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This is honestly one of the best things on Prime Video, and I have NO idea why or how so many people haven't seen it. Nutshell summary of the plot - dead beat gamer janitor unwittingly "summons" two rebellion fighters from the future, who take him with them on a mission to bring down the creator of a race of genetically superior humans. It's like a horribly mutated baby of terminator, back to the future, and quantum leap; and it's beautiful. It's incredibly funny, incredibly inappropriate and at times genuinely shocking (in a good way!) - but also very self aware that it's basically taking the p*** out of itself. Across 3 seasons, Future Man is a journey of complete madness and chaos, peppered with more pop-culture references, hollywood homages and send ups than you can count, many of which are so subtle you might miss them - acted brilliantly by all involved. The first season is an absolute masterpiece, and sure there's a smidge of a burnout by season 3, but this is in comparison to how good season 1 is - that is, its still good, its just not as good as the start of the story. I can't recommend it enough, it's honestly just about perfect. Even the final credit scene of season 3 is an absolutely brilliantly delivered nod to one of Hollywood's worse habits. 10 out of 10 acting, writing and production

Not sure what all the bad reviews are about - other than high expectations pulled out of nowhere or people trying to find depth in brain chewing gum: this is simply a modern take on a classic B movie disaster theme, its over the top, underbaked, light- touch Sci Fi; and it knows it. There's nothing difficult to follow, no complicated plot lines to keep track of, and no hard-core science to understand - it's just dumb, disposable fun. The general premise is pretty run of the mill: greedy generic corporate entity ignoring any care for humans and the environment, triggers "something" ancient under the sea bed to bite back - the oil rig setting is just a vehicle to deliver the ensuing "what is it?/ is it bad or good?/ how do we stop it?/ should we?/ we should/...should we though?" plot line from. Granted the rig setting is a bit on the nose, it being heavily an allegory for environmental issues, but also adds isolation, claustrophobia, and thallasophobic atmosphere for a bit of easy to create tension. Which it kind of has to do quickly given its only 6 episodes of under an hour each (the total time is about 5 hours). Given the short run time to deliver quite a complex story (despite the "nothing new here" core plot), they actually do a pretty good job of not dropping threads, but it does suffer character development - which is a shame given there's some quality actors here, unfortunately underutilised by a compressed script. Of course there's some hammy acting, some over-acting, and some outright poor casting choices - but it's a fairly large cast so that was inevitable - plus you can see they've spent the casting budget mostly on 5 or 6 main characters, resulting in more than a fair share of "soap opera quality" choices. It's fine though, most of these people only have small parts! And again, this isn't pretending to be some great drama - its just a romp. And yes, the CGI is a bit underwhelming here and there - but AGAIN - this isn't a bloody marvel movie! It's an amazon prime TV show! If you're expecting GoT level special effects from a low budget short form B show, you're off your meds mate. All in all, go in expecting intellectual side salad and "a good bit of escapist trash" and you'll probably enjoy it. If you want poignancy, rich character driven drama, or riveting Sci Fi - watch something else.

Firmly "meh", bordering on "oh dear". As a massive fan of AHS and indeed most of ryan murphys shows, I was really looking forward to the premise of a season of self enclosed shorts - and when I saw the 1st was to be an expansion of Murderhouse, assumed most would be side stories of the other AHS worlds/ building on their side plots, or interesting stand alones set in the AHSverse... Unfortunately, a few in and it feels more like rejected main season side plots and master storylines, or just leftover thought starters from the ideas board that have been given to film school students as an assignment to flesh out. That is, there's the odd standout, but most teeter on that line where theyre neither good nor bad, but almost all would've been a LOT better with a bit more polish, a more experienced production crew and or stronger actors. On that, overall the majority of the casting and acting is shockingly poor - there's the odd AHS alum and actor-they-spent-most-of-the-casting-budget-on showing up and raising the bar right up, but that's balanced out by the old gag of having people in their late 20s playing teenagers, and the bulk of the cast are sadly, distractingly, pretty bad - varying from "they'd be OK as non speaking part extras" as per almost all of the "teenage" cast in the Drive In episode, through to "everyone would be better off if they never acted again" e.g. Noah Cyrus and whoever her mate is in the final episode - and the scripting is rife with horrendous lines nobody in real life has ever said or would say unless taking the mick - is for the most part doing no favours. Its the kind of thing that seems petty to bang on about, but really drags you out of just being able to watch and enjoy it. The stories themselves also are rushed (obviously, since they're condensed to under an hour) - and as such a few potentially excellent plots suffer quite badly for the shorter runtime. All the stories, except perhaps Ba'al, lack the dark, rich, campy spirit of the full AHS seasons, and feel very much like they're aimed exclusively at the YA audience (while failing to recognise that "YA" doesn't equate to "vapid"). And this self-contained, short run model, when at their best, serves to cut out fluff filler and keep the story firmly on track - when at their worst though, you have the protagonist literally narrating what would be bridging scenes, or the reason why something is happening, instead of actually showing it. Overall, I'm treating this anthology as a stopgap to keep me busy while AHS 10 is available to watch in full, definitely won't rewatch, and don't really recommend unless you're really bored.

