HACKER’S DELIGHT
THE MOVE to offer Showmax free to DStv subscribers on the premium bouquet becomes more understandable with the announcement that season three of Mr Robot will be available first and only on that platform.
From Thursday, episodes will be delivered express from the US every week, within 24 hours of the American broadcast.
The series follows Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a young man living in New York City, who works at cyber security company Allsafe as a security engineer. Constantly struggling with social anxiety disorder, dissociative identity disorder and clinical depression, Elliot’s thought process seems heavily influenced by paranoia and delusion.
He connects to people by hacking them, which often leads him to act as a cyber-vigilante.
He is recruited by a mysterious insurrectionary anarchist known as Mr Robot (Christian Slater) and joins his team of hacktivists known as fsociety. One of their missions is to cancel all consumer debt by destroying the data of one of the largest corporations in the world, E Corp (which Elliot perceives as Evil Corp), which also happens to be Allsafe’s biggest client.
And sounds like an idea I could get behind, to be honest.
That’s the background and it all sounds very straightforward, but at the same time fairly complex and clever. But three quarters of the way through season one, it’s revealed to viewers that everything we’ve watched up till that point – while diligently keeping track of all the plot twists and inner workings of Elliot’s mind (no easy task in itself) – is not true.
It was at this point that I became infuriated with the series. But then the accolades began flowing in. Malek won the Emmy for Best Actor last year, the first actor of colour to do so in 18 years.
Among many other awards, Mr Robot also won Golden Globes for Best TV Drama and Best Supporting Actor (Slater); an Emmy for Original Music; Critics Choice Awards for Best Actor (Malek), Best Supporting Actor (Slater) and Best TV Drama; a Peabody; and a Writers Guild Association Award for New Series.
I tried again. I did some research and settled in for Season Two but I just couldn’t get into it.
After a few episodes I once again grew annoyed and turned my attention elsewhere.
Apparently, according to the season three trailer, the cliffhanger at the end of the second season resolves itself in the form of Elliot waking up with no idea where he is.
“So brace yourself for another season of sitting on the edge of your couch, second-guessing your assumptions, as fsociety rallies against enemies like the FBI and the Dark Army, rival cyber terrorists,” they say.
Also new on Showmax this month is season one of the Mzansi Magic co-production crime and corruption drama, iNumber Number. Game Of Thrones season seven is up and available to binge watch. Showmax/kykNET co-production Waterfront will be launched on Wednesday. Described as “family noir set in the dark underbelly of one of South Africa’s most popular tourist attractions”, the cast includes Dawid Minnaar, Rolanda Marais, and Albert Pretorius. Directed by multi-award-winning theatre director Jaco Bouwer (see next week’s Top Of The Times for my interview with him), the series is a dark story of secrets, sibling rivalry and gentrification.
Channel Zero: Candle Cove arrives on October 16. The first instalment of this anthology series is about a child psychologist who returns to his hometown to determine if his brother’s disappearance is connected to a series of similar incidents and a bizarre children’s TV show that aired at the same time.
Showmax is an internet TV service. For a single monthly fee (unless you’re a DStv premium subscriber), get all-you-can-watch access to a huge online catalogue of TV shows, movies, children’s shows and documentaries.
There’s no contract so you can start and stop whenever you want.
Stream Showmax using apps for smart TVs, smartphones, tablets, computers and media players.
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No internet? No problem – download up to 25 shows to smartphones and tablets to watch later off-line. The website also has a list of wi-fi hotspots which you can
Vice Principals (M-Net 101, 11.10pm): New on the schedule is the premiere of this raucous HBO comedy which sees two high school vice-principals go to extremes to get the coveted school principal job when it becomes vacant. Oscar-nominee Bill Murray guest stars, and Walton Goggins (Justified, The Shield, Sons Of Anarchy) is also in the cast. Even so, the series ran for only two seasons (in reality one season split in two). The Fixer (Vuzu AMP, Monday at 8pm): At the end of season six we saw Mellie Grant (Bellamy Young) being sworn in as president, and Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) as her chief of staff, as well as stepping into her father’s shoes as command of the shady B613 operation. Moving to this channel from M-Net 101, in the seventh and final season, which premièred in the US last night, we’ll also see Quinn (Katie Lowes) heading up her own crisis management firm.
Viewers will have noticed several series shifting to new homes – this one, Mr Robot, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man – as the sheer volume of new seasons simply cannot be accommodated on M-Net 101 since it merged with M-Net Edge.
The Good Doctor (M-Net 101, Monday at 8pm): This medical-drama series was developed by David Shore (Family Law, NYPD Blue, Due South) based on a 2013 South Korean series of the same name. Freddie Highmore (most recently Bates Motel) stars as Shaun Murphy, a young paediatric surgeon with high functioning autism spectrum disorder and savant syndrome. Showrunner Shore once had an idea that while in most procedurals the characters are secondary to the mystery, a medical procedural should place the mystery secondary to the hero.
And that character was Dr Gregory House.
Lockdown (Mzansi Magic, Monday at 8pm): In season two, Thabazimbi Women’s Correctional Services and Mazet’s (Dawn Thandeka King) territory is shaken by the arrival of a new prisoner, the infamous killer, Maki Magwaza (Linda Sebezo) who is out for revenge. Another arrival that’s bound to rattle some cages is the new stern and focused Governor Deborah Banda (Pamela Nomvete), who holds a dark secret that only the walls of prison can handle. Alongside her is Thabo Rametsi, taking on the role of Simon Banda, her clueless son.
Doc Martin (ITV Choice, Tuesday at 8pm): Back for season eight, Martin Clunes stars as the eponymous Doc, a brilliant surgeon forced to move to a small town in Cornwall and work as a GP because he developed a fear of blood. His abrupt manner led to various runins with the locals (not the least because of their insistence on the nickname; his proper name is Martin Ellingham), but his medical brilliance earned him their grudging respect over the years. A recurrent thread involves his on-off relationship with local primary school teacher Louisa Glasson (Caroline Catz) with whom he has a child. Doc Martin will end next year.
The Zoo (M-Net 101, Thursday at 9pm): The season three premiere of the dystopian thriller, about when the animals rise up and fight back, opens 10 yea rs after the animals are cured. However, “the hybrids” emerge: an army of unstoppable lab-made creatures. James Wolk stars as zoologist Jackson Oz.
All programming information is supplied by the channels and subject to change.