Trash tv -- more or less
Watched contrasting TV stuff last night -- BBC's If... Things Don't Get Better, followed by the trashy tacky but kind of compelling Hypercube: Cube 2.
The first was what you'd brand quality TV -- a serious look at the disturbing possibilities of increases in gated communities and inequalities in society. It wasn't anything like as apocalyptic as last week's offering, 'If... The Lights Went Out', which ended in true death and destruction and left me quite unwilling to leave extra lights burning unnecessarily. Yesterday's sequence was a little pale and wan in comparison, with the greatest tension situated around a mightily-disliked roadblock installed by the managers of the gated community; but nemesis was obviously going to visit the gated community not in the form of avenging furies, but simply in the paying punters moving out as they got fed up with the hassles all round.
The second was tacky tv rated 2 stars on the Sci-Fi channel -- as the sequel to the also fairly pants Cube, the extra menace has to be signalled by an intensifier -- in this case 'hyper' -- usefully also indicating the hyperdimensional nature of the trap that the hapless people are caught in. The acting was wooden, the plot contrived, the explanations absurd (what, the military have suddenly got the power to build an, admittedly unstable, hyperdimensional cube with time-dilation and parallel universe capabilities -- and they're just using it to bump off a few of their own rebel citizens?). Oddly compelling though -- what will the doors open on to next? (OK, that makes it sound a bit like Sliders, only without the teen angst and romance possibilities. And more violent death. Yeah, that's about right.)
The first was what you'd brand quality TV -- a serious look at the disturbing possibilities of increases in gated communities and inequalities in society. It wasn't anything like as apocalyptic as last week's offering, 'If... The Lights Went Out', which ended in true death and destruction and left me quite unwilling to leave extra lights burning unnecessarily. Yesterday's sequence was a little pale and wan in comparison, with the greatest tension situated around a mightily-disliked roadblock installed by the managers of the gated community; but nemesis was obviously going to visit the gated community not in the form of avenging furies, but simply in the paying punters moving out as they got fed up with the hassles all round.
The second was tacky tv rated 2 stars on the Sci-Fi channel -- as the sequel to the also fairly pants Cube, the extra menace has to be signalled by an intensifier -- in this case 'hyper' -- usefully also indicating the hyperdimensional nature of the trap that the hapless people are caught in. The acting was wooden, the plot contrived, the explanations absurd (what, the military have suddenly got the power to build an, admittedly unstable, hyperdimensional cube with time-dilation and parallel universe capabilities -- and they're just using it to bump off a few of their own rebel citizens?). Oddly compelling though -- what will the doors open on to next? (OK, that makes it sound a bit like Sliders, only without the teen angst and romance possibilities. And more violent death. Yeah, that's about right.)