March TV Update
10 TV programs I watched in 2026
****
1. Atomic (2025 TV Series)
Max (Alfie Allen) is a drug smuggler driving across the Sahara from the cartel in Guinea Bissou to the North African coast. He’s stopped by a group which includes former Jihadi JJ (not his name*) (Shazad Latif). Hearing a British accent and having an instinct something isn’t right JJ shoots the others and joins Max. Along the way they lose the money and drugs, and it turns out there’s a British special forces team after them. Arriving at the rendezvous, there are two statues with special bases they’re supposed to take to Beirut, though they don’t have the payment so they hold them up at gunpoint. The boss tells Max he won’t shoot him and he won’t, instead throwing the gun at him while JJ shoots the others. Leaving, the survivor warns them to keep the two statues at least 2m apart.
The bases of the statues have (of course) weapons grade uranium as part of a complex plot involving a deal between a Russian oligarch (represented by his daughter) and the Cartel leader. JJ was previously involved with this, having smuggled “statues” across the Caucasus in a flashback. Arriving in Beirut they are double-crossed following which JJ takes them across the border to Syria, the site of his time in IS. One of the statues, Baal, is from Palmyra, famously destroyed by IS, and he takes it back. He’s still got faith, but not in prayer, and not in anything IS. It turns out he had a wife and child who died in the final fall of IS, while he made it out.
In Beirut the American DEA discover something unexpected and call Cassie Elliot, a physics professor at the American University there, and on their nuclear emergency list of contacts. She is, of course, a CIA officer undercover, watching for students who might use their knowledge to build nuclear weapons. When she alerts her superiors they send cowboy agent Mark Ellis, who seems curiously well informed about the events.
Max and JJ are wild cards, zigging when everyone expected them to zag. Still, they can’t stay on the run forever. The cartel know Max’s pressure points and JJ is on every watchlist. Max would give it up – but can’t. And JJ has given up looking for signs, and doesn’t believe in redemption. Yet signs keep appearing and the possibility of doing something good is almost visible.
This moves between light-hearted and grimly dark fairly smoothly. Every location is announced with a sign post that then gives a sardonic description. Rather unfortunately every desert road looks the same and so does every city, no matter whether in Libya, Morocco, Lebanon or Syria (all filmed in Morocco) though the highway and major port in the last sequence is a refreshing change of pace.
Watch This: Enjoyable thriller with some exploration of
faith
Don’t Watch This: Violent, unserious, can’t quite make sense
* Max calls him JJ for “Jihadi John” an infamous British member of the Islamic State. His name was also not John.
Dr Niles Caulder (Timothy Dalton) aka The Chief keeps a variety of odd super-powered characters in his mansion, claiming to be trying to help them. They are: Cliff Steele, former racecar driver now a brain in a robot body; Rita Farr, former 50s movie star who melts when under stress, and slowly learns to control this over the course of the show; Larry Trainor, a former 60s test pilot who got turned radioactive (so is covered in bandages) and shares his body with a weird energy space creature after an accident; and Jane who has multiple personalities who have different powers. Also joining them is Vic Stone, Cyborg, much closer to a normal superhero though we play up the body horror and trauma; later still Laura De Mille aka Madam Rouge a shapeshifter; and Dorothy Spinner, Caulder’s daughter, who has the power to make her imaginary friends come to life.
What they don’t do is form a super-team (or at least not initially); events kick-off with the disappearance of The Chief, and strange events occur in the nearby town of Cloverton Ohio. In the first season they are being threatened by fourth-wall breaking super-criminal Mr Nobody (Alan Tudyk) a minor criminal rejected by the Brotherhood Of Evil who takes on the full power of a Nazi scientist’s experiments in Paraguay. Investigating this they discover that Caulder was there in 1947 when Mr Nobody got his powers. Their investigations go on to show that they, too, are experiments. Niles Caulder orchestrated or took advantage of their accidents in order to learn about longevity.
