Post-Apocalypse TV

[RottingCorpse]

EDIT FROM NACHO 7/2012 -- MERGED THE AMERIKA THREAD WITH THE PA TV THREAD SINCE AMERIKA IS NOW ON YOUTUBE AND LINKED ON THE THIRD PAGE OF THIS THREAD.


Nacho and I got to talking about Sam Neill which led me to Amerika.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092316/

Don't tell Nacho I haven't seen it or else he'll invite me up to get really drunk and watch it.

[nacho]

Nobody's seen it, unless you caught it when it aired.  Like Rock Hudson's fantastic World War III (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084919/), it's never been out on tape or disc.

Both are considered to be the worst of the worst of 80's paranoia TV.  Though I loved World War III -- if only for the shootout at the pipeline where all the American soldiers take cover in the junk pipes and the Soviets machine gun the fuck out of them while they're trapped.

[Reginald McGraw]

Kris Kristofferson at his best!

[nacho]

Okay, fine, another apocalypse thread to go along with the PA movie thread:

http://www.greatsociety.org/forums/index.php/topic,2810.0.html

And the book thread:

http://www.greatsociety.org/forums/index.php/topic,2811.0.html

Within the next six months, we have four big PA TV events... So we'll start off with listing links to their main threads, and then use this thread to talk about past shows or lesser PA shows that aren't worth a thread...

The threads for the Big Four:

V:
http://www.greatsociety.org/forums/index.php/topic,3025.0.html

Apocalypse:  Greedy aliens.

Day One:
http://www.greatsociety.org/forums/index.php/topic,4241.0.html

Apocalypse:  Unknown (plot description sounds like an EMP blast)


Survivors:
http://www.greatsociety.org/forums/index.php/topic,3270.0.html

Apocalypse: Superflu!

Day of the Triffids:
http://www.greatsociety.org/forums/index.php/topic,2953.0.html

Apocalypse:  Comet/alien


Now, let's get all the past shows organized (and I'm not counting the dime-a-dozen disaster shows like Supervolcano and 10.5 and so on).  

Jeremiah.  Two seasons of hopelessly misguided shit with a beautiful backdrop and an intensely huge budget.  Season one concerns the coming together of our heroes, season two pits them against the Big Brother-like "Daniel" from the east.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_%28TV_series%29

Apocalypse: Mystery plague.

Jericho.  One so-so season capped off by the insultingly bad second season.
What could have been a wonderful update of Testament, we got instead a weird ham-fisted agrarian drama with far too many characters and no creativity at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_%28TV_series%29

Apocalypse:  Limited nuclear war

Cleopatra 2525.  The awesome sexploitation apocalypse with more Gina Torres than you can shake a stick at.  Essentially a post-apocalypse update of Jem and the Holograms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra_2525

Apocalypse: Machines.  

The Last Train.  A wonderful six-part one-off from the UK where a bunch of folks are frozen in time and wake up decades later to get eaten by dogs and hunted by Mad Max savages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Train

Apocalypse:  Meteor strike.

PotA: The Series.  Of course.
http://www.greatsociety.org/fpm/content/view/117/2/

Apocalypse:  Total nuclear war.

What am I leaving out?  Skipping the kid stuff -- Ark II.  Also skipping the Logan's Run series and Starlost because, ouch.
 

[nacho]

Oh, Dark Angel.  What was shit.  But it settles the argument that there is no EMP blast apocalypse fiction.

[Nubbins]

What's the ABC one where the whole world blacks out for 10 minutes or something?  I saw a bunch of previews for that and it looked pretty sweet.  I don't know if it qualifies as apocalypse, per-se, but it seems apocalyptic.

[nacho]

Flash Forward.  But, yeah, I'm waiting till I see it before I call it apocalypse.  Looks more like 4400...

[nacho]

Here -- walking the apocalypse line, definitely. 

By the way, reading some about the book, it's LHC paranoia.  The "flashfoward" experiment was an accident related to the LHC turning on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashforward_%28novel%29

Watch out, Wikipedia tells the whole plot.  But, after reading it, I wanted to buy the novel...so maybe that's okay.

