WinsomeHax

This series is breathtakingly ambitious. The first season is science fiction as it should be done on TV. It didn't expect it to go even further in the second season.

The story begins, no spoilers, with the idea of the first humans who upload into computers and how this triggers the SF concept of "singularity". All I have told you so far is what you can read on a "premise" of the show.

The show is animated but don't let that pit you off. The voice talent is stellar. The story in season 1 takes its time to get going as it begins in the mundane and then launches into SF. Trust me when I tell you it's nothing compared to where season 2 is eventually going.

It's a well made and intelligent science fiction TV show and deserves your attention.

This show is written by Orson Scott Card - if that puts you off because of the near-constant howling of outrage mobs - well shame on you.

It's made by Brigham Young University - The Mormons.

But don't let that distract you... as I did at first. This is a well made and interesting show. There's no religious lecturing in it... but it's quite unlike a lot of modern TV/movies. No gratuitous sex or violence... no crass woke... no LGBT inserts... but a lot of interesting SCIFI ideas.

The show really deserved a better fate than just one obscure season. It's perfectly enjoyable.

20 minutes.

That's how long I lasted. Twenty minutes into the first episode. Bad writing, bad acting, low quality FX. There's nothing at all to recommend it.

I want to give a show a chance, but I have my limits.

Great stuff. I went into this with few expectations. The first episode looked good and it just kept on getting better.

Beautifully shot, well acted (use the Japanese audio and English subtitles)... it keeps you guessing. The only criticism I can actually think of is occasionally overdoing the extreme emotional close up (esp the end of the first hearts game)... but this is minor and probably personal taste.

This is a great series and it seems it's been renewed too. Nice.

Love, death and Robots gets off to a rocky start. The first episode "Sonnie's Edge" has beautiful imagery, but rapidly becomes crass. The second episode is annoying. I found myself fast forwarding through them. However... episode 7 is great. Then it's back to fast forwarding through episodes again... until episode 14 "Zima Blue", which is another good one.

So season 1 has 2 or 3 out of 18 episodes worth watching.

Season 2 has 8 episodes... with a few worth watching. So a higher hit rate.

Season 3 though... really seems to raise the game. Most of the episodes are worth the effort with some very entertaining and creepy efforts. "Night of the mini-dead" and "Swarm" being two standouts for me - episode 2 "Bad travelling" is also extremely well-made.

So stick with it. The quality is variable, but the 3 season seems to have much higher quality control, and the entire shows is a demonstration of how good computer graphics have become.

Each episode is short - between about 35-45 minutes.

And honestly, that's it's only saving grace. The show starts well, with a NATO solider hijacking a plane and demanding it fly West immediately to avoid the sun. Ok... but that's about the only interesting thing in the show.

The rest is just some unlikely coincidences and a lot of manufactured interpersonal drama between the passengers and silly logic. The show is extremely low budget... and it shows by rarely if ever leaving the plane interior. There are some very rudimentary occasional FX.

That said, low budget isn't really a bad thing - see the movie Cube for example.

But Into The Night starts to become annoying as you realise that the story doesn't seem to be really going anywhere beyond the sun becoming lethal. There's no real expansion on the mystery and in my case I started fast forwarding through the episodes towards the end of S1.

And then you realise that S2 has just moved from one interior micro-budget set to another.

I honestly don't know whether I can pluck up the stamina for S2. Maybe I will fast-forward through it.

The original film has a dumb premise. A perpetual motion train engine that keeps running around the world on the oddly still maintained single global track - despite a global catastrophe freezing the entire world.

It never made a lick of sense.

But ok... the film used this conceit to tell a fairly tight story about class.

So why turn it into a TV series? Desperation for content perhaps.

The result is a boring mess that after a reasonably competent opening then follows it up by showing how infected with "modern" writing it is.

I managed to get three episodes in before I just couldn't bring myself to invest any more time or effort in it.

A genuinely awful butchering of Henry James' work. Not all the actors are terrible, but most are. You have some genuinely creepy ideas but stitched together by awful dialogue and woke-isms. I went to see who'd written it... and was suddenly struck by the realisation that this series has one of the most blatant author self-inserts I've ever seen. Honestly... I took to fast forwarding through lots of it.

One episode was enough. I usually give shows at least two, even if they are bad. I want to give them a chance to redeem themselves. But this was so awful I couldn't manage it. Stupid people writing about smart people is never a good idea. Everyone in this show behaves like an imbecile. That tells you a lot about the writers. And the acting is awful too. Unsalvageable... hence one episode.

I gave up after two episodes. It looked really promising. The first episode is shaky, but they often are... there's a lot to introduce. Things get worrying when the gratuitous progressive inserts start - even in the first episode. "man-splaining"... really. Seriously get some better writers.