News Flashing | Under the Dome Goes Straight to Series

HBO's Game of Thrones may still be going strong, but with Fringe finishing in the not-too-distant, and my favourite new series from this season - namely Last Resort - dead in the water already, I've been wondering what the year 2013 holds for me in terms of TV.

Well, now I've an inkling. TV Guide is reporting that CBS have made a straight-to-season order of 13 episodes of Under the Dome: a series based on Stephen King's gargantuan 2009 novel of the same name, adapted by Brian K. Vaughan of Lost and Y The Last Man fame, and directed by Niels Arden Oplev, who helmed the original Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Under the Dome is set to hit home theatres sometime this coming Summer, and Simon & Schuster's re-release of the original book in April in the US seems telling; I'd expect to see it on this side of that window. 

Here's a smart-arsed synopsis of the show by TV Guide's Sadie Gennis, now with proper apostrophes:

"The serialized drama, which will be produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, tells the story of a small New England town that becomes sealed off from the world by an over-sized transparent dome — much like in The Simpsons Movie. But instead of running around with Spider Pig, the town's inhabitants are faced with dire and deadly circumstances due to the dome's arrival. Under the Dome will follow the citizens' survival as they try to learn more about the dome and how to get rid of it."

It's unknown as yet, however, whether Under the Dome will be a limited or a continuing series. I'd like to see CBS go limited with it - the premise might be able to sustain itself indefinitely, but the same can't be said about its characters - but no doubt if its first season does decently, Under the Dome will be back for another run in summer 2014 too.

Now that it's actually happening, officially and all, I'm cautiously optimistic about this adaptation. The talent certainly promises a lot. And though I didn't love the book, if the truth be told, as ever with the work of Stephen King, most of its missteps only became evident come the cruddy conclusion... so if Under the Dome goes and goes, that disappointment's a long, long way off, plus the showrunners will have to make such changes to the tale for television that perhaps the end will be better for the stretching of the rest.

It's not likely to be worse, is it?

So, will you all be watching? Or does Under the Dome still have its work cut out convincing you?

Letters to Editors | Killing Fringe

Dear Network Television Executives, 

You guys... you get a bad rap.

From where you're sat, it's all about the business; I get that. You've got to spend money to make money, and if you don't see a return on your investment on the near or far horizon, then better to declare an early loss than go all in, hoping against hope that something will happen to turn the tables. 

And credit where it's due: you execs have actually been pretty decent this year. I'd go so far as to say surprisingly lovely. For instance, I'm not exactly chuffed that you put Stargate: Universe down like the dog it may or may not have began as, but at least you had the decency to offer those of us who'd stuck it out in the hopes that the series would find its feet some closure in what became its last episode... just as you did with Caprica, amongst others I'm forgetting - perhaps for good reason, now that I think of it - in 2010.

Add to that the shows from 2011 that never found an audience at all, yet still you had the good grace to air almost all of them from first to last. I'm thinking of Terriers, Lights Out and The Chicago Code specifically. Tremendous series, to a one, made the more so because they were allowed to actually end; series whose narratives were able to run their course, and though I'm certain their respective show-runners had ideas as to what twists and turns were around the next bend in the great river, I was content to see of them as much as the eye could see.

So I can't find fault with the decision to cull these three. If no-one was watching them - and no-one really was, as I understand it - then I'll say I'm grateful for small favours, on balance, and come to my point. Which is: given this recent trend of doing the Right Thing, can you do a little thing for me, Network Television Executives?

Can you kill Fringe?

I hate to be the one to say it - I've been a Fringe fan since day one, and I'm no less devoted to the show now than I was way back when - but understand that I ask this thing of you for the greater good, not my own personal pleasure. The sad fact of the matter is that Fringe seems to me is in dire need of a well-meaning mercy-killing.

Not today - please, no! - nor even tomorrow... but I beg of you, can we set an endpoint already?

Cast your minds back to the heyday of another of J. J. Abrams' speculative series. Remember how Lost was the talk of the town for a while, and then, all of a sudden - namely during that execrable interlude when The Others captured Jack and Kate - it wasn't? Do you remember when, instead of throwing in the towel, you guys threw Lost a long-sighted lifeline by stepping in to say, essentially, that the show had had its moment, but its moment was over? 

