The Affair: A Family And Romantic Drama That's Actually Quite Interesting

You see me bitch and moan about family and romantic drama a lot, probably in every post but I don't completely hate it. I only hate it when it's cheesy, repetitive and contains hammy acting which a lot of is does, but when it's done well it's pretty swell (I'm trying to make using this word a thing, just go with it) to watch. The Affair from Showtime is one of those dramas that is swell to watch and insanely addictive, because even though the show is called The Affair theres a hell of a lot more to it.

The Affair centres on an affair (obviously) between Alison Lockhart (Ruth Wilson) and Noah Solloway (Dominic West). Both parties in the affair have a happy facade on for the outside world but on the inside they are quite frustrated with their lives and struggling to move on. Alison is married to Cole Lockhart (Joshua Jackson), together they had a son that passed away some time before the events of the series and they are both attempting to get their marriage back to the way it was but without success. Cole seems to have successfully moved on from the tragedy and is unable to understand why Alison hasn't which leads to some friction between the two, that probably aids in her choice to embark on an affair. Noah is the complete opposite to Alison in many ways, he has a loving wife and four healthy children. He also has a stable job and has had some limited success as an author in the past although he is having trouble writing a follow up. Unfortunately for him he is living under the shadow of his father in law who has had numerous best sellers and is constantly giving him unsolicited advice. Being trapped in a house with him for the summer is probably one of the reasons he turns to Alison, to lash out at the family that makes him feel inferior. 

So How Is The Flash Going?

The Flash's pilot leaked many moons ago and of course I jumped on it and fell in love, but I was in a television drought then so it may have been my mind playing tricks on me. We're four episodes into The Flash now and how is it going? I can honestly say I stand by pretty much all of my initial observations. Looking back I still feel that the pilot was brilliant and the fact that was The CW's most watched premiere EVER certainly supports it. The show has only gone from strength to strength since then rather than regress which I felt that Arrow slightly did after its first episode.

One of the main things I loved when watching the pilot all those months ago was the casting, and watching the show continue, seeing the actors interact with one another and their character backgrounds unfolding just proves that I'm right constantly. I'm not trying to sound big headed but it's true. At least in The Flash's case anyway. I was probably wrong about everything else. Anyway, we're only four episodes in even with a big cast we've still managed to get to know most of the characters fairly well. Barry is still getting used to being a hero whilst learning his capabilities can be limited at times and that he's not invincible, especially when he comes across Leonard Snart/Captain Cold. It's refreshing that the only person that he really has to keep his secret from is Iris, it's not like Smallville where Clark is attempting to hide it from everyone and it gets absolutely ridiculous and you realise that the people that live in Smallville are complete idiots. 

Anyone Else Let Down By The BBC's Lifetime Of Original British Drama Ad?

I'm hardly ever excited enough for a show that I actually plan to sit down and actually watch it live but I was absolutely pumped when I saw the trailer for The Missing last week to that's exactly what a planned to do. If having The Missing on tonight wasn't good enough I spotted this tweet on my feed earlier today:

Tonight we are launching a brand new trailer, led by Benedict Cumberbatch, showcasing the best of BBC Drama. pic.twitter.com/mazaz3pksI
— BBC One (@BBCOne) October 28, 2014

If you hadn't noticed I'm a B-Cumbz fan as well as a fan of the BBC drama so I was ecstatic when seeing that. Instead of one hour of enjoyment I get one hour and two minutes! Unfortunately for me seeing the trailer almost dulled the experience of watching The Missing. I guess my expectations were too high because I've always felt that the BBCs trailers were amazing. Just take a look at their trailer below.

My Watch List: Prey

I do try my best to keep up with television and films but it's damn near impossible unless I learn how to control time and space to watch them. For everything I manage to watch there's about 10 others I miss which I stick on a watch list and promise myself I'll watch them all before my demise. Over the past couple of years I have been adding to the list constantly but have never actually sat down and watched what's on it until now. I picked the shortest show I could find which was Prey and it saddens me that I didn't watch it when it aired. Prey ran for 3 episodes last year and starred John Simm as DC Marcus Farrow who is arrested for murdering his estranged wife and young son, and the series explores his attempts to clear his name. In doing so he unfolds a web of conspiracy involving gangsters and police officers, and he has to come to terms with the fact that some of the people that he works with and trusts are working against him. I only intended to watch the first episode before I went to bed but that wasn't enough, I burned through the whole series without even realising, and at the same time I was texting friends and urging them to watch it. If done well seeing the plight of a grieving and wrongly accused man should be both riveting and heartbreaking to watch, and Prey most certainly delivers.

I never watched Life On Mars (also on my watch list) so I've only known John Simm from films and a few other television dramas that he's acted in so I thought highly of him anyway, but seeing his performance in Prey was absolutely marvellous. There is only 3 episodes and Marcus goes through so much emotionally, he has to deal with his grief, anger, betrayal and a whole host of other things in such a short space of time that Simm could be forgiven if he lost it slightly but he never does. Simm managed to portray the character to perfection and emote so well that the audience sees all the emotions that he is going through throughout the series, while watching the show I felt the pain and betrayal that Marcus felt. The show is very fast paced and a lot of things happen within a single episode so it would be easy to lose track of what is going on but you never forget the reasoning behind it, it's all in Simm's face every time he lights up the screen as Marcus. If awards were actually about people's work rather than hype and campaigning then Simm's portrayal would be award worthy, I say he should be given an Oscar even though Prey isn't a film. He's that good.

