New Years TV.
In all honesty I haven't watched a whole lot of films in the past couple of weeks (apart from my second viewing of Cats) so today I'm just going to blog about something I feel like I've seen a lot of. TV. Specifically New Years Day TV.
At 6.55pm Doctor Who returned to our screens after a year long hiatus, with 'Spyfall Part One', written by series showrunner Chris Chibnall. I've been a big fan of the show since I was young and it will always feel very special to me. I don't think I could ever hate the show. I loved Whittaker's first series but in all honesty this return did very little for me and I don't feel like I have much to talk about here. It plays out as an old spy B movie with an extra-terrestrial twist but I just really didn't care. A large amount of the praise comes from the twist ending and Master reveal but all I can saw is: Why? One of my favourite things about Series 11 was it's originality, and how it acted as a fresh start for new fans of the show. I know a lot of criticism for the series stemmed from people who wanted to see returning classic series characters and I just hope that Chibnall isn't giving into this. I know we've only seen part one of this story, so I hope the next one justifies the Masters return a bit.
In the later slot at 9pm the first episode of Dracula aired, a brand new episodic adaptation of the classic Stoker story. I loved it. This time Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffatt are at the helm and they did such a great job bringing the story back for a modern audience. There's enough in here to keeps fans of the old films happy, with countless references to the Lee/Cushing era and an especially great reveal of a classic character, but also would act as a perfect introduction to the story for new fans. Claes Bang's interpretatiation of the prince of darkness is one of the best we've seen, you can tell the men who wrote Moriarty wrote him. It's just a delight to see his back and forths with John Heffernan's Jonathan Harker, they played the first part of the novel out perfectly. The effects are also phenomenal for a BBC show. The episodes climax features an army of stake-wielding nuns exploiting a forgotten Vampire weakness to defend themselves from Dracula, one sequence shows the count's transformation from wolf to man (vampire?) and it's unlike any Dracula transformation we've seen before, with practical effects reminiscent of John Carpenter's The Thing we see him grow from the wolves open stomach in a bloody scene echoing some messed up kind of childbirth. Dolly Wells leads this army as the witty and cool Agatha Van Helsing, another masterful performance to counter the series villain. It's terrifying, hilarious, and pretty damn emotional and I can't wait to see where the next two episodes take us, one of the best things I've seen on TV in a long time.
Spyfall Part Two airs this Sunday at 7pm and Dracula: Part Two, Blood Vessel starts at 9pm tonight.
At 6.55pm Doctor Who returned to our screens after a year long hiatus, with 'Spyfall Part One', written by series showrunner Chris Chibnall. I've been a big fan of the show since I was young and it will always feel very special to me. I don't think I could ever hate the show. I loved Whittaker's first series but in all honesty this return did very little for me and I don't feel like I have much to talk about here. It plays out as an old spy B movie with an extra-terrestrial twist but I just really didn't care. A large amount of the praise comes from the twist ending and Master reveal but all I can saw is: Why? One of my favourite things about Series 11 was it's originality, and how it acted as a fresh start for new fans of the show. I know a lot of criticism for the series stemmed from people who wanted to see returning classic series characters and I just hope that Chibnall isn't giving into this. I know we've only seen part one of this story, so I hope the next one justifies the Masters return a bit.
In the later slot at 9pm the first episode of Dracula aired, a brand new episodic adaptation of the classic Stoker story. I loved it. This time Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffatt are at the helm and they did such a great job bringing the story back for a modern audience. There's enough in here to keeps fans of the old films happy, with countless references to the Lee/Cushing era and an especially great reveal of a classic character, but also would act as a perfect introduction to the story for new fans. Claes Bang's interpretatiation of the prince of darkness is one of the best we've seen, you can tell the men who wrote Moriarty wrote him. It's just a delight to see his back and forths with John Heffernan's Jonathan Harker, they played the first part of the novel out perfectly. The effects are also phenomenal for a BBC show. The episodes climax features an army of stake-wielding nuns exploiting a forgotten Vampire weakness to defend themselves from Dracula, one sequence shows the count's transformation from wolf to man (vampire?) and it's unlike any Dracula transformation we've seen before, with practical effects reminiscent of John Carpenter's The Thing we see him grow from the wolves open stomach in a bloody scene echoing some messed up kind of childbirth. Dolly Wells leads this army as the witty and cool Agatha Van Helsing, another masterful performance to counter the series villain. It's terrifying, hilarious, and pretty damn emotional and I can't wait to see where the next two episodes take us, one of the best things I've seen on TV in a long time.
Spyfall Part Two airs this Sunday at 7pm and Dracula: Part Two, Blood Vessel starts at 9pm tonight.
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