Jesus Christ, real or not, has left a significant mark on the human race. History tells us different stories about him, the holy grail, templars that found and protected the grail. And sometimes, templars where presented as protectors of the church, but sometimes, stories where different. And because of this, church has abandoned them. Were they a fearless warriors, immortals bound to the fate of the grail? Or maybe something else.

The Last Templar is mini series, made in 2009 and based on the novel of the same name by Raymond Khoury. Book published in 2005, became bestseller and remain so for years. And because of that, producers decided to use it to make this series.

Story and characters

This is a story about templars that followed the principle that truth will set them free. 700 years old flashbacks are used to explain the story that follows very attractive Dr. Tess Chaykin, well known archaeologist played by beautiful oscar winner Mira Sorvino. Her quest for the lost treasures of templars started with her mentor Dr Bill Vance (played by Kenneth Welsh) who dedicated his life to that quest. And Tess is daring, brave and reckless, always getting into trouble because of her obsession for excavation, and she remind us of famous Indiana Jones. And, as it happens is such books and movies, leading lady needs a man. And her free spirit and recklessness attract FBI agent Sean Daley (played byScott Foley) and he joins her in her quest. He is religious with traditional values trying to hold on to the church dogma and teachings.

And the story needs a bad guy, or in this case the Catholic Church that denies the existence of the templar treasure. Emissary of the church is Monsignor De Angelis (played by Victor Gerber) doesn’t care about rules and he believes that he has to do everything in his power to stop Tess and Sean. A small role in the series is given to one of the greatest actors of all time Omar Sharif, who is helping our heroes to find the truth. And the truth behind the treasure is not what they have expected.

Sean & Tess

And while there is a lot of action all the time, and it was intended as an roller-coaster adventure, this series fails to deliver on all counts. Bad acting even though the actors tried to make it work, but the script they had was the worse part of this mess. Incoherent, with a lot of confusing and not used well flashbacks. Visually, series is not up to todays standards and is just above the series of bad TV movies and mini series NBC made in the recent years.

Production

At least they shot the series on location in Canada, Morocco and Turkey. But they skipped the important part of getting all that right, and have been criticized with unrealistic portrayal of Turkey and no truth in geography. I guess that research was not so important to producers. As long as it looks ‘realistic’ it’s ok. But, that’s wrong with many similar attempts and one of the reason why such adaptation end up pale and well, bad.

Conclusion

I expected much more from this adaptation. Cast was good, the source book also, but the end result turned out unoriginal, poorly directed and simply has failed. But, maybe that’s just me, maybe you will like it, and you can get the DVD’s and check it out for yourself.

Couple of weeks ago I posted review about Invasion, series that aired on ABC and got canceled after one season. In the same time, on NBC, another series was airing called Surface. But, in this case NBC didn’t even allowed for a full season to end, and they canceled it after only 15 episodes leaving it open ended. Just like Invasion, Surface was amazing show but NBC once again managed to kill it before giving it a real chance.

Why invest millions in a series, just to cancel it after few months? And Surface was really great, great idea, intriguing story. But 15 episodes are not enough to develop the series as it should be. Surface deserved a chance of at least 2 seasons to explore the story, to explore the characters and finish telling it’s story. And trust me, it’s far better than most of the crappy shows NBC aired at the time, and renewed. It’s a shame that other TV stations did’t picked up Surface to continue it. Surface storyline would lead to natural ending after maybe 10 more episodes, and to make things worse, it managed to pull very good and above average ratings.

Story

During an underwater expedition Dr. Laura Daughtery discovered the new species, an unclassified marine vertebrate that appear to be larger and different from anything else in the sea, and far more dangerous. Serbian scientist Dr. Alexander Cirko also is working on tracking the animals. Richard Connelly looses his brother to one of the creatures during the dive.

Nimrod

In the same time, a 15 year old boy Miles finds the egg in the sea. He takes it home, and after a while it hatches. Miles starts taking care of the unusual animal. Until the very end we follow these two story lines: Miles and the creature he called Nimrod, and Laura working with Richard to uncover the truth about them.