Caulder’s reasons though are not a selfish fear of death or lust for immortality. His daughter Dorothy is immensely powerful, containing within her imagination several powerful beings who can come into the real world. To keep her safe he intends to stay alive one day longer than her. He also keeps her from maturing, as when she reaches menarche her powers will manifest, possibly destroying the world. None of this makes the rest of the characters like him any better, but they come to appreciate that this was done out of love and necessity.
All this though undercuts the weirdness of what goes on. When they decide to go into town Rita loses control of her body and becomes a blob; the town is sucked into a vortex and a donkey is left behind that they later all get sucked into. The Cult Of The Unwritten Book attempt to decreate the world, only for this to be solved by going back in time and having one of Jane’s personalities create a counter cult of the rewritten book. There’s a genderqueer sentient street named Danny who acts as a refuge, mostly from the Bureau Of Normalcy (who, inevitably, turn out to be pretty weird). Events cause the manor to be haunted by sex ghosts. The Brotherhood Of Evil assign an alien to assassinate Rita Farr in 1949 (for reasons that don’t get explained yet as this episode has the first appearance of the time machine that will dominate later events – until it doesn’t) and he stays at his post at a resort, even after the defeat of the Brotherhood, until the Doom Patrol finally turn up by chance in 2019. They die, come back as zombies, infect the horrible butt-monster with zombieism, which creates one of the several possible future apocalypses.
Some of these are more successful than others, almost all cribbed from Grant Morrison’s run on the comic, though that had a different team (Jane is Morrison's creation; Elasti-girl Rita and Negative Man Larry from an earlier version and Robot Man Cliff appears in most versions of the team). The team’s default is to fail to come together and instead worry about their own issues. This is generally entertaining, yet even this refreshing failure to take meetings and briefings seriously and to stumble to a confused conclusion stales after a while.
This exploration of some of the stranger things that mainstream comics have done doesn’t really go anywhere, and ends on something of a maudlin note. Not that it hasn’t earned it, but after striving, failing, goofing off and creating absurd paradoxical situations, to end on acceptance of death, romance and a flamethrower is a bit anticlimactic. Even if one of the deaths is funny, the romances are queer, and the flamethrower cathartic.
Watch This: Superheroes pushed beyond any rational limit
Don’t Watch This: Lot of ridiculous monsters refuse to be
responsible
At the end of Season 1 of Gen V (a spin-off of superhero dystopia The Boys) Andre, Marie, Emma and Jordan were locked up in the Elmira facility. Now Andre has died in an escape attempt; Marie succeeded in escaping. Emma and Jordan are offered a deal, if they publicly agree with the cover story for the events of Season 1 they will be let out and allowed to go back to Godolkin University. Arriving there they are greeted by Cate, the mind-alterer who betrayed them and has now got them out. Godolkin U is now explicitly Supe-supremicist with non-Supes (workers etc) being suspect. The new Dean, Cipher, is a Supe, though no one knows what his power is. He’s given Cate the task of finding Marie and bringing her back.
Following the events of The Boys Season Four, there are violent clashes between Starlighters and Patriots; Marie is spotted when she intervenes on behalf of some Starlighters. Supe bounty hunter DogKnott tracks her but she’s rescued by Starlight herself. She tells Marie that they’ve come across information on something called Odessa that involves Marie and was started by Thomas Godolkin (who also started the university). Shortly afterwards Emma and Jordan catch up with Marie, to convince her to come back (also confront her about escaping and leaving them behind*). Cate was following them; when she tries to convince Marie to return with her powers Jordan attacks her, and they return to the university leaving Cate for dead.
Cate survives, though thanks to her head injury her powers are messed up. This is a problem as Cipher is re-arranging Godolkin University on a survival of the fittest scheme; one-shot comic relief Supes with ridiculous powers are for the chopping block. This then is the status quo; the Gen V kids are back at the university, which is even more messed up. Something weird is going on here and they have to find out why. Meanwhile they keep getting distracted by Cipher’s nonsense of the week, and by their own relationships.
