TV Series I've Been Watching - part 19

The summer season is fast approaching and there have been a lot of changes in the TV series arena. As usual, the red indicates shows that I don't recommend and green the ones that I recommend.

• Elementary - I was correct, there was an entire arch of the story regarding the brother of Sherlock, French mafia, MI6, moles, etc. It lacked subtlety and it was mostly boring. How come normal murders are so much more interesting than archvillain trickery?
• The Tomorrow People (2013) - the show was cancelled in May. I can't say I am sorry, though. It was typical young adolescent idiocy.
• The Originals - I am however completely not happy for NOT cancelling this crap.
• Marvel's agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Yay! Hail Shield! Good guys win again. And also Samuel L. Jackson appears in the end season, bringing with him what appear to be Shield agent clones? Did he steal them from Star Wars?
• Ripper Street - Filming for the Amazon online channel was supposed to begin in May. I think it has.
• Babylon - No news yet, but there are certainly no news of cancellation, so I guess we will see the next episodes being released later this year.
• Banshee - Third season confirmed.
• Bitten - Another show that was renewed for a second season for no apparent reason. It is just awful.
• Black Sails - Renewed for a second season, I partly like it. It is at least well done, with decent acting and an eye for detail.
• From Dusk Till Dawn - As a funny commenter observed: in an incredible moves the owners of the El Rey network renew the show produced by El Rey for a second season. I understand the difficulty of translating a movie into a series... wait, there is a sequel, too? Wait, there is a From Dusk Till Dawn third part? I've never heard of them before. Nevermind.
• Helix - I think I got it now. When a show makes an effort to really suck ass, they renew it. It's like an executive learned behaviour to promote ass sucking. Renewed for a second season, Helix is the poster child of bad movie making.
• House of Cards - It's good that I had to write this review, because it reminded me to watch the second season. Still haven't done it, though, which indicates either a problem with me or with the show. Probably me. Again, Kevin Spacey can't go wrong.
• Intelligence - Amazingly enough, a show that I sort of enjoyed, without liking it too much, was cancelled. Very *intelligent* move...
• Ressurection - I really tried to make myself watch this show, but I just procrastinated for a really long time. It says something about my feelings for this show. I was really waiting for the second season of the French one and the American remake doesn't do it for me.
• Star Crossed - Teenage sci fi show about alien romance? Really beautiful actors, incredibly stupid script and acting. I just can't believe it was cancelled. It ruins my theory, because it trully sucked ass.
• The 100 - The show started really well, predictably degenerated in artificial drama that had no place in the series, while going soft on the problems that someone would meet in that exact situation. Suddenly 100 teenagers from space have a functional colony, fight "grounders" for no good reason and keep alternating between screwing, screwing over and screwing up. Typical teenager, one might say, but their parents on "The Ark" are even worse. The show was renewed for a second season. The season finale, though, didn't give me much hope. They added two (and a half, one might say) human factions to the mix in just the one episode
• The After - The pilot got positive reviews to they ordered it to series. I am not holding my breath.
• The Americans - I liked the second season, although the arch with the American mole that turns homicidal and discovers the entire KGB operation by himself was really ridiculous. It was a nice touch about the murder of the KGB agents, also what happened to Nina and the reactions of the people. However the Moscow verdict makes no sense.
• The Red Road - Ah, maybe exceptions just confirm a rule. Another crappy show that gets renewed for a second season.
• True Detective - The first season was great, so there will be new seasons. New actors and new stories, though, for each season.
• Vikings - Politics keep interfering with nice raiding and pillaging. That is the moment in history when things started going downwards and global warming started. True fact!
• Suits - The fourth season just started. They try to keep it exciting, but the feel is gone.
• Continuum - The third season went all over the place. The season finale has Cameron cooling it off with a new boyfriend from (yet) another timeline, then another mysterious traveler from a very far future that seems to have started the Freelancer cult, Liber8 split off after realizing they do more harm than good (while each character in the group starts to get a "nice" shine on them) and finally the Freelancers getting mowed down. But then, they never really die, do they?
• Crisis - For me the scene when a stupid kid sees Francis killing a kid and then tells all of the others that the kidnappers made him do it has done it for me! Oh, or the one when he forces a Chinese spy to unleash a virus that effectively destroys the Internet in order to gain time. Where do you get this idiocy from? BTW, it was cancelled.
