Martin Rolfe – Google

Perhaps one if the most ridiculously banal mini series I've had the misfortune of enduring. The general plot line is seriously pedestrian, relying on a shock ending to camouflage it's ordinariness. The journey should be the trip, not the destination! And speaking of the ending, it was nothing if not utterly absurd. The show had been, purportedly, some sort of pulp fiction romance thriller which suddenly decides, out of the blue and with one hour to go, it is instead Harry Potter and indulges in fantastical magic! I went to bed angry I had seriously wasted 6 valuable hours of my life.

It is often asked that we the audience suspend disbelief for the sake of creativity, and for the most we happily acquiesce. Film is, after all, art. And then we are asked to simply accept the utterly ludicrous as a reasonable proposition - such as this sequence in YOU that we don't see but must accept: Slightly built man somehow knocks out equally weighted woman in third floor, lift-less apartment. Drags/carries her limp body down three floors of stairs, out onto the bustling streets of daytime New York, all the way downtown to his bookshop, down into his basement, and into his book humidifier/ jail. Of course. Yep. Easy.

Continuum is well built on solid sci- fi foundations, with the whole time travel conundrum pretty much it's primary focus. Greedy corporations and selfish individuals manipulating time for advantage is interesting. However, there is no doubt four seasons is three too many! The whole show devolves into an endless whining whinge from main character Kiera, who's desperate need to go home overrides all other concerns. In fact her entirely selfish motivations become more loathsome than the greedy corporates we're supposed to boo. Unintended irony no doubt.

The OA certainly does draw you in at the very beginning, setting itself up as a show of real possibilities. Then after a second episode or so one wonders if the writers themselves are not really sure what to do with the concept, and if they are have they been drinking. Then when the characters start executing a choreographed 'life saving dance ' (reminiscent of some ancient rain dance) with an ever increasing frequency and urgency, which looks utterly ridiculous, we realize that our original suspicions we're correct and that yes, the writers had indeed been drinking.

Although Doomsday starts quite well, establishing the premise for a decent post apocalyptic type thriller and exciting the audience with it's possibilities, it suddenly decides that instead it would prefer to be Mad Max Thunderdome. Or maybe 28 Days Later. Or Aliens. It finally decides it would instead like to be Future World, Franco's appalling self- indulgent apocalyptic nonsense film. And once it heads down this path there is no salvation, completely losing the plot in an instant and becoming an idiotic parody of itself.