Fringe is a lot like that, except it was never really the talk of the town to begin with. I mean, it did alright. Enough folks tuned in to keep the Fringe Science Division in milk and paperclips in the early days, but even at the height of its popularity, years past now, Fringe wasn't exactly water-cooler television. And if it wasn't then...

Long story short, no-one's holding out any hope for some ratings renaissance. What you execs want from Fringe seems much more reasonable than that, on the face of it. From the horse's mouth (that is to say Fox's entertainment president Kevin Reilly): "I don't expect explosive growth, but if Fringe can do exactly what it did last year, we're going to be very, very happy with it."

Well, it can't. It won't. Already, though it pains me to say it, it hasn't, because the first episode of season four premiered to 3.5 million viewers. Down of course from the relatively incredible 9.28 million viewers who watched the pilot episode, way back when, but also a share significantly reduced from the 4.9 million viewers who tuned into Fringe's first Friday night episode, when it moved to the Slot of Death last year. And bear in mind that premiere numbers are almost always higher than the ratings for subsequent episodes.

These aren't just ominous numbers; Fringe is in real trouble, folks. Real trouble.

So what to do... what to do?

Well, like I said: kill Fringe.

What you did for Lost, when you declared from on high that season six would be its last... if you ask me, that single decision saved a show in real need of saving. By killing it, albeit on a date to be determined several years hence, you gave Lost new life. That's what I want for Fringe.

Not least because - and by now everyone who aims to watch the fourth season of Fringe will have seen the lackluster first episode, and if not, shame on you - this season seems to me analogous to the indulgent digression in season three of Lost which you will recall spelled that series' eventual end. Which is to say... disappointing.

Of course it's early doors yet. But this ploy to open the door to new viewers is never going to work, not at this late stage - let's not kid ourselves - and I am deathly afraid that it will instead shed so many formerly faithful viewers that Fringe's ratings slide will only continue. Continue till you execs do the only thing you can, given your job description: slaughter the show mid-movement.

And that's the last thing I want. Stories without endings are hardly stories at all, if you ask me. In fact the finale of season three seemed to me at least such an ideal endpoint for the series that I wonder now if Fringe's last-minute renewal will prove not the blessing it initially appeared, but a curse, because it will take the show-runners some time, surely, to arrive again at such a satisfying note for the narrative to close out on. And I very much doubt it has that long.

Now I may not love what I've seen of season four of Fringe, but I have faith in Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci to take me somewhere weird and wonderful, as they have each and every year I've watched this tremendous show... easily the jewel in the crown of genre television, excepting perhaps HBO's Game of Thrones.

Yet I am so very afraid that this rollercoaster is going nowhere.

So please, network television executives: agree to see Fringe through to the bitter end. Let everyone know that this will be its last year, or better yet, agree that season five will be the final season of Fringe, as per the original five-year plan. Give the show-runners a destination to head towards, and time enough to get there.

Kill Fringe, then, if you must. As you must. But kill it softly. That's all I ask.

Fingers crossed,
Niall Alexander.

Screen Shot | The Walking Dead Walk Again

I know it's late, and I've still three or four more chapters of Every Dead Thing to read before I let myself sleep, but I could hardly wait to say...

...it's on. :D

Yes sir. While I might have had my reservations about the latter half of the first season of The Walking Dead - yes indeed I did - nevertheless, I'm so very ready for season two.


Season two, which is officially shooting as of this screenshot.

And goodnight.

###

Source: TV Guide

First Impressions | Game of Thrones

Winter... has come.

I'd add to that: and about bloody time, too!


Though the urge has been in overdrive since HBO began promoting the latest addition to their many-studded slate of sophisticated adult dramas, I never did get around to reading any of A Song of Ice and Fire. This despite my quite adoring Fevre Dream and those short stories I cherry-picked from the compendium of all things early George R. R. Martin that is Dreamsongs. This despite my deep-seated fondness for intelligent epic fantasy and all things grim, which I understand now - as I intuited then - the great Game of Thrones indubitably is.


So for me it's been a long road, though not half, nor even a quarter - I'd say somewhere around a sixteenth - as long a road as I'm assured it's been for all those vocal devotees who've hung on every word of every instalment of A Song of Ice and Fire so far. Well, here's hoping this series helps tide those anxious souls over some. For myself, I come to HBO's sumptuous adaptation from a perspective unaffected by any knowledge at all of what's on the horizon, but for the received wisdom that it'll be pretty awesome, probably.