There are some good setpieces, the secrets of Marie’s blood powers manage to intrigue throughout. One aspect is that, of course, Cipher is wrong; the one-shot comic relief superpowers come in handy throughout and become vital in the final fight. Emma, whose powers are shrinking and growing and relied on her purging and eating respectively, has to work through the fact that it’s really about her state of mind; her forcing herself to vomit to become small is linked to feelings of negative self-worth. This obviously leads to problems when she succeeds and feels worthwhile and accidentally grows.
Maybe it was just me but there’s a reveal that seems obvious. I think we, the audience, are supposed to get there before the characters, but maybe not as quickly as I did? Not to boast, but I spent a lot of time going get on with it. I felt The Boys was reaching the end of what it could do, had got as grotesque and violent and silly and pointed as it could. So too, and quicker with Gen V. Having dug into the idea of a superhero university in season one, it doesn’t have much more to say; a bit about fraternities, a little about how it can be a paranoid hothouse. Cipher runs his seminars as gladiatorial combat, using the indestructible Vikor, a giant bearded man wielding a hammer. I suppose university as competition comes up here. Several times the story is pushed off course, or perhaps on course, by characters from the main The Boys series – Sister Sage the smartest person in the world is involved in the Odessa stuff, Zoe Nuemann and Stan Edgar intervene at a critical moment. This is it’s own story with the concerns of it’s characters – but it ends up leading into the next (final?) mainline The Boys story.
Watch This: Often funny, sometimes clever superhero show
reveling in the grotesque
Don't Watch This: Superhero kids mess up, their enemies do
so even more
* Marie is upset to learn Andre is dead due to trying too hard to escape, and blames herself. She’s not been back to rescue them which preys on her, her reasoning being that she barely got away herself, but she was actually spending her time trying to find her estranged sister.
The titular station is the CIA station based in the American Embassy in Berlin. Daniel Miller is newly assigned there. Although he has to be brought up to speed on recent stuff he lived in Berlin as a youngster, and has a German cousin there. After a complicated time in the field in the Caucasus, he was brought back to be an analyst in America. Now he is under Official Cover (diplomatic immunity). As well as his regular job (mostly monitoring people with ties to the Middle East) he’s been given an even-more secret assignment, to find the source of the leaks that pseudonymous whistleblower Thomas Shaw has been providing to the press. To begin with Shaw was revealing embarrassing CIA secrets from all over, but recently he has been concentrating on Berlin.
Other characters, and thus suspects:
Hector DeJean, who was Miller’s partner in the Caucasus and helped clear up the messy parts of that. He’s more than cynical (the baseline for the intelligence professionals) he’s actively disillusioned, seeing that they cause more damage than they prevent, having been in an interrogation black site. He has a variety of relationships, including with a minor Saudi prince (when the Saudis learn he’s gay DeJean is unable to convince anyone to stop them shipping him home), new agent Claire, and a mysterious drag artist.
Head of station is Stephen Frost, who is getting blamed for the Shaw stuff; he and his wife are considering retirement until the Deputy Director who has been on his neck is forced to resign and he’s suddenly in the running for her job. He’s also having an affair with his secretary Sandra, and she comes to the realisation that as well as that, she’s been helping him take documents out of the Station.
Frost’s deputy is Robert Kirsch, frustrated at being in Berlin as his son is in the US. Also frustrated at how things are going; he uses his contacts in Mossad to try and learn more, inevitably tangling himself in their plots.
There’s also Valerie Edwards, a senior officer at the station, who is always clashing with Kirsch, and occasionally with Frost, though she has a good working relationship with him. She’s mentoring Claire, and is the one who has been tracking an ISIL people smuggling operation that is hidden under refugee organisers and a former jihadi who feigns trying to turn people away from extremism.