A mysterious global event causes everyone to simultaneously experience, for two minutes and seventeen seconds, his or her life six months in the future. When it is over, many are dead in accidents involving vehicles, aircraft, and any other device needing human control. Everyone who survived is left wondering if what they saw will actually happen.

A Los Angeles FBI agent named Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) tries to figure out what exactly happened and why it happened. Along with his team, he creates a database of people's flash forwards from around the world called the Mosaic Collective (for which a website
 
has been launched). Apart from the various catastrophic visions, people also see themselves relapsing into various former vices, such as Benford seeing himself drinking again, and his wife Olivia has a vision of herself with another man

[nacho]

Unless it really gets feet and is worth creating a thread (which will surprise me), we'll use this one for Flash Forward.

[nacho]

Episode one of Flash Forward has "leaked."  Downloading now!

[Cassander]

if this were real life, Joseph Fiennes would flash-forward to the sight of him sitting on a chaise lounge in London, unemployed again and brooding.

[nacho]

Finally getting around to Flashfoward because stupid Cassander has made me spend the entire day thinking about how to reform my life into something awesome and...the file is fucked up.  So don't download "flashforward.s01e01.webrip.preair.avi".  Hopefully I can get the corrected version tonight because I need me some poccy-clypse!

[nacho]

So RC...I think you're on to something with the whole thing about the current atmosphere being bad for PA stories.  This recent V news -- getting the Firefly treatment two months before it even airs -- is the icing on the cake. 

So V is cut down to just a few episodes, with the remainder "airing at a later date."  Day One has been pushed back to 2010.  Survivors season two has simply vanished. Day of the Triffids has been erased from the history books... On the big screen, we have the strange saga of The Road.

All these things have something in common, too -- they're complete.  They've been filmed and then put on hold to the tune of months and even years.

Does that often happen in the industry?  Isn't that a huge loss to shelve something for a year or more?

And why is the atmosphere anti-PA?  We're surrounded by doom and gloom.  Happy days are not here again... Foreclosures, recession, war, the Fall of Obama... What's changed?

[nacho]

Oh-ho! They're remaking The Martian Chronicles!

I mean...Oh-ho!  New PA TV!

The BBC are making a new series Outcasts, which sounds like it should be a show on BBC3 for teenagers but is in fact Science Fiction! Here's the blurb...

    Following on from the innovative and era-defining hits Spooks, Hustle and Life On Mars, Kudos Film & TV is moving into another new world.BBC One has commissioned a new eight-part drama series, Outcasts.

    Created by Ben Richards (Spooks, The Fixer, Party Animals), Outcasts is set on a recently-discovered planet and tells of the dilemmas, loves and lives of a group of people setting up a new world.

    This life-sustaining planet is now home to the surviving population from Earth. Here there is a chance to start again, to bring the lessons learnt from Earth and to put them into action on a new planet.

    Set in 2040, Outcasts begins on the day the last known transporter from Earth arrives, prompting great excitement on the new planet: Who is on board? Friends and loved ones? Important supplies and news from Earth? But also many questions: Will the new people bring the problems of Earth with them? Will the mistakes that destroyed Earth be repeated? Will the arrival of a new, would-be leader, rock the fragile and precarious equilibrium of our fresh, unified and courageous new world?

    And, most importantly of all, how do you create a new and a better world?

How do you create a new and a better world! Hurrah.

It starts filming in April 2010 (in South Africa) and will be eight, sixty minute episodes.

[nacho]

AMC to do Walking Dead:

It's on, IT'S ON!!! One of my new favorite television dramas is AMC's "Mad Men", which features compelling character pieces on ad men (and the women around them) in the 1960's. This show has given me such high hopes for what can be done with the live-action adaptation of Image Comic's epic ongoing post-apocalyptic zombie series "The Walking Dead", which is to be directed by Frank Darabont (The Mist). AMC has officially given the green light to shoot the pilot episode, meaning it's one step closer to reality! Check out the story below.

I gave up on the comic after 20 issues because it was a boring, confused mess.  At the start, it was great.  We follow a cop as he gathers family and friends and sets out in search of shelter.  Lots of sitting around campfires, melodrama, and getting picked off one by one in generally stupid ways before they spent a long arc camped out in a prison, where I gave up on the series.