Autumn 2015 TV - Part One

We're a few months into the 2015/16 television season, so I just wanted to run down all the shows I'm watching, how I think they're getting on, and my degrees of continued interest in them.

'Agents of SHIELD' (season 3) - ABC.
Season 1 became good halfway through. Season 2 turned bad halfway through. Season 3's proving to be a real bore from the start. It seems someone decided what we really want from AoS is lots of people with superpowers, so they're going big on the whole Inhumans angle. I just wish the show didn't feel like a live-action X-Men more than a spy-fi show that could tackle a lot of different subjects and ideas. Unsurprisingly, the best episode (so far) concerned an hourlong flashback to Simmons stranded on an alien planet, having to survive until rescue arrived. While it was probably inspired by The Martian novel, or knowledge of the film adaptation, it was something you don't see TV do very often.

Review: ITV's JEKYLL & HYDE

The BBC have dominated family-friendly telefantasy since Doctor Who returned in 2005, and their traditional rival ITV have mostly failed to deliver a worthy riposte—with the possible exception of Primeval. Their last serious attempt was 2009's awful Buffy ripoff Demons. ITV are hoping to put that right this autumn with an adaptation-cum-sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, from writer Charlie Higson (The Fast Show). In this version, we're following the great-grandson of the original Victorian scientist who drank a potion that split his personality—so the action mostly takes place in mid-thirties London.