Sexy Revisionist History Coming Soon! “Over it,” Says Henry VIII

Prequels today are all the rage. Personally, I blame George Lucas for the modern rise of this trend, but you may see things differently. Regardless, in addition to the origin stories for our favorite scruffy nerf-herders, would-be Übermensches and socially-conscious arrow slingers, Starz is going historical and finally giving us the Leonardi Da Vinci coming of age story we didn’t know we wanted. I give you Da Vinci’s Demons!

Makes you wonder if the demons have a code or something...

You can check out the first trailer for the show here. From the official description:

Starring Tom Riley ("Monroe," I Want Candy), as the title character, "Da Vinci's Demons" is a historical fantasy, following the ‘untold' story of the world's greatest genius during his turbulent youth in Renaissance Florence. Brilliant and passionate, the twenty-five year old Leonardo Da Vinci is an artist, inventor, swordsman, lover, dreamer and idealist. As a free thinker, with intellect and talents that are almost superhuman, he struggles to live within the confines of his own reality and time. He begins to not only see the future, but invent it. 

I confess I’m a little ambivalent about this.

Pro: I love history, so anything that gets people more interested in a chapter of history, especially for someone like Da Vinci who, despite being well-known, isn’t really someone most people know anything about, is gravy in my book. Also, the series is by David S. Goyer, who recently wrote a couple of movies that you may have heard about and which I think are all uniformly incredible. Goyer is a master at understanding how to employ action and character in a way that supports multiple deeper themes. Given how lush Da Vinci’s life and work was, the potential here in the hands of such a capable writer could be amazing. Also, judging by the preview the thing looks bloody incredible. The production values are high, the visuals are stunning, the whole thing just looks beautiful.

Con: Really, Starz? I know it’s Hollywood, but was “Sexy Leo Da Vinci” really a thing that you had to resort to in order to get this thing greenlit? Da Vinci’s life is fascinating and there are plenty of opportunities to play with the political and social intrigues that he was really involved in without skirting toward the Twilight audience. As a cable network, you can count on a viewership that’s going to be more discriminating. Also, given that Da Vinci lived a somewhat notoriously celibate life, possibly because he may have been gay, this seems like a stretch.

The early Virtuvian Man sketch looked a little different, apparently.

Another potential concern, one that could outweigh the slick visual design, is the production team which is the same that produced Torchwood: Miracle Day, another show that looked great but had some unfortunate missteps that ended up hurting the final package. Hopefully, that team has picked up a few lessons since their inaugural outing.

Finally, why refer to this as a historical fantasy? History is pretty fantastic (and fantastical) when you actually look at the details. It doesn’t need magic realism in order to dress it up. Of course, I’m also the guy who liked Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, so maybe I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth here. This also may be the least concern, since the show descriptions are being more than a little coy about how much fantasy this thing actually is.

Da Vinci’s Demons will air on Starz sometime in 2013.

The Newsroom

I'm having a lot of trouble writing this review; I've thought about how to frame it all day yesterday. I think my big mistake was reading critic's reviews of The Newsroom before I actually watched it. Most of them were not kind, and so I went into the show expecting another debacle like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. You know what I mean: Sorkin basically using the show as a soap box on which to impress us all with his cleverness and instruct us on how to think like the benevolent god that he is.

Ok, that might be a little harsh, but it turns out that I actually enjoyed The Newsroom. It's definitely more The West Wing (and Sports Night) than Studio 60, which is to say that it's essentially about a small group of dedicated people who are out to change the world. Well, change America. Well, change Americans who watch late night news.

From HBO.com:

From the mind of Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and screenwriter of The Social Network and Moneyball, comes The Newsroom, a behind-the-scenes look at the people who make a nightly cable-news program. Focusing on a network anchor (played by Jeff Daniels), his new executive producer (Emily Mortimer), the newsroom staff (John Gallagher, Jr., Alison Pill, Thomas Sadoski, Olivia Munn, Dev Patel) and their boss (Sam Waterston), the series tracks their quixotic mission to do the news well in the face of corporate and commercial obstacles-not to mention their own personal entanglements.

Unfortunately, the show is loaded with plot points and characters that are obviously derivative of past Sorkin shows. But if you can get past the parallels to past programs, The Newsroom is an interesting and insanely well-acted show.

Jeff Daniels' news anchor, Will McAvoy, is known for being the "Jay Leno" of late night news, essentially because he is entirely unoffensive because he doesn't share his personal political views. Turns out he's actually a giant jerk though, which I don't know, I found kind of refreshing? I wouldn't say he is particularly likable, but for some reason I didn't mind that he yells, is disrespectful, and is ruled by his ego. Maybe because there is a strange sort of egalitarianism to his behavior; he may not be a nice guy but he treats everyone like shit so what do you think makes you so special? He is also, as it turns out, remarkably good at his job. But then so is everyone in this workplace. Just once in a Sorkin show I want there to be a character who shows up to work 2 hours late, naps at his desk, and spends the day surfing the internet. It would be like The Office meets every Frank Capra movie ever.