Of course there are the Germans who they have a complex relationship with. The German government does not like the way Americans ignore local laws and this attitude continues with the German Intelligence Service… up until the point where the CIA can spy on someone of interest that they would be barred from. They don’t like being ignored when inconvenient and used when convenient.
Events kick off when Miller is able to identify the courier who brings the leaks to the reporter at Berliner Zeitung that Thomas Shaw passes information to. However while she’s being followed she’s murdered by a mysterious figure. Following up on this is the throughline for the series. Yet perhaps the show’s strongest aspect is that everyone is trying to do other dubious spy stuff at the same time. There’s a comic relief defected Chinese General in a safe house in Berlin who keeps wanting to go out; the problems he causes keep getting passed about until they learn in advance that the next Thomas Shaw leak will be about him, at which point they immediately hand him over to the Chinese who claim he never defected (and also execute him). The grim cynicism! There’s a subplot involving an Iranian minister at trade talks that Kirsch thinks worth cultivating, thinking that this will possibly get Frost promoted back to the US, and him with him. Frost uses the situation in his own way, for his own purposes; he is just as much of a reckless idiot as everyone else.
They turn a local Muslim leader to get access to a former Jihadi they suspect is not so former; this keeps taking up time for almost all the spies. They then attempt to roll up the network, but it goes wrong and everyone acts desperately. No one comes out of it well; exactly whose fault it was isn’t actually clear, but certainly not the person who gets blamed.
Indeed this cynical betrayal at the drop of a hat combined with loyalty to one another that will have them inflict massive violence and suffering is what drives the show forward. And where the loyalty ends and the cynical betrayal begins is the question each character has to face. And having done this, I am surprised to learn they made two more seasons of this – is there more to do? And if so isn’t it just bleak disillusion from here?
Watch This: Darkly stylish modern spy drama
Don’t Watch This: Unrelentingly grim with no one able to
offer any hope of improvement
Entering Season 7 of The Rookie, with over a hundred episodes gone, I wonder if my approach to reviewing/summing up/making notes for my own purposes is actually useful. Have I got any closer to knowing what this show is?
It is a police procedural television show, based around the on-the-job training of new police officers (“rookies”) in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). After an initial intake of three, two of whom are now relatively senior officers training their own rookies, one or two new rookies are introduced when previous ones qualify or leave the force. This latter is often rather abrupt as characters leave at the end of one season of the show, which in earlier seasons ended on a cliffhanger.
Sometimes an episode’s plotline (case) will be a large one drawing in all the police characters, often a major crime or disaster, looking at it from different aspects, and the varying approaches and roles the characters have. Sometimes there are a number of smaller stories, perhaps one character trying to do a minor but complicated task that intersects the others trying to complete their own low stakes/low urgency plot. In general I find these more interesting*. The charming ones are slight but fun. Others include someone who is clearly in trouble, or going to cause trouble, but at a level low enough that the police can’t or won’t intervene. The training of rookies has an emphasis on correct procedure, and on top of that ethics.
This has come up several times from several angles and characters. At the end of last season recurring evil lawyer Monica Stevens was revealed to be working with the department psychiatric counselor, using the information she gathered for the benefit of her (criminal) clients. This was yet another corrupt police scandal; several stories involve trying to (re)build trust with the community. Others include the department being short-staffed due to resignations, investigations etc. One involves a non-corrupt but sleazy detective’s confidential opinions. And on top of it one detective is married to a community organiser and while she is dedicated to the police not only being a force for good in the community (assumed), but also appearing and engaging with them, it puts stress on their marriage.