On the strength of this first episode of Game of Thrones alone, then, just this one time, I might be inclined to believe the hype. Tell no-one!

Game of Thrones opens with what appears to be a Wahlberg - though appearances are in this case deceiving - riding through The Wall which divides the South of Westeros from the tortuously frosted North. He and his Night's Watch companions come upon a bleak forest clearing full of dead people, yet the dead seem to have a little life left in 'em still, for they rise up as if they'd never fallen at all and commence beheading the men. The encounter's sole survivor escapes to Winterfell, where he's declaimed as a deserter and a lunatic for his dire rantings about beings thought dead for centures, and decapitated for his trouble.


On the other end of the offending sword, we meet Ned Stark. As Sean Bean. Or perhaps it's the other way around? Let's say that. Certainly, Bean is utterly at home in the role: as the would-be hand man of the King of the Seven Kingdoms he brings grizzled gravitas and a stout-jawed resolve many will remember fondly from The Fellowship of the Ring, while as the powerful patriarch of House Stark he evinces a warmth I hadn't expected - and a coldness, too. His character seems a fascinating one, neatly encapsulated in a couple of this first episode of Game of Thrones' most memorable lines. "The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword," he tells his youngest son after insisting the boy Bran witnesses the aforementioned execution; I would imagine that a fitting mantra for Ned Stark - lifted directly from the novel, perhaps? Later, upon finding a pack of Direwolf cubs huddled around the butchered remains of their mother, he allows to his spread of sons - the bastard Jon Snow and all - the following: "You will train them yourselves, you will feed them yourselves, and if they die, your will bury them yourselves."


Indeed, Westeros feels every bit a world in which the dead - and I would wager there will be many dead when all is said and done - must either resolve to somehow bury their own bodies or be content to decay in the open air. From the chill and forbidding feel of Winterfell alone, where much of this first episode's action occurs, it is too a lavishly realised location: it and its sister continent, Essos across the narrow sea, which with its rugged golden coves and sun-bleached Mediterranean sensibilities appears the polar opposite of Westeros, one bleakly blue-white and the other orange, and earthy. But though in its first 30 seconds alone there is enough stunning fantasy imagery to secure the undying devotion of many a genre fan, Game of Thrones doesn't really seem to be about the sightseeing, for in Essos we're offered an opposing perspective on the struggle for the Iron Throne one imagines will own the day across the narrow sea. Silver-haired siblings Daenerys Targaryen and her banished brother Viserys are all that remains of Westeros' former royal family. Between them they mean to reclaim their rightful place by amassing a vast army, but Essos' forces are a barbarian horde, and the only way into their good graces seems to be by marriage. Thus, Viserys demands Daenerys give herself to Dothraki leader Khal Drogo like a prize pony, and though the prospect does not please her, what other option does she have?

All this and I haven't even mentioned House Lannister - composed of Peter Dinklage as Tyrion, a double-talking dwarf whose "greatest accomplishment" is to be the Queen's brother; the Queen herself, Cersei, to whom Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' Lena Headey brings the same pained nonchalance she seems to visit upon her every role; the King, of course; and Cersei's brother and lover Jaime, a dirty great meanie by all accounts, however little seen in the first episode of Game of Thrones.


All this and all that and there's more, I gather, and much more still to come. Yet Game of Thrones is not, at the outset, nearly so unwieldy as I'd feared. Pulling double duty as showrunners and head writers, David Benioff and Dan Weiss wisely opt to offer a throughline into this desperately complex world via the Night's Watch man, who passes along the narrative torch to Ned Stark when the latter unceremoniously beheads the former. Only when this hour-long first episode veers too far from Winterfell and the trials ahead of House Stark did I find my interest beginning to slip - and even then David and Dan have the decency to keep such seeming digressions as the incestuous manoeuvring of Cersei and Jaime as brief at this point as the source material will allow.


We're being broken in gently, then. Well thank the heavens for that!


Such restraint means we've had time to align our sympathies just so - though I don't doubt they'll change a great deal in the weeks and months to come. Such focus equates to the natural establishment of certain crucial characters and relationships that could easily have overburdened the narrative's developing momentum. The showrunners clearly have a lot of love for George R. R. Martin's series, and I found that their affection shone through, glinting like a knife in the night even during the darkest moments of this terse introduction to Westeros.

