Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 63
April 17, 2022
Outer Range 1.1-2: Elusive Hybrid
The hybrid of science fiction/fantasy with the western (contemporary or historical) genre has long been sought after, touted as a natural, powerful combination for a television series, for as far back as I can remember. But it's seldom been realized, and off the top of my head, I can't think of a single successful example. Last year's Invasion on Apple TV+ took a shot with a lead-off episode out West, with no less an actor than Sam Neill in the lead -- but it was the weakest episode segment in an otherwise top-notch series. My wife suggested Westworld as an example that achieved the elusive goal, and yes, it did, but only partially, because the heart of its narrative was not western.
But I'll never say no to a recipe which seems so logical, so I'll gave Outer Range and its first two episodes which went up on Amazon Prime Video on Friday a shot. The upshot: I wasn't blown away by the narrative, but I liked it enough to keep watching.
[Spoilers ahead ...]
Here's the story: On a ranch in Wyoming, Royal Abbott (well played by Josh Brolin) discovers a water hole or pond (I'm not sure what it is, or should be called) that has some strange properties. It's not clear as yet exactly what those are either, but they may entail bringing back the dead, or some kind of time travel, if the bison that keeps appearing with some arrows in its side is any indication. Before the two hours are over, Royal throws a dead body (whom one of his sons killed) into the water, and is shoved in the water himself by Autumn (Imogen Poots -- great name), a young woman who shows up with a deep interest in the area. Royal comes back fine the next day -- with just a wound in his leg -- but the dead body, not as yet. Autumn clearly has some knowledge of what's going on, but even she doesn't know the whole story -- she's surprised when Royal comes back. It's also no doubt also significant that Royal's daughter-in-law is missing (did she fall into the water hole and then the hole disappeared, too?).
So clearly, there are a lot of provocative questions in the air, which means a lot of possibilities for this series. I would have advised Amazon to put up all eight episodes of Outer Range, so it could be properly binged and therefore comprehended and appreciated. But, as I said, I'm sufficiently intrigued to watch more, and I'll see you back here with my reviews of the next two episodes next week.
April 16, 2022
Podcast Review of Slow Horses 1.4
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 280, in which I review episode 1.4 of Slow Horses on Apple TV+
Written blog post review of this episode of Slow Horses
Mick Jagger on how he came to write and sing "Strange Game"
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Slow Horses 1.4: Fine New Song by Mick Jagger
But one thing I didn't like in this episode was the continued near absence of Sid. As I said in an earlier review, she is one of my favorite characters, and I'd like to see her getting more action than just in a coma.
Otherwise, there wasn't all that much that was actually new in this episode. It's clear now that the true villains are MI5, and I'm glad to see our slow horses in one way or another continuing to get the better of them. It was good to see Catherine Standish in so many scenes with Lamb -- I think they're a good couple. She no doubt has an interesting backstory, and it would fun to see more of that.
So that's all I have to say about episode 1.4. But this might be a good time to say how much I like Mick Jagger's theme song, "Strange Game," written very recently for the series (see here for how this came to be). Starts off with a great rhyme -- "losers" and "boozers" -- and goes on with a lyric that shows Jagger hasn't lost his chops with words. He also wrote the music, which is good, too. The whole song reminds me a little of The Doors' "People Are Strange" and Johnny Rivers' "Secret Agent Man" but, hey, harkening back to the 1960s is fine with me. In fact, I think the whole idea of asking a rock legend to write and sing a new song for a series is brilliant, and beats choosing a well-known song that everyone already knows as a theme song, which is the way most new series go these days.
Jagger writing and singing "Strange Game" is just one example of the originality of Slow Horses, which I'm glad is here. See you next week with my next review.
