Post-Apocalypse TV

[RottingCorpse]

I'm still zombied out, man.

[Matt]

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.

The series really start sucking when Kirkman set it up for potential threesomes and then featured a zombie death arena and it felt like I was sitting there watching a teenager's fantasy of the zombiepocalypse not a story.

[nacho]

This is awesome...

From Quiet Earth:

I don't know how we missed this one, but thanks to victoriandeathray for the heads up. Coming soon (I can't find an ETA) is a new 6 part mini-series that's an adaptation of the Dark Horse Comic's 'Apocalypse Nerd' by Peter Bagge, produced exclusively for British TV.

FALLOUT is the story of Douglas and Gordon, two friends battling their quarter-life crisis, who come home from a weekend in the woods to find the world has come to an end.

Sadly, not able to see the trailer at work:

http://www.quietearth.us/articles/2010/03/11/Coming-to-the-BBC-a-new-6-part-post-apocalyptic-comic-adaptation-FALLOUT

[nacho]

Sky's "top 6" PA series.

http://tv.sky.com/6-of-the-best-post-apocalyptic-tv-shows

A little self-serving, as they're bankrolling Walking Dead.  But, besides that, I like their loyalism to the original shows -- the original Survivors, Triffids, and BG are all in there. Red Dwarf and Firefly are a real stretch, though. While technically, yes, both shows are set after the apocalypse, the apocalypses in question are in the distant past. 

[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.

Outcasts has been (mysteriously) delayed.  We were supposed to get episode one last month. Currently, the premiere is either August or to be announced, depending on who you listen to. It's been assumed that it's another Day One -- canned and thrown out.

But... The BBC 2011 trailer mentions it (and features some scenes). Also amusing that about 60% of that preview is Doctor Who/Sherlock dominated.

[nacho]

Ugh... I see why they've been playing this so close to the vest... And why it's been delayed for two years.  They should have stuck with the trailer in the post above where nonsensical spaceships are squeezed between Doctor Who clips.

[nacho]

Outcasts premiered tonight. Downloading now!

[nacho]

Outcasts live blog!

We open up with a pretty ship radioing "Are there any human beings out there?" which seems like a weird thing to say. Okay, yeah, we're in space... But I would still say "anyone" instead of "any human beings."

Just as you're thinking about that, we cut to -- Child Actor!  I had been drinking water all night, but it was bad enough to make me pause and go make a Lynchburg Lemonade.

Okay...back to it!

[nacho]

So we have no idea what's going on. Nothing makes sense.  Jamie Bamber's a rugged explorer and everybody's cunty towards him. There's the "Calling all humans!" ship that finally makes contact with Bamber's people after five years and they immediately get into a mundane, polite conversation about how the ship needs servicing and nobody seems truly pissed that they've apparently been stranded for five years, and that something terrible has happened somewhere...either to Earth or some fleet that they casually mention or something.

Talk about a show that needs an opening scroll!

[nacho]

Still don't know what's going on. Something's happened to Earth, something's happened to the colonists, Bamber is either planning a revolution or the construction of a summer home, there's a bacon black market and plenty of joking amidst the potential death of everyone on the arriving transport.

What I don't get is why the transport couldn't talk to anyone on the planet till they were in orbit. The leader of Bamber's people talks about having been able to communicate with Earth up till five years ago. So you're capable of communicating with a distant planet but not an approaching spaceship between you and that planet? Because it's all a big surprise. Oh! You're in trouble? Well, tally-ho and all that. Stiff upper lip and raise those thermal shields old bean!

How about some warning? Hi, we're a year out and we've lost contact with Earth and sustained some damage. How about we get all our people together and talk about possible solutions because nobody wants all of the colonists and supplies on board to burn up on re-entry, right? Any thoughts my fellow human beings? Since you're the advance colonial expedition with a zillion great minds twiddling their thumbs.

[nacho]

Oh my god! 

"What if Mitchell found out?"

"He didn't."

*change subject*

FIND OUT WHAT?

"We're almost ready."

"But....what?"

"We're, almost, ready!"

*change subject*

What?  Ready for what?

"Who was it?"

"Some SP deadbeat."