Cast and characters

Series lead Lake Bell is great in the role of Laura and the same goes for Carter Jenkins in the role of Miles. But, I didn’t like much Jay Ferguson as Richard, there was something off in his performance, and for the most time he annoyed the hell out of me. Rade Šerbedžija as Dr. Cirko is great as usual and it’s great to see him more in the big US productions.

Surface cast

Production

Series looks expensive, but it’s not really consistent. Special effects are not as good as you would like them to be, and in many cases it’s easy to spot flaws in merging of special effects and live action. But, it’s not that important, story is great and some production problems are not that big issue. Initially, Surface was planned as a mini series, but due to high initial ratings it was expanded to a season, and than canceled before the end.

Conclusion

Despite it lacks the ending, Surface is one of my favorite series, and I have seen it couple of times by now. Complete series is released on DVD and I recommend that you give it a chance.

Yes, this one is even worse from the previous one. And after the disaster of first disaster movie under the same name, they somehow managed to convince few more good actors to join in. Were they all blind or brain washed to agree to participate in something like this? Also, there are tow versions, and even the short one is boring and very bad, long version is unbearable to watch. Shame on NBC for making this.

Story and characters

Not much to say. Earthquake from the first 10.5 is now moving across US trying to split it in two. Completely unrealisting story, science without any sense, tech-no-bable you are not going to understand, and if you manage to do so you are going to laugh how stupid it is. And how they managed to get new actors, good actors to participate in this is really amazing and because of this one, I almost lost all respect for great Frank Langella how is playing the father of the Kim Delaney character.

Production

Again, director managed to annoy everyone with terrible zoom in-out technique, and reminded us again that many porno movies have better direction and sense of action and scene composition. And yes, all these NBC disaster movies are so bad that you get better production in a porno movie. Did anyone at NBC watched any of these series before they decided to air them? How they managed to make 3 more after the first terrible movie? Do people really buy DVD’s of any of these movies? And this one, Apocalypse, has even a Blu-Ray release. I can’t imagine how bad this must look in HD.

Conclusion

Avoid it. It’s terrible, it’s boring, it’s without any sense of reality. And to write these last 4 reviews I have wasted 12 hours of my life. At least I can warn you to find something better to watch. And there are plenty of good series out there. Check out reviews here and take your pick.

This is actually first mini series about natural disasters made by NBC, and it was broad-casted in 2004. But, for some strange reason NBC decided to make a sequel in for of another mini series 2 years later, and that one will be reviewed also. And as with any other similar movie, 90% of the science part of the story is totally unrealistic with very little connections to reality, and reasons for such script are beyond me.

Story

Main story line is about series of catastrophic earthquakes staring in Washington state and moving south to California. And, as other similar productions, you are thrown into several human relations stories that aim to show how regular people would react to the situation, and here, all that fails completely, and you simple can’t relate to any of them due to bad written characters and situation. First and main problem is to believe that something like that can actually happen. You can check IMDB page for the series to see the amount of scientific errors and even basic geographic mistakes that make the story laughable.

Cast and characters

Situation is bit better here, and cast is solid and overall, performances are good. Many of the characters are cliché and that includes first president of the USA (played by Beau Bridges) and all the scientists. Most of them are not very believable due to no character development and no back stories and cast didn’t had much to go on and work with.

Production

Special effects are bad. When I saw the train miniature and so bad reusing of shots from it, lack of details, I had to see the scene several times, because it was looking so bad. Music is better this time, and at least follows the events on the screen. But, direction is abysmal. Use of zoom was totally uncalled for and distracting. Director thought that sudden zoom in and out will get some sense of dramatics to the mix, but he only managed to diminish the actors performances and annoy the hell out of me.

Conclusion

This is somewhat better from The Storm and Meteor, but still not worth wasting time watching. Again, if you are curious, DVD is available.

Here is another mini series from NBC in, what they call Survivor Sunday. This one is bad, but not as bad as The Storm reviewed yesterday. There are two more mini series in this pack: 2 parts of 10.5, they will be reviews also, despite very bad quality. Meteor is also known as Meteor: Path Of Destruction, but this name doesn’t make it any better. And the worst is, many networks are making bad mini series like this one.