Which isn't to say Game of Thrones is in any way without its share of drawbacks. Headey's lazy imitation worries me already, and though Emilia Clarke does a terrific dazed and confused as Daenerys, there seems precious little dimension to her performance. But perhaps it'll come. I hope so, for hers is a character I am fascinated by already - what with the way she wilfully scalds herself in too hot a bath. The only personage who interests me more is Michelle Fairley's Catelyn Stark, who I dearly hope has more to do in future, for she positively smoulders with tempered frustration in some of her scenes with Sean Bean, while near every other cast member is content to either smirk or sneer.


Then there's the score, which seems dreadfully overbearing during certain key scenes - a relentless racket of dramatic drums that quite ruined a few moments for me - though the theme itself is solid, I'll say that. And oh: and I could do without the contrived cliffhangers in future, thank you very much. The first such - Bran's "fall" from the walls of Winterfell - already strikes me as a cheap way to elevate stakes in no need of elevation.


But we're talking small potatoes, because assuredly Game of Thrones does a great deal with what I'm sure is very little in the grand scheme of things. I was won over in moments - not quite despite myself, for I had been looking forward to this series, but there were no guarantees of quality going in, and coming out, I find myself struggling to restrain my excitement for all that's to come. We'll be looking at a fantasy for the ages here if Game of Thrones continues anything approaching as impressive as it's begun.


Truly, Gods be good that it does.

News Flashing | Seeding The Endgame in A Game of Thrones

A week tomorrow and A Game of Thrones will be gracing your screens and mine. I can hardly wait, needless to say. No, I still haven't made a bond of my word and read the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire - though I did finally buy a copy - but I can't imagine that'll last long, once the show's worked its magic on me. I just don't want to spoil it for myself, not now we're so close. Does that make any sense?

Anyway.

In an interview with D. B. Weiss and David Benioff on TV Guide the other day, ostensibly about all this back-and-forth between George R. R. Martin and Damon Lindelof of Lost fame, the executive producers of HBO's near-as-dammit adaptation of A Game of Thrones went to lengths to assure readers they were't planning on "pulling a Lost" come the last episode of the series. That's the last episode of the last season.

And they know this... how?

Why, because they've been in consultation with the man himself: they've read most of A Dance With Dragons and the author has told them, in so many words, how it all ends. And not just A Dance With Dragons, but A Song of Ice and Fire entire.

A neat nugget of news, in the first. Of particular interest because of the following comment, from Benioff:

"Getting to read that is incredible. It's so much fun, but it's also really helpful for us because George had created such an immaculate beautiful world and we want to make sure that if there are going to be major developments in future seasons, we make sure we seed it properly in the first season."

In short, you GRRM devotees might want to keep your eyes peeled, because these folks, they know. And perhaps what scenes above and beyond the events of the books they deem to add in will be in service to certain story threads pivotal to the end of A Song of Ice and Fire.

You lot'll be better set to spot them than I, no doubt. But bear in mind I totally called Fauxlivia's baby. There really might be something to this...

First Impressions | The Borgias

When it came time for me to pick what subjects I wanted to study in my last years at high school, I plumped for Geography over History. History in my experience had amounted to an interminable series of dates and family trees to memorise, and the hell with that, I thought: I'll learn about glaciation. Something good and practical, you know?

I have a great many regrets in life - don't we all? - and that decision, I'll say, is a way from uppermost amongst them. However I have, in the years since, had cause to wish I'd had the opportunity to study both, because I really do adore a good historical drama, whether in one medium or another, and my education, alas, has left me practically clueless as to the veracity of such narratives.

That's the glass half empty perspective. The glass half full point of view is that I can forgive a vast amount of historical inaccuracy, thanks to my ignorance. I simply don't know any better! And that can come in handy.

To wit: all I knew about The Borgias, before the feature-length pilot episode of Showtime's new series of the same name, was that in last year's Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood I, as Ezio Auditore, stabbed one Juan Borgia in the ugly face and dropped another - namely Cesare - off the battlements of a crumbling castle.

