“Oh gravity, thou art a heartless bitch.”
Winding down in front of E4 yesterday evening, I caught episodes of two new (here in the UK) TV shows I’d seen trailed and been intrigued by.
Reaper is an hour-long drama-comedy-fantasy thing about a guy whose parents sold his soul to the devil in return for a favour (!). I’m hazy on the detail. As payback, he works as Satan’s hitman-type, hunting down rogue bad-guy souls who’ve escaped their due torment and are wreaking havoc in the world. It’s a nice idea, but aside from a couple of high quality comedy sidekicks, the episode I watched (about a nasty toxic-waste dumping dead businessman killing off the lawyers pestering his heir-to-the-family-ick son) didn’t really excite. Great premise, doesn’t live up to its promise.
The Big Bang Theory, on the other hand, was great fun. It’s another light-hearted sitcom in the vein of Two And A Half Men (without turning into a Charlie Sheen vehicle) or 8 Simple Rules (a favourite of mine). A pair of shy and nerdy physics PhDs share a flat. When a pretty girl moves in across the hall, hilarity ensues. The humour is of a properly geeky (even internet-y) tone:
“If you don’t have any other plans, do you want to join us for Thai food and a Superman movie marathon?”
“A marathon? Wow, how many Superman movies are there?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Or even better:
“Now we’ve got an inclined plane. The force required to lift is reduced by the sine of the angle of the stairs. Call it 30°, so about half.”
“Exactly half.”
Maybe you had to be there, but hey, I loved it.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:21 pm
I love The Big Bang Theory, too. It is coming back with 9 new episodes this season starting on Monday, March 17. Also not it is moving to 8:00. I can’t wait.
February 21st, 2008 at 9:57 pm
I think there’ve only been a couple of episodes shown here in the UK. I’m very much looking forward to more to come :)
February 21st, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Rob and I have been loving Big Bang Theory, it’s just so smart and full of wit. I loved the part about organising cereal according to fibre content.
As for Reaper, I caught a bit of it the other night and wasn’t too impressed. I just didn’t get it for many reasons, one being why would the devil want rid of bad people? Should he not be hunting down the good guys? Hmmmm
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:50 am
OK, that was a bad episode of Reaper. It’s not a stellar show but it’s usually solidly entertaining. I’ll now lay out the core premise.
Before Sam was born his dad got cancer, sells his firstborn’s soul to the devil for a cure then goes and gets a vasectomy so he can’t have kids. Sadly the surgeon had some gambling debts and the devil cleared them in exchange for a less than full vasectomy… So on his 18th birthday Sam discovers why his parents have spoiled him so much until then. Meanwhile security in hell being less than it should be a lot of souls of evil people are escaping and causing mischief (read violent deaths). So it’s Sam’s job to bring them back, assisted by his two clownish friends and a “freaky devil power of the week” which is meant to give him a clue as to the soul’s whereabouts/identity. Sam’s a tool so he never works it out himself resulting in the devil having to tell him. Which is no bad thing since the devil is the best acted, best written, funniest bit of the show - he’s clearly a completely evil amoral bastard but certainly to begin with he was broadly on Sam’s side trying to help him with his friends / lovelife, just in ways that are less than fair and usually can cause issues. As of two episodes ago with the contract stuff he’s got more prickly and evil.
Big Bang Theory is just funny :) I’ve heard it called Friends For Nerds and it works for me.
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
“Friends for nerds.” That sounds exactly right.
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Except nerds don’t have friends.
February 24th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Have you seen Sarah Connor Chronicles - Summer ‘River’ Glau is a Terminator!
Only seen 1 episode so far.
Hope you are watching all these from an exercise bike!