The first of the new shows I've watched for 2023 is The Way Home, a title which says little about what is happening in the series. It is a fantasy time-travel series airing on the Hallmark Channel.
Like other Hallmark series, there are many characters and many of them look alike, so that you are not always sure who is who. In addition, in this series, the scenes switch back and forth between the 2020s and the 1990s very quickly, and you are not always sure what decade you are in.
The only cast member in the series I recognize is Andie McDowell, who plays the grandmother. I suspect she is also the person who jumped in the lake at the beginning of the pilot episode, which started in the 1600s with a witch hunt.
I wonder what Glen Larson would think of The Ark on SyFy. It's the series he originally envisioned in the early 1970s, about a group of people leaving Earth. That concept later evolved into Battlestar Galactica in 1978, about a group of people whose own planets were destroyed and were looking for Earth.
I loved the first episode. It had a 1960s/1970s feel, with people trying to be positive under extreme circumstances; likeable, attractive characters; a villain who is more pathetic than scary; a long-range story arc (pun intended). All of the cast members are new to me; I've never seen any of them before.
I've given up on the new Night Court. It just isn't all that funny. I love John Larroquette but the other cast members are annoying, especially the three women. I like the clerk but he's the only other one besides Dan who I can tolerate.
I've given up on the new Night Court. It just isn't all that funny. I love John Larroquette but the other cast members are annoying, especially the three women. I like the clerk but he's the only other one besides Dan who I can tolerate.
Tried to watch, could not make it all the way through Night Court. The worst show I have seen is "Alert". It is a confusing cobbled up mess.
Lucky Hank is another one of those short-seasoned cable-made series with unlikeable characters. It started last week on AMC, and is about a college professor in a small town. I watched about 10 minutes of the first episode and gave up.
It's kind of a cross between Community and Richard Dreyfuss' The Education of Max Bickford and Mr. Holland's Opus.
Barons, an Australian miniseries now airing on the CW in the United States, is awful. The show is about male Aussie and American surfers and their girlfriends in 1973.
I hate it because it shows all the worst stereotypes of surfers: The drug runners and addicts, the selfish sociopaths who use others, the arrogant ones, the wives and girlfriends who are completely neglected, and, of course, the airheads. I watched a whole episode last week and half of one last night, and that was enough.
The Swarm on the CW has nothing to do with the movie about bees.
One thing I like about the CW is that it has been showing many dramas in the past few years from other countries. Some of these are mini-series. The Swarm is an eight-week show from Germany.
I haven't yet figured out the title. This is a science fiction show that started out with whales going after humans. A huge whale leaped up and landed on a whale-watching ship, breaking the boat in two and sending the passengers into the ocean.
Of course it sounds stupid but I enjoyed the first episode last week. It airs on Tuesdays at 9 p.m.
The CW is the network I've watched the most in the past few months. It finally stopped airing all those DC comic book shows and have replaced them with some Canadian dramas.
The first is Sullivan's Crossing, a family soap opera. I had a hard time following the first episode and missed the second one. The third episode was much better, and it had a cliffhanger ending with a teen girl being kidnapped and an older man shot and left for dead. Prior to that, I had thought the series was going to be a mild family drama.
The second is The Spencer Sisters, who aren't sisters but are mother and daughter detectives. This is a lighter mystery, along the lines of Murder, She Wrote and So Help me Todd. The women are never in any real danger.
I would recommend both of these.