A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for a show to watch during lunchtime at work and came across The White Rabbit Project. It has the familiar support team from Mythbusters so I was intrigued. I read a little about it first and all the reviews seem to be complaining that it’s not as good as Mythbusters.

I decided to give it a go because the premise isn’t the same as Mythbusters so I don’t actually need to compare it to that show.

The premise of the show is like this. They pick a topic and then they select 6 examples of said topic and rank them. Some examples are simply talked about with some actors doing a little sketch and others they try real world examples themselves, sometimes even doing a build or two in the workshop.

It started off with an episode about Super Power Tech, essentially they wanted to find out what technology from the comic book world could be reality. Freeze guns, Mind control, lightning, flight and so on. It was fun and interesting, especially the mind control which is more like muscle control via the mind. The show was off to an interesting start.

The second episode is Jailbreak, apparently this one was the pilot episode. I loved this one because there were some fascinating jailbreak stories, the best of which was the story of Günter Wetzel and Peter Strelzyk along with their families who escaped Soviet controlled East Germany in 1979 via a hot air balloon they made themselves. The story was made into a movie in 1982 called Night Crossing. The hot air balloon rig was re-created by Grant and tested.

I won’t recount the rest of the episodes, I have watched the first 6 out of 10 myself but they vary from really interesting to sometimes stupid.

I’m not going to compare this to Mythbusters because it’s not meant to. No, it’s not as cool as Mythbusters but as a show to just entertain you for 40ish minutes and learn a few interesting things along the way, it’s great.

If you want a really interesting and engaging TV show, you will want to look out for Billions.

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Towards the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017, I have been watching a few shows on Netflix. I love the Netflix original shows that pop up from time to time. Some are crap but often they are brilliant shows produced either exclusively for Netflix or else in conjunction with a traditional TV channel such is Orphan Black with Space or Frequency with The CW. Often, it will only be a Netflix Original in certain regions but we are only concerned with Ireland for the sake of this article.

I’m going to start giving things a personal rating out of 10 on these Netflix articles. Just my personal opinion. If it’s 5 or more, it’s worth watching if bored. 8 is highly recommended and 9 or 10 is just a can’t miss.

Shooter is based on the 2007 Mark Wahlberg movie of the same name. A sniper has been framed for attempting to kill the president so he sets out to prove his innocence. It’s pretty gripping and binge free as new episodes are released weekly. 8/10

Frequency is loosely based on the 2000 Dennis Quaid movie. In this case, Frank Sullivan is a cop and is able to speak to his daughter in the future who is also a cop. The main premise in season one is catching a serial killer who kills his wife/her mother. There’s a vague attempt at using a HAM radio correctly in the first episode like pressing the button, saying your piece and then waiting for a response. This gets forgotten about and the radio then functions in real time with no annoying button presses or pauses between response. It makes the conversations flow more smoothly if a little less realistic. Who cares? We are talking about time travelling radio waves here. 7/10

Medici: Masters of Florence is an interesting one. Its beautifully shot with an all star cast. In fact, I’m in love with the opening sequence which features a hauntingly beautiful song called Renaissance composed by Paolo Buonvino and performed by Skin. The show follows Cosimo de’ Medici played by Richard Madden (Robb Stark from Game of Thrones). There’s a scene which I can only assume was contrived through some sort of black humour because Cosimo marries Contessina de’ Bardi, an arranged marriage between fathers. Her father is played by none other than David Bradley who played Walder Frey in Game of Thrones. One of the most memorable scenes not only in that show but any show is The Red Wedding. In it, Walder Frey had arranged to marry Robb Stark to one of his daughters. Robb ended up falling in love with someone else and getting married so to appease Walder, Robb arranged Edmure Tully to marry one of the daughters instead. Needless to say, it doesn’t end well. In this case, it was like Walder Frey finally married one of his daughters to Robb Stark. 8/10

