into Mark Frost and David Lynch's mysterious world. Would anyone like to read a run of archival season 1 reviews (republished with amendments and HD vidcaps), leading into new series 2 reviews?

EXTANT, 1.2 – 'Extinct' - survival of the fittest

I enjoyed Extant's pilot (more than most people), but the second episode was distinctly average. I was hoping Extant could become a fun summer show to review weekly, but now I'm not so sure. Halle Berry's performance felt much flatter as Molly, and the direction they're taking her android son Ethan (Piece Gagnon) appears to be the most obvious one. He's learned about extinction at the Natural History Museum, and Darwin's adage "survival of the fittest" suggests he's going to start seeing humans as inferior beings soon. Uh-oh.

Review: CBS's EXTANT - beautiful, alluring space-baby mystery

Television shows executive produced by Steven Spielberg usually fail to excite me, because beyond interesting concepts and fantastic production values, they rarely succeed when it comes to delivering a story you can invest in over months and years. For every Band of Brothers, The Pacific and Taken (notably finite miniseries), there's a Terra Nova, The River, and Under the Dome.