This is a slightly old-fashioned episodic TV series. You can almost come in to any one and easily catch up to what’s going on. There’s no plot to be spoiled. Having said that the status quo does get changed – for example in a minor decision Sergeant Wade who has been the on-screen leader of the patrol division in the station since John Nolan got their captain killed in season one, and has flirted with retirement, has finally been promoted to lieutenant – perhaps reflecting how other characters are getting promoted to sergeant. In a slightly less minor set of changes characters gain romantic partners, and in perhaps the most developed storyline, the two new rookies both have major life changes. Still, these are soap opera style plots; at the start of a standard, meat and potato episode, the characters head into the station, catch us up on their personal problems, are briefed on the situation of the day, and go out to variously interesting and exciting police encounters.
What then for The Rookie which hit it’s stride a few seasons ago and has not shown much ambition to change since? It’s awkward when it’s earnest about a topic because neither the show nor the police are in a position to change the systemic problems that make such difficult situations. Yet this is better than when it takes it easy, just charmingly solving crimes with foot chases, fistfights and tense gun stand-offs, ignoring that these are the backdrop of when Nolan walks in and uses his charisma to deescalate a situation. And they are a nice cast, the characters given blindspots or weaknesses to go with their personality quirks, and having to cover or even fail through them. It’s on my watching as a nice relaxing show – charismatic characters solving moderately difficult problems once a week. And that kind of TV is less common that it used to be.
Watch This: Cops get in and out of trouble every week
Don’t Watch This: Just cops getting in and out of trouble
every week
Sorry: Not to bring you up to date on everyone’s love life
* There are multi-episode plotlines, for example there is a set of complex events around a psychiatric hospital this season. More often these are character centred – as an example one character decides to take the sergeant’s exam and so studies, worries and is tested as a supervisor.
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Edmund Dantes, first mate of Pharaon, finds himself in command when the captain dies. Following his instructions he calls at the island of Elba where he receives a mysterious letter for M Noirtier in Paris. Arriving in Marseille, the shipowner M Morrel agrees to make him captain, allowing Dantes to propose marriage to his lover Mercedes.
However this excites the jealousy of Danglers, an older employee of Morrel, and also of Moncref, Mercedes cousin, who wants to marry her (they are both part of the Catalan community). Knowing about the letter and suspecting that it is from the exiled Bonaparte Danglers drafts a letter to the local prosecutor, denouncing Dantes. Overhearing, the tavernkeeper Carderouse objects and Danglers throws it away; Moncref retrieves it and delivers it. Dantes is arrested at his engagement party. At first Villefort, the prosecutor, is inclined to accept Dantes explanations until he learns the name – the name of his father, a Bonapartist who he has disowned, taking his mother’s name. To prevent word getting out Villefort has Dantes imprisoned, nameless, in the Chateau D’If in Marseilles harbour.
Napoleon invades, is defeated. Dantes remains in prison. His next door neighbour the Abbe Faria is digging a tunnel and accidentally breaks into his cell. The Abbe is very knowledgeable and tutors Dantes, keeping him from despair, training body and mind as they try to dig their way out. Along the way Dantes realises who is behind his incarceration and swears revenge. The Abbe also tells his secret, of a fabulous treasure hidden on the island of Monte Cristo. Then the Abbe dies; in a desperate move Dantes takes his place in the shroud sewn around him and is thrown into the sea. He manages to escape and joins Jacopo, a Genoese smuggler, and finds the treasure.
Fifteen years have gone by and when Dantes and Jacopo track down Carderousse they find his enemies have prospered: Danglers is now a banker, and a nobleman in Paris, with a wife and daughter. Moncref got promoted to general before retiring and becoming a nobleman; he and Mercedes have a son Albert. Villefort too has prospered, married for a second time with a daughter from his first marriage and a son from the second. Dantes’ friends have not done so well; his father has died and Morrel is on the verge of bankruptcy. He is able to save him though, and although Morrel dies the next year, his son and daughter are saved from disgrace.
Dantes, having purchased the title of Count Of Monte Cristo, emerges on the scene in Rome where Albert and his friend Franz* are on a tour; Albert due to marry Eugenie Danglers and Franz, Valentine Villefort when they return. When Albert is kidnapped by notorious bandit Luigi Vampa, the Count gets him out as Vampa owes him a debt. With this introduction and his fabulous wealth he emerges into Parisian society, with the intention of destroying the three men who wrecked his life.
