In the USA the TV Series Dollhouse premieres its second season today! Yay, after heroes now more from Dollhouse, great times!

Tags: dollhouse · season · season2 · series · start · trailer · tv

Hello, dear friends. Nice to have you back for the third part of my best-tv-shows-ever review!

Todays show is just about the limit and, to be honest, nothing for weak nerves and stomaches! I am talking about Dexter!

The show is named after its main charakter, Dexter Morgan, a charismatic Forensic of the Miami Police Department. Dexters area of expertise is the analysis of blood spatter patterns. He can reconstruct the course of events of a crime by looking at the blood left behind at a crime scene.

His brilliance in this job isn't just based on his precise working mind, no, Dexter has a secret ... He is living a double life, on the day he is a cop, in the night a serial killer.

All this sounds really crazy, but the show is made very clever and believable. Dexter was raised as the adoptive son of a cop. Soon it was clear, that Dexter wasn't like a normal boy. He doesn't have any kind of emotions and the urge to kill is rising in him. His dad realizes there is nothing he can do to "cure" his son. But instead of getting professional help, he tries to parent Dexter on his own. He teaches his son how to pretend to be normal, how to kill without being punished and whom to kill.

Dexters victims are always criminals (or people who Dexter thinks are criminals) who did not get their punishment by the law. For example a rapist who came free due to procedural errors would be on the top of Dexters list. How Dexter works off this list is shown in extreme graphic detail.

The special thing about this show is, that Dexter becomes the "good guy" for the viewer. You really hope that he succeeds in murdering those scumbags and that his colleagues and family (his little sister works at the police department, too) don't catch him. But on the otherside you know it is wrong what he does and that you should detest him. It's an interesting moral dilemma.

Visually it once again is a great show. Miami as a setting is already known from some other shows but still has a great flair to it and can fascinate the viewer. You also have to say, that the creators of Dexter really know how to show realistic looking wounds of every sort (especially the disgusting ones) ;)

Through season 1 you get to know Dexter and how he became what he is today. After about half of the season Dexters past begins to haunt him which culmulates in a fulminant season final. The individual episodes have their own stories, but there also is "the big story" which connects all the episodes. The Lost-Addiction-Factor is definitely there.

Since the end of September 2007 episode two of Dexter is aired in the USA. In Germany we have to wait till at least 2008 for the first season. As stated on Serienjunkies.de RTL2 has picked up Dexter. We will have two see how cut it is, I can't imagine the show to come out uncensored on free-TV in Germany ... 

Tags: dexter · review · series · tv

Welcome to the second part of my series reviews and recommendations!

My topic for today, dear children, is the tv series Farscape. My first encounter with it was some years ago, when I accidentially switched to it on free-tv. Sadly, this was a mistake ;)

Someone who never saw an episode of Farscape and watches one in the middle of the series will wonder what this is all about. Strange people and even more strange aliens who seem to be different characters at the same time? What's happening here? Where should our new viewer know from, what is going on, if noone is telling him?
 
In short: I could not really relate to the show and even disliked it somehow.
Some time later, after I heard some voices which really liked it, I decided to give it another chance and to watch the whole series from season one, episode one on.

Said, done, thrilled!

The show is full of creativity. The charakters develop very mich through the episodes, they and the story are sometimes that crazy - you have to wonder about the mental fitness of the people who wrote it. Don't misunderstand me, I mean that in the best of all meanings.

If you are a little engaged in the show and watch every episode, you will get a masterpiece with a stunning story, great images, thrilling action and a lot of fun and feelings.

The story: The astronaut John Crichton is testing a new propulsion system with his shuttle (the farscape project) in earth orbit. He accidentially opens a wormhole and flies through. Barely escaped death and far far away from earth he stumbles into the living spaceship Moya. The moya was a convict transport but the convicts took over command and are on the run from the Peacekeepers, a human-like race.

In an unintended collision with his ship, John Crichton kills the brother of a peacekeeper commander, who is now out for revenge and is hunting Crichton and the Moya through space.
Moyas crew consists of some aliens:

Pilot, like the name already hints, is the pilot of Moya. His race has a symbiotic relationship with the living ships. His nerves are connected with those of Moya, so he can steer and manage it quite effectively.
Pilot is a good natured beeing, but it also has its dark sides.

Aeryn Sun, former fighter for the Peacekeepers, is struggling to lose her education and propaganda formed view on the things. Through the seasons she and Crichton develop a romance, which is a central part of the story.

The blue-skinned Chiana is a real scoundrel. The steals, lies and uses her female attributes wherever she thinks it will get her what she wants.
Most noticeable on the first glance is her beastly, cat-like movement. This emphasizes her being an alien, even if she looks like a strange coloured human.