See also Slow Horses 1.1-2: Fast-Moving Spy Thriller ... Slow Horses 1.3: The Fine Art of Bumbling
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
April 15, 2022
Podcast Review of Star Trek: Picard 2.7
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 279, in which I review Star Trek: Picard 2.7 on Paramount+
written blog post review of Star Trek: Picard 2.7
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard 2.6
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard 2.5
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard 2.4
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard 2.3
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard 2.2
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard 2.1
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard season 1
a little time travel story -- free
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
Review of Star Trek: Picard 2.7
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 279, in which I review Star Trek: Picard 2.7 on Paramount+
written blog post review of Star Trek: Picard 2.7
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard 2.6
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard 2.5
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard 2.4
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard 2.3
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard 2.2
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard 2.1
podcast review of Star Trek: Picard season 1
a little time travel story -- free
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
April 14, 2022
Star Trek: Picard 2.7: The Bread was Tastier than the Meat
Let's start with the psychoanalysis or whatever it was with Renee going inside Picard's head. If I was up for a story like that, I'd watch In Treatment, any season. It was good to James Callis, aka Baltar of Battlestar Galactica as the shrink, though, and let's just leave it at that.
Among the highlights of the rest [Spoilers ahead]:
Rios and the doctor and her son -- both their relationship and his beaming them up to the ship -- were all fun and good to see.Agnes under the control of the Borg Queen is always good to see -- that is, it's bad, very bad, for all our characters, especially poor Agnes, not to the mention the Universe, but it's great for the narrative. I say that even though breaking the window to boost her control of Agnes was a little on the weak side to see (especially given the damage that anyone under Borg control can likely do).And then there's that last scene in the bar. First, it was good to see Jay Karnes (The Shield, 12 Monkeys) back in action, even if he does only play an FBI guy (which he did in 12 Monkeys). And, actually, though he may be an FBI agent, I think it's a pretty good guess that he's another member of the Q Continuum. After all, Guinan was trying to summon Q, and the character who walked down those stairs had a Q-like feel, didn't he? (By the way, I don't know what Star Trek can do about this, but whenever I hear anything about Q, I think of QAnon in our reality, which I'd really rather not).Anyway, I'm up for the next episode, and I'll see you here next week with my review.See also Picard 2.6: Borg and Soong .. Picard 2.5: Don't Walk Away Renee ... Picard 2.4: 2024 LA ... Picard 2.3: Agnes, Borg, Badge ... Picard 2.2: Q and Borg ... Star Trek: Picard 2.1: Cameos and Time Travel ... Star Trek: Picard (Season One): Non-Pareil
a little time travel story -- free
Review of Stream this Next: The Start of an Indispensable Guide
I've been saying at least since 2015 that streaming -- in particular the capacity it gives viewers to watch as much of a television series as they like, at one time, as if reading book -- constitutes a third golden age of television (the first being what TV broadcast networks began to bring us in the 1950s, the second being the cable revolution which I take as beginning with The Sopranos on HBO in 1999). Indeed, I watch a huge amount of television -- I find it good for my brain -- and I'd estimate more than 80% of the dramas and comedies are streaming (all the live news I watch is on cable -- mostly MSNBC, with a little CNN, if you'd like to know).
And the streaming world has grown exponentially since 2015, with Apple TV+, Paramount+, HBO Max, Disney+, and (I'm probably leaving some out) joining Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu as big-time streamers. And the nature of the streaming has evolved. For example, several of the newer players -- especially Apple TV+ and Paramount+ -- have made binging possible only after a complete season of a series has been streamed, with each episode becoming available on a weekly basis, much as networks and cable still do, when they put up their new series.
The result is a still expanding avalanche of TV shows to possibly watch, on a growing number of venues with overlapping and different presentation modes. A handbook or guide to at least some of these shows would be handy to have, and that's just what Liane Bonin Starr's Stream This Next: 1,000 TV Shows to Suit Your Mood is. There of course are far more than 1000 TV shows now streaming or soon to stream, and this book does miss some of the best, in my view. For example, Star Trek: Discovery on Paramount+ is listed and well described, but there's no mention of Star Trek: Picard (the best of the new Star Treks, in my opinion) or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, to debut next month, starring Anson Mount as Christopher Pike, in my view one of the best new captains. It also would be useful to know whether the series streams all at once, i.e., is immediately available for binging, or doled out on a weekly basis for each new season. Other meta-details, such as Paramount+ lacerating its shows with commercials, even though it requires paid subscriptions, would also be helpful to know.
