This Years TV: The New Blood

So a few days ago I covered the returning shows, however we usually get a crop of new stuff each year, usually its 90% guff but this year has been a good one. Here's what I consider the top 5 (in no particular order) of the new genre series this year.

How did this get made. Seriously, how. With the networks that axed BSG, killed Firefly etc, how the hell did something this whimsically addictive get past initial pitch. All I can assume is that they pitched it as a crime series and left out the details until the cheques were cashed. I can see the meeting:

"We've got an idea for a series, there's a guy who can bring dead people back to life, but only for a minute or else something else dies, so him and his PI friend use the power to solve murders"

"Sounds good, fantasy twist on what is otherwise a crime show"

"Score, we've pulled the wool over their eyes"

See, Pushing daises is set in a bizarre fantasy world, ts kind of like a made up 1950's, but present day, Our hero is a Pie Maker, and at the core is the romance between him and the love of his life, Chuck, who he brought back from the dead. Only now he can't touch her or else she'll die again. She likewise can't get back in touch with her aunts, two retired synchronised swimmers, for fear of their reaction to her death. And that's just a taster of the madness that follows. Its light whimsy, with plenty of laughs and its just a real cuddly joy of a series. Hope this gets kept on.

Easily the most technically ambitious of the new crop this spinnoff from the Terminator franchise had a hard furrow to plough, for starters the 3rd Terminator film had killed Sarah Connor. However it was a very entertaining series, took some interesting angles and used a nice time travel style plot to effectively separate the timelines from that of the films. It had some nice ideas regarding the sending back of people and also had a rather chilling idea of how well a terminator can infiltrate (One has actually lived with a lover for years). To the series credit it also Didn't shirk from the terminator style effects. Indeed from what I hear it was expensive. Still, it appears to have survived the cull and got a second series, so hopefully we'll see this develop further.

There was a disturbing similarity in two brief descriptions for series this year, both augured ill. Reaper was described as "Bill & Ted meets the grim reaper" and features a slacker who's parents sold his soul to Satan and now has to collect escaped souls from hell assisted by his slacker mates. It sounded weak and despite having Kevin Smith's name attached looked missable, but it was on when nothing else was and I was really surprised. Basic premise is as described, we have Sam as our Reaper who works in a DIY shop called The Work bench (Kind of like B&Q) and each week he gets some telltale powers that hint to the escaped soul, and a vessel to catch it. It took its basic Monster of the Week format and developed it. In fact later episodes we get much more about demons living among us and a mystery surrounding Sam's true relationship with the devil. The supporting cast are good with his uber-Slacker mate Sock being easily the most likeable, despite being a cheap man's Jack Black. Its been fun and solid entertainment, again looks like we get a second season and unlike earlier this year, where I hoped it would die fast so we had 20 or so fun episodes before it went cack, it now has a direction and I'm looking forward to where this is going.

This was the second of the "Bill and ted meets.." pitches, only this time slackers were to be spies. The premise is that Chuck, normal guy who works at the "Nerd Herd" a sort of on site IT support for a big brand electronics store, accidentally gets a whole job lot of government secrets dumped in his brain, which he uses to foil acts of evil. He gets two handlers, one NSA who is pretty much an assassin, and the CIA one, an attractive blond. As a supporting cast he has his Sister and her husband, and his best mate Morgan. This was also entertaining, although much more of a One Man show compared to Reaper, we mainly focus on Chuck and his possible relationship with his CIA handler. It is a bit less light hearted than reaper as there is a lot about how disposable he is, how nasty the Government agencies can be etc, and Morgan took a lot longer to grow on me than Sock, but overall its been very good and definitely has a second season.

Ok, not really genre, but geek themed I decided was good enough. This comedy about a group of geeks and their attractive neighbour had a weak start. Initially the humour was very much focused on "Look at these daft geeks" however somewhere along the line the attractive neighbour had her role reduced and the humour started centring more around the interactions between the geeks. As a result its really become worth watching.

So, overall some good new starts this year, hopefully there won't be too many edits to this article to say they died young, and this is good, we loose BSG this (or next depending on how long they spin out Season 4) year, and lost the year after, so I am looking to what will fill the holes these shows leave.