Rygel the 16th, former ruler over 600 billion liveforms unfortunately stood between his relatives and the power. On Moya he still behaves like a royal, arrogant and spoiled. But he also has some more pratical abilities, such as (dishonest) negotiations and trade.
The figure is, like pilot, a mechanical puppet. Many of the aliens in the show are such puppets and look really great.

Ka D'Argo is the warrior on board, which is already obvious when you see him. He is huge, has tatoos all over and a large sword/laserweapon combination.
Imprisoned for a crime he did not do, he is now on the search for his son. He becomes Johns best friend, who is also on a search ... the search for the way home.

In the first two seasons the priest Zhaan also plays a main role. She is the heart and soul of the crew and heals the psychic and physical wounds of the others.

Some of the main points of the story are the getaway from the Peacekeepers, the search for earth, wormholes and the such. Over time it gets kind of complicated and is only comprehensible if you saw the episodes before.

For example implants Scorpius, a Peacekeeper leader who wants to get the secret of wormholes from Crichton, a clone of himself in Crichtons head. From now on there are two Scorpius': The real one and the one in Crichtons head. First you think Crichton is getting crazy but over time it kind of resolves what this is all about. For a frequent viewer this is great, of someone tuning in for the first time it is asked too much.

This strange and abstruse side is what makes Farscape special. Especially the the most nutty episodes are the best. In "Revenging Angel" for example you get a closer look in the world of feelings and thoughts of the main character. Very characteristically this episode is a mix between animated (drawn) sequences and real film. You don't see the character of a show ride a comic-missile every day :-)

The creative part of the show is big, it is very well done in all aspects. At the beginning everything is still a little clumsy and cheap looking, but you can observe the progress the team makes from episode to episode. The aliens for example are really looking great and ... well ... alien! Not like in Star Trek, where every beeing seems to be a human with rash. They are fantastic looking puppets, and that is a good thing!

Especially great was in my oppinion the intro. In the third season it is a graphical firework. Amazing! A real piece of art.

Sadly the show fell victim to its own concept. There were not many new viewers (see my experience when I first saw it) and the frequent viewers got fewer. If you miss some episodes and don't know what it is all about now ... that is kind of frustrating.
Farscape did not survive longer than the fourth season and was cancelled after that. The result was a massive outcry on the internet and in letters to SciFi Network. The producers reacted and made a TV movie with two parts: The Peacekeeper Wars.
Although it was not another season, it at least brought the show to a good end.

If you have the possibility to watch Farscape from the first episode to the last, you should absolutely do that! If you ignore some of the minor bumps at the beginning you will get one of the most exciting, emotional and funniest shows on TV ever. To get it will however be expensive, the price for the DVDs on the german Amazon is outrageous at the moment.

A small side note: In season 9 and 10 the two actors of Farscapes main Characters Crichton and Sun took over two roles on Stargate: SG1. The writers of SG1 really know how to enthuse a Farscape fan, if you see the small hints and glances the two give two each other. More clearly it gets in the episode named "200" in which you can find a cool Farscape parody with switched roles.

Tags: farscape · review · scifi · series · stargate · tv

AS already written here I want to present some of my favourite TV series.
The attentive reader has of cause already noticed, that I did not give a precise date of when I will do that :-D But now the time has come ...

I want to start with a series which interestingly fits very well to my last vacation (as soon as I picked and retouched some photos I will upload them): 

Rome is one of the most expensive series of our times (the most expensive?). Like the name already hints the main subject of it is Rome, more precisely Rome during the rise of Julius Caesar. In the second season he is not a part of the plot, but mainly I am writing about the first season.

The story is seen with focus on two roman soldiers, Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo. Those two also appear in the original documents of this time and tie together a story of might, war, friendship and betrayal. Also more famous persons like Julius Caesar and Brutus make their appearance and you learn how they think and what motivates them.

The special thing about Rome is (for me, at least) how believable this time and the values of its inhabitants are presented. This manifests in some quite bloody scenes and rude language, but you always think it is appropriate for this time. Things that are disgusting nowadays for us were back then normal and ok for everybody. This shift in moral values creates a dense atmosphere, it feels like the ancient Rome and you feel with the characters (although it is common knowledge how it all ends). 

The design of the series is well done, part of which is a result of the enormous production costs. They made really good sets and filmed in Italy, which is noteworthy for an american production.

The only thing I did not really like was the intro (compared to other series, more in the next texts). It is a good work of art, cuts of a walk through the city with mystic elements, but personally it was not what I would associate with the series. After some episodes I got accustomed to it, until then there still is fast forward ;)

Tags: review · rome · series · tv