It's foolish at this moment to compare with the book or other adaptions; nevertheless it’s worth noting this manages to keep in a lot of the minor characters who drop out when this story is trimmed back for a two hour film. And as many of them are women that’s good, we can see the full set of them from Villefort’s scheming wife; through the remorseful Mercedes; the loyal Valentine; and on to the bold Eugenie who very briefly cross-dresses for her elopement with her music tutor and lover Louise. Like in the book the Count has picked up knowledge of chemistry and also takes a drug (unnamed, in the book it’s hashish though here it seems more like cocaine). The reveals are a little modernised, and the messing with the semaphore telegraph a bit fudged, but the outlines are there.
In other words it manages a lot of the soap opera style complexity of Dumas’ book, while still managing to move the pace along – which is pretty much what Dumas did as well. Good for them. However the Count’s profligacy is more told than shown – in that we’re told the houses he’s buying are expensive, and indeed they look fine both inside and out. But the set dressing doesn’t look that extraordinary compared to all the other noble homes we visit, nor is the (one) dinner party we see especially extravagant. This is somewhere a visual adaption ought to make it’s mark.
In any case this is a good version, if one that has a little less swashbuckling and a lot more sitting around brooding and plotting than I might have preferred. Just like Dumas certain ideas are brought up, dealt with, then forgotten. In the book the Count spends some of the book disguising himself, until Dumas decides to stop doing that. Here they dispense with that entirely, having the Count use his subordinates, Jacopo, Jacopo’s mute brother, and Caderousse to do the sneaking about and so forth.
Watch This: Solid, enjoyable Count Of Monte Cristo adaption
with much of the fun bits kept in
Don’t Watch This: By forcing the Count to confront his own
choices, the revenge plot becomes grimmer and less fun, and without the redemption of the 19th century original
* Franz goes on to work for a newspaper, where various secrets and stories are leaked. Efficient use of the character!
Between Season 1 and 2 they closed down one version of the DC superhero universe and opened another one; as the new version is under the control of Season 1 writer James Gunn they continued with this anyway, though some details of the backstory are implied to have changed. Anyway, Chris Smith, the Peacemaker, is depressed due to the events of Season 1, in particular the death of his father. One night he enters the Quantum Unfolding Chamber and discovers a door to another universe with the identical code to the one in his world. Going through he encounters another version of his father.
Back in his world things aren’t going so well. After many failures and problems at the ARGUS spy agency Amanda Waller the director has been replaced by General Rick Flag Sr – the father of Rick Flag who Peacemaker killed in The Suicide Squad or possibly an alternative version of The Suicide Squad from this universe. In any case Flag is watching Peacemaker, partly to settle a score but also because they’ve detected a quantum event which could be bad (see Superman, written and directed by James Gunn). Of the 11st Street Kids gang (Peacemaker’s friends who survived the events of Season 1) John Economos is still working for ARGUS; Amanda Harcourt has been fired and can’t get work (as a secret agent?) thanks to Waller’s influence and gets into fights; Leota Adebayo has quit ARGUS and is setting up as private security, also split up with her girlfriend; Adrian, the masked vigilante Vigilante continues to be weird and violent.
Rick Flag brings in some new agents on the Peacemaker case. Langston Fleury is an older man who makes odd jokes and gives people nicknames to help him remember them – which makes him fit in the show (in which everyone doesn't quite fit in) but seems also designed to annoy everyone around him. Sash Bordeaux is a hyper-competent agent who is also a cyborg and as it turns out Rick Flag’s lover. Judomaster returns (?). And when they attempt to raid Peacemaker’s house to find the quantum door and are chased off by Eagly, Peacemaker’s eagle, they bring in an eagle hunter who is a white man dressed as a native American who believes killing the king eagle will wipe out America’s sins against the native Americans (?).