Glitch is an odd one that I’m working through at the moment. It’s a light hearted Australian show about a bunch of people coming back to life in some backwater Aussie town. One of the deceased is the Sherriff’s wife who died 2 years ago. Another is an Irish guy who apparently founded the town about 200 years ago and was considered mayor. He even has his own statue. A lot of this seems to be news to him because he’s more of a Ned Kelly sort. The only thing we know so far is that the formerly deceased can’t travel more than a few km from the town or else their eyes start bleeding and they go poof and turn into a pile of ash. Let’s see where this is going. 5/10

The Expanse is pretty epic. I watched it via an alternative method before it appeared in Netflix. The premise is that 200 years in the future, we have colonised the solar system. There are no warp drives or anything, the technology is quite feasible compared to what we have today. Earth and Mars are practically at war and the main plot of the show revolves around a mining colony on the dwarf planet, Ceres. They even manage to get artificial gravity right. It’s not perfect and is based on motion. You can’t pour a drink straight like you can on earth, it has to be poured at an angle. Well worth a watch, one of the best proper Sci-Fi space shows in a long time. 9/10

Ascension is an odd one. It’s a single season mini-series that I suspect wanted a second season. The premise is that in the 1960s, a massive ship was launched with 600 people on board for a 100 year mission to colonise Proxima Centauri, a planet that was only discovered recently. The crew are 50 years in to their mission at the moment. I don’t think I’m giving too much away here but it quickly emerges that actually, the ship never left earth at all. For 50 years, 600 people have been kept underground in a simulation environment and they believe they are are flying through space. It’s an experiment to see how they might survive the journey. Those “on-board” were born on the ship and have never known earth. It’s worth sticking on if you are bored but the characters never develop beyond card board and all that saves it is a cast of beautiful women led by Tricia Helfer. 6/10

Travelers is an interesting one. It’s a bit like 12 Monkeys in some ways and then unique in another. No one physically travels back in time here but the premise is as you might expect. The future is fucked so what happens is that the consciousness of people in the future are sent back in time to inhabit the bodies of people who were just about to die in the past. They then take up their hosts former lives as best they can and perform missions designed to save the future of mankind. It stars Eric McCormack from Will & Grace and more recently Perception. The characters are likeable but there are one or two detestable sub-characters from their hosts previous lives that you just wish would go away. 7/10

Van Helsing takes a different take on the infamous vampire hunter. This show revolves around his ancestor, Vanessa. During the vampire apocalypse, she is bitten and killed by a vampire. However, she doesn’t die and instead lies in a coma for years. She is protected by a military grunt in a hospital. Eventually she awakens when they are attacked. She is bitten and the vampire dies. It turns out that she can either kill vampires or turn them back to human depending on how close to human the vampire was. Ferals die but those capable of conversation turn back to human. It’s an entertaining show and Kelly Overton does a convincing job in the role. You clearly don’t want to mess with her as she looks like she will fuck you up. 7/10

And that’s it for today. I’ll probably have a few more shows to mention in a few weeks.

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If you don’t like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, best move on a few paragraphs below to some other recommendations on Netflix. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was another series of books that Adams wrote in the late 80s. There were only two books, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and then The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.

The intended 3rd book was meant to be The Salmon of Doubt but Adams never finished it and part way through decided it fit better in the Hitchhikers universe than Dirk Gently’s. In the end, the book was released posthumously as a series of short stories.

The BBC Version

A few years ago, there was a 4 episode British TV series starring Stephen Mangan. I enjoyed it a lot and it was fairly true to the spirit of books. Unfortunately the BBC had to cancel it for some bullshit reason about money and concentrating on importing foreign shows. Begs the question, what does the British license fee payer want? British made drama or foreign shows?

The 2016 version

Queue 2016 and I recently came across a new adaption on Netflix. This one is a little different than the BBC adaption. It stars Samuel Barnett as Dirk and none other than Elijah Wood as a new character, Todd Brotzman. I don’t want to give too much away here and that means I can’t actually say much at all about the show or plot but the gist of it is this. Todd works at a hotel and comes across the scene of a weird murder. Weird stuff happens, Todd meets Dirk breaking into his apartment where it turns out he was hired to solve the murder. Oh and this is set in the US, not UK.

