Posts by Gino Sassani

"All I know for certain is if the four Mickaelsons come together, it will signal darkness like we've never known. So many possible tipping points, but without the benefit of hindsight, how can we know if we're at the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?"

We do have hindsight as Warner Brothers releases the final season of The Originals on DVD. This is the beginning of the end. It's a bit of a shame. This show always had better stories and a more compelling cast than The Vampire Diaries had on their best season. With the very notable exception of Ian Somerhalder, who is phenomenal, the rest of that casts pales like a vampire in a crypt to the outstanding cast found on The Originals. Unfortunately, Warner Brothers stopped caring so much for the spin-off once the original show exited stage left. The home releases went from Blu-ray to DVD only and the marketing all but dried up. The result of this negligence is a series dying before its time. But you can at least check out the final unlucky 13 episodes crammed on just three discs with the release of The Originals: The Final Season.

"911. What is your emergency?"

In the 1970's my family watched a lot of television together. One of the shows that we rarely missed was Emergency starring Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe, a Jack Webb show that lived in his Dragnet world. The series followed the adventures of fire station 51 and would bring us an hour of fighting fires and daring rescues. The show ran for seven seasons from 1972-1979 and was followed by a few television movies in the 1980's. While there have been many shows in that mold, there really hasn't been anything that came close to that series. Now Fox brings us 9-1-1, and it's about as close to that old favorite as I've seen to date. Emergency is quite dated when you watch it today. With modern filmmaking techniques and production values, the rescues can be so much bigger now. Emergency also brought us a good cast of characters and never lost focus on those relationships and lives. That might be just the thing that makes 9-1-1 a worthy companion. The rescues might be bigger and flashier, but we still get compelling characters who we enjoy spending time with each week. That's what just might give this series some lasting power. Now Fox has released the first season, and you can check it out, if you haven't already. And if you're old enough to remember that 1970's show, this just might be your new Emergency.

There's a lot going on with Fox's X-Men property these days. Legion became the first live-action television series based on that universe. It's an odd show that takes the franchise in more of a mental direction. There is a new film that features the First Class cast that deals with Jean Grey and her Dark Phoenix nature. While that film is being delayed...again, you can get your mutant fix with the release of the first season of The Gifted on DVD as well as the upcoming second season soon to air. This show is more in line with the kind of action and mutant powers display that fans of the franchise are likely looking for. It appears to exist in the X-Men universe created by Fox, as there are multiple mentions of the X-Men in the show. The first three films are now out in 4K, and there's a lot of X-Men stuff coming to your home theatre. Add to that list The Gifted: Season 1 on DVD.

Stephen Moyer plays Reed Strucker. He has been a prosecutor who has been working with the Mutant Task Force to help convict dangerous mutants. He saw his job as pretty much cut and dried until his own son and daughter exhibit mutant abilities. Son Andy (White) has been bullied at school and finally lashes out with an unexpected power to cause destructive vibrations that literally bring the school down. Daughter Lauren (Lind) has known for some time that she has the power to send a barrier kind of force much like Sue Richards in The Fantastic Four but without the invisibility. When the Task Force comes for the children, Reed and his wife Kate (Acker) make a run for it. They are assisted by a group of mutants who have established an underground to help shelter mutants and offer resistance to anti-mutant actions.

Mention the name J.K. Rowling, and the first thing that pops into your head is Harry Potter. She was a struggling writer just getting out of a bad marriage when her first Potter book took the world by storm. Now she's the wealthiest woman on the planet. The problem has been her life has since been Harry Potter all the time. I can well understand why she might want to find a way to distance future novels from all of that hype and expectation. So she invented Robert Galbraith and wrote a series of detective novels based on a character named C. B. Strike. The novels didn't come close to the sales of a Potter novel, but they did fairly well, particularly in England. So BBC One and HBO got together for a joint production of the show for both England and the United States. The result is a kind of mini-series that tackles three of the novels in seven hour-long episodes starring Tom Burke as the title character.

The first of the three stories is called The Cuckoo's Calling and is separated into three hour-long segments. It serves as an introduction to the character. Strike is an ex-military police officer who lost his leg in action. His father was once a huge rock star, but they are estranged. His office/apartment is a small place over a guitar shop where he works alone amid a huge trash heap that looks more appropriate for Hoarders than a detective story. Enter Holliday Grainger as Robin Ellacott. She arrives as a temp that he really can't afford, but she's persistent enough to remain and organize his office. He's not very thrilled to have her, but when a complicated case falls in his lap, he finds her to be indispensible.