All this is beside the point, or perhaps not. In the other world Peacemaker is a respected hero, part of a trio of him, his deceased brother (killed in the regular world when forced to fight Peacemaker by their father as children), and his father. He’s messed up there, but seems on the right track, and maybe even has a chance at romance with that world’s Harcourt. Of course when he meets his alternate universe twin, he chases him back through the door, fights him, and is then killed by regular Peacemaker.
Peacemaker returns to that world, taking that Pacemaker’s place. Yet on the other side ARGUS is closing in, wanting the dimensional doorway. And not everything in the alternate world is as perfect as it might seem – even if Peacemaker is oblivious to it.
This has some good tricks, a big twist hidden in plain sight, characters flaws revealed to be horrible gaping psychic wounds, what appears to be a throwaway gag carrying on and becoming a plot or character point. Vigilante’s odd view of the world continues to fascinate. I’m not a pervert, I don’t enjoy having sex, he says, I wanted to join in to get closer to my best friend. This after Peacemaker, in a dark moment, takes a drug that fills his house with naked people having sex. They seem to be real people, where did they come from, where did they go, that drug is weird, weird even for comic books and this show.
Having said that it seems a bit odd here and there. There are flashbacks that don’t seem needed, the show is stuffed with weird characters who have odd aspects rather than any actual emotions or motivations. This is the flipside to making a show that’s cynical and has heart, shows vulnerability and likes gross and shocking moments. By being off-the-wall in a good way, it has bits stuck on that don’t fit. It plugs neatly into the new DC universe without requiring it – just a couple of cameos and the knowledge that Rick Flagg is willing to work with a supervillain does the job.
Watch This: Superhero show with guts, heart and laughs
Don’t Watch This: Plays horrible things for fun, generally
quite cynical
In 11th century England peace has broken out as the three great earls, Godwin of Wessex, Morcar of Mercia, and Siward of Northumbria have agreed to the reign of King Edward (known to history as the confessor). Godwin may have got the best of the deal as his daughter Gunnhild is queen, married to Edward, though Edward’s great piety has interfered with him fathering an heir, and Edward’s mother Lady Emma plots to make the great earls less great. Godwin has three sons, Sweyn, the hot-headed oldest; Harold who is smarter and more controlled, a good solider; and Tostig, the youngest, untried. Harold is married to Edith in the Danish fashion (common law, rather than Christian ceremony).
In Normandy William, Duke of Normandy and a cousin of Edward, is at war. He accepts an invitation to go to England for the coronation, to the displeasure of King Henry of France (who is secretly orchestrating the war for his own benefit). In England a bunch of plotting takes place. Lady Emma has arranged for Mercian raids to start a war with Wessex and Harold saves William from an attack. Learning that the Mercians intend to attack Dover he leaves for Normandy, only to lose the war and go into exile in Flanders with his father in law. Meanwhile Godwin and family are found guilty of breaking the peace and sent into exile in Flanders, though not before Morcar captures Edith and her children.
It’s a historical drama that captures something of the wild turns of fate of these people at this period, while entirely failing on the actual history as best we know it. I wouldn’t mind so much but some changes seem to actively work against the show. The budget being saved for the two final battles leads to rather obviously small scenes – William is riding alone to the coronation when he’s attacked! There’s a tendency for camps to be made in clearings in woods so that half a dozen tents and a dozen extras fill the space. The throne room in England seems rather cramped and so forth.
An attempt at modernising this kind of drama that back in the 20th century would mostly be people in five or six sets speaking cod-Shakespearean language, but can’t quite get there. It sadly is just another plotting and murder in leather jerkins show.
