But
no critic wants to call out the creators and stars of the new shows.
Who wants to be the one voice challenging the “golden age” consensus?
That might make you look like you’re out of it.The on-screen
evidence, though, is overwhelming. And the more I look at all the talent
and money invested in these series, the angrier I get about the
mediocre-to-wretched results.Feature film director Guillermo del
Toro’s “The Strain” had a lot of buzz in advance of its debut on FX last
week.
But the buzz all but went away after 2.99 million viewers saw
this series about a ghost plane and a guy in a pawnshop who has
something in a jar in his back room that lives on human blood and is
supposed to be real scary.It felt laughable to me. And I can’t imagine anyone over the age of 12 being impressed.Really, “The Strain” felt to me like Saturday-morning programming aimed at boys in an earlier era.And
then there was Berry’s heavily publicized debut two weeks ago in the
CBS series “Extant” as an astronaut who comes back to earth after 13
months of supposedly being alone in space to find out she is pregnant.
And, oh yeah, the “child” she already has, a robo-boy created by her
engineer husband, is starting to act ... well, let’s just say kind of
freaky and mean.
“Extant” not only boasts Berry, it also has
another Oscar winner producing it in Steven Spielberg. Berry is good
enough that even when she is walking through a role, as she is here, she
makes her character credible. But that’s about the nicest thing I can
say about Berry, her character or this flat, lifeless series.Reviews elsewhere have been mixed, but outside of one or two, they are driven by a general tone of disappointment.“Extant”
drew an opening-week audience of 9.56 million viewers, making it the
most-watched series of the week. But being the most-watched series of a
week in July isn’t anything to get excited about — especially when a
series gets the kind of promotional push this one did.
Let’s not
waste too much time on “Halt and Catch Fire,” which debuted in June on
AMC and was supposed to be to the computer industry and the 1980s what
“Mad Men” was to the advertising business and the ’60s.Right.Actually,
I am glad “Halt and Catch Fire” caught no cultural mojo — as punishment
to AMC for cheapening the first season of “Mad Men” by comparing it to
such superficial fare.
I hope the people who run AMC know the vast
difference between these two series and were only trying to trick
viewers into watching the new series with their outrageous comparison.And what about FX’s “Tyrant,” which has been hyped as the new “Homeland”?Gideon
Raff, the creator of the Israeli series on which “Homeland” is based,
invented this series about a pediatrician from California who is drawn
back into the heart of warfare, terrorism and tribalism upon the death
of his father, the ruler of a small Middle Eastern country.
It’s
an intriguing idea, and the pilot was steeped in action and violence,
but the leap of faith the viewer was asked to make with this
return-to-the-tribe premise was too large — and Raff never made us care a
whit about the primary American character, the prodigal son, played
with clenched jaw and not much else by Adam Rayner.To know more visit our site http://allindiayellowpage.com.