Some new fandoms
I thought I’d mention some of my ‘new’ fandoms – not necessarily ones I’ll write fic in, but still fandoms I quite enjoy one way or another. Later I’ll probably review some or most of these.
Here is the list:
Mr Selfridge
Death in Paradise
Bletchley Circle
(VikingsHill)
Sherlock
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries
VikingsHill is a Swedish YA serial with an intriguing plot, but annoyingly, it’s only five (1) minutes long, which includes a brief preview of next week’s episode. It’s about a teenaged girl who moves to a new residential area that I find a little creepy. All the houses are exactly the same and the area seems to be more or less dead at all times. You only see the school kids going to and from school. The new girl has a mysterious past and things start getting more mysterious her first day in school. Everyone stares at her and whisper behind her back. Eventually, someone tells her that there was a girl who looked exactly like her who disappeared five months earlier. She gets to know some people and tries to figure out some of the mystery, but no one seems to be exactly who they seem to be and she doesn’t know who to trust. It’s definitely not the people who show up wearing masks and stay around for a while to stare at her. This is a web only series. I like that, but most series are available online now, which is very convenient for me. I just don’t seem to be able to turn on the tv (or rather the computer) at the right time. 😉 Here is an image from the series. You won’t be able to watch the episode but maybe you’ll be able to see the pic.
Since I’m sure everyone knows what Sherlock is I’ll just mention that I really enjoyed the last episode of the third season. I wasn’t sure I would, but I did.
In case you’re not familiar with the series, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is a quite interesting Australian mystery series about a woman who solves mysteries in 1920’s Melbourne, with the help of her maid Dot, two cops, two taxi drivers, and a female doctor. Phryne Fisher has an interesting background, some of it quite dark, but now she is living it up, partying and chasing men, when she’s not out solving mysteries and making sure victims of crime get justice. She’s also an early feminist.
I imagine most of my readers are familiar with the rest of these series, but in case you’re not, I’ll just say a few words about them.
Mr Selfridge is a historic series about the man who founded the department store Selfridges. In season 2 the producers seem to have given up on trying to follow the real Mr Selfridge’s life, simply because comparatively little is known about him. I think that’s an improvement. This season seems to be even better than the first one.
Death in Paradise is, not surprisingly, a cop series, with a bit of comedy. It’s set in a tropical island. There’s also a really hot cop – Fidel Best (played by Gary Carr, known from Downton Abbey) – but I kind of like the other cops too.
Bletchley Circle is about a group of women who worked at Bletchley Park during the war. They are brilliant at cracking codes. Now they’re having trouble adapting to live in postwar England and the enforced inactivity, so they’ve turned to solving murders.
It’s no coincidence that half of these series are historic. I really love the genre. (I also love science fiction, but there seems to be little of that on Swedish tv. Not that I watch much of our tv. Netflix has come in very handy.)
I’d say Bletchley Circle is my favorite, though I know I’ll never write any fic about it. Actually, I like/have liked all of these series.
The 1990’s
So, now it’s official. The 1990’s are retreating even further into the past. From now on, I’m going to have to consider stories/tv series/movies etc from the 1990’s ‘historic’. It feels odd, I had barely grown used to the ‘noughties’ and now we’re in the tens? Anyway, X files, Roswell and all those ‘big’ 90’s series are now historic in the sense that you can hardly see them as contemporary anymore. Not like Heroes, FlashForward, Being Human etc. Scary, but I guess you just have to accept it and move on. Maybe it would be easier if the tv series, movies and music were just better.