I know a little more now, though I've little doubt what The Borgias has taught me about  the infamous Italian family fathered by Pope Alexander VI - played here by Academy Award-winner Jeremy Irons with arched eyebrows and aplomb - is any more accurate a reflection of true events as the Templar conspiracy theory played out in the last Assassin's Creed. The pay cable station which gave us Dexter and The Tudors are in their infinite wisdom positioning The Borgias as Spartacus meets The Sopranos, and in fairness it's easy to see why: going from the first hour and a half, the presumably much-embellished tale of the rise and fall of "the original crime family" seems equal parts guilty pleasure and storytelling masterstroke. Creator, writer and director Neil Jordan - he of The Crying Game, and of late the lovely Ondine - brings to The Borgias an elegance and a clarity very far from the blood and balls of Spartacus, yet you can sense the potential for sleaze and salaciousness in every narrative margin. Be sure, there will be blood - there has already been blood - not to mention sex, secrets, and all the rest of it.

The pilot episode of The Borgias is essentially a showcase of the series' biggest get in terms of talent, the aforementioned Jeremy Irons. It is his journey in microcosm: from corrupt patriarch to Pope and back again, via a beautiful woman - the lovely Lotte Verbeek as Giulia Farnese - who comes to the Vatican to confess her grave sins, and an attempted poisoning, courtesy of Cadfael himself, Derek Jacobi as Orsino Orsini. Irons, for his part, chews the ornate mise en scene of every tableau he's a part of. One can only hope he continues as central a character to The Borgias as he begins, for daddy Borgia's support is rather less convincing thus far: Joanne Whaley as his suffering wife is no Edie Falco, though I suppose there's time for her yet, and David Oakes - last seen as the villain of The Pillars of the Earth - makes immodest every scene he's in. Meanwhile the jury's still out on newcomer Francois Arnaud as Cesare Borgia. There's certainly potential for the French Canadian to grow into this pivotal role; what he makes of it, or indeed doesn't, remains to be seen.

At that, there's a lot about The Borgias it would be fair to apply the same caveat to. It could very well devolve into a romp, or else ascend to the heights of Rome, if not David Chase's modern mafia masterpiece. All one can speak to at this early stage is the promise of this feature-length first episode, and one imagines - with no small amount of trepidation - that showrunner Neil Jordan is likely to be rather less hands-on going forward. Nevertheless, he gets The Borgias off to a sterling start.

Marching Orders | Watch Fringe Tonight or Forever Hold Your Peace

I was halfway through writing a bit about Fringe when the news broke that it'd been renewed.


Here's the bit, as was:


"So I'm just a Scotsman with a thing for speculative fiction. In the grander scheme of things, however handy you guys might find the reviews I write, or any of the rest of it... I don't really matter a whole lot. My little opinion pony isn't going to change the world.

"Certainly American network television execs could give a happy hootenanny what I have to say. I could beg and I could plead, for all the difference it'd make. Perhaps I'd stand a better chance of convincing a few TSS readers to do, in turn, what they can. So.

"To those of you in a position to make even the tiniest bit of difference tonight, which is to say you lucky Americans: please. Watch Fringe tonight. If you're already watching, take +10 internet cred, and so much the better; instead, if you're able, make sure everyone you can shame into an hour of television they might otherwise take or leave is watching Fringe tonight.

"Because after bowing so strongly its first week back from hiatus, demoted though it had been to the Friday night network television death slot, Fringe has been on a downwards spiral since, sliding further and ever further down the ratings rabbit hole. Till last week, when fewer people than have ever watched Fringe before bothered to tune in..."


But just when I thought Fringe was out, or as near as dammit, they pulled it back in!


Good for them. Fox: I salute you.


However, I'm not so sure this is quite what Fringe needs, either. What Fringe needs is a renewal along the lines of that which Lost received when its mid-series ratings struggle threatened to shut the production down. Two seasons of 16 episodes, say. Just so we can be sure we'll hear this tale told right through to the bitter end.


But you know, Fox just bought another year of my favourite currently airing TV show; I should be over the effing moon. I am, a bit. I'd just as soon not feel all this all over again next year... same time, same place. You know?


Still and all. Three cheers! :D

Screen Shot | A Game of Images of Thrones

A quartet of gorgeous new images from A Game of Thrones, HBO's forthcoming adaptation of a certain George R. R. Martin novel - you've never heard of it already, have you? - just went up over at TVGuide.com. You guys and gals should totally look at them. You'll probably know what they're of and everything.

