Jericho, Continuum and Revolution...

There have been a number of television series produced recently with exciting premises to them.  Jericho featured an all to prevalent fear in which terrorists got hold of nuclear devices and set them off in a number of major American cities. The series centred on a small town’s struggle to survive in the aftermath as the world’s superpower went into meltdown. Sadly it officially ended after only two seasons by which time it had got out from the immediate concerns of survival and into American politics of a post United States era.

Recently I’ve been intrigued by two particular series.  One, Continuum features characters drawn from the latter half of the 21^st century being drawn back in time to our contemporary era.  The future here is one of a high-tech surveillance based corporate state, a fascist Orwellian mix.  The rebels of this corporatocracy end up fleeing back in time to now but not before killing thousands in a blow for freedom. In an interesting mash up of virtues, the rebels really are, to continue the 1984 context, prepared to throw acid in a child’s face to secure their goals.  The police officer pursuing them who ends up in our time hails from a middle class family and is principally interested in preserving the status quo so her family’s comfortable life in 2077 is not disturbed.  Particularly striking are the sequences in which downtown Vancouver is transformed into the city it will be in over sixty years time. 

Also I’ve been watching Revolution, the most recent release. Here, for reasons that are so far unknown, at a particular instant all electronic and mechanical power stopped working, seemingly forever.  The show skips between shortly after this society altering moment and fifteen years later.  At that later date, the USA has collapsed into a number of smaller states including the Monroe Republic in which the series takes place.  I particularly enjoyed the action sequences which were well planned and the sight of sword play in an American setting was excitingly incrongruous. Billy Burke is always worth watching and his performance adds a lot of tension.  It certainly looks intriguing but I’m not clear how all technology and machinery fail to work yet guns still fire perfectly normally.  In addition, as with the BBC’s new version of Survivors, it seems that despite the manufacturing, distribution and the sale of new clothes and hair products stopping some time ago everybody still manages to look well groomed and in clean, new clothing.