tv review
Reviewing insightful and thought provoking science fiction TV and technology.
Review of 'Severance' 1.4
A more disturbing episode of Severance -- 1.4 -- than usual, because [Spoilers ahead ... ] Well, if you saw the episode, up since Friday on Apple TV+, you'll know why: Helly takes her life, or tries to take her life, at the end of the hour. I make that distinction because, you know how it is on television, if a character's head isn't literally severed (for want of a better word), than she or he might well have survived. In Helly's case, someone in that hell on Earth might have come by and rescued her.
By Paul Levinson4 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'Star Trek: Picard' 2.1
The debut episode of the second season of Star Trek: Picard on Paramount+ was enjoyable, notwithstanding the annoying commercial breaks which lacerated the narrative on the paying service. (Yes, I'm too cheap to pay more for Paramount+ with no commercials.)
By Paul Levinson4 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'Severance' 1.3
It's hard to watch and review a profoundly dystopian science fiction series when a profoundly dystopian reality -- the horrendous, Nazi-like invasion of Ukraine by Russia -- is going on and available to see on a myriad of television screens. I'll be interviewing the Polish holocaust poet Grzegorz Kwiatowski about this on Monday (I'll be posting links to the video and audio recordings to that interview here), but for now, I wanted to take an hour to keep up with and review episode 1.3 of Severance on Apple TV+.
By Paul Levinson4 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'Raised by Wolves' 2.4
A really superb and pivotal Raised by Wolves 2.4, in which every kind of sentience is pitted against one another. Since most of the sentience is one kind or another of artificial intelligence, usually embodied in some kind of android, the contests and their outcomes provide one of the best explorations of the power and limitations of programmed android intelligence in any television series. Isaac Asimov would have loved this. I wonder if he would have agreed that this was a far better example of such exploration of android intelligence than we've at least seen so far in the Foundation series on Apple TV+.
By Paul Levinson4 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'Severance' 1.1-1.2
Finally saw the first two episodes of Severance. Well it's only been up on Apple TV+ for less than a week, and I'd intended to watch the two episodes earlier, but got caught up in other things, and I wanted to give those two episodes my full attention. Hey, I almost sound like one of those perpetually apologetic workers (John Turturro's Irving in particular) in that quasi-totalitarian workplace, in which workers or "innies" have no knowledge of their lives outside of work, and vice versa, hence the title of the series, Severance.
By Paul Levinson4 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'Beforeigners' seasons 1 and 2
I just binged the first two seasons -- twelve episodes -- of Beforeigners on HBO Max over the past few nights. On Jackie Reich's suggestion. She was Chair of my Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, and is now Dean of the School of Communication and the Arts at Marist College. She told me on Twitter, "I think about you when I watch it — all that time travel!" She has my number. As Ricky Nelson almost said, "I am a [time-] travelin man."
By Paul Levinson4 years ago in Futurism
