Last week I stumbled on what is possibly the best historical doc ever on the Discovery Channel:

Cleopatra, Portrait of a Killer. (To be pronounced “KILLAH!” with Gloria Swanson eyes.)

Their premise is that Cleopatra, because she hinted around at various Romans until her brother/husband and her half-sister got bumped off and left her sitting pretty on the throne, is a stone-cold killer. Also they have an extra five minutes to fill, so we’re going to reconstruct some bones we found in Arsinoe’s tomb and decide where she came from! (Not interesting enough for its own show, I guess, but apparently a nice way to bring home the fact that Arsinoe was dispatched by a KILLAH.)

Here’s the problem with that: they must think we have never heard of a royal family before. Killing each other is what royal families more or less exist to do. (Last one standing gets the throne, you guys!) So, the fact that Cleopatra exerted some influence to rid herself of rivals to the throne is business as usual, and doing everything you can to keep yourself in power is not only business as usual, but history sort of vilifies you if you can’t manage it, so you might as well really go for it and become Oxnard the Wrathful or whatever instead of Plinkerton the Waffling.

(Also, if we’re talking about someone who is not afraid to fight for the throne, the ghost of Henry VIII heard this TV show title and looked up, superoffended.)

On the other hand, “Cleopatra: Portrait of Moderate Political Acumen” doesn’t have the same ring to it, I guess.

But long as we’re still competing for incestuous, murderous royal families, there’s another amber-filtered desert-dwelling monarchy that makes Cleopatra’s friends look like an episode of Blackadder. Just saying.

On the plus side, this had the best history-documentary extras EVER. They were really going for it, especially Cleopatra and Arsinoe, who did more intense-head-turns-to-the-camera than any other history documentary has ever attempted.

I think I’ve talked about this before, but I REALLY love extras. Extras in big movies, extras in small movies, accidental extras in crowd scenes, extras who look right at the camera, extras who are falling asleep, extras who outdance the leads, extras who are into it above and beyond the call of duty and gesticulate wildly in the background having a peas-and-carrots fight. But perhaps no extras are closer to my heart than the extras in historical documentaries, who usually look a little confused as to why they’re doing whatever they’re doing, but gamely push forward into a castle siege or something, just like they were told.

These extras came to win, though. They threw shade at each other and had silent freakouts and threw jewelry all over the place! I actually enjoy this Cleopatra in a completely non-facetious way, and watched the entire hour because I loved how much fun she was clearly having. You make it happen, Cleopatra!

Below, a clip from the show for your enjoyment. (She was a KILLAH!)

So, as promised, I reviewed Riverworld for Tor.com.

It was…plentiful? I don’t even know what to say about it. They somehow managed to undercut most of their good points by accident (though every once in a while my jaw would hit the floor when something egregious stereotyped through the frame).

They did try very hard with the casting, which is generally passable and occasionally enjoyable. Sam Clemens and Allegra the courtesan did very well for themselves, and of course, Peter Wingfield never met an outdoor set he couldn’t halfheartedly stage-fight his way across. (I also suspect he had a contract rider that stipulated he be making out for at least 40% of his screen time.)

I’d be surprised if it makes it to a long-term series, only because renting a riverboat like that must be expensive, and because they burned all four hours of it on a Sunday night in April, which doesn’t speak much to their confidence about holding an audience from week to week.

But here’s the thing: I tease SyFy (and rightly), but I do think that with all this “reimagine-classic miniseries” stuff they’re getting closer and closer to something good that they can sustain. I mean, sure, Tin Man was a disaster. And Alice had a decent first half and then kind of imploded, but the cast was actually surprisingly good, and I enjoyed it quite a bit whenever I could forget the WORST PLOT IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. Frankly, if SyFy could have come up with a better premise, I would have tuned in to that show every week, no problems. A nice pulpy hour every week full of actors I like? SOLD.

This one had a multicultural cast (thumbs up) who are mostly sci-fi TV veterans (thumbs up!) in a script with an ensemble feel (thumbs up), in a setting where they can be held hostage by Vikings at any moment (thumb sideways), and a standard Chosen One quest plot (thumbs down) where the hero is looking for his impossible, dull, virginal girlfriend (thumbs down), and where blue aliens manipulate you with cryptic messages and sometimes tie you to a table and taunt you for no reason and then let you escape from your prison and then transport you a hundred miles away from the prison anyway, making your escape moot and leaving you staring at your costar in the middle of the Vancouver woods. (Uh, thumbs down.)

They managed to strike gold for a whole season after the BSG miniseries. (And then three more, which were like brass.) Someday soon, they’ll get it right again.

Just…not with this one.

Today at Tor.com, I talk about SyFy’s new reimagined-fairy-tale movies of the week. First up will be Beauty and the Beast (naturally), starring Estella Warren (naturally).

Do I think this will be awesome? Yes. But it has some serious work to do if it’s ever going to compare to the most amazing version of this story ever broadcast, and I think you know which I mean.

This one. (Immortalized here on Greendale Elementary’s picture day.)

Now, this show is not amazing for its overall storyline (which was three ounces of story in a two-gallon jug). Nor is it memorable for its individual episodes, which tended to be like the 90s remake of The Tomorrow People, in that almost every episode featured someone new learning about the underground society that has existed in secrecy for decades, except that judging by the discovery rate on the show, by now everyone in New York probably knows about it and just doesn’t realize it’s common knowledge because it doesn’t come up in conversation. The Underground Renaissance Faire: New York’s best-kept secret.

But neither one of those is the element that makes the show truly timeless. That would be the wardrobe.

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One of my favorite things in the world is watching historical documentaries (generally biographies) that have extras in the background, looking historical and Very Serious. They’re never allowed to talk, of course, but sometimes they get to “Peas and carrots” their way through something as historians explain things in the foreground. It’s all extras, all the time, and it’s awesome!

The best of these I’ve seen was “The Real Jane Austen,” which aired a while ago on PBS, and was amazing because it took the framework of a talking-heads biography with actors as the talking heads. It was narrated by Anna “I always play harridans for some reason” Chancellor, and starred a list of actors I can hardly believe managed to get in the same project just to make my life easier/worse: Gillian “Stuck in a Cookson” Kearney, Jack “Also stuck in a Cookson I haven’t recapped yet” Davenport, Lucy “Becoming Jane” Cohu, Oliver “I had two lines in Lorna Doone” Chris, and Beth “Yes, I’m Kate’s sister” Winslet.

(Oh, Awesome British Actor Camp, you always know just what to say!)

The one I’m watching at the moment is about the youth of Queen Victoria, with a narrator who seems to be reading her lines off cue cards she has never seen before, and the Queen Victoria extra’s job is to look up off-camera and shake her head “No” every time we cut to her, and it’s delightful. Also it’s about history, I guess.

(If I ever have a month to myself, I should start peoplewhohangaroundindocuemtnariesdatabase.com. Best month EVER.)

So! After I vaguely went to bat for Alice Part One, Alice Part Two aired last night, and now I feel like when a friend is visiting a city and you sort of vouch for an old college friend who lives there now as a friend introduction and they end up in a screaming food fight in a diner; totally embarrassed and sad I didn’t see it coming.

On the other hand, I called the ending in an email twelve hours before it aired, practically down to the dialogue, so clearly I saw SOMETHING coming.

Too bad it was this thing. Tor.com has the brunt of my despair, but I’m not done.

“Spoilerland.”
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