It’s a blend of Altered Carbon and Defending Your Life except it doesn’t look anything like that at all. In Amazon Prime’s new series Upload, the afterlife is hell, or close to it, because it’s gone digital. And if you want to have a good afterlife you better be rich, because otherwise you risk weeks a month without service. Like Altered Carbon, your memory becomes uploaded after your body dies and like Defending Your Life you get some help, not via heaven’s legal counsel as revealed in that film, but by customer service agents standing by to help via virtual reality. But it’s the chemistry of the story’s two lead characters that is touted as the reason viewers will come back after the first episode.
What’s it take to outperform a surprisingly successful supernatural series like Chilling Adventures of Sabrina′s first season? A core of fine writing in each episode of its second season and a returning cast of actors willing to immerse themselves unwaveringly into a strange world of the occult and the macabre, of witches and warlocks drawn from an expansive comic book universe. That’s the sophomore season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which arrived on Netflix earlier this month, adapting the comic book series from the Archie Horror imprint. Mainstream critics weren’t kind to the series in the first weekend of its release, and that may because the series is one best taken episode by episode–each chapter is its own mini-movie, weighty and twisty, dark and heavy–too heavy for one sitting–yet it’s still fun. But it’s not recommended for binge watching. Spread this one out over a few weeks and you may agree this is a fantastic series, steeped in mythology and lore, while also outlandish enough to not take too seriously. And yes, it’s even better than its first season.
Two incredible actresses anchored Chilling Adventures of Sabrina again in the leading roles and two others provided gravitas in supporting roles. Twenty-year-old actress Kiernan Shipka returned as a bolder and smarter 16-year-old Sabrina, facing off against her favorite teacher who is also the manipulative Lilith, played by Michelle Gomez, right arm of the Prince of Darkness. It’s fair to say Gomez is fully the co-lead of the series–she is today’s master performer of villainy, following up on her performance as the villain we loved to hate, Misty the Timelord, in three seasons of Doctor Who. If actors really love portraying villains more than any other type, then she is at the top of the league. So it takes one heck of a performer to be able to stand firm against a performer like Gomez. Shipka does it, never flinching no matter what the writers ask of her. Kill (and play) her doppelganger? Overpower everyone to save her cousin from the guillotine? Discover and take down a trio of new demons in town? Take on the devil himself? Sabrina can do it all, but it’s only because Shipka never falters in every layered and surprising new script.
The stories this season pulled from past supernatural shows, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Harry Potter to Grimm, and incorporated all kinds of horror tropes (Hellraiser puzzle box?), peppered with clever pop culture references (Stepford Wives Zelda?). It succeeded where its sister series, CW’s Riverdale, was unable this year, getting better with each episode. Writers Donna Thorland, MJ Kaufman, Christina Ham, Oanh Ly, Ross Maxwell, Matthew Barry, Christianna Hedtke, Lindsay Bring, Joshua Conkel, and showrunner and comic book writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa stretched the boundaries of fantasy into a series like nothing anyone has ever seen on TV.
Initially announcing that it would air at the end of 2017, Fox released the first trailer for the next season of The X-Files, fifteen years after we all thought The X-Files were officially closed. On the heels of last year’s short season return, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson return again as our favorite paranormal agents Mulder and Scully, but this round will be the last for Scully according to Anderson at this year’s New York Comic Con The X-Files panel. But you know how that goes.
The duo is in pursuit of their son, who we learned about last year, and the focus is again a cataclysmic event that is going to destroy the world–unless Mulder and Scully intercede.
In the first trailer for the series released Sunday, we also learn that fan favorite Mitch Pileggi is back as Skinner, and William B. Davis returns as The Cigarette Smoking Man–along with some young agents we first met last year and at least one of The Lone Gunmen.
A few years ago, who would have guessed this would even happen? Check out the trailer for Season 11 of The X-Files:
Finally, fourteen years later The X-Files returns to Fox, with a two-day event this coming Sunday, January 24, and Monday, January 25. Fox has released several new previews, including the opening scene of Episode 1, and six posters–one for each episode of this limited run series. The last we saw David Duchovny’s Mulder and Gillian Anderson’s Skully was in The X-Files: I Want to Believe, the second movie in the series back in 2008.