Story

Main story is used over and over again in many movies before, and I can bet that it will be used again. And no mater how good the premise is good, there isn’t a single successful adaptation that I know of. So, the large meteor(s) are coming to earth with very little time to stop it. To add on top of that, and make the screenplay longer they have added human based stories that are in many instances totally pointless and always distracting. So, the story that would be enough for maybe even good movie is expanded to 3 hours. Story writing is bad as it was in The Storm.

Cast and Characters

This is what is better in this mini series. But, not by much. No matter how good actors are, they can’t work with bad script, and I think that they did the best they could with what was given. I am not going into many details, and I will not going to single out any of them, but I bet they all regret taking the job. Most likely they had to work on these series due to some contract obligations, and it’s a pity we are going to see more of such productions.

Production

Slightly better than The Strom, but special effects and use of miniatures is really low tech and not very realistic or believable.  I am sure that NBC could spent money on something that is worth like the many of the good series they have canceled in the past few years.

Conclusion

Again, avoid this. And again, if you are interested to see how bad it is, you can get DVD from Amazon and see for yourself.

It doesn’t get worst than this. If you thought that SyFy mini series and TV movies are bad, wait to see this. The Storm is created for NBC, and was aired in two parts in July 2009. From appalling script, unbelievably bad acting from all involved, awful direction, antiquated special effects and really bad music, this is one of the worst productions for TV I have seen in the recent years. But, let’s go in order, starting with story.

Story

Basic idea is not that bad, and that’s the only good thing in the script. Military controlled project to control weather has gone out of control. Everything else has gone downhill from here. Incoherent dialogs, storytelling without any sense. Science elements of the story are very unrealistic and this makes everything even worse.  I understand that they worked with very low budget, but that’s still not the reason to work with such bad script. There are many low budget movies that deliver with the quality script.

Cast and characters

There are many well known names in this one, and I am really a fan of some of them (Treat Williams and Teri Polo are usually really good). Character development is non existent, and even if they wanted, cast members did’t had anything to work with. Acting is bad, delivery plain and without real emotions, and at moments looks like they are reading the phone book.

Production

For the most part, music sounds like it was taken out of the porno movie. Special effects are absolutely horrible. And to make things worse, they are reusing many of the effect shots without any sense of the story, making things worse. Use of the split screen shots is over used and looks bad. Direction is without any style, mix of many techniques, everything used really bad, with no sense of pace or storytelling. I don’t understand why anyone would finance something so bad, and than air it. This is worse than most direct to DVD B production movies. NBC must be in real trouble if they fall so low to make mini series like this. And I don’t understand actors that accepted to be part of this, because the money couldn’t be major part of the deal, considering overall low budget.

Conclusion

I can go on and on, but it’s best to stop. Simply enough: avoid ‘The Storm’, there are many good mini series, series and movies to wast time on this. If you still want to see it, DVD has been released with Blu-Ray on the way.

I am not big fan of new ‘mockumentary’ series started with Office (both original UK and newer US version), so I wasn’t really looking forward to watch Parks and Recreation. On top of that I really don’t like (not to use stronger words) Amy Poehler, and I had very low expectations about the series. Series is created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur previously working as writers on the US version of The Office.

Story

Series follow Leslie Knope, deputy director of the local government department of Parks and Recreation in small town Pawnee Indiana. She’s working on the project of converting old construction pit into park. That project is her first ‘big’ sub-comity appointment, and her attempt to get out of her mother shadow.

Series shows the inner workings of local governments, the inertia of small communities, and all that can be easily translated to any country in the world. Many great remarks from some of the characters are showing mockumentary style in it’s best. I can’t compare it to The Office, since never could get over first episode of that series.

Cast and characters

Parks And Recreation

Amy Poehler really annoys me, and I just can’t stand watching and series or movie with her. But that annoying ‘quality’ actually is really good fit for the overly ambitious, naive and occasionally stupid Leslie. Rest of the cast is mostly unknown to me, with exception of Rashida Jones.

