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Post by fenris on Dec 18, 2008 19:26:04 GMT
The current issue of SFX (#178) has a lengthy feature about Demons. Any mention of Hex is conspicuous by it's absence - instead (and quite understandably) Shine's current success Merlin is name-dropped several times. And the SFX website is having what it claims will be new and exclusive Demons material (clips, interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, etc) made available every day until when the first episode is screened on 03/01/08. Link for more info; www.sfx.co.uk/page/sfx?entry=countdown_to_demons
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Post by orokiah on Dec 18, 2008 21:29:17 GMT
The SFX website is having what it claims will be new and exclusive Demons material (clips, interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, etc) made available every day until when the first episode is screened on 03/01/08. Looks very interesting, thanks for posting the link fenris. Definitely going to take a look at that. The ITV Demons site is also now up and running with tons of content: www.itv.com/Drama/cult/Demons/There's a couple of clips of Katrine de Candole included in the Zoe Tapper interview ( here) - nice little bonus for Hex fans.
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Post by orokiah on Dec 21, 2008 16:49:53 GMT
There's an excellent, in-depth interview with Zoe Tapper in today's Sunday Herald, promoting Affinity and Demons, which includes this gem of a Hex reference: Demons also re-unites Tapper with the producers of Hex, the fantasy series broadcast on Sky which has proved such an extraordinary nursery for British-based acting talent. As well as Tapper it featured Michael Fassbender, star of the Camera d'Or-winning film Hunger and seen most recently in The Devil's Whore, and the Lost In Austen pair Jemima Rooper and Christina Cole.Free spirit: Zoe Tapper
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Post by fenris on Dec 22, 2008 19:37:57 GMT
What a great interview. Thanks for the link, orokiah. I liked the way that Hex is referred to at the end of the article as 'a cult niche series that looks increasingly like a who's who of the next generation of British acting talent.' If Zoe Tapper, Jemima, The Fass, Christina, and Amber Sainsbury do (hopefully) keep going on to bigger and higher profile projects, it's intriguing to think that their new-found fans will check their respective IMDB profiles, see the entry for Hex, think 'what's that?', click on it and then say 'wow - I didn't know all these people starred in a TV show together'. The most eye-opening thing in that interview is Zoe's remark that despite only working in the business for five years, she's already noticed a sea-change in the way British TV shows and movies are produced. It used to be the director who chose the leading actors, now all the major casting is by committee. Sounds like the UK industry is sadly going the same way as America, where all the major networks and studios are now run by beancounters who actually know nothing about film-making or story telling.
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Post by orokiah on Dec 24, 2008 20:09:47 GMT
With the launch date so close, some adverts for Demons are starting to appear in the press. Not seen Zoe Tapper included in one yet, but I thought I'd scan and post a couple anyway: (click for full size) I liked the way that Hex is referred to at the end of the article as 'a cult niche series that looks increasingly like a who's who of the next generation of British acting talent.' Yeah, I got a kick out of that. It's really nice to see it acknowledged.
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Post by fenris on Dec 30, 2008 19:55:07 GMT
Looking at my TV listings magazine for next week, I've spotted that the first episode of Demons is being repeated on ITV2 on Sunday (04/01/09) and Wednesday (07/01/09) at 20:00. Presumably subsequent episodes will also be repeated twice.
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Post by orokiah on Jan 1, 2009 15:38:30 GMT
Looking at my TV listings magazine for next week, I've spotted that the first episode of Demons is being repeated on ITV2 on Sunday (04/01/09) and Wednesday (07/01/09) at 20:00. Presumably subsequent episodes will also be repeated twice. I notice ITV2 is showing the film Van Helsing straight after the Sunday repeat. Nice touch. Hopefully there'll be a Making Of at some point too, either on ITV2/3 or the inevitable DVD.
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Post by fenris on Jan 2, 2009 20:00:58 GMT
I notice ITV2 is showing the film Van Helsing straight after the Sunday repeat. Nice touch. Plus Van Helsing is so dire that it can only make Demons look good in comparison. Heh heh.
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Post by orokiah on Jan 3, 2009 17:31:00 GMT
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Post by fenris on Jan 4, 2009 14:24:34 GMT
Episode #1: They Bite
Before posting my thoughts here, I've read other people's reactions on the IMDB message board for the show, and also the SFX forum. The response so far is overwhelmingly negative, with the vast majority of contributors not having anything good to say about the first episode at all. The main complaints are that it's 'a Buffy clone' (which was already being used on those forums as a reason to dislike the show, long before yesterday's episode was actually broadcast), plus quite a few people seem to be fixating on Glenister's American accent.
Me? Personally I liked it. The first episode of any series has the difficult task of explaining the show's central premise, introducing the main characters, establishing their relationships with each other, and also providing a (mostly) self-contained story in order to show the characters in action, either working as a team and/or solving a problem. In my opinion, 'They Bite' performed all these functions more than adequately.
The cast all got a chance to shine, to varying degrees: Christian Cooke expressed an understated Everyman quality and a nice edge of teenage reluctance. Philip Glenister's Rupert Galvin is a take-charge, all-business kind of guy, but with a thoughtful, quietly reflective side. In short, he's not simply Gene Hunt with an American accent (speaking of which, considering that Galvin has spend most of his life travelling the world, I thought Glenister's mid-Atlantic twang was both fine and appropriate). Zoe Tapper was also effective and suitably intriguing as the slightly icy and distant Mina. Best of all though was Holliday Grainger as Ruby, whose reactions and dialogue (well done, scriptwriters) when confronted by assorted weirdness erupting around her was entirely believable. I especially liked her instinctive wariness towards Mina ('who is this beautiful older woman who knows my almost-boyfriend?') and her tactless-while-trying-not-to-be-tactless remarks regarding the pianist's blindness.