So what have they been up to, and who is returning? Of course, Mitch Pileggi is back as Skinner, and William B. Davis as The Cigarette Smoking Man, plus Annabeth Gish as Reyes–even the Lone Gunmen are back. Newcomers Robbie Amell (The Flash), Lauren Ambrose (Coma), and Joel McHale (The Soup, Community) will have appearances on the show, too.
Fortunately Mulder, Skully, and Skinner will take center stage, with the subordinate characters only appearing in a few episodes.
Want to see more? Check out these four previews from Fox:
If you’ve been watching BBC America’s Canadian production of Orphan Black, then you know you’re been watching the most exciting science fiction series on TV this year. But close on its heels was this year’s U.S. premiere of Continuum, also filmed in Canada and re-broadcast on the Syfy Channel in the States. If you didn’t already run out and watch Season 2 of Continuum on video, or if you missed Season 1 altogether, you can catch a marathon of Season 1 this Friday, June 7, 2013, on Syfy, leading to the premiere of Season 2 at 9 p.m. Central Time. We reviewed Continuum earlier this year here at borg.com.
Continuum stars the awesome Rachel Nichols (Alias, Criminal Minds, G.I. Joe) as Kiera, Victor Webster (Castle, Melrose Place) as her partner, detective Carlos Fonnegra, and Erik Knudsen (Jericho, Scream 4) as Alec Sadler, the IT wizard who could be Kiera’s key to saving the future, and whose future self may be more involved than we could have guessed in the time travel mishap that propelled Kiera from the year 2077 back to 2012.
Last season we met Liber8, the terrorist organization whose members returned to 2012 with Kiera. We also saw a glimpse of Kiera’s husband’s boss in the future, a much older Alec Sadler, president of SadCorp, played by none other than the original Smoking Man from The X-Files, William B. Davis. Kiera finds a missing piece of time-jump technology in police headquarters–originally found in the rubble where the transfer occurred. We witnessed future crime-fighting tech that allows Kiera to record memories and force criminals to speak the truth, as well as the many powers her supersuit and weaponry hold, and how she herself can see in ways beyond any technology we have today. And we learned about the fanatics that the young Sadler is forced to live with, and how the death of his stepfather puts into motion a conflict for upcoming episodes.
Following on the heels of the successful Canada import Lost Girl, the Vancouver based sci-fi series Continuum premiered this year on the Syfy Channel in the U.S. and it easily earns the status of best new TV series of 2013. Like Lost Girl, the first season has already aired in Canada, and is being shown one season behind here, hopefully to catch up in the U.S. market later this year. The series has already been renewed in Canada, and Season 2 is being filmed on location in Vancouver, B.C. Tonight, episode four airs at 7 p.m. Central/8 p.m. Eastern on the Syfy Channel. You’ll want to set up your DVR for this series and if you’ve missed episodes 1-3 you can still catch them on primetime Free Per View.
Continuum stars Star Trek 2009, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and Conan the Barbarian’s Rachel Nichols as a British Columbia cop from the year 2077 named Kiera Cameron who gets transported back in time to 2012 where she tracks down a group of rebel terrorists who have come to the past with her. The terrorists, who go by the name Liber8, were sentenced to death and at their execution someone smuggled in a device that created a warp field that spun the convicts back in time and sucked in security officer Cameron. Like her cool and tough performance as Scarlet in the first G.I. Joe movie, Nichols is perfect as a no-nonsense cop, quick to act in a gunfight and several other situations she never could have trained for.
The producers of Continuum have created the most seemingly realistic future technology here along with a creepy possible future political structure where corporations have bailed out the defaulting government and eventually taken over all its functions, taking away individual liberties from citizens. The police force Cameron works for is in protection of this new world order, and the great twist of Continuum is having the terrorists’ ideal be a return to our political structure today. Continuum is the series many hoped the Battlestar Galactica spinoff Caprica would be, but in only three episodes Continuum has already surpassed that other Syfy Channel series in production quality and story.
