Tag: TV

I should be a fan of the Syfy series “Resident Alien”.  It’s a comedy-drama-mystery-scifi show, which checks off most the boxes on genres I enjoy. I like Alan Tudyk in everything he does. The show is based on a comic book and I like most of those. I watched the pilot episode then had zero desire to watch any more.  The promos I see for the 2nd season look nice, but stir nothing in me. 

I should be watching this show, but I just can’t enjoy this show.

The Resident Alien comic book is about an alien biologist who crash lands on Earth, then poses as a doctor while he awaits a rescue. He is pursued by a government agency and passes his time solving murders and other mysteries.

The TV show premise is that after crash-landing on Earth, an alien sent to wipe out humanity kills and takes on the identity of a vacationing pathology physician. He is asked to do an autopsy on the town’s doctor, who has died in unknown circumstances. He wrestles with the moral dilemma of his secret mission, while also dealing with a nine-year-old boy who can see his true appearance.

The issue I have is that the alien just murders someone and takes his identity.  I just can’t get behind an amoral protagonist who randomly murders a guy.  The Executive Producer, Chris Sheridan, wrote the pilot episode as well as the season 1 finale, where it is revealed that the Doctor the alien killed was corrupt and an assassin involved with a crime syndicate who was the murderer of the town’s doctor in the pilot.

This kind of information presented before the doctor’s murder would have made the series palatable. Instead, it was too little, too late. It was also a weak, manufactured reveal for the season finale. There were 8 episodes between the pilot and season finale. Poor writing, IMO, since I could not get past the distaste of the pilot show and never watched another episode. Maybe I’m the only person in the US who has this problem with the show. I think changing the premise from the original comic premise was a dumb idea that makes the show weaker than it could be. But I don’t care anyway, I don;t watch it.

The new Discovery Communications empty suits running the recently-merged Warner Bros. Discovery have been taking a cost-cutting hatchet to a ton of things lately.  The stunning shelving of the Batgirl HBO Max film, nearly-completed at a cost of $90 million+ will be hard to top, but there is time.  At Thursday’s 2Q earnings call, it was announced that next summer, HBO Max and Discovery+ would be combined into one streaming service. Of course, a new brand name for the service or pricing were not announced. 

Interestingly, there was THIS ham-fisted infographic showing some kind of justification for the combo service that was allegedly-based in some kind of research:

I find this equally hilarious and insulting, and based on my 30 years in TV & Media research, I know that’s not any kind of actual research.  It’s complete bullshit.  It’s an opinion, and not a very cogent one at that. The obvious:

• HBO Max (and HBO) does not skew male
• HBO has more scripted and Discovery+ has more unscripted. That’s true.
• Lean in / Lean back? WTF
• Please explain to me how Shark Week is not appointment viewing, but Comforting
• Enjoying DC content = Fandom / Enjoying Food Network content = Genredom? GTFO

It’s absolutely ridiculous. So I added some true points they forgot:

Anyway, I’m sure the services are not being merged into one platform because HBO Max (48.6 million subs) is excellent and Discovery+ (24 million subs) is terrible. 

I’m also sure that since both services are complimentary, and thus combining the two would not generate any kind of added value to existing viewers, the subscription cost for HBO Max will not rise.

I’m sure.

Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, I watched a lot of TV.  I especially liked 70’s Cop and Detective Shows – Hawaii Five-O is still my favorite TV show of all time with Cannon in the top 10 as well was a relatively obscure show called Banacek.

Banacek (pron: BAN-a-chek) starred George Peppard and aired from 1972 to 1974 on NBC as part of the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie wheel, which means it was a 90-minute show. The pilot movie was 2-hours and it is said that Peppard signed on for a weekly 1-hour show but NBC decided to run it every 3-4 weeks with a 90 minute runtime instead. Only 17 episodes were made (pilot + 16) and all but the pilot movie can be seen on COZI TV Saturdays at 12:30pm CT or streaming on FreeVee.

An American detective TV series about Thomas Banacek (George Peppard), a suave, Polish-American freelance insurance investigator. He uses his unique set of skills as a solver of cases involving theft. Banacek collects a portion of the insured value of the property he recovers, allowing him to maintain a rather lavish lifestyle in Boston.

COZI TV

Cop and detective shows largely replaced the westerns of the 60’s, and each show had some kind of character hook to them: Think about Colombo, Cannon, Kojak, McMillan and Wife, Charlies Angels, Rockford Files and Starsky and Hutch just to name a few, and each had a “hook” that made them unique.  Banacek’s hook was his lavish lifestyle, proud polish heritage (complete with terrible Polish proverbs), and a fee of 10% of whatever he recovered for the insurance company.

I love smart investigative shows, and Banacek was one.  Banacek only took on cases that interested him and that seemed unsolvable. The cases solved were all very interesting in their own way – from a football player that disappears after being tackled to a room-sized main-frame computer that vanishes to a 3-ton statue that disappears at its unveiling.  Banacek is definitely the smartest man in the room, but will grin and admit it only when necessary. 

Thomas Banacek is also proudly Polish, which in 1972 may have been groundbreaking considering the prevalence of hurtful “Polish jokes”.  He frequently spouts “Polish Proverbs” such as “No matter how warm the smile on the face of the Sun, the cat still has her kittens under the porch.” and “A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.”  All indications are that the “proverbs’ were all made up.

The show was renewed for a third season, but Peppard quit the show to prevent his ex-wife Elizabeth Ashley from receiving a larger percentage of his earnings as part of their divorce settlement (!)

I think Banacek would be a very cool show to reboot.

When I watch this show, it takes me back to growing up in the late 70’s since so many other shows had a similar style.  Universal produced this show and shot it mostly on their back lot, so it has the look and feel of a lot of 70’s dramas that aired on NBC.  I DVR the show on Cozi every week and just love watching and transporting back to back then. Check it out, you might like it