BODIES PILE UP
Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant play estate agents in Santa Clarita Diet. Something happens to Sheila, which gives her an insatiable appetite for fresh meat
little hesitant about this new series is that it’s billed as sci-fi. However, it’s a fairly wide ranging genre so I have to remind myself how much I enjoyed Black Mirror, which falls into the category.
Even the animated series Futurama, will come up in a sci-fi search and lines between fantasy and supernatural – even horror – can be blurred. To simplify, we can think of sci-fi as something which takes place in an imaginary future, or a present with “other worldly” changes.
In Counterpart, Howard Silk (Simmons) has been working for a bureaucratic UN agency based in Berlin for 30 years. Because of his lowly station, he doesn’t know this agency oversees a crossing point to a parallel Earth.
It’s a copy of his world and there is a copy of him there too – his counterpart – who has a far more exciting job as a field agent who makes “crossings” between the two worlds.
Maureen Ryan (Variety) writes: “Counterpart is quite likely to appeal to fans of a few different genres.
A smartly constructed and atmospheric spy thriller, Counterpart’s first allegiance is to hushed conversations, dangerous secrets, and the kind of shadowy alleys and darkened hallways traversed by secret agents.
“But Counterpart is also a work of speculative fiction, and it uses its graceful and well-modulated sci-fi elements to ask thoughtful questions about missed opportunities, identity, and what happens when people get unexpected chances to remake their lives. And if that weren’t enough, Counterpart is also a handsome, character-driven wserial for adults.”
One Strange Rock (National Geographic, Wednesday, at 8.05pm): A 10-part cinematic event series, Academy Award-nominated actor Will Smith joins award-winning film-maker Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan, Requiem For A Dream) and producer (also award-winning) Jane Root (The 80s: The Decade That Made Us) to explore the fragility and wonder of Earth in a visual journey that alternates from the microscopic to the cosmic and reveals our planet through an alien lens.
Smith contemplates questions such as “Why is Earth the only planet (that we know) to support life?” and “What are the greatest threats to the environment and human existence on Earth?”, with an elite group of eight astronauts who provide their unique perspectives and relate personal memoirs of the planet seen from a distance.
Each hour-long episode explores monumental events including genesis, cosmic violence, the cycle of life/death, human intelligence and alien life, sacrifice, oxygen, survival versus destruction and how the planet has shaped life and life has shaped the planet.