And as for any accusations that Demons is merely a Buffy clone, of course it's clearly influenced by Joss Weedon's show. But let's not forget that while Buffy was an extremely well written, produced and acted show that fully deserved it's success and popularity, it wasn't particularly original itself. It was basically a teen version of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and another jumper on the Nineties X-Files bandwagon (The X-Files being another show directly influenced by Kolchak). Plus TV Zone magazine once memorably pointed out several startling similarities between Buffy and Russell T. Davies' 1991 series Dark Season (school setting, young heroine with extraordinary abilities, male-female pairing of sidekicks, school staff-member as mentor, a world-ending threat located underneath the school, male arch-villain with bleached blonde hair and a leather trenchcoat, etc). So using lack of originality as a stick to beat Demons with hardly seems fair.
Yes, there were some minus points. Redlip coughing up his bodily waste was just silly. And the theme song is awful (what were they thinking?). But these were offset against some effective little touches such as the slight wheezing sound coming through Thrip's metal nose, and Galvin's grudging acceptance of Ruby's teenage bolshiness.
The bottom line is that 'They Bite' was far from brilliant, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But I still found it to be a solid, entertaining sixty minutes (including commercials) and a promising introduction that made me want to watch the rest of the series. Job done, in other words.
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Post by orokiah on Jan 4, 2009 20:13:55 GMT
I really enjoyed it. It was a decent introductory episode that got the ball rolling, no more, no less. The cons: the pacing seemed odd at times, particularly in the final couple of scenes, and the use of 'Ruby' as incidental music just didn't work. The title screen also looks like it was cut and pasted together in an awful hurry when a name for the series was finally decided. There wasn't enough Zoe Tapper either, although that helped enhance the enigmatic nature of her character. What little we did have worked well, and the beginnings of her relationship with Luke intrigued me: I've seen it suggested that there was sexual tension there but all I saw was Mina treating Luke quite maternally, a nice bit of foreshadowing for the arrival of her son later in the series. I wonder though if Luke will develop some sort of crush on her, leaving Ruby to pine for him, unnoticed. Of the rest, Christian Cooke was a good reluctant hero (and reminded me a lot of Jamie Davis, oddly enough), while Philip Glenister was great and his accent worked fine for me. While I liked the feisty Ruby, her relationship with Galvin looks more interesting than that with Luke, and I hope she doesn't end up stuck too often as the damsel in distress. Mackenzie Crook's pedantic Mr Thrip stole the show though: I'm glad we haven't seen the last of him, if his IMDB listing and comments by Zoe Tapper about having a fight scene with him are anything to go by.
It wasn't the greatest first episode in the world, but I can't believe it's being compared to Bonekickers in some parts. Unlike Bonekickers, it has its tongue firmly in its cheek (the jaunty title music - which is going to take some getting used to - is surely the giveaway), which makes all the difference.
I'm looking forward to the rest of the run. There's huge potential in the situation and the characters, and hopefully Demons will be able to build on it.
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Post by fenris on Jan 5, 2009 15:14:25 GMT
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Post by orokiah on Jan 7, 2009 11:38:54 GMT
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Post by fenris on Jan 7, 2009 20:50:53 GMT
There wasn't enough Zoe Tapper either, although that helped enhance the enigmatic nature of her character. What little we did have worked well, and the beginnings of her relationship with Luke intrigued me: I've seen it suggested that there was sexual tension there but all I saw was Mina treating Luke quite maternally. While I liked the feisty Ruby, her relationship with Galvin looks more interesting than that with Luke. I agree. One of my favourite parts of the episode was the parallel scenes in the cars, as Luke and Ruby were taken home. Mina's treatment of Luke and the way she talked to him was definitely 'adult to child' in my opinion. As we know that she's over a hundred years old (although that hasn't been revealed in the show itself yet), I don't see how she could be attracted to a teenager. *And I think there's some promising chemistry between Galvin and Ruby. When he wrote his mobile number on her hand, and she thanked him for the ride (calling him "Rupert") as she got out of the car, it was strangely touching. I'm actually hoping that Ruby develops a crush on Galvin (with Luke taken by surprise by how this makes him feel), but I seriously doubt the writers are doing to go in that direction. * I have a similar creditability problem with the current hit movie Twilight (based on a successful novel that was aimed at teenagers), in which a vampire who looks 17 but whose actual age is 107, falls in love with a 17 year old girl (!!). I'm sorry but I'm only 39, and I wouldn't want to date a 17 year old. Of course, the same situation occurred in Hex, with Ella having her 442th birthday while being romanced by Leon. It was never addressed in the show, but I recall Laura Pyper trying to explain it away in interviews by saying that when Ella had stopped aging, her emotional state had also been frozen, meaning that psychologically she was still a teenager.
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Post by orokiah on Jan 8, 2009 15:14:07 GMT
I think there's some promising chemistry between Galvin and Ruby. When he wrote his mobile number on her hand, and she thanked him for the ride (calling him "Rupert") as she got out of the car, it was strangely touching. I'm actually hoping that Ruby develops a crush on Galvin (with Luke taken by surprise by how this makes him feel), but I seriously doubt the writers are doing to go in that direction. I was really surprised by how well Holly Grainger and Philip Glenister worked together in that scene: I wonder if it was scripted or a case of them taking a potentially commonplace scene and running with it. I hope we see more scenes between them in the rest of the series. At the moment I think they have the best chemistry of all the cast. I've always thought they should have made that a bit more explicit in the show itself. I adored the Ella/Leon relationship - the need to explain why and how it was credible somehow disappeared behind the performances. But the dissonance between Ella the cold, focused demon slayer and Ella the weepy poster child for teenage angst really didn't serve them well in parts of season two.
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