Other than the premise of Dirk and how he operates in a holistic, “everything is connected” way, this show bears no resemblance to the books or BBC version.

Who will like this show?

If you area Hitchhikes Guide fan or have read the Dirk Gently’s novels, then this is for you. If not, it still might be. If you can imagine Dirk Gently as Sherlock Holmes meets The Doctor (Doctor Who) then and that sounds interesting to you then you will love this show. The Doctor Who thing makes total sense when you consider that Douglas Adams created Dirk Gently after writing a couple of episodes of Doctor Who. Dirk believes in “the fundamental interconnectedness of all things”

A piece of advice I can give you is don’t fall at the first hurdle. There’s a lot going on in this series and very little of it makes any sort of logical sense. That is, at first it doesn’t but remember, the premise of the show is that everything is connected so as the series progresses, stuff that made you think WTF starts to fall into place.

There are little nods to Adams in the show too. There’s a group of supernatural nutters called the Rowdy Three which consists of 4 members and eventually a 5th. If you recall, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was a 5 part trilogy. It was described as a trilogy on the release of the 3rd book. Then a “trilogy in four parts” on the 4th book. The US edition of the 5th book said “The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Trilogy” on the cover.

I have read some extreme fanboys being horrified that it doesn’t stick religiously to the books and anyone who says different doesn’t understand Douglas Adams and to them I say that they themselves don’t understand Douglas Adams. They seem to forget that Douglas Adams couldn’t even stick to his own plot-lines when bringing out a new version. Hitchhikers Guide for instance started as a radio show and then a series of books. He also wrote movies, TV series and computer games. He was forever changing things to see how it worked. I think Adams would have been very happy to see this version on the small screen.

Where to now?

The first season deals with the whole hotel murder case in a very roundabout way. There are many sub plots and one that remains unresolved at the end of the season. This plot may play a part in the second season. The original novels were set in the UK and we know that this show is set after those events because when Todd asks Dirk if he ever solved a case, Dirk replied “Sure. Tons. Well, some. Well, a few. There was a bit about a sofa, a thing with Thor…” and these are the plot-lines of the two books. This might lead us to believe that we won’t be seeing these plots in the new series but then again, this is Dirk Gently’s world and pretty much anything is possible.

There are so many possible ways for this show to go and that’s what makes it exciting. I think there’s a real chance for this to become a major cult hit like Doctor Who.

Two things we do know from the first season is that everything is connected and Karma is a bitch.

Other Netflix Shows

I’m just pasting in something I wrote on Facebook a few months ago. Very quick recommendations of shows to watch.
OK Netflix junkies, recent shows I have started watching and I think are really good and worth a look.
– Luther – About a broken and violence prone London detective. Really interesting.
– Power,  About a drug lord/nightclub owner in New York.
– Marco Polo season 2 – Brilliant, watched the first episode last night and am still fascinated by Genghis & Kublai Khan/Mongolian Empire. I know it’s an entertainment show but some of the things in the show are fascinating. Khan showed a strange tolerance to all religions and even encouraged his subjects to convert at will, strange for a conqueror. The Chinese Swallow opening scene thing is also real, amazing stuff. I had never heard of that war tactic before.

And the big one, Stranger Things! How good this show is can be hard to convey but the internet has been raving about it. I finally watched the first 2 episodes last night but I was hooked 5 minutes into the first one. It’s like an adult version of Erie Indiana with hints of Stephen King and Stephen Spielberg. It reminds me a lot of the movie Super 8.

After finishing Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Netflix, I needed another show. Netflix suggested a number of French shows for some reason but eventually suggested Master of None with Aziz Ansari from Parks & Recreation. It’s absolutely brilliant. It’s not a sitcom, it’s sort of like a funny look at life. Each episode has a specific theme but revolves around mostly the same characters.
It’s charmingly funny and insightful too. Watch it!

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