I’ve already mentioned Showtime will be starting up their Smexy History Hour after the The Tudors by replacing it with The Borgias, about a family so smexy they can’t even handle each other. Lucrezia Borgia, sensing that the casual “So have you read Flowers in the Attic yet?” conversation with her brother has taken a turn. But today’s I’m less concerned with the intricacies of their family tree, and more about the intricacies of their costuming. Though not a lot of photos have been released, what’s available is interesting enough… Read more »

Monday night, SyFy premiered Riverworld, a four-hour miniseries based on the series of novels by Philip José Farmer. The novels chronicled the adventures of those resurrected after death, living on a cultivated river-planet overseen by extraterrestrial powers. SyFy is notorious for hilariously abysmal weekly movies. Their miniseries have fared a little better from additional time and care–not that this tempers the glee with which they can throw a decent cast into a cauldron of plot soup for four hours. (Lookin’ at you, Tin Man, and Alice, and Children of Dune,… Read more »

The character of Sherlock Holmes is one of the most iconic in literature, so easily recognizable that his hat alone conjures up the image of a stuffy Victorian sitting room, a faithful doctor, and a seemingly-impossible conclusion that, of course, makes sense once the clues are explained. Fans of the stories know that Holmes was a little more cutting-edge than cozy, with a great interest in forensics, a pugilist pastime, and a cocaine habit. When bringing him to the screen, the struggle usually lies in reconciling Holmes the preternaturally-capable investigator… Read more »

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… Read more »

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… Read more »

Sunday night, SyFy premiered Alice, a miniseries based loosely on Lewis Carroll’s Alice books and given the same slightly-punk treatment as 2007’s Tin Man. I reviewed the first half, which showed promise, and mentioned I was looking forward to last night’s conclusion. Then I saw last night’s conclusion. SyFy? We need to talk. The milking-humans plot, which was straining credibility from the beginning, fell apart completely in the second act. Do the Wonderlandians have no emotions without human assistance? No, they seem fine. Do we see a single person in… Read more »