Marco Polo - 'The Wayfarer'

So there's a new series about Marco Polo and his travels along the Silk Road! I know next to nothing about Marco Polo or his writings, all I know is that he's considered the first Westerner to detail East Asia, though I'm 99% sure he's definitely not the first European to go there, but let's just ignore that because this show is about him

And wow he does not need to be in this show. The first episode is meant to be the expository episode, laying out the basic scenario, who the characters are, why they're there etc. And this series decides not to do that in a coherent manner. We see Polo being offered by his father as a servant to the Khan. Why? I have no idea. Something about priests that didn't make it to the Khan's court? And also maybe his father hates him but also loves him? There's a long montage of scenes of Polo travelling with his father's caravan to the Far East in which they get caught in a storm, travel across deserts, lose priests and are attacked by a sand demon (?????). Nothing that happens in these scenes seem to have any relation to anything that happens in the rest of the episode. In fact, nothing that happens in the rest of the episode has anything to do with anything in the episode

Okay, that might be unfair. There's build up to some kind of assault on the Song capital which first requires an attack on a fishing village. This is some kind of test for the Khan's song, Prince Jingim, to prove that he's a true Mongol and not basically Chinese. Despite only have 500 soldiers because his uncle didn't bother turning up (probably stuck in traffic with the rest of his hoarde), he opts to still attack the clearly thousands of Chinese troops in the village. Will he win? Yes, probably

Speaking of tests, Marco Polo himself undergoes a test at the end of the episode. He has to walk through why I'm going to term 'The Passage of Whores' not touch them even though they're all over him 'cos they love some white meat. It's a dull scene if you have no interest in naked women (and after suffering through this scene I can confirm I really don't) but Polo is a red-blooded Italian male so he must be going through agony not touching at their vaginas and what-not. Honestly, it's a scene that doesn't need to be in here. Along with all the rest of the scenes of naked women doing sex on men. I understand they're challenging shows like Game of Thrones and Spartacus and other such programmes but these scenes are pointless and gratuitous. The only women who have a speaking role where she doesn't have her muff out are the Dowager Empress of China and someone else connected with the emperor but I don't remember her character. Perhaps this episode is an outlier and there are better female characters later on, but I have heard the phrases 'naked swordfight' being whispered around the internet and I don't hold out much hope that this will be between two buff guys

The rest of the episode I can barely remember. Something about a blind man teaching Polo to fight and Polo getting to wander around the capital (but not look at the pretty lady with the chinese lanterns). Inconsequential crap that might be important later

One positive is that the sets will look very nice once they fix the lighting and accept that not everything has to happen in gloom

I'm going to stick with this show, I have nothing else to watch over Christmas, but considering the fact that they spent something ridiculous $90m dollars on this, it's just left me feeling rather disappointed

Sleepy Hollow: Probably the best show you're not yet watching

Sleepy Hollow was the best new series to launch in 2013. I suppose that wasn’t too hard when the main competition was ABC’S Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., a show which was forced to wait 16 episodes before it was allowed to get into the meat of its premise (there will be more complaints about Agents of SHIELD in another post later, don’t worry). If you’d asked anyone a year ago, they would have written off a show based upon a 19^th century Gothic novel involving a headless horseman, all transposed into modern day upstate New York where he partners with a small town cop to save the world. It’s impossible to describe the show without appending “But it’s all really good!” at the end, as the person you’re attempting to convert rolls their eyes at the idea that “George Washington’s Bible is really important”.

But it is really good, and it’s difficult to explain to the sceptical exactly what makes it so good. The only phrase that really explains why the show is worth watching is that it’s batshit insane with fantastic internal logic. The show runs at breakneck speed through a variety of completely ludicrous set ups and internal machinations and for 40 minutes you sit transfixed, agreeing fully with everything it’s told you. It’s only 5 minutes later when you’ve calmed down from the excitement that you start questioning anything, but it’s important to push any doubts out of your mind because they just ruin the experience.