"Oh."

Wait... A what? 

"We lost the signal from Earth five years ago."

"Yes... Let's just say they're not having a good time of it."

Huh? Wait! So you know what's happening? What do you mean?

"What about the other ships?"

"We lost touch with the fleet."

"Oh."

Wait...what fleet?

There's the first 20 minutes.

[nacho]

Outcasts! The new series with Jamie Bamber! Who dies 45 minutes in and is no longer in the show! Tune in!

What a fucking mess. And, yet, it's basically Earth 2. They could have kept it simple and done a better version of that show. Which, you know, wouldn't be hard. Instead we get some disorganized mess of a script that feels more like it's the first episode of a second season wrapping up a cliffhanger and not a pilot. Or maybe like there's 50 years worth of a comic book behind it and we're all expected to know everything going on.

[nacho]

LOL.

The BBC has confirmed that the post-apocalyptic off-world science-fiction drama Outcasts has been cancelled after one series.

Outcasts‘ opening episode attracted 4.45m viewers (a 17.9% audience share), but by episode three viewing figures had slipped to 2.95m, and to 2.6m for episode four, amidst a largely hostile critical reception.

In response to the weak viewing figures, the BBC moved the drama from its 9pm Monday night slot to 10.25pm on Sunday – an indication that it had effectively abandoned its support for the show. The BBC explained:

“BBC One commissions a large number of new drama series each year and inevitably there will be some that do not engage as wide an audience as we would like them to [...] We are proud to have brought this original and high quality drama to the audience but unfortunately it did not engage enough of them to justify playing the full series out in a 9pm slot.”

On 13 March 2011, the final episode of the eight-part series drew 1.56m viewers (11.6%). The following day the BBC confirmed that Outcasts would not be returning.

[nacho]

It would probably be wise to not proudly declare affiliation with SGU:

Have you been in serious Stargate: Universe withdrawal ever since the series was canceled? Well, a whole lot of SGU alumni are working to make you feel better.

No, it's not a revival of the show, but Red Eye Chicago reports that SGU visual FX supervisor Mark Savela and production assistant Ken Kabatoff have teamed up to write a pilot for a new series called Echoes. And they say that they've rallied "about 80 percent" of the SGU production crew to create a presentation piece with which they hope to sell the show.

The team, which includes SGU veterans like actors Jen Spence and Mike Dopud, director Will Waring, director of photography Michael Blundell, production designer James Robbins and composer Joel Goldsmith, is assembling in Vancouver this weekend to shoot the piece, which will showcase about 15 pages of the script.

The proposed series follows the struggles of humans trying to survive an alien apocalypse in the near future. The twist on this well-worn premise is that the aliens did not intentionally set out to destroy us; Earth got caught in the crossfire between two extraterrestrial races.

Kabakoff said, "Having aliens against another alien race basically leaves the humans as collateral on their own planet. Many of the Earth's citizens have been wiped out already. It's not us against them, it's them against each other, and we're just trying to stay alive."

Spence, SGU's Dr. Lisa Park, will play a woman leading a band of humans across what's left of the United States two years after the alien war crashed into Earth. Savela said, "It's basically her journey from a shy, unassuming kind of wallflower into a kind of Sarah Connor-type character."

Once the presentation piece is completed, Savela and Kabatoff will shop it around to the networks, where hopefully the "dark, gritty and action-packed" series they have planned will get picked up.

If it does, it seems likely that the pair could bring back many of the SGU team members who helped get Echoes started. Savela said, "When we came up with this project, people said, 'Oh, we all get to work together again? That's really cool.' Everybody jumped on board."

[nacho]

Um...

Showtime, the network behind Weeds and the now defunct PA series Jeremiah, is determined to bring the genre back to the TV. Yay. The network recently bought a series pitch called Last H.O.P.E which is said to be a post-apocalyptic story that is a cross between M.A.S.H. and Mad Max. So, what doLes "H.O.P.E" stand for exactly? It stands for Last "Hospital on Planet Earth," so I'm actually wondering if it'll be more like E.R. meets Jericho.

The pitch comes from writer David DiGilio who recently Disney hired to write Tron 3.