Spud Rating System
√√√√ – Must See
√√√ – Worth Seeing
√√ – Take It Or Leave It, Unless You’re A Fan
√ – Sucks
• Summer TV Doldrums? – I Don’t Think So.
• But It’s No Game Of Thrones
• Spuditorial — Remembrance Of Lemmings Past
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Summer TV Doldrums? – I Don’t Think So.
The mainline network TV season kind of works like the school season. It cranks up in September and October and goes full tilt for a couple of months, then shuts down between American Thanksgiving and The SuperBowl then cranks back up again until May.
After that things kinda go to hell in a handbasket until September. Or at least they used to before the coming of the US Cable Networks like FX, AMC A&E, SyFy, USA, TNT, Showtime and of course HBO to name but a few.
These networks operate, it would appear, based on the assumption that TV viewers are still around in the late spring and summer months. A fact of life that the mainline networks have never really come to embrace. In fact there are more than enough people around to have made Substantial hits out of several of the great summer series like Damages, Leverage, Warehouse 13, Burn Notice, Covert Affairs, White Collar, Memphis Beat, The Glades, and of course the big Kahuna of summer series all, True Blood. Not to mention a whole raft of independent, BBC and ITV shows that launch at this time of year including Game of Thrones, Injustice, Thorne, The Shadow Line and Camelot.
Starting late June.
This spring, I have spotted a couple of new shows worth looking for. Franklin and Bash which is a kind of lighthearted legal dramady, is very well put together and ably anchored by Malcolm MacDowell and Teen Wolf, which is albeit, aimed at a younger audience but is produced and directed by A-list action director Russell Mulcahy, (Highlander). New shows that will be appearing shortly include: Falling Skies, a big budget sci-fi adventure series on TNT and probably Space here in Canada and Alphas, another sci-fi adventure series that looks very cool indeed.
Obviously nobody has the kind of money it takes to put on a big time network show and run it year round. So the networks are simply behaving in a very logical way. But as a marketing person, I really have to admire the ‘find a need and fill it’ mentality of the cable networks, who have created a whole other season of programming for people like me, who like to go out and play when it’s warm, but eventually come back inside with a few TV hours to kill before bedtime.
Coming in July.
I guess you could call it one of the few upsides of the billion channel universe. Unless of course you’re one of those people who live and die by the goings on on Survivor, The Apprentice, The Amazing Race or any of the cooking shows featuring that sadistic bastard Gordon Ramsay . These shows are fine, but here at Spud Central the rules are pretty clear. Reality is depressing enough, why add to it by spending time with reality TV, our weakness for So You Think You Can Dance, not withstanding.
But It’s No Game Of Thrones √√√√
In every generation of TV programs, since I was a kid there, has always been some show that was the gold standard, to which everything else was compared. My earliest recollection was Gunsmoke. You’d be having a conversation with your buds and some other show’s name would come up and you’d say, “Yeah, its OK but it’s no Gunsmoke.” I can’t recall how many pinnacle shows got substituted in that sentence over the years, but they included among others: Hawaii Five-O, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Have Gun Will Travel, Bonanza, The Prisoner, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Wiseguy, Star Trek, The West Wing and The Sopranos.
But about two months ago, a new show was added to this illustrious list. It’s called Game Of Thrones and it represents the largest investment in a TV series maybe ever.
I was over at my son’s house for brunch and the old chestnut with the new name was bandied about more than a few times. “Spartacus/Camelot/The Borgias? They’re OK, but they’re no Game of Thrones.”
Game of Thrones has pretty much taken the TV world by storm. It’s a big, lavish HBO fantasy series
The amazing Sean Bean as Ned Stark, my new fictional hero.
that’s basically one story told on several different interconnected fronts. It actually took me a couple of episodes to figure it all out, but what an entertaining ride it has been. The complexity of what’s going on here is one of the most delicious parts of the experience.
Game of Thrones is based on a series of fantasy novels by some dude named George RR Martin, called A Song of Fire & Ice. And its filled with amazing amounts of political skullduggery, back stabbing, sex, scary creatures, mysticism, violence, foul language and all the magnificence required to elevate this production to the highest level of what’s going on in TeeVee Land right now. In fact, it was renewed for a second season the day after it’s first episode aired. Now that’s something!
The story itself is a metaphor, it would seem, for the European continent. There are kingdoms scattered all around. The kingdoms are united in an uneasy truce that is threatened in an ever growing number of ways. I am really oversimplifying here, because the story itself is much more complex. There are questions of succession, shifting alliances and high levels of lust for power. And none of this is sugar coated in the least. This is powerful stuff that really walks the talk.
