The Magicians is a new show coming to Syfy on January 25th, and if the show is half as good as the books, it will be on my DVR every week. They have a sneak peek on the website that looks like the first few minutes of the first episode, also looking good. It is based on Lev Grossman’s trilogy of the same name, a set of books praised by a lot of people, including Cory Doctorow, William Gibson, and George R. R. Martin. Let’s face it, any time three of your favorite authors tell you somebody else wrote important books you need to read, you pay attention.
Neil Gaiman’s excellent book American Gods is headed for TV, with screenwriter Bryan Fuller of Pushing Daisies fame heavily involved. The book won the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Locus Award, and the Nebula Award, which is quite a range of recognition for a single novel; I can’t wait to see what they do with the show. It is scheduled to air on Starz in 2017, and while I haven’t found a trailer yet I did find a rather interesting interview with Bryan about both it and the new Amazing Stories show over at Crave. And word is that Neil Gaiman will write some of the episodes for the new series, which puts me solidly on board with the project.
Oh My Ghostess is a Korean Supernatural RomCom/Dramedy which jumps into episode one with a wonderful setup. In the opening sequence, we have the police picking up yet another dead body in a long string of men that appear to have been frozen to death during a heat wave. That’s the only police procedural type action during the initial episode, but we do see the cops again later in a more domestic setting, and it is obvious they will play a major part in the story line going forward. The next scene introduces both our ghost protagonist and our living girl protagonist, their first encounter setting the tone for further interactions. Then we get introduced to all the other characters in their various settings, central to which is a team of cooks running a highly rated restaurant, a foodie blogger, an exorcist, and an entire community of ghosts who do not approve of Ms Ghostess’s approach to being less than alive. We also get to meet a wonderful range of supporting characters, all of them interesting and having the potential of being elevated to the main plot sequence depending on which way the writers decide to go. While I have only seen a single episode of this so far, I think it has a lot of potential, and I can’t wait to see what happens next. The entire series ran this summer and is only 16 hours long, so you should be able to complete it in a single weekend if Oh My Ghostess turns out to be something you enjoy.
The season has already started for both The Flash and Arrow, but these are quite tasty and worth sharing even so.
Season 4 of Arrow kicks off on Wednesday, October 7th, the day after The Flash has its season opener, and both shows look like they are up-leveling their game. That makes sense, since they have cranked up the tension each season from the beginning, and since they are building towards next year’s Legends Of Tomorrow. Both with these series and with the upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad movies, it looks like DC is finally going to give Marvel a serious fight for the hearts and minds of the audience. I for one hope the competition stays intense for many years to come, if it causes both teams to keep cranking out quality science fiction of this caliber.
The Hallways trailer for American Horror Story: Hotel is slick, and they just announced adding Lady Gaga to the cast (or at least I just heard about it). It hits the small screen on FX on Wednesday, October 7th.