innocent_lex

I've been watching Bones. I think I've seen all of S2, most of S6 and some of S3 and 7 (don't ask me how Living are showing this). Thanks to the excellent primer I had (thanks, Rynogeny!) I can generally understand what's going on. And I like it. Considering I tend to really dislike shows that seem incapable of writing romance without turning people into ridiculous caricatures of what could have / had previously been multi-dimensional characters, I was pleased that this didn't go there. I mean, it goes there with romance, but not with turning women (in particular) into simpering appendages pining after random male 'hero' character who saves them from turning into old, unmarried, pitiable, pathetic excuses for human beings.

Good writing, then, thank FSM. It actually has the same kind of impact on me that NCIS does, where the characters are what keep me coming back and the plots are almost entirely incidental. Favourite episode so far is the one where Brennan and Hodgins are stuck in a car buried underground, and while that's about the only plot I can remember in any detail, it's also one that really had me hooked from the start. Most annoying character is Brennan's dad. I love that Brennan is a complete scientist and says what she thinks, and wish there were many more characters like her on telly and in film. I would be quite happy if there was no romance at all in this, but as it doesn't piss me off I'm not bothered.

I'm now quite intrigued to see how it all started. S1 doesn't appear to be coming on any time soon, but it'll get here eventually. I'm sure I saw at least a couple of early episodes, which didn't draw me in, but I expect I'll have a lot more patience for them now.

My digiguide has just updated and told me a date for Falling Skies (new scifi) on FX in June, plus SPN S6 in June. SPN is going on at 10pm - a bit late, but maybe Sky think their viewers are easily scared? Plus Lie To Me is definitely back in early June for the last episodes.

Also, a new Aussie programme on Monday called Rescue Special Ops. Daft name but it's about a search and rescue team, so might be worth a look.

In case any UK folks are interested, there's a bunch of talks / conversations starting next week on Sky Arts 1 from the Hay Festival (which is a book festival). Some fascinating people, like Stephen Fry, Ian McEwan, Robert Winston, Bill Bryson, Jo Brand, etc.

And Louis Theroux has a thing on Sunday. And new Primeval is on Watch next week.

Wow, actual stuff to watch. Huh. Have reformatted the box in advance so it'll hopefully be feeling happy and ready to actually record stuff for me.

Apparently the whole Sky buyout of various Virgin channels has really borked things up. Supernatural has been MIA for months (expected in Jan / Feb as usual). Now it turns out White Collar and Leverage aren't likely to be coming back at all. We had S1 of White Collar and S1/2 of Leverage, but no more expected. Sky keep going on about their wonderful new Sky Atlantic channel, which so far has a whole bunch of telly on it that I don't want to watch so it's nice of them to keep it all in one place and not let it bother me. But getting rid of stuff that's actually worth watching? Bloody typical, really.

In scifi telly news, we're apparently getting Falling Skies, the new Steven Spielberg in July, some more Eureka in September, and the final season of Smallville is starting next month on E4 (apparently), which is possibly vaguely interesting as various review sites have claimed S10 is actually not bad at all. I don't know if they mean 'not bad as compared to the rest of Smallville' or 'not bad as compared to quality telly' but I may actually give it five minutes to see if any of the reports are true. I mean, it's clearly got nothing in common with the actual comic (which I read a lot as a wee kiddie) but I'll recognise at least some of the characters, right?

There's actually very few programmes on these days that I avoid spoilers for. There's Supernatural and, er, hmm... I think that's it? Maybe. It's possibly because I just don't watch that much telly where spoilers would make a difference to me, or perhaps that I don't watch most of that telly very closely - I'm usually doing many other things while the telly is on (like posting to LJ, looking at the internet, cooking, sorting, reading, etc).

Anyhoo, I know new eps in SPN S6 have started again in the US, while here in the UK there's no indication that we'll be getting S6 at all. So I'm waiting and being patient, and very grateful for all those who post their thinky thoughts behind LJ cuts.

And while I'm avoiding the spoilers, I'm apparently getting trojans. Am now running through scan 3 with MSE, have run spybot twice and am installing something else just in case. Because, y'know, paranoid. Or determined to be safe.

Various channels were bought out by Sky last year, and now they seem to be disappearing. And the ones that are sticking around are changing in ways that irritate me. Particularly, some series aren't coming back when they should be, and nobody seems to have (or be willing to give out) any information regarding what's going on. Sky is also advertising a whole new channel where they'll be showing a whole raft of shows I have no interest in whatsoever. So I guess it's swings and roundabouts. Still, irritation carries the day, methinks.

On telly that actually is returning, or new stuff coming, Criminal Minds S6 has come back and I already have 3 eps sitting on the box unwatched - does that demonstrate my level of interest? Lie to Me seems to be showing the same episodes again, so I'm wondering where the rest of series 3 has got to. The Good Wife is back and is still, er, good. Hawaii 5-0 is coming soon though I'm not holding out much hope - the last time I saw people get this interested this quickly it was Firefly and I found it dull. NCIS and NCIS:LA have probably fallen off my list - I couldn't tell you the plots of most of the last few years of NCIS, and the LA version is full of truly bland characters. Outcasts is coming soon, which I think is new BBC sci-fi. No sign of Supernatural S6 as yet, which means I've got a really, really long time to wait before there will be any episodes with Sam in. Maybe I should just wait until the DVDs are out. And no sign of Flashpoint, but that's par for the course for ITV - picking stuff up, showing it at random times, and then dropping it with no explanation.