Conclusion

First season only has 6 episodes, and was really more of a test balloon for another Office series, but it managed to offer some refreshing new humor and further exploration of the style. In any case, it’s short, and give it try, you might enjoy it.

Scrubs were great during the first season, but the second season is even better. Writers and producers have explored what can be done, and they really improved on some aspects with better day dreaming sequences. Also, the drama aspect is better than in season one with more interesting cases since JD was not a intern anymore. Any with more interesting guest stars, this is really great and fun season to watch.

Cast

Neil Flynn as janitor had a great role in the first season, and that earned him a regular cast role and name on opening credits. Beautiful Christa Miller got a bigger role in the season, and her character Jordan is one of my favorite recurring characters. She and dr. Cox are really great not-a-couple. Guest stars list is really long, and I would like to single out: John Ritter, Sarah Lancaster, Jay Mohr, Ryan Reynolds and Amy Smart (in few episodes). Zach Braff is more relaxed and more secure in his role of JD and that also improved day dreaming scenes that were used even more in this season.

Season 2 cast of Scrubs

Writing

Drama dimension of the series is more pronounced and mixing drama and comedy is very effective. Some of the episode are very emotional and very funny in the same time. Also, writers did some experimenting with different narration points and characters giving as a break from JD. Music was became apart of the storytelling with guest musician Colin Hay.

Conclusion

These early episodes of Scrubs are really great, and real fun to watch. Unfortunately this concept can’t last forever, and soon we will see the quality of Scrubs decreasing. But, until that happens, enjoy.

First season of The West Wing was a great success, both with audience and critics. For this season series has won nine Emmys, and that is still the record for most won Emmys for a single season. Later seasons were also successful, and every season won many awards. As for season two covers Bartlet’s second year in office and follows till the middle of the third year until the announcement for candidacy for the second term in office.

Season 2 starts right after white supremacists opened fire at president, his staff and crowd gathered in front of the town hall. First two episodes deal with the post shooting and search for shooters, and with recovery of the president and Josh fighting for his life. These two episodes also use flashbacks to introduce first campaign. But, central theme for the entire season (and important theme for the rest of the series) is the presidents multiple sclerosis.

This season covers wide legislative array and many issues in regards with hate groups. Also we will get to see more wins for the White House stuff caused by the rise of the approval rate.

Cast and Characters

Cast was not changed, but some of the characters will get much more screen time. Beautiful Janel Moloney is now the cast regular and her character Donna is definitively among the favorites of the entire series. Also, I really liked the performance of Kathryn Joosten in role of Mrs. Landingham, long term president’s secretary. She has a major role in the ending of the season and amazing cliffhanger two part episode.

It’s really hard to find bad performance from the main series cast, and the same goes for many of the guest stars or actors in some minor roles.

Production

One of the ideas for this season was to include many flashbacks throughout the season to better show how the president staff has come together and how they won the first election, but it was to expensive to do, and we will get to see flashbacks in the first two episodes, and later in few episodes only.

Conclusion

This is one of my favorite seasons of the series. Even if you are not that into politics, this series is really much more.

Series that can be called truly original are very, very rare. And Scrubs can be proud being among the chosen few. This is basically the medical comedy show, but the concept is very unique, humor refreshing and cast amazing. And as far as I know there is no similar TV series. So, what is so special and unique in Scrubs? First of all, this is a comedy, but this is not a sitcom so no audience laughing. And this show can’t be made as a sitcom.

JD and his best friend Turk are starting as staff interns in the Sacret Heart hospital. They meet there other interns, most importantly Elliot Reid (played by beautiful Sarah Chalke). The rest of the main cast are head nurse Carla, chief of medicine Bob Kelso, senior attending doctor Perry Cox and hospital Janitor. There are many more recurring and minor characters to mention all of them. Casting is really great, even with some of the character have much smaller roles in the beginning (like Janitor played by Neil Flynn), but will be much more important later.

Even with great cast and characters, there are times when you can have problems following the dialogs, because they are really fast and snappy. But, that is a great excuse to watch the series many times to catch all great moments.

