After the wrapup of Battlestar Galactica and the first two Stargate shows on SyFy, I was worried about the future of good sci-fi programming on cable.
Most nights, SyFy foists a menu of pseudo-reality shows, movies about Giant Monsters, and professional wrestling on you. But they’ve got a few new shows that are definitely worth a look.
Warehouse 13 is our current favorite. It’s a humorous and creative series along the lines of the old Friday the 13th (not the movie, the television series), about a top-secret government warehouse where they store mysterious artifacts with unusual and mysterious powers. The two main characters are secret-service agents who travel around the world trying to recover lost ones before they can do any damage.
Season one was a little slow getting off the ground, but in season two they’ve hit their stride.
The cast is adorable (especially that Myka!) and has great chemistry, and the writing is terrific. Next Tuesday is the beginning of a two-part season finale.
Over on AMC, right before Mad Men on Sunday nights, is Rubicon. It’s a layered and mysterious story about a spy agency. Now the first episodes were brilliant, deeply confusing (in a good way) as you tried to tease out who is an ally and who is an enemy, who is working for who, and what exactly they’re trying to do. The last two episodes not so much — a little too comprehensible and transparent, and therefore mundane. But it’s earned a little patience.
Coming up later this month, a third series of Stargate Universe. Like Warehouse 13, season one was a dud — like the old Lost In Space series, it was the planet-of-the-week. But season two really took off and we couldn’t take our eyes off it.
And that’s about it. We don’t watch a whole lot of TV, so the things we pick are carefully selected and we set aside the time to follow the smart shows.