Me? I just think they're purdy.

Here's the two I've saved as fodder for potential desktops - loathe though I'll be to leave behind the exquisite art from The Way of Kings that's been gracing my screen through 2011 so far:

The other pair, you'll find over here, where embiggening opportunities await.

Hell with it. You know what I'm going to do? By gum, I think I'm going to read this book!

Starting just as soon as my coffee's good and brewed...

News Flashing | The Cape, Cowed

Having had so little faith in The Cape as to order only 13 episodes of this year's requisite superhero series, and then postpone the run till mid-season as if to add insult to injury, news has just hit of a final, irrevocable twist of the knife: NBC has reduced their order to a paltry 10 episodes. Presumably roughly as many the showrunners have in the can as is.

The Cape, in short, is doomed.

Long live The Cape!

There can be precious surprise, I suppose, about the dire fortunes of this silly little series. I'd be surprised to see the network even dignify The Cape with an outright cancellation. It hasn't been a ratings smash, nor anything approaching a success with the critics; in fact the only thing The Cape seems to have had going for it is the notion that it's "so bad it's good" - a nonsense made exponentially less meaningful (if it ever had any meaning at all) with every repetition.

What am I getting at, exactly? Well, at the risk of annoying anyone who's ever enjoyed a comic book, I tend to think that statement's a steaming load: The Cape isn't exactly great television, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it's far and away the most faithful superhero comic book show I've ever seen - in tone and spirit and execution. It's silly, frivolous and off-kilter in exactly the same way the vast majority of superhero comic books are silly, frivolous and off-kiler - and for that reason, I've enjoyed it a great deal.

If you're going to say it's "so bad it's good," internet, at least be truthful about what you're trashing: if The Cape is bad, it's bad only in the sense so many of the comic books I presume we all adore are bad. Let's not be dicks about a show which consciously embraces the same gleeful, madcap silliness we all do week in, week out - every Wednesday without complaint.

I for one will be watching The Cape to the bitter end, and I'll make no apologies for my fondness. Will you?

News Flashing | Fringe on the Fringes?

Thank fucking God: the overnights for Fringe are in, and the news isn't the nightmare we've all feared since the networks announced they'd be dumping what must be THE BEST GENRE SHOW ON TELEVISION in the Friday night slot of doom. Returning from Winter break, Fringe scored a glorious 4.9 on the Nielsen scale, which is to say more viewers tuned in, in its hour of need, than watched the mid-season finale in December.

Which is such a startlingly pleasant development I might just have a cup of coffee to celebrate.

Long live the Fringe!

News Flashing | I Am Not Spartacus

Spartacus: Blood and Sand was one of my greatest guilty pleasures last year.


In fact... no. I take that back. It was only a guilty pleasure to begin with: after a couple of hours of daft action and borderline offensive sex, the untold origin story American cable network Starz proffered up during the Summer of 2010 really picked up. By the halfway point, right about the time my interest in most shows tends to sag, I was utterly gripped. And by the end - those of you who saw Blood and Sand will know what I'm talking about - there was simply no going back.


Except back is exactly where they've gone. See here:

"This house offers many pleasures," says Batiatus of the Ludus in which we watched Spartacus become the warrior history recognises him as. "With more yet to be presented," adds Xena of the coming prequel miniseries - equal parts, one presumes, an opportunity to spend a little more time with two of the most memorably treacherous characters television has seen in decades, and a chance to let lead actor Andy Whitfield recover from his treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma.


Sadly, Whitfield's condition hasn't been so easily brushed under the rug, and the rising star has had to give up the role that helped make him. Hollywood waits for no man, not even a leading man, it seems, so in a couple of weeks we'll be hearing all about our new Spartacus - delete as appropriate two of the following: Canadian actor Stephen Amell, British player Aiden Turner and Aussie contender Liam McIntyre. "Hmm" with me.


For the very moment, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena will act as a fine measure as to whether the show-runners of Blood and Sand can capture the impact and the intrigue of that series without him. As to that, the above trailer certainly leaves me hopeful.


Most of you lot will be able to judge for yourself come January 21st, when Gods of the Arena begins airing on Starz in the US. Who knows when (or indeed where) we'll see it here in blasted, behind-the-times Blighty.

I hate you all. :/