Watch This: Historical drama with plenty of incident, action
and characters
Don’t Watch This: Only historical in the broadest strokes
and doesn’t use the factual liberties to it’s advantage
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It’s 1857 and the East India Company is more powerful than governments. In the prison camp at Kalpani they’re building a secret technological marvel, a submersible called Nautilus. Designed by French engineer Benoit to explore underwater (he wants to find Atlantis as it turns out) they plan to use it to defeat China to open the country up to trade (opium). Amongst the prisoners is Nemo (Shazad Latif again - see above), once Prince Dakkar, who has been of great use to Benoit. His plans to escape are forced into action when director Crawley arrives to take control of the Nautilus. Nemo and a rag-tag crew escape aboard the submarine, but Nemo’s best friend is shot.
They immediately run into a company ship commanded by Captain Youngblood and sink it. Nemo refuses to pick up the company crew, but does take on board the women and children, and also the dog. These are Humility Lucas, who ran away to study engineering but has now been sent to marry Lord Pitt, a major shareholder in the company; Loti her French maidservant, who is also her bodyguard and escort to ensure she reaches the wedding; Blaster the cabin boy; and Archie, a dog. Casting Crawley adrift with Youngblood in the boats he swears revenge, and as it happens has been building another ship; the Dreadnought. They set off in pursuit.
This is the show; steampunk waterborne-and-underwater adventures with the mis-matched crew of the Nautilus being chased by a variety of posh Englishmen in a big warship. Nemo has a plan, but he keeps lying to the crew about it. Crawley has immense arrogance and self-regard but clear sight; at one point he tells Captain Billy Millais, an old acquaintance of Nemo’s, that he’s the one to get Nemo, not “the cretin, the inbred or the honourable fool,” correctly if cruelly pointing out the flaws in the command structure on the Nautilus.
Nemo’s plan is ridiculous, somehow more-so than the 50-year in advance technology, sea monsters and underwater nonsense. I suppose I expect something based (very loosely) on 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea to have mysterious sunken civilisations and people after them, but less so financial shenanigans and contract trickery. But why? Jules Verne was happy to play fast and loose with money, industry and government in his stories, at least as much as his science and geography. The show struggles to say and be more than just a costume adventure, though the ongoing plot lines keep the Nautilus on the move and the character’s stories have to keep up – or they might leave their arcs dangling at the end of the series.
Watch This: Rollicking steampunk adventure that tries to
make a few points along the way
Don’t Watch This: Crew of misfits argue on a submarine
Supercar is a vehicle that can land and take off vertically, fly fast and also go underwater and into space. It was built by Professor Popkiss and his assistant Dr Beaker and flown by pilot Mike Mercury (also sometimes by other people, and occasionally under remote control or automated control). Following a rescue in the first episode Jimmy Gibson, the younger brother of a friend of Mike’s, and his pet monkey Mitch, an abomination that proves this show is the work of the devil, join them in their remote Nevada desert laboratory/workshop/hangar/home.
They have various adventures, mostly rescues, risky tests of Supercar, investigations into various strange events and occasional attempts by criminals or spies (led by Master Spy) to steal Supercar. It’s a puppet show from Gerry Anderson’s AP Films, and the one that started his trademark launching sequence, in this case them turning on Supercar’s engines one by one, bringing them to full power with a bang, interlocking them, then taking off (usually vertically through the hanger roof doors). Like a lot of the ideas here, they’re less well-designed than those in later Anderson puppet/machine shows.
Indeed this is very much the prototype. Sometimes Supercar is the problem, sometimes the target, sometimes the solution. Often the monkey causes chaos, either for our heroes or for our villains. Dr Beaker is the comic relief scientist, but also the one most likely to get his hand’s dirty, and the one who kicks off an adventure with a friend or relative he wants to assist. At this distance in time more of a curiosity, a prototype that is better expressed in later shows.
The caricature style puppets do not improve the show.
Watch This: 1960s black and white kid’s puppet science
fiction adventures
Don’t Watch This:
1960s black and white kid’s puppet science fiction adventures
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