Sorkin's dialogue is, as ever, brilliant, whip-smart and whip-fast, and it's clear The Newsroom is a response to Americans' tendency to engage in discourse by yelling in each other faces. The characters in The Newsroom want to CHANGE THINGS and MAKE US BETTER. Remember the whole, "let Barlet be Bartlet" plot from The West Wing? It's like that except instead of working towards political goals, these folks are going to educate America and change the way they think. 

I think the best way to enjoy The Newsroom is to take it as optimistic theater; don't fool yourself into thinking this is a realistic look at the behind-the-scenes of a news show and try to check your cynicism at the door. I found myself engaging in some major eye-rolling (usually following some broad pronouncement about how they were like Don Quixote) but then I felt kind of bad about it. After all, what's so wrong about wanting to make a show about people who want to improve America? Am I really so jaded? And how much introspection can I cram into this review?

Long story short (too late), The Newsroom is clever, but it knows it. Still, at the end of the day, I was glued to the seat of my couch, I am excited about where the show is going, and there were some genuine surprises in the pilot. Oh, and the news show within a show? Is actually good. So already it's got one up on Studio 60.

The Newsroom airs Sunday nights at 10:00 on HBO. The first episode is available for viewing at HBO.com.

Welcome Back to the Rock. Again.

It’s time we all just faced up to the really horrible truth of this year’s television season: Despite some valiant efforts to bridge new territory in storytelling or reality exploitation, TV networks really, really just miss Lost and want it back.

The latest heir apparent to the landmark show about mysterious happenings on a time-traveling island is Alcatraz, a show about mysterious happenings on a time-traveling island. Some of the cast is even the same. The premise is that Something Happened on the infamous prison island in 1963, just before it officially closed, whereby 302 inmates suddenly vanished. They are now reappearing in our time and a team of plucky heroes is on the case to hunt them down. No word yet when the polar bears will emerge, but one assumes they’re coming.

But seriously. Which one of us is the Kate?

It’s tempting to say that Alcatraz is learning a little something from Lost’s mistakes – namely that while you need a good mystery to keep people tuning in, audiences will only trust you for so long and so you’ve got to dish out some of the goods. And it doesn’t count if you just keep adding questions that you have no intention of answering. In that sense, Alcatraz does a fine job of helping us to feel like the story is going somewhere. By the end of the first episode, we know that there’s a secret cabal of men who have some nefarious plan for these reappearing criminals and we even know something of their backstory. We’ve been treated to an intriguing, albeit brief, view of a secret prison where the villains (or ARE they?) will be housed after being caught and we even get the sense of a much bigger story, what with the promised interconnections of our two lead characters.

It fizzles a bit, however, when after four or five episodes we’re stuck with the exact same formula each time. Mysterious psychopath from the past emerges in modern day San Francisco, the detective and her nerdy sidekick hunt them down and along the way manage the seemingly irrational and secretive behavior of their new boss. The big reveals don’t even pack that much of a punch because the story is formulaic enough that we know when to expect them. Also, some of the plot holes are big enough to build the Golden Gate Bridge through. To wit, why do none of these recently re-emerged criminals just hop the first bus to Mexico rather than stick around San Francisco to commit new crimes? Hopefully, this is only a case of networks needing a Dollhouse-style opening, one that doesn’t demand the mythology overtake the individual stories, thus letting new viewers on board.

The problem with that approach is, unless your television show has the words “law” and/or “order” in the title, most people don’t watch scripted television just to tune into the story, they also want to get to know the characters. Watching the growth and development of your leads is really where most television dramas get their mojo from. Ironically, that’s a lesson from Lost that the creators of Alcatraz haven’t quite picked up on yet. Although you can easily go overboard with characterization to the point where you make the audience forget if it’s watching a television show or reading someone’s diary, we’re far more interested in hearing about people than about things.

“I could do something that moves this plot forward, but then when would I find the time to stare wistfully out to sea and remember my past transgressions?”

I’m hopeful that Alcatraz pulls it together, even if some of the conceits in the show are a bit laughable. Parts of the show are total nerd-bait, including the notion that you can successfully live in San Francisco when you are paying off your school loans after two PhDs and your only income is running a comic book shop. The show is really at its best when it’s showcasing the cruel and bizarre inmate torture of the 1960s prison system and how the inmates, themselves not exactly sympathetic characters, deal with that torture. The potential for this show is significant, let’s just hope the network’s need to create another Lost doesn’t interfere with what the show should actually be.