I’m trying not to tell you too much about the actual story, because sooner or later you will have to see this, as it is truly some of the most incredible TV you will have ever seen.
Game of Thrones is to TV what Peter Jackson’s Lord of The Rings was to mainstream cinema. Big, complex, intelligent, extremely well written, acted and produced. And it will be quite a while before anything this powerful supplants it in the sentence, “(Show Name) is great but it’s definitely no Game Of Thrones.”
I'm certain the professor would see the humour here.
- Spuditorial — Remembrance Of Lemmings Past
- Yesterday, while prowling around my local dollar store, I ran into a blast from the past in the person of Adrienne Tyson. Adrienne is a beautiful petit woman now, but when I last saw here she was in her mid-teens. She was the daughter of one of my closest friends at the time. A man named Brian Tyson, or the Professor, as he was known. Professor Lemmings Northward.
We talked for quite a while and I found out that, in addition to living a few blocks from me, Adrienne was a single mom and a totally dedicated one at that. She told me that she had seen me riding around on my bike quite a few times but for some reason she had never flagged me down. Her dad was not just a friend, he was also a client of mine both when I worked in the agencies and for a couple of years afterwards. Unfortunately, he died in his early forties from an incurable disease. But he was a good and true friend whom I was in contact with pretty much right up to the time he passed on.
I remember him telling me that he honestly felt that he had packed more actually living into his 43 years than most people who live to be twice that ever will. That was true for sure.
After he was gone I wrote a goodbye note to him, which I published in a very early issue of the Chronicles. I’ve kept this note for more than 20 years, and look at it from time to time, to remind me of someone who was special in my life. When started to think about leaving the ad agency world and go on my own, Brian was my biggest cheerleader.
Seeing Adrienne again after all these years, seeing the bright, powerful woman she had become, partly I’m sure from having a father who lived every day of his life to the fullest, caused me to dig around in my ancient archive (I am a digital pack rat), find that goodbye note and publish it once again.
Memo
To: Professor Lemmings Northward
Subject: The Temporary Alteration Of Our Friendship
Dear Professor
It seems you are no longer with us. I know this was not an exit of your choosing, as you would undoubtedly have chosen something much more grandiose, in keeping with your true personality.
Your passing has left a crater the size of Alberta in my soul. One does not acquire many true friends in this life and I can count them all on the fingers of my hands. Especially those who always seemed larger than life to me. Your approach to living was a study in organized chaos. There was always a method to your madness and your madness was always the good kind. The kind that made people laugh when they were down or feel at ease when they were uptight or feel confident when they were skeptical.
Even though we knew each other for only a few short years, that doesn’t really matter when it comes to true friendships. Those years were great ones. Sitting around at the Harbour Castle while the kids splashed in the over-chlorinated pool, sipping iced tea and reading the New York Sunday times and pretty much solving all the world’s problems. Hanging out over at Stewart’s house trying to be wittier than the British. Mid-town lunches at the Pilot. (Maybe that’s why you called your company Pilot Marketing…I never asked but probably should have), where you seemed to know everyone. The day I found you sitting in Rupert Brendon’s office lecturing the president of my agency on the finer points of dealing with high strung creative people. And Rupert sitting there wide eyed, astonished by your chutzpah, and wondering “Who the hell is Professor Lemmings Northward?”
That’s never been an easy question to answer. Marketing genius. Visionary. Dedicated father. Big hearted friend. All of the aforementioned.
And now you’ve transcended to the next dimension. I’m pretty sure there is one now, because I know you wouldn’t have gone otherwise. So thanks for that.
The thing about good and true friends is that, physical unavailability not withstanding, they are always with you. No matter where they happen to be. I think about you all the time. And though the years have caused the memories to fade a bit, the essence of our friendship, like a tiny pearl in an aged oyster, remains intact. I’m sure we will be friends to the end, despite the inconvenience of your not actually being with us any longer.
Thanks for the good times Professor and the life lessons that you taught by example. You’re leaving a lot behind. Hopefully everyone is equipped to carry on. I am, but the hole in my soul will always be there, and somehow, in some weird way, I can never see that as a bad thing.
Sincerely, J Murray
The Couch Potato Chronicles Is A Wholly Owned
Intellectual Subsidiary of Onwords & Upwords Inc.
