'Twas the Week Before Christmas - Video Distractions by Mike N.

On the cusp of the end-of-year holidays. It's a busy, busy year's end for me, professionally, which is making it difficult to break away and try to enjoy what should be a sustained break for me.

   This past Tuesday we not only got our general Internet upgrade (the gaming faction in the household is very pleased with the huge improvement in speeds), but I have my DVR capabilities back for the first time since August, IIRC.
  As I'm typing this Thursday night, FX is running for the first time its new adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Guy Pierce and Andy Serkis have top billing. FX is running it as a three and a quarter hour block, though it was produced as a three-part show -- and that's how those in the U.K. will be seeing it for the first time on BBC ONE, on the nights of December 22-24th.
  It struck me after reading about this that it's the first time I recall having an adaptation of the story serialized, which historically struck me as almost funny given how Dickens' work was originally serialized -- the 19th century, print mass media -- pop culture, hungrily devoured in installments by frantic fans.
  Anyway, it sounded interesting enough for me to set the DVR to catch it, so I can watch it sometime before Christmas, and hop through the commercial breaks. I'll either write up some reactions to it for next week's column, or append them here in red. (That's something I did in one of the earlier columns when I revisited some new shows.)
   FX will be running it many times in the coming week, I see.
   Recently I got around to begin catching up on the SF series The Expanse (Amazon Prime). Originally a SyFy channel series, they cancelled it after three seasons and Amazon picked it up. The fourth season - Amazon's first - debuted December 12th, and demonstrating their commitment to it they'd already greenlit a fifth season back in late July. I'd watched the first two seasons a year or two back, but hadn't gotten around to the third. I ended up rewatching season two, then rolling through three, and am only now starting the fourth season.
    Set a few centuries in the future, mankind has spread out into the solar system. While a more advanced drive system was discovered, humans don't have truly physics-breaking modes of high speed travel, which forces the show to generally give more respect to how huge the distances between the planets in the Solar System are.
   The show has overt sociopolitical themes, along with historic parallels of empire, colonization, exploitation of those colonies, and the inevitable rebellions. Earth's environment, pushed to the brink by human greed and carelessness, helped drive people off-planet. Mars is deep into a multi-generational terraforming project, but one that's been repeatedly derailed and postponed. The Martian colony felt too put upon by a too-comfortable and property-minded elite back on Earth, and so struck for independence from those who essentially believed they owned it because they'd bankrolled it. So, Mars is fiercely nationalistic, and has sacrificed the original timeline for making the planet truly livable in deference to developing their military and defensive capabilities. Mars' form follows its mythological namesake, becoming a largely martial culture.
   This awareness of what defense has cost them has folded back into their hostility towards Earth, knowing that having to deal with protecting their world from the grasp of pampered, greedy people who never had to sacrifice to develop Mars, has cost them the chance to see a green Mars in their lifetime or perhaps even that of their children.
  Meanwhile, a little farther out is the asteroid belt, where life is much more precarious than even on Mars. The "Belters" who are born and live there have to actively cling to life in an unforgiving, almost unimaginably hostile environment --- though for most of them it's the only way they've ever known. Generally looked down on by both Earth and Mars, they've been exploited for generations by those civilizations of the inner planets, who have been hungrily gobbling up the mined resources the Belters tap to eke out a living. An underclass of cheap, eminently disposable labor. Necessary survival skills have generally made Belters into something between clans and criminal gangs, though events in the series see leaders emerge who begin to show glimmers of realizing the potential of giving the Belters a sense of national pride. If they're to rise they have to define themselves as a people.
   We meet characters from various strata of each of these societies and subcultures, see them clash, test each other's mettle, and in some instances mesh and grow.
   Woven through all this, especially in the first season, is a noirish gumshoe theme, as a detective out in the Belt is put on the trail of a missing young woman who turns out to be a much, much bigger deal in more than one respect, and ultimately the key to staggering changes for everyone.
  Intelligently written and generally well-acted, the steepness of the learning curve has seen a few people I know stall out a few episodes in. Taking in the dynamics of the cultures of Earth, Mars, and the Belt, their perspectives on each other, and a sprawling cast of characters, along with the well-worn, day-to-day tech these people employ, not to mention the slang many employ and the patois spoken by the Belters, requires a little time and effort. It eventually clicks, though, and is worth the investment.
  I'm looking forward to taking in the rest of this fourth season as part of my holiday break.

      That's almost as much time as I have for this week, though I did want to pause to note some of the things hitting recently, today, or very soon that may be of interest.
  On Netflix, today the 8-episode first season of Witcher drops. Starring Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivera, a monster hunter who is trying to find his place in the world, coming to realize that some people are far worse than some beasts. Based on a series of novels of the same name by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski.
    On December 24th Netflix's second season of Lost In Space is set to appear. While I remember on the whole enjoying this new take, just watching the trailer for season two reminded me that I'd forgotten more than a few things from season one.
    Over on Hulu I see that the second season of the BBC America series Killing Eve arrived Wednesday, so I'll make a note to get to that eventually.
  I enjoyed the first season, which I DVR binged from BBC America last year. It centered on a professionally stifled MI-5 agent, the eponymous Eve Polastri (played by Sandra Oh), who has an interest in serial killers, particularly female ones. Psychologies and methodologies. This leads to her conducting a productive, but off-the-books investigation only to be fired as an inconvenience. Her talents recognized, she's recruited by a secret division of MI6 and given the task of chasing a highly successful, psychotic, international assassin. Dream job for an outwardly nerdy civil servant with a curious kink. Quarry becomes aware of hunter, investigates and ends up reciprocating her interest, leading to a sometimes uncomfortable overlap of their lives. I'll be interested to see where season two took matters. I know a third season was given the nod immediately after the second one started to air.
    Okay. Now that's really enough. I have some presents to wrap and box for last-minute shipping, and working in a few hours sleep would probably be a good idea, too. It's just past midnight.
     Enjoy the weekend, then Happy Hanukka and/or Merry Christmas and/or hopefully at least a little time off, ideally with some good company.    See you next Friday.   -- Mike

Shows and movies hit on in previous posts:

 Sept. 20th: Mindhunter (Netflix)

     Sept. 27th: What's The Matter With Helen, The French Connection, and Frenzy. (Early '70s R-rated movies I saw with my mom)

     Oct. 3rd:    Preacher (AMC), Stumptown (ABC), Sunnyside (NBC), The Good Place (NBC), and Jack Ryan (Amazon Prime).

     Oct. 11th:  Joker (still in theaters), and In The Tall Grass (Netflix)

     Oct. 18th:  El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (Netflix)

     Oct. 25th: Dolemite Is My Name (Netflix)

     Nov. 1st:   Watchmen (HBO series), The Kominsky Method (Netflix)

     Nov. 8th:   Seconds (1966 movie, currently available as part of Amazon Prime)
     Nov. 15th: Dr. Sleep (current theatrical release, but probably not for long), Horace and Pete (2016 web-produced series, currently on Hulu)
     Nov. 22nd: NOS4A2 (AMC, now on Hulu) and Man In The High Castle (Amazon Prime)

     Nov. 29th: The Irishman (Netflix), The Mandalorian and The World According To Jeff Goldblum (both on Disney+), light touches on Watchmen (HBO) and Ray Donovan (Showtime)
  Dec, 6th: The Booth At the End (Amazon Prime), and Us (HBO).

Dec 13th:  Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon Prime), The Feed (Amazon Prime), 6 Underground (Netflix movie).

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