informage

I'm not big into television - in fact these days I never watch it. Except that is for certain specific shows - almost always on DVD or via BitTorrent - that get recommended to me as a notch above average. Recently one such show has been 24 (yup I caught on rather late). The recommendation came, rather insistently, from my friend Callan, as did the first couple of seasons worth of shows. If you haven't seen 24 - and you have any kind of appreciation for visual entertainment - watch it. It is superb, and that's all I'm saying on that.

More recently the rather unlikely candidate of the "re-imagining" of cheesy 70s space opera Battlestar Galactica has hit my radar. I hardly watched the original, but I had some toys and a book and loved the concept. This makes me the perfect viewer of what is seen as a travesty by the dyed-in-the-wool deep-nerd fans of "the original series" (TOSsers in online lingo). The new series takes the basic premise of the original, keeps the characters with the odd gender and ethnicity alteration to add spice, and basically retells the story as though it really happened rather than throwing out yet another piece of hammy space theatrics (*cough* any of the Star Treks *cough*)

The new Battlestar Galactica is to TV sci-fi what 24 is to TV crime thrillers. It has a gimmick (remake of a cult show, rather than the real-time of 24), it has the peerless Edward James Olmos (Bladerunner) where 24 has Kiefer, it has the gritty verit� cinematography, it has the "no-one is quite who they seem" mystery appeal, it has top-class acting and character development, and it has the edgy minute-by-minute sense of crisis. In essence both shows manage the conjuring trick of combining a raw down-to-earth documentary feel with epic context and plot. Of course TV crime thrillers have always been a bit better than TV sci-fi, and indeed Battlestar Galactica isn't quite as good as 24. However it's the best sci-fi series I've ever seen, and I've pretty much watched them all. Long live Galactica!