Sturdily average YA show, definitely could've been better with a bit more attention to detail. General premise - Carp; a dead end town that's so dead end that the high school graduates will literally risk death to escape it - how fortunate then that theres an annual hunger-games-esque competition where participants can take part in a series of tests designed to induce panic, whereupon the last one standing makes off with a cash prize they can use to buy their ticket out of Carp. It's technically OK, 90% of the acting is great, the town itself is fantastic in its styling - and the panic event isn't massively overdone (I.e. there's an actual story behind it along with individual stories of the key characters that actually get decent treatment) - however: It relies VERY heavily on tired tropes. The "bad kids" are the classic smoking/drinking/ne'er-do-wells who might as well walk around with black hats on (in one of the episodes, the main bad boy actually does) the "good kids" all have after school jobs, strong moral cores and lofty dreams. People are never that black and white. Also the majority of the kids seem smart and ambitious - I'll loop back to that shortly as to why its an issue. Additionally, the main girl is your tried and tested "trailer trash whose better than this, but is she? (yes she is)" which is deeply uninspiring at this point. For a town that everyone under 25 is desperate to escape, there are A LOT of young people. At the various party scenes, there's always at least 250 people it seems. And it's usually different people, so there must be a huge young population here... can you see where I'm going yet? Speaking of, we also have the "actors in their late 20s playing teenagers" lark. One thing in its favour here is that everyone at least looks like a real person. Granted they all have incredible skin, hair and teeth for poor trash teens, but they don't ALL look like they could stride into a modelling shoot. Unfortunately all this is the main reason the show feels a bit (very) dumb: The town has a massive population of young, smart, good looking people: a stronger message from these people would be "use your talents to improve your environment and life", not "risk death to escape rather than try" but sure, I'm over thinking it. So to circle back on the set up as they have it: Though the main premise would've been great with better editing and presentation, there are some utterly ludicrous details, scenes and side plots that derail that, and though I said 90% of the cast are great, there's still that 10% who stand out - unfortunately one or two of them are main characters. It also seems to drag horrendously at times, and though most of the character building sub-stories are great, there's a sub-plot about the identity of the people orchestrating the games that is stretched so thin it makes you wonder if the reason nobody has thought of solving it before, despite the game apparently running for decades, is just that they got bored. Oh and there's the final point that renders the whole thing kind of moot - the only "success story" of a winner of the games is a guy who still lives in the town having recently been released from prison - not what you would think would inspire anyone to take part in it. So yeah, dumb, recycled and unimaginative - but not terrible. Think of it as brain-chewing-gum

Visually stunning, occasionally funny, and a few very good performances - but otherwise its less a sequel and more a loose copy of the first one. Same jokes, similar key plot, exact same one-liners. It's... OK basically. Definitely could've been a lot better but it's alright as a modernised nostalgia trip (though honestly if like me you LOVED the first film, just watch that one again!)

It's not bad, but not particularly great. Think "brain chewing gum". The main story (one of the many comic book licences Netflix hoovered up) centres around the children of the Locke family, who after their father is murdered, have to move to their ancestral home - which they discover has a thing with a bunch of magical keys that unlock various abilities - shenanigans ensue. Each episode escalates the main story (no spoilers) of their fathers secrets and some untoward antics in the past, while also centering around a new key and the social lives of the two oldest children. And this is for me the reason it's 3 stars: The main story is pretty good, however it sort of gets backseat treatment, where these amazing magical keys basically get used to sort out petty teen drama - and I've never known teens this petty or dramatic. And there's some great potential plot elements that get the gloss-over treatment in favour of some extra empty screen time with the kids (which, I get, it's aimed primarily at YA audiences, but give them some credit - YA doesn't mean "vapid") Added to that, there's some pretty awful acting and or poor character design. The big-bad is basically appalling on all counts. In fact any "baddie" falls into that most basic trope of "you know in a bad one because look at my sultry confident movements and sneaky smirk". The mum is a bit bland and wishy-washy, but the woman playing her isn't terrible. The few decent actors are only in small roles - and as for the kids - the oldest teen looks permanently sarcastic and or fed up with what's happening - all the time, the youngest one just shouts 90% of his lines, and the middle girl only gets interesting about halfway through - although to her credit she's probably the best developed character and actress. So basically - it's alright, could be better - could be worse, but I can't see it tearing up any awards. It's not a bad way to spend a rainy lockdown weekend though.