Monday Monday
Evil lingering cold is evil. And tomorrow a cousin's wedding, too.
On the cheerful side of things, The Bletchley Circle was as great as advertised. The basic premise - four women who used to be among the 80% female part of Bletchley Park employees (aka busy breaking codes in WWII) team up again to solve a case of murders nine years after the war is over and they've tried, with varying success, to cope with "ordinary" life in the 50s - should be good for a longer series, but if the miniseries of three parts i all there'll ever be, I'll still be content because it was fabulous. Not flawless - the third part was weaker than the first two, since the denouement depended on a very clever and sensible character doing something eminently stupid - but the good far outweighed this: the four women (Susan, Millie, Jean and Lucy) were all competent, interesting, with distinct personalities, and the revival of their war time comraderie under the very different circumstances they're now in was compelling.
With all the hiati and season premieres, it occurs to me that I've now dropped three shows I used to watch, all in the same year - Fringe, Dexter and now Downton Abbey. DA is painless, Fringe had such a lot going for it that dropping it leaves the kind of ache that dropping Heroes caused me a while back, but just as in that case, it has become necessary, and the decline of Dexter in s6 (though the rot set in earlier than that) still infuriates me.
It also makes me nervous because Homeland had its season premiere last night (haven't had a chance to watch yet, will do so soon), and the first season for me was terrific but also good in a way that makes me wonder whether this particular premise is sustainable for more than one season, and I should hate to see it decline the way Dexter did. I'll access my inner optimist soon!
Maybe, cold aside, I feel a bit in the doldrums because we've been doing media tie ins over at b5_revisited for a while now, having exhausted all the on screen canon, and while that was fine when we were talking about the telepath trilogy, it's become depressing for the most part since, because I dislike so much about the the Centauri trilogy (oh my beloved Centauri!), and of the JMS and Fiona Avery short stories, I loved The Shadow of his Thoughts, was fine with Genius Loci, but then came the appalling Space, Time and the Incurable Romantic and now Ms. Avery's story True Seeker, which I didn't know before, turns out to contain more coals than gems as well. So that meant I've been writing negative reviews for weeks now. And it's depressing. I don't like doing that, I really don't, it's just that hardly anyone else writes reviews at all and it's the Babylonverse which I still love discussing because of my ongoing affection for the show proper. But it's incredibly depressing. :( ...so much more fun to squee, I can't tell you. Speaking of which:
Discword/Avengers crossover of genius: Ankh-Morpork, Avenged. Which absolutely had to happen. It made my Monday.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/824723.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
On the cheerful side of things, The Bletchley Circle was as great as advertised. The basic premise - four women who used to be among the 80% female part of Bletchley Park employees (aka busy breaking codes in WWII) team up again to solve a case of murders nine years after the war is over and they've tried, with varying success, to cope with "ordinary" life in the 50s - should be good for a longer series, but if the miniseries of three parts i all there'll ever be, I'll still be content because it was fabulous. Not flawless - the third part was weaker than the first two, since the denouement depended on a very clever and sensible character doing something eminently stupid - but the good far outweighed this: the four women (Susan, Millie, Jean and Lucy) were all competent, interesting, with distinct personalities, and the revival of their war time comraderie under the very different circumstances they're now in was compelling.
With all the hiati and season premieres, it occurs to me that I've now dropped three shows I used to watch, all in the same year - Fringe, Dexter and now Downton Abbey. DA is painless, Fringe had such a lot going for it that dropping it leaves the kind of ache that dropping Heroes caused me a while back, but just as in that case, it has become necessary, and the decline of Dexter in s6 (though the rot set in earlier than that) still infuriates me.
It also makes me nervous because Homeland had its season premiere last night (haven't had a chance to watch yet, will do so soon), and the first season for me was terrific but also good in a way that makes me wonder whether this particular premise is sustainable for more than one season, and I should hate to see it decline the way Dexter did. I'll access my inner optimist soon!
Maybe, cold aside, I feel a bit in the doldrums because we've been doing media tie ins over at b5_revisited for a while now, having exhausted all the on screen canon, and while that was fine when we were talking about the telepath trilogy, it's become depressing for the most part since, because I dislike so much about the the Centauri trilogy (oh my beloved Centauri!), and of the JMS and Fiona Avery short stories, I loved The Shadow of his Thoughts, was fine with Genius Loci, but then came the appalling Space, Time and the Incurable Romantic and now Ms. Avery's story True Seeker, which I didn't know before, turns out to contain more coals than gems as well. So that meant I've been writing negative reviews for weeks now. And it's depressing. I don't like doing that, I really don't, it's just that hardly anyone else writes reviews at all and it's the Babylonverse which I still love discussing because of my ongoing affection for the show proper. But it's incredibly depressing. :( ...so much more fun to squee, I can't tell you. Speaking of which:
Discword/Avengers crossover of genius: Ankh-Morpork, Avenged. Which absolutely had to happen. It made my Monday.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/824723.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.