Review: Deadwood and Star Cops DVDs
2005-Jul-23, Saturday 20:50![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matgbWell, further to my prvious post, I watched a disk of Star Cops first, and a disk of Deadwood later. The latter had 4 disks total, the former 3. That I finished watching all the Deadwood episodes before watching the last Star cops disk shows with relative worth of each series.
I'll deal with Star Cops first. Don't bother buying this one. I'm not regretting buying it, and people with a penchant for late 80s fasion, cop shows and a reasonalbe attempt at a hard science TV show may be interested in borrowing my copy.
The premise is that it's 2047 (made in 1987, they thought fasions wouldn't change in 60 years?), there's a moonbase, a Mars outpost and a lot of orbiting space stations, mostly manufacturies and science labs. "Where there's life, there's crime" is a repeated phrase through the show, and the main character is an "old school" British cop pushed into the job by a boss who doesn't like his approach to earthside investigations.
Considering the obviously low budget, it wasn't actually that bad. The science is sustainable, the crimes are mostly believable (if a little too contrived at times) and the premise is sound. Unfortunately, it hasn't aged well. For a start, they refer to the Russians as "Soviets" which could so easily have been avoided (just Russian) would be fine and Gorbachev's reforms were in full swing at the time after all. The fasions are horrible, and the technology looks dated even thoguh they'd obviously thought things through. Oh, one of the episodes covers the threat ot worm software in integrated networks. This was a shocking thing to them, and no non-military computer, including the channel tunnel, had any kind of protection. Oops, I guess Dr Norton never got around to existing in their timeline. Ah well.
Fun, but, well, only in a kitsch nostalgia sense; the acting at times is terrible.
I love it. Seriously, Ian Mcshane is no longer Lovejoy, he is Al, and it's a well deserved award nomination. It's an HBO production. For those unware, HBO (Home Box OFfice) is a subscription US cable channel that, as it's subscription only, can pretty much do what it likes and be as "realistic" as it wishes.
Mcshane's character does manage the occasional sentence without swearing. But I don't recall an entire paragraph. WIld Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane, Seth Bullock; these are the characters we meet at first. Bill's shooting is a central part of the plot of the early episodes, the build up to it followed by the trial after it happens. Despite knowing it was coming, the event itself still surprised me, and the way the characters are dealt with is, just, cool.
I'm going to watch it all again soon, and while I reckon it won't be to everyone's taste, if you like westerns, realism or just decent, adult drama then this is one to watch. I suspect, however, that my mother, a huge Lovejoy fan, will not be impressed. It's a little too violent, and Al does have a penchant for murder.
Oh, the only real full frontal scene is a bloke, an ugly one at that. Funny scene though.
Next up, thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lithium_doll (http://www.livejournal.com/users/lithium_doll/144325.html) I'll be watching Robin of Sherwood. Many many reasons why I'm looking forward to this one; first, I loved it as a kid, and they made multiple series so it wasn't crap (Star Cops got dumped despite sequel material clearly written in). Second, it effectively launched the careeer of Enya. While that in some people's opinions isn't necessarily a good thing, for a TV serios to get a career off the ground is impressive. Third, well, my (then) uncle is in it a few times.
Ah well. That's been my day pretty much.
I'll deal with Star Cops first. Don't bother buying this one. I'm not regretting buying it, and people with a penchant for late 80s fasion, cop shows and a reasonalbe attempt at a hard science TV show may be interested in borrowing my copy.
The premise is that it's 2047 (made in 1987, they thought fasions wouldn't change in 60 years?), there's a moonbase, a Mars outpost and a lot of orbiting space stations, mostly manufacturies and science labs. "Where there's life, there's crime" is a repeated phrase through the show, and the main character is an "old school" British cop pushed into the job by a boss who doesn't like his approach to earthside investigations.
Considering the obviously low budget, it wasn't actually that bad. The science is sustainable, the crimes are mostly believable (if a little too contrived at times) and the premise is sound. Unfortunately, it hasn't aged well. For a start, they refer to the Russians as "Soviets" which could so easily have been avoided (just Russian) would be fine and Gorbachev's reforms were in full swing at the time after all. The fasions are horrible, and the technology looks dated even thoguh they'd obviously thought things through. Oh, one of the episodes covers the threat ot worm software in integrated networks. This was a shocking thing to them, and no non-military computer, including the channel tunnel, had any kind of protection. Oops, I guess Dr Norton never got around to existing in their timeline. Ah well.
Fun, but, well, only in a kitsch nostalgia sense; the acting at times is terrible.
I love it. Seriously, Ian Mcshane is no longer Lovejoy, he is Al, and it's a well deserved award nomination. It's an HBO production. For those unware, HBO (Home Box OFfice) is a subscription US cable channel that, as it's subscription only, can pretty much do what it likes and be as "realistic" as it wishes.
Mcshane's character does manage the occasional sentence without swearing. But I don't recall an entire paragraph. WIld Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane, Seth Bullock; these are the characters we meet at first. Bill's shooting is a central part of the plot of the early episodes, the build up to it followed by the trial after it happens. Despite knowing it was coming, the event itself still surprised me, and the way the characters are dealt with is, just, cool.
I'm going to watch it all again soon, and while I reckon it won't be to everyone's taste, if you like westerns, realism or just decent, adult drama then this is one to watch. I suspect, however, that my mother, a huge Lovejoy fan, will not be impressed. It's a little too violent, and Al does have a penchant for murder.
Oh, the only real full frontal scene is a bloke, an ugly one at that. Funny scene though.
Next up, thanks to
lithium_doll (http://www.livejournal.com/users/lithium_doll/144325.html) I'll be watching Robin of Sherwood. Many many reasons why I'm looking forward to this one; first, I loved it as a kid, and they made multiple series so it wasn't crap (Star Cops got dumped despite sequel material clearly written in). Second, it effectively launched the careeer of Enya. While that in some people's opinions isn't necessarily a good thing, for a TV serios to get a career off the ground is impressive. Third, well, my (then) uncle is in it a few times.Ah well. That's been my day pretty much.
