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Cable Shows? Into the Badlands? Flesh and Bone?

10 years ago
last modified: 10 years ago

Anyone watching these? Or another small audience show that's interesting?

I read poor reviews of both of these, but I've been catching up with them and like them enough to actually watch (with eyes) rather than sort of listening while doing something else. They're not Mad Men good, but they're good, in my opinion.

Into the Badlands is based on a Chinese show. It's a different kind of post-apocalyptic than the current young adult book/movie series. It takes place in a rich enough land (filmed in Louisiana) where seven barons are each responsible for a single resource. They're surrounded by badlands and no one really knows what's beyond, except maybe the River King. The architecture is mostly plantation, the costumes run to the heavily Chinese influenced novo-Victorian, they have 20th C. tech in many forms but not an abundance of it, and much of it fairly retro. There is an oil baron and they have power. Gunpowder is banned (not sure how that's enforced) but they all have swords and fighting techniques. There's a lot of supernatural fighting and a ridiculously large number of men are killed or maimed--that's aimed at the martial arts fanboys. Most of the fighting has insufficient narrative thrust to be more than fighting for the sake of fighting, like in a musical when they stop the action to sing a song that has nothing to do with advancing the plot. I sort mail during those parts. :) In general, however, the show is visually stunning, and the characters are well drawn, visually separable (I hate shows where all the people look the same and you can't tell who's who), and have clear cut motivations. Lots of intrigue and venal scheming going on, plus a quest in the making. I'm only a few episodes in, but I really like it.

Flesh and Bone is about psychologically damaged people, mostly women, dealing with daddy issues, but it's set in a major ballet company. Unlike almost every film or show that is set in the dance world, the actors, who do a good job with the acting, are actually dancers and believable, most of them, in the ballet. Those who seem less well trained or clumsier are the ones in the story who aren't as good, so the lacks may be part of the characters rather than the actors' training (though I'm not sure how the characters would get the company jobs they're are in if they were that bad, but they may have been exaggerating to make it easy for the majority of the audience, who don't have ballet training, to spot). Which is a lot of pickiness to say the actors can actually dance. It's slow and moody, and the real story moves along underneath the overlay of the goings on at the ballet company. It's well lit and directed, and they've done a good job of giving the four main women (also visually separable), as well as the male lead, enough character to be interesting and also to make one care about them. The two male dancers are types, and more like the requisite girls in any older tv show with mostly men. The plotting of the actual story about these damaged people is also pretty stereotypical, like an amalgam of a bunch of magazine articles and tv movies, but it's so sparingly shown and drawn out that it's more like being aware of those issues makes you understand the people rather than feeling trite, though it really is. Plus, the parts where they dance are pretty. :)

Do you watch them? What do you think? What else are you watching?

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