• Da Vinci's Demons - Enemies get together, they eventually run into Mayas on America and, of course, traces of DaVinci's parents, then they return just in time to stave off the invasion of Italy by the Turkish navy which just appeared out of nowhere. Not only will this be renewed, but it won prizes! It is a guilty pleasure that I like it, most of the time, I have to admit.
• Turn - Interesting show. It lacks something, probably sympathetic characters. I really don't see myself liking any of them, including the generously bosomed women who have casual sex all the time. That is saying something.
• The Crimson Field - Was it cancelled because it featured female main characters? Or because it was well acted? I just don't know.
• Silicon Valley - Elon Musk accused the show of showing the wrong weirdness of Silicon Valley. I don't know how things are there, but to me it feels like he probably is right. A lot of crap about sex, race, manhood, geekiness seen as emasculating, random genius, etc. For me the scene when in one night the guy develops what his entire team failed to in five months has done it for me. I like parts of the show, but I don't think I liked the show overall.
• Bad Teacher - I could stand literally 2 minutes of it. Then I stopped and deleted everything. It is the type of ha ha ha sitcom that brings nothing.
• Black Box - A movie about a brilliant woman psychiatrist. Of course she is very sexually active, a bit insane and a sexy redhead. It's basically Doctor House meets Unforgettable. I bet it will be cancelled because she is a crazy broad and only male characters are allowed to be brilliant. Plus she is annoying. Nice ass, though.
• Californication - The seventh season will be the last, thank you! They butchered a lovely idea that was fantastic in the first two seasons and let it die in agony for the last five, blood and guts pouring out of it until nothing but a boring husk remained. Duchovny was my god at the beginning of the show.
• Deadbeat - comedy about a deadbeat seeing ghosts and solving their problems. I actually commented on Imdb (I usually don't for TV series) to warn people off it. It is offensively boring and formulaic and completely not funny.
• Dracula - It was a weird reinvention of Dracula, but one that I kind of liked. Guess what! They cancelled it! Perhaps the trick is to not like anything that I like and like everything that I dislike. In this way they will renew the shows that I hate to love, rather than the ones that I love to hate. Yes, that's a good plan.
• Game of Thrones - Thank God for Peter Dinklage! One realizes how tedious the books are when they watch this well done series that compresses whole books in half a day of video and you still feel nothing happens. And then someone dies and the episode ends.
• Halt and Catch Fire - Imagine Mad Men, but with a real psychopath as the main character, the field changed from advertising to personal computer manufacturing and a clone of Angelina Jolie's persona from the movie Hackers as the "tech genius". So, in other words, with more Mad, and less Men. I really dislike the main character and I don't see where this is going. Hardware is not glamorous, software is! *cough* *cough*
• In the Flesh - I really liked the first season, but I waited to see episodes from the new one as well. Somehow I can't bring myself to start watching it again. I will, though, soon.
• Penny Dreadful - Ok, it is a horror series that mixes in all the Victorian themes like Jack the Ripper, vampires, werewolves, tuberculosis, Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, etc. But it's well done and it has a nice cast: Eva Green, Timothy Dalton, Billie Piper, Josh Hartnett and others.
• Prey - John Simm is a detective in this British drama, and he is framed for the murder of his wife and son by a mysterious man. He is a... fugitive from the law trying to solve his own case. Kind of bland and hard to believe in this day and age. The Fugitive was much more credible because not only movies were silly at that time, but also most people. Now we have evolved quite a lot *cough* *I should stop with these asterisks everywhere* *cough*
• Quirke - Gabriel Byrne is the lead in this British miniseries, playing a doctor that somehow is connected to everyone in the city and where the problems usually stem from one member of his extended family or another. Feels like In Treatment set in the past and in which Byrne is both doctor and patient. I think it could have been more. As such, it's a little bit annoying and slow.
• Salem - It is still the season of the witch. Salem is a new show, but I haven't started watching it. The premise seemed a little bit forced.
• The Wil Wheaton Project - Wesley from Star Trek is hosting a show that is not a TV series. It is a humorous take on the latest sci-fi news. You might not know it, but Wheaton is very active online in all kind of geeky indie shows, together with his friend Felicia Day (The Guild). I found it a little too satirical, but I liked it.
• Under the Dome - the boring and annoying show has been renewed for a second season that will air at the end of the month.
• Crossbones - Pirates! Again! This time starring John Malkovich. Haven't started watching yet.
• Fargo - Based on a Coen brothers movie with the same name, it stars Billy Bob Thornton and has the brothers as executive producers. Haven't started watching yet.
• From There to Here - British drama covering life from the Manchester bombing up to 2000. Haven't started watching yet.

That's about it so far.