A Cinemax Special: The Knick

Everyday for the past couple of months I've seen a poster for The Knick on my way to work. I see a scrubbed up Clive Owen as he's about to perform a surgery with the name Steven Soderbergh hovering over him to tempt me even more. I was intrigued instantly but didn't have the time to watch it when I first saw the poster but I looked it up a little while ago and saw that it was produced by Cinemax. Call me ignorant and naive (a lot of people do) but I thought Cinemax specialised in porn or documentaries about porn or soft porn, basically things that were porn related. I could sort of understand Soderbergh's involvement in the show and Cinemax because even though he panders to the masses with Oceans movies but he is quite experimental and likes to push boundaries but I didn't understand Clive Owen's involvement in a show which I assumed would be like True Blood but set in a twentieth century hospital. This weekend I decided to watch the first episode and again learnt that I shouldn't judge a book by its cover. I really should stop it, I miss out on a lot.

The Knick is set in the early twentieth century in New York and follows the lives of the staff that work there, the main character being Dr. John Thackery (Clive Owen). I tend to love period pieces, and no I don't been the heritage dramas starring Keira Knightly that the UK spits out every year to garner awards and money, but real period pieces. Shows and films that don't centre on aristocrats as they decide who to marry or getting over a stutter, but ones that feature gritty realism which is what the audience gets with The Knick. It is a hospital that is set in a part of New York that isn't affluent so their patients are mainly people that are of lower class and living in poverty. They are the patients that would allow untested methods to survive so the audience gets to see how modern medicine has come to be what it is. In the first episode alone we see Dr. Thackery perform two procedure that would be deemed unorthodox at the time, and hopefully we'll see many more in the episodes to come and people learning from it. We've had hospital dramas like ER and Greys Anatomy but we haven't had anything like this, we haven't seen the experimental side of medicine and it's advancement over the years so it should be interesting to watch.

Marry Me: The Sitcom Of The Year

 I have been searching for an enjoyable new sitcom to watch over the past few weeks and up until this afternoon I had come up empty. First there was A to Z which in the pilot felt like it wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to be and I wasn't willing to put in the time to see how it ended up because I could spend that time watching the comedy classic The Big Bang Theory (I'm joking, don't judge me for that statement). Then there was Selfie that seems promising but I don't think missing an episode or 3 would really matter, I haven't gotten engrossed in the show or characters as much as I would have liked. I decided to dip my toe into sitcom land one more time this year and watched Marry Me earlier today and after one episode I can tell it was the show I was waiting for.

Marry Me comes from the mind of David Caspe who created the much underrated Happy Endings. Whenever I tell a friend that I was a fan of Happy Endings they seem to laugh and want to rescind the TV geek girl card that I gave to myself. Happy Endings may not have had the most brilliant start (or the most brilliant name) but it did manage to develop into a show that is truly funny, with well rounded and loveable characters, and isn't that what we need in a sitcom? Unfortunately the damage was done after the first season and it was unable to gain the audience that it had lost so it was cancelled after the third season, and it still pains me. But I guess Marry Me came out of the shows cancellation so it's not all bad. Marry Me follows Annie and Jake who get engaged after a six year relationship even though the botched proposals are deemed by them as signs that are pointing towards their relationship being doomed, eventually they get it together and presumably we'll watch them on the way to the isle. I take issue with the name of the show again, I mean for some reason sitcoms just tend to be badly titled! What happens when they do get married, the show won't be about their proposal anymore will it? Unless their friends get engaged which is possible, or they could changed the name I guess. I vote for a Cougar Town style intro when it gets to that point, put in the intro that the show is badly named and then I'll take back my initial reservations.

Does The Walking Dead Still Have Its Bite?

I remember waking up early on November 1st 2010 to watch the first episode of The Walking Dead. It was a show that I had been teased with for months that was based on an epic graphic novel (so I've heard, I've only read snippets of it) and featured a lot of blood, gore and zombies, that are referred to as walkers. I still don't understand why they aren't called zombies, unless in the fictional zombie infested worlds they've never had zombie fiction, and if they haven't I pity them as they didn't get the likes of The Walking Dead in The Walking Dead. I'll stop with that now as it feels like im getting a bit Inception-y. Within the first five minutes of the show I was enthralled and tuned in week after week without fail, waking up at the crack of dawn to watch it before anyone could spoil it for me. The Walking Dead is the reason people think I am obsessed with zombies and I tend to get zombie related gifts like Gnombie, who is my zombie gnome. Of course I love these gifts so keep them coming (I'm talking to you Matthew) but it's not the zombies I'm fascinated with, it's the show. I like to feel I have an appropriate level of obsession for zombies, as I do aliens. It's not over the top! The obsession only pops up when The Walking Dead is airing and thats no coincidence!