But such perceived oversights, especially in terms of series that should have been listed, are inevitable -- different strokes for different folks -- and there's plenty of value in the categorization of the shows listed in Stream This Next -- ten categories ranging from comedies, thrillers ... to science fiction -- as well as is the show best watched with a group of family or friends, cuddling with someone as a couple, on your own, etc. Liane Bonin Starr is listed as the book's editor, and she and her team have done a fine job in assembling this indispensable guide, published last month in hardcover by Universe, especially appealing if you like to put your eyes on the pages of a thick book, once in a while.
In fact, having just thumbed through this book, I realized I really wanted to see a streaming science fiction series I somehow must have missed in the past year. Want to know what it is? Keep reading my reviews ...
April 11, 2022
Review of a Review -- But, Hey, It's About The Beatles
I don't usually write reviews of reviews -- in fact, I'm pretty sure I never have -- but Joel McKinnon, whose views on science fiction, music, and the world at large I've found invariably worthy, strongly recommended that I read Ian Leslie's lengthy review of Peter Jackson's lengthy masterpiece The Beatles Get Back ("Knowing how much you loved Get Back I think you'll love this beautiful essay about it," Joel told me), so I did, and he was right.
In fact, from the very first line of Leslie's review -- "A friend of mine, a screenwriter in New York, believes Get Back has a catalytic effect on anyone who does creative work" -- I knew that Joel was right. Because that's exactly what watching Jackson's eight-hour documentary did for me. I'm always writing reviews, other nonfiction, science fiction, lyrics and music, whatever, but I've been on one thrill of a creative ride since I saw Get Back at the end of November (including writing an alternate reality story about The Beatles and WFUV Radio -- It's Real Life -- which has in turn sparked my writing all kinds of other linked stories). And that's because Get Back is a paean to, as far I know, the greatest creative work of the words and music of songs in human history, and Leslie's review gets that, too.
Here are two other other points on which Leslie and I manifestly agree:
Leslie likes McCartney's "toothy, boyish, involuntary grin" which, he notes, even showed up after the British bobbies arrived on the roof. As I noted in my review of Part 3 of The Beatles: Get Back, McCartney's response to the police on the roof was my favorite moment in the entire documentary, and there were a myriad of contenders (see the next point).Leslie cites Ringo's "I would like to go up on the roof" as a pivotal moment in the true narrative that Jackson gives us. In that same review of Part 3, I mention that another favorite moment is Ringo making that statement. I've been thinking on and off about that since the end of November, and I'd say that statement and its result of getting the Beatles up on the roof is sweet proof of the important role that Ringo had in the group, concomitant with his drumming.Ok, here's a brilliant part of Leslie's review which I don't talk at all about: Leslie approvingly paraphrases Rick Rubin's observation that "The Beatles are the single best argument for the existence of God". I really like that -- not surprising, given that I thought Rubin's McCartney: 3,2,1 was a kind of masterpiece, too.I could go on, but you surely get the picture. If you love the Beatles, and loved Jackson's documentary, read Leslie's review. It provides a really attractive fence around the magnificent garden of music that was and is The Beatles, and the astonishingly satisfying lighting that Jackson's movie has shone on it, and that's an insufficient metaphor.
But I'll end this review of a review with offering an answer to one of Leslie's minor questions: He wonders what John meant when he says to Paul, “We’re altogether, boy". Leslie also wonders if Paul knew. I'd say John was referring to Paul's "All Together Now," recorded in 1967 and released in January 1969. The timing is perfect and of course Paul knew.
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April 10, 2022
Podcast Review of Slow Horses 1.3
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 278, in which I review episode 1.3 of Slow Horses on Apple TV+
Written blog post review of this episode of Slow Horses
Podcast reviews: 1.1-2
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
Podcast Review of The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey 6
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 277, in which I review The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, episode 6, on Apple TV+
Written blog post review of this episode
Podcast reviews: 1-3... 4... 5
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
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