Survivors

I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic fiction and it's rare that I come across an example of the genre that doesn't captivate my interest. So why is it that I'm struggling to bring myself to watch any more of the BBC's series 'Survivors'?

Shown on BBC One in prime-time it is clearly a key part of the Beeb's early 2010 programming. This is the second season and tonight saw the broadcast of it's second episode but it's unlikely I'll be tuning in for the third episode.

I must start by saying that I missed the first season, not by choice I just didn't realise it was on until the season had finished. That being said I started watching the second season having done my homework. I'd watched the recap clips and read the episode guides and so had an overview of what to expect. Unfortunately none of this preparation lead me to expect such poor quality from a flagship show. The dialogue is nearly unbearable at times, tonight's episode in particular had the token child (Naj - because Najid is too long to say repeatedly it seems) spouting awful lines and behaving in a manner that apocalypse-or-not would have earned him a slap if I'd been around.

I'm used to forgiving Sci-Fi and Fantasy fiction for it's many flaws in exchange for a look at the worlds they provide but I can't seem to bring myself to grant 'Survivors' this concession. Not knowing the details of the first series I can't really comment on why the minuscule number of survivors are starving to death in a major metropolitan city. I can comment on the fact that the show seems to be geared around constantly placing the 'Survivors' into perilous predicaments (they clearly haven't been through enough in surviving the downfall of civilisation).

The previous series concluded with one character laying shot in the raid by sinister men in black which saw another character kidnapped. The new series picked up immediately from this point with the group racing to save the life of their fallen comrade by visiting the nearest hospital. This was the setup for an episode in which a hospital collapses upon half the gang, Max Beesley gets to slow motion run through a lot of dust holding a shotgun, the shot character has a fever flashback and another female character has to submit to being raped in order to obtain a rather pitiful piece of rescue equipment:

There is clearly an attempt to focus on the relationships and the emotions of this handful of individuals forced together by the apocalypse. This is muddied by the stories insistence that they spend their time shouting at each other, running for their lives or laying very still (either under rubble, on a table bleeding to death or in a sinister lab surrounded by figures in Haz-Mat suits). The two aims don't work on screen at all, in the hands of better writers or with better actors perhaps this wouldn't be the case, other works have managed it (none perhaps more skilfully than Stephen King's 'The Stand').

It is disappointing that a big BBC One show, in a genre for which I am a fan of and aimed squarely at the demographic I inhabit, can fail to arouse more than minimal interest from me. This wasn't helped by the decision to have a two week gap between the first and second episodes due to the football - this isn't America, scheduling should be continuous.

Next week I think I shall be re-watching Skeet Ulrich in 'Jericho' instead.

A Little Look Around

Quick video tour of my tiny room:



It isn't much, and it normally looks a hell of a lot messier, but I call it home.

The Prestige

A short video I made about the film 'The Prestige' as part of my continuing experimentation with social media:

Facebook copying Twitter again?

Ten minutes of searching Twitter, Facebook, Google & Mashable have turned up no other posts regarding what appears to be Facebook's latest homage to one of Twitter's lesser known features... the "via".

Since Twitter brought in their controversial new retweet feature, it seems the use of "via" to indicate the user who provided the original link has fallen into disuse. Those who feared it was therefore lost forever will be thankful to hear that Facebook have seen fit to resurrect it.

When you see a post on another user's Facebook feed, you are presented with a 'Share' button through which you can post the item in question to your own feed. So far so social media, right? Well previously these shared posts to your feed were unattributed. This meant you could pass the link off as your own (to those people who don't follow the user you stole it from anyway) but now Facebook are making an effort to show your 'Friends' who it was that originally created the post by adding a "via" followed by the user's name. This is in no way similar to Twitter's new retweet feature that makes an effort to show your 'Followers' who it was that originally created the post.

Apart from making people look a little less cool (now that you can see that it is one of their more interesting friends who was actually providing all those awesome YouTube links to cute cats) the point to note here is Facebook's continuing drive to encourage it's users to widen their online social circle. Why show where posts are originating from (with a handy clickable link) if you don't want to encourage more socialising on your social network?

I have no problem with this new feature (being the guy who finds all those cute kitty videos) but many others may feel that Facebook's continual erosion of user privacy and it's attempts to force them to make new 'Friends' may be less appealing.

Update
Since I made my post last night, Mashable have written their own piece about Facebook's newest feature.