So what’s the basic premise of the show? It’s hard to summarise, but I’m willing to give it a go. Ichabod Crane, an 18^th century Oxford scholar has joined the Americans in the American Revolution with the aim of freeing the colonies from British rule. The British, because this is American media and they have a national mythology to preserve, are conspiring with the dark forces of Hell to hand the world over to some powerful demon. Crane kills the Headless Horseman who is Death, but is himself also killed by said horseman. His wife, who is a witch, magically preserves him and he is buried in cave, ready to awaken when the Horseman does, which happens, obviously. He meets Lt. Abbie Mills of the Sleepy Hollow sheriff’s department, whose mentor has just been killed by the Headless Horseman. They then become a wonder team of brilliant rapport and a model platonic male/female duo. The lack of any hints of romance between them is really what sets this show above the rest. They are now the protectors of the Earth from the evil that exists just beyond our own world. There you go, that’s your basic premise.

Except there’s a thousand more things going on just in the first episode. It’s really impossible to explain fully what’s going on. It’s easier to give three reasons why you should be watching.

The relationship between Abbie and Ichabod is the best I’ve seen on TV in a long while. It’s a man and a woman having an effective working relationship that develops into a close friendship and doesn’t then go on to be anything romantic. This is unbelievably refreshing and a welcome relief from the constant sexual tension writers insist on forcing into their scripts. You don’t spend that show wondering if they’re going to sleep together, you can just enjoy a purely platonic relationship between two people. You just have to ignore the rabid shippers, but that’s a phrase that can be added to discussions about basically any show.

The show moves along at quite a pace. There are few episodes in season one that don’t have any significant action happening until the final act, and that is one of my bugbears when it comes to TV. But in general, the show isn’t afraid to hang around, it’ll just keep on moving forwards, and that’s a good thing for a show that is so heavy on mythology. It can introduce and explain each new addition to its universe without bogging the show down.

The mythology the show is building is one of its main strong points if you’re a massive nerd who likes a convoluted backstory. There’s freemasons, hessians, demons from hell, secret demon hunters, time travelling early colonisers and more. The show is partly engaging in the ‘monster of the week’ style of Buffy, Supernatural and shows of that ilk, but it keeps everything coherent and everything you see is important to the greater storyline, sometimes not in ways you expect. Again, this is something you want, it’s rewarding for viewers who have been paying attention throughout its run.

So there are three quick reasons off the top of my head. But really, the phrase “The answers are in George Washington’s bible!” should be enough to make you drop everything and rush to watch this show.

UPDATE: I stopped watching this show because it got dull. Whoopsies

New TV Season, New Start

Happy TV season 2014/15! To celebrate the start of this new season, I’m going to have another go at doing reviews of whatever I’m watching on this blog. Will this last? Probably not, I don’t have the best attention span and there’s a good chance I’ll just forget. But I will try. I will endeavour to review all the shows I watch (and there are lots of them) when I’ve finished watching them. This means that I won’t be posting anything on a strict schedule because that would be a step too far, but I will be trying to post a review for at least each week that it’s on.

And it won’t just be American TV shows. I’ll be reviewing British things as well if they grab my interest. I haven’t decided quite how I want to be doing this for British shows, it might be easier to do a weekly round-up rather than a strict episode-by-episode system like I intend to do with the US shows (please note the word intend. I make few promises). We’ll see what happens.

Maybe I’ll even do some film reviews. Probably not because I don’t really watch many films, but maybe. Never say never or something along those lines.

Final thing I should say; I make no pretences to being a writer or having any background in media critiquing. I’m usually a Twitter reviewer, by which I mean I make stupid comments on Twitter to get retweets. The only thing close to this I’ve done is a French cinema module, and I was lucky I didn’t fail it. Basically, what I’m saying is don’t get your hopes up that this will be worthwhile. Lower your expectations. Pessimism is the best way.

Enjoy!

(PS If you get the reference that the blogname is making, then I am writing for you. You know who you are)