Just watched the DVDs of season one of the Beeb’s Outcasts. I liked it but wiki says it has been cancelled and I’ll never find out what happens with the host force. Waaaaah!!!.
Is there any hope the series will be picked up by any entity more appreciative?
There was a suggestion that the writer was going to finish the story off as a novel, but I’ve not heard any more about that in some months.
In the current climate there is no hope of this series being made which is a good thing from my point of view. SF, Fantasy and horror is not treated well at the BBC. Any production (such as Outcasts) which is so clearly SF and yet shouts so loudly THIS IS NOT SF has a problem. The BBC has also cancelled The Fades and reduced the next run of Being Human to 6 episodes.
If you are not Dr Who, a rubbish talent show, crime drama or feature the halcyon days of Empire (preferably Victorian or Edwardian times) then the BBC doesn’t want you.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by
gav.
I did not realise The Fades had not been recommissioned; it wasn’t half bad.
To be honest, I’m not that bothered about Outcasts being canned – they turned it into a soap opera in another planet, and only engaged at a SFnal level (and that very lightly) towards the end of the series, after they had lost any hope of building and keeping an audience.
I quite liked Survivors when it was on. Perhaps not as much charm as the original series, but well-acted and had a good sense of tension between the characters.
Fantasy has a better chance of getting commissioned in my opinion, than SF. Merlin (though it’s aimed at a younger audience) has had a good few series and the success of the Game of Thrones adaptation may persuade the BBC to take on something similar.
It appears that the the cancellation of the Fades was a shock to everyone. It was popular (among critics and viewers) and it’s first run attracted good viewing figures. If you hunt around you’ll find interviews with the writer and producer were they were still saying another series was coming right up until the cancellation was made official. There’s some hope that the show could be picked up by another television station.
The BBC have made a number of perplexing choices recently – axing popular shows and replacing them with repeats… all in the name of “quality” (whatever that actually means).
HBO has recently demonstrated that if you spend some time and money and make a quality show people will respond in kind. They made Mad Men, Rome (series 1…) and now GoT – all which have been the sort of quality telly people like.
If you look at the BBC’s output in the past it was clearly capable of commissioning and producing this sort work. Quite why they’ve lost their mojo is a mystery to me.
Cynical Gav thinks that the current government is attempting to undermine the Beeb so that it can easily be privatised. I have no evidence of that (other than occasional articles in the Torygraph and sundry lackies) but I wouldn’t be surprised if this happens soon.
Cynical Gav is probably right; there’s a large constituency (mostly aligned with the Conservative party) that thinks the licence fee is a tax and restricts choice and should be abolished.
As someone who originally comes from outside the UK and has been exposed to very poor quality television with interminable ad breaks, I cannot for the life of me understand the amount of criticism the BBC gets and, despite your comments above about “quality”, I believe it’s still responsible for ensuring there are minimum standards of quality across the TV spectrum.
I posted about this a couple of months ago on g+ if anyoe’s interested:
https://plus.google.com/110643251545630262762/posts/2kaNQjRWeZs
As someone who originally comes from outside the UK and has been exposed to very poor quality television with interminable ad breaks, I cannot for the life of me understand the amount of criticism the BBC gets and, despite your comments above about “quality”, I believe it’s still responsible for ensuring there are minimum standards of quality across the TV spectrum.
As someone who has lived outside the UK for a few years, I completely agree with you here.
I have seen some awful TV in mainland Europe – endless repeats of aged British and American comedies hacked to pieces so that plenty of ad breaks could be inserted.
The BBC does come in for a lot of criticism – and it’s not a perfect organisation – but we are all a lot better off for its existence.
The BBC does come in for a lot of criticism – and it’s not a perfect organisation – but we are all a lot better off for its existence.
Don’t get me wrong I am a defender of the BBC and its right to exist as is. It is under sustained attack at the moment and this makes their recent decisions either perplexing or understandable (depending on whether you believe in the conspiracies…).
The only bright spots in TVland are the Beeb and similar dramas from Canada and Australia. Even their radio is better – just proves that profit is not very conducive to making interesting shows. The Beeb has the greatest presence in the US but Paul Gross is doing interesting films in Canada. His “Paaschendaele” was far better than “War Horse” – which the latter copied a great deal though making it less believable. What little is on US TV that is worth all the ads [30% of air time during prime time] comes from Vancouver. If the GOPhad their way it would ALL be ads…. it already is after midnight. I wish I could say cable is better but I cancelled that years ago – 250 channels of nonsense. [Now the ISPs are capping data and internet freedom so that people are forced back to TV propaganda].
Douglas Adams was the force behind much of the scifi production at the Beeb – he is sorely missed. When BBC7 radio had a Dr. Who type put in charge of the 7th Dimension it meant downhill for scifi from there on – the demise of BBC7 was entirely predictable at that point.
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This reply was modified 1 year ago by
Judy__.
I too enjoyed this show, mostly for its acting. I watch 5 minutes of “Sanctuary” (I think), then flicked over and saw this it was so much better. Hermione Norris in particular has been great in everything I’ve seen her in.
The show copped very heavy criticism in the uk, I think particularly for its plotting which was a bit sketchy. The sf elements (eg. “the mysterious behaviour of the planet”) seemed very haphazard and inconsistent and I’m not sure they were going anywhere. Some of the characters who were supposed to be competent were allowed to make and get away with decisions that were very dumb.
It’s a shame because I think the should could have been rescued. With a strong cast and decent characters the plot is the easiest thing to fix up I would think.
I had the distinct impression some bureaucrat was meddling in the scripting. The writers were better than that.
Yes, it suffered from the meddling but compared to something like “Glee” or “American Idol” it was positively brilliant.
I liked Amy Manson. Mabius played a baddie right out of this year’s US politics. Maybe the “right” didn’t like his Julius Berger character.
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This reply was modified 1 year ago by Judy__.
I thought Outcasts went a fair way to redeem itself in later episodes. However the fact that set dressing annoyed me so much early on speaks volumes of the early episodes.
I mean would you really take CRT screens (used for makeshift effect) to another planet? And with weight so prohibitive to space travel would anyone seriosly be allowed to take a stack of vinyl records?
Shocked to see The Fades has been scrapped, I was hoping it would take the baton from Being Human of which the latest series was a mess!
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