The Fall season

A round up of the fall season in the states

It has been a long time since I last commented on the content we viewers are offered on TV. I thought that as I have been absent for so long, rather than write about one program I would cast my eye over the schedule and look at the programs that I have been watching.

My viewing schedule was in good shape at the start of the season. However, as is usual at this time of year the US TV schedule is basically dropped for a month in favor of xmas specials, endless repeats and seemingly endless sports coverage. Add to the mix my pet hate genre the reality show and you basically have a whole load of nothing from week two in December until new year.

So beginning with Monday here are some programs of varying interest.Fox have been screening a new show called sleepy hollow. Recently there have been a lot of supernatural and ghost stories. The horror genre is also spawning new shows. Someone at Fox must have decided to combine a bit of every genre and throw a bit of rip van winkle as well. Having said that I have to admit it is fairly entertaining if you are in to this kind of thing. Tom Milson, who plays Ichabod Crane, resurrected 18th century civil war hero and Nicole Behari (Lt. Abbie Mills) have a good chemistry and the banter between them is funny at times. It is a program for the times as the theme running through the series is the coming of the apocalypse, which Crane and Mills are trying to stop.

A much more satisfying program is The Blacklist (NBC). It is a pacy political thriller in the Nikita mode, but with a more believable plot line than it. James Spader is brilliant as Raymond Reddington, an FBI agent who has been off the radar for years then suddenly shows up at FBI HQ with a list of the most wanted world criminals and information that will help capture them. In exchange for the information Reddington demands to be partnered by a young female agent called Elizabeth Keen. Keen was adopted as a young child and doesn't know who her father is. As the series progresses she begins to suspect that it is Reddington, although he denies it. To add to the intrigue Keens husband may not be who he claims to be and she doesn't know who to trust. Week by week the new partnership, with the help of a backup team hunt down and capture someone on the list. It is interesting to watch because although Reddington is cooperating with the FBI he is also carrying out a covert agenda of his own. This adds to the drama as the viewer is never quite sure what he will do next, although we soon come to expect him to do the right thing in the end.

Running in the same time slot as The Blacklist is Hostages on CBS. It is a political thriller about a surgeon who leads her field ( Dr Ellen Sanders played by Toni Colette) who is called upon to operate on the president. However on the eve of the operation a masked gang take the family of the Dr hostage and tell her she has to kill the president when she does the operation or she and her family will be killed. She is to switch the presidents pre- op medication then operate as normal. She switches the meds, but at the last minute aborts the operation. She outwits the gang, she thinks, but of course they still have her family.

My only complaint about the show is that in real life, at this point, the family would all be killed and the mission terminated. Not in TVland. The op is postponed for two weeks. It seems to me that whoever wants the president dead would find another way now. In episode three the ringleader, FBI hostage negotiator Duncan Carlisle (Dylan McDermott) who is actually the ringleader of the kidnappers has an attempt made on his own life by someone further up the chain of command that wants him punished for his failure.Why does someone want the president dead? In episode two there is a flashback of six months previously. Quintin Creasley  the Whitehouse chief of staff is telling Delaney that sometimes you have to look at the big picture:

"what they are doing is a necessary component of something much more important than just one man.... history calls upon us to do something bigger than we ever expected. Sometimes we are asked to shape the future of the world."
This could be a hint toward the New World Order. This may turn out to be an interesting show, to which I shall return in the future.

As you will see as we progress through the week there are some recurrent themes and plots as well as similarity in programs. I tend to watch things that are not too mainstream and not a comedy (does anyone know of an existing comedy that is actually funny?)

 Not a bad nights viewing, considering.