Story

Scrubs

Scrubs is narrated by the series main character JD played by Zach Braff. But it’s not simply narration, JD has a whole day dreaming thing going and all that is a part of the series. At least few minutes of every episode show what’s going on in JD’s mind. And all that is very funny. Later in the series, from time to time, we will see day dreaming scenes from all the other characters. Anyway, first season is the year of internship for the young doctors and them learning more about what hospitals are really like.

Production

Series is created by the ABC Production, but it’s aired by the rival NBC TV. This was unusual arrangement , but for several years was actually working. Sets and visual effects are very good, but music could be better.

Conclusion

Simply amazing comedy that you need to see. I am not big fan of medical series, but Scrubs (much like House) adds many unique things to the genre that are refreshing and funny.

Every once in a while, a new series is created that will use the classic idea of a police drama and add something new and interesting. And the end result in this case was a series called simply Life. It’s a real pity that series lasted only two seasons, but at least they managed to wrap the main storyline. There was a rumor about some other television will pick up the series after cancellation by NBC, but so far that is not happening.

Main story

Charlie Crews is a police detective wrongfully accused for triple murder, and sentenced to prison for life. After 12 years in maximum security jail he was released and returns to his police job, and gets 50 million dollars settlement. Damian Lewis is excellent in the role of Charlie, and he has proven again that he is excellent actor. His partner on the force is young detective Dani Reese, played by wonderful Sarah Shahi. And while they are working on cases, he also investigates people that set him up in the first place. That main storyline is very complicated, with many people implicated in the cover up, and it will take a lot of time before Charlie discovers the truth.

Characters

During the first season we get to know the way Charlie is changed by the prison. Most of that is wrapped by the short narrated Zen-Buddhism quotes. Characters are great, and not only Charlie and Dani. Charlie’s lawyer, his accountant and jail buddy, Charlie’s former partner. Some parts of every episode are filmed as a documentary and his friends, his ex wife and few other people are talking about Charlie. Humor is also a big part of the show, and Charlie is often puzzled by the new technology invented while he was in jail.

Life season 1 cast

Production

Show is basically the police drama, and for the most part looks like any other similar shows. But, it’s not very important because the story and characters is what the series about. Music is excellent, and mixed with narrations are very important for driving the story.

Conclusion

I really recommend Life. Catch the reruns or get the DVD’s, because it’s really worth watching. Season 2 review coming soon.

The West Wing is fairly unique television show that focuses on a president of USA and his White House administration. This political drama is created by Aaron Sorkin and premiered in 1999 and lasted for 7 whole seasons. Both president and his administration are liberal, and at times idealized but at any point I didn’t take this as a bad thing. I really enjoyed the show, some seasons more, some less, but always well worth watching.

Show starts after a year of the term start for the new president Josiah Barttlet (amazing work by Martin Sheen), economist, Nobel award winner and highly educated, even a geek. This first season for the most part is an introduction in a ways of political system and political games, challenges of the office of the president and confrontation with congress an senate with republican majority. First season ends with very exciting cliff hanger, and the same will happen with every season until the last one. They really know how to create the tension.

Characters

Beside Sheen, I would like to point out few major character that I really liked, starting with Donna Moss, portrayed by Janel Moloney. She was part of support cast, but because of here excellent performance, her character became much more prominent in the coming seasons. Her boss, deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) and communication director Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) are also excellent character and perfect cast. I didn’t like much Rob Lowe because at times his performance was over the top, and over played. Many minor and supporting characters were also excellent, and I would like to single out presidents personal secretary played by Kathryn Joosten.

The West Wing cast

Production

Show is focused and driven by the dialog, and most of the episodes use walk and talk technique to give the sow illusion of things progressing, even without the real action. Most of the locations used in the first season are the White House, but still we get to see quite a bit working of Secret Service, Airforce One and famous presidential motorcade. Music is done well, and adds a lot to a tension of the show.

Conclusion

This is really excellent show that will need from a viewer a degree of engagement into the story and a lot of concentration for following the complex story lines and massive amount of dialog. Also, I learned a lot about USA political system, so that’s a bonus. My recommendation is to give this show a chance, I am sure that you will like it.