But, work is incredibly busy, so not much time to watch telly anyway. The box has picked up a load of stuff this week that I'd forgotten was on (yay for series links) and which I expect I'll delete half of without watching. But that's okay - since it's for my entertainment I get to be the one in control. There's very few programmes I really want to watch these days, and only one that still resonates high on my emotion-ometer.

I watched the first episode, which was on last night. I can't say I'm all that enthralled, and none of the characters so far are in the slightest bit interesting. I wonder if that's because this is a programme all about the zombie!pocalypse so all characters look like zombie-food to me. The first episode ended on a wholly unbelievable cliff-hanger which I'm presuming the main character will get out of or be rescued from in episode two, but that'll only happen because it's the main character. And, really, when the main characters are acting like complete morons a lot of the time, I'm not endeared to them.

Er, this may not pass muster. Thing is, there seem to be a lot of reviews praising this programme as intelligent (although that may be just compared to most of the other shite that's on telly these days). What am I missing? Is it just another Lost, where the programme was praised even though I thought everyone on the damn island was missing a significant percentage of their functioning brain cells? Maybe it gets better. Or at least, smarter. Don't know if I can be bothered to stick around to find out.

Hmmm. I've watched the first two episodes and I'm still on the fence. It seems to be well made, apart from the fake fuzziness around the CGI plane, as if they couldn't quite get the edges right. Various actors I've seen before but none of them are exactly setting the screen alight. Story that's taking the same direction as Lost, in that there are flashbacks, tiny bits of clues given out here, there and everywhere, some obvious bad guys (but who are they?) and few obvious good guys. Some clear morons (aren't there always). And the horribly overused cliche of having women in danger as motivation for the men to take action - the women don't have stories of their own, apparently.

Sadly, I've already started fast-forwarding through various flashbacks, mostly the ones with the bloke and his girlfriend - dull, dull, dull. They seem to be in there just to slow the story down. I'm sure someone would say it's to build characters, make them more 3D, etc, but it's not working for me at all. If it's not moving the story or characters forward, take it out. Also, not impressed by the overt badness of various baddies - it's like they've been to evil henchperson's training and have graduated with dual honours in moustache twirling and stupid threats.

Yeah, okay, so it's possible I'm more on one side of the fence than the other. Will I watch next week? Possibly. Probably. Though at this point I'm only interested in knowing the answer to one question, and beyond that it's all conspiracies and nonsense that doesn't interest me. And there's only one character I actually give a toss about, which is Sophia.

Tell me, fllist - does it get better?

We're getting some new series next week and onwards, so if anyone's seen them can you tell me if they're worth setting the DVR for?

- Nikita (what is this, incarnation 3 or 4?)
- Haven (Stephen King's story, but not sure if he's actually involved)
- NCIS: LA season 2 (season 1 was okay, but not really that interesting, and honestly I'm not that interested in NCIS itself these days either)
- Community (is that a drama or a comedy?)
- Shattered (which doesn't seem to have the usual hype about it out there, but I guess that's because it's not US?)

Any thoughts, oh wise flist?

Yesterday I watched the first episode of Southland. It's been touted as a cop show that's different from other cop shows, and I'm at a loss as to see why. It was loaded up with a bunch of interchangeable white men of varying ages and levels of assholishness, one representative white woman and one representative black woman. And the plot (such as there was one) was mostly incoherent. It's a shame, because for some reason I had hopes that this might be worth watching.

Anyone seen it? Does it improve?

And on entirely the other end of the scale, I've been watching Lewis. I wasn't a fan of Morse, but Lewis seems better. I've ended up watching a variety of the episodes, clearly in completely the wrong order as they're shown on at least two different channels (and randomly at that). It's much slower moving, still full of (supporting) characters I'd never want to meet in real life, but the two main characters are excellent. Some of the stories are still entirely unbelievable, but that's telly for you.

In other telly, White Collar is getting better again but it's never given me the same thrill of fascination that the very first episode did. Doctor Who is over for another series - I liked the last two-parter, but I'm still not fond of the new bloke and suspect I never will be. Drop Dead Diva and The Good Wife are both over for the moment, but I'll definitely be coming back for more: strong women, FTW.

Coming up this week on ITV something called 'Identity' about identity theft, and something called The Silence starting in a week on BBC1 for five nights (with Douglas Henshall and Dervla Kerwin) which I'm hoping will be a good summer miniseries. And towards the end of July Medium is back for a new series. I think it'll be the last series, but I still like watching it so I'll keep with it as long as it's around.

Just spent over 30 mins trying to watch a programme on Five's website. Completely useless. No luck with either Firefox or IE. Firefox just had an unwatchable mess of jumping images and dodgy sound; IE was smoother but only played one advert over and over and over and never got to the programme itself. Now all either of them are doing is 'buffering' and I'm getting nothing at all. I'm on a 10Mb connection and have no trouble with any other streaming video.

Google-fu tells me Five's site really is a pile of junk. Why advertise a service you're incapable of providing? *sigh*