Reviews Reactor

Stranger Things 2 is a follow-up to last year's excellent Netflix original series Stranger Things, and it takes place approximately 1 year after the events of the first season. A new threat is looming, and poor Will Byers is once again at the center of it.  I absolutely adored the first season, it was one of my favorite new series to come out recently and I was super pumped up for the second season. And thankfully, it delivered once again. The Duffer Brothers managed to give us another season full of mystery and thrills, fun and feels. Once again, the performances were great across the board, talking about them would take too long so I'll just mention my personal favorite this time. Mille Bobby Brown (Eleven) was the standout last time; this time, however, Noah Schnapp (Will) absolutely KILLED IT. He didn't have much to showcase his acting talent chops in season 1 since he was absent for most of it, but here he brought it all, and it was wonderful. Shawn ...

Sense8 is a sci-fi drama series from Netflix and is created by the one and only Wachowskis (and J. Micheal Straczynski). It is about eight people from around the world that are mentally linked with each other. This premise gave the series a large main set of characters of different ethnicities, culture etc, and made it quite varied. Now, the Wachowskis have had a really bumpy ride so far, with supreme highs like The Matrix to abysmal lows as Jupiter Ascending, so I wasn't really sure what to expect from this series. But I'm glad to say that this is a proper comeback from them.  The story is interesting, and while there is the main overarching storyline that connects everything, you also get eight different storylines. Not all of them are equally good or interesting, BUT even the worst among them is still intriguing enough. Same is the case with the characters themselves. There are some I definitely liked/loved more than others, but the show does a great job of gi...

Glitch is an Australian mystery-drama TV series and it is about a small town where things turn upside down for a cop and other people as six deceased people suddenly rise back one fateful night.   The story/premise intrigued me from the start. You feel just as confused as the people in the show. How did they come back? Why are they back? Is it something supernatural? Or is it science related? All these questions and more raise through your head in the first episode and becomes the framework of the series experience.  Now, there is a good amount of characters in it, but they don't get an equal amount of development, nor are they all interesting or well acted. But the ones that are interesting certainly keep the intrigue level high enough that you want to know more and want them to solve this mystery and get answers.  The story creates interesting scenarios and makes you wonder what would you do if you were thrown in this situation. And like I ...

"We’re all dying. That’s what defines the condition of living ." The Crown is a series about Queen Elizabeth II and her early years as the Queen. Now personally, I don't really have that much interest in the subject matter and wouldn't go actively look for media showcasing it, but after hearing so many great things about it, I decided to give it a watch. To my surprise, I was hooked from the start. The series is so well made, the execution of everything is so exemplary, and its pacing is remarkably well balanced (for a series like this), that I couldn't help but have a wonderful time with it. I was intrigued by the inner workings of the royal household, and how the crown weighs on the bearer and the people surrounding them.  The casting was damn good. Many of the actors do look similar to the personalities they are portraying in that time, and the acting itself was marvelous. Clair Foy is so lovely and plays as the queen with great beauty. John Lithgow...

"These violent delights have violent ends." Westworld is a sci-fi series from HBO and is about a futuristic western-themed park populated by artificial being or hosts (as they are called in the series) where rich people can come and do whatever they want. The premise alone was enough for me to warrant a watch as the subject matter of the series is something I have a very high interest in. And to my utmost delight, the series deeply explored it and gave me the experience I always wanted.  It is created by Jonathon Nolan (brother of Christopher Nolan) and Lisay Joy, and they both did a marvelous job with it. The world, the characters; the moral, ethical and philosophical dilemmas; all the interesting stuff I look forward to in things tackling this genre were top notch.  The series boasted an impressive cast with some A-List actors thrown in the mix and the resulting acting was good to spectacular across the board, but the two standouts for me were Anthony H...

Harper's Island is a show about an island where a couple decides to get married, but soon after arrival, people start dying one by one. Sooooo, I didn't like it. The show was just filled with so many stupid moments that I couldn't take it anymore. There are a lot of characters but most of them were cliched meh. Acting wasn't that good either from a lot of the cast, so that didn't help. The first couple of episodes really weren't doing anything for me, but since there were only 13 episodes in total, I decided to stick with it and end it (would have dropped it otherwise). But I'll give the show credit where credit is due. It increased my interest in the story after several episodes. There was this stretch of 4 or 5 episodes where it actually got good, and I was on-board. The pacing felt fine, the thrills were coming, the situations were entertaining. The characters I did like got better, and the ones that were meh, got less meh. Also, being on an...

The Nigh Of is a mini-series from HBO and it's about a guy who, on one night, finds himself in a very sticky situation when the girl he was with ends up dead and he becomes the main suspect. From a glance, this might look like another murder mystery type show, but in actuality, it is more about being in this situation, and how the system is flawed.  In usual HBO fashion, the pacing of the show is slow, but the good kind. Everything takes its time and lets you soak it all in. The tension slowly creeps up on you during crucial moments, and builds and builds, putting you on the edge of your seat, without rushing anything. Since there are only eight episodes, there isn't a moment of boredom to be found, even if things slow down to a great deal.  From crime-scene to police stations and trials, everything feels laid out to a great degree of detail. People are simply doing there job, going about their business while the protagonist finds himself in this situation. It al...

Stranger Things is a Netflix original series about a disappearance of a boy in a small town, and the efforts of his family and friends in order to find him, in the midst of strange events. This show's popularity really blew up after its release this year. It was everywhere, and I finally got around to watching it, and to see what all the big fuss was about. And well, the hype is real. I'll be very honest, I don't think I have ever seen a show that got me hooked so badly, so quickly, and maintained that interest throughout with extreme consistency. I started it after midnight, with a plan of watching a couple of episodes that night (Working Day, had to get up early), and continuing the rest next day. But instead of that, I stayed up till morning and completed it in one go. It literally glued me to the TV. Now, the thing that was most prevalent in hooking me to this show, at least at the start anyway, was the setting. It hit all the right points for me considering...

The Newsroom is an HBO series created by Aaron Sorkin, who has written great dialogue based movies like The Social Network and Steve Jobs. It is about a news network that undergoes some changes and decides to do deliver proper news, and the ordeals they have to go through because of that. Aaron Sorkin is an amazing writer. He just has this natural talent for making dialogue driven stuff. This series oozes with that. A show about news is obviously going to be nothing but dialogue throughout, and he made it work so SO well. I loved seeing how the news worked, how people dedicated themselves to delivering the truth, how real events from recent years were covered and how brutally honest the show could be at times. And because of Sorkin's writing, it always felt fast paced but natural at the same time, embedding the feeling and urgency of their jobs. All that could not have been possible without the cast, which was so perfect, with Jeff Daniels taking the charge. His best performan...

11.22.63 is a 8 episode mini-series based on the novel by Stephen King of the same name, and it grabbed my attention because of its interesting premise. A guy, played by James Franco, goes back in time to 1960 in order to stop the assassination John F. Kennedy. He is involved in this by his friend who believes that stopping this assassination will make America great again. Time travel has always been a huge interest of fine. Couple that with the plot of this series and James Franco as the lead, no chance in hell I wouldn't watch it. The show starts off strong, admittedly with a rushed feeling though, and really reeled me in with good production values, acting and ofcourse, the plot. I was interested in seeing how he'll plan it out, how he'll handle staying in the past for so long etc and how this will have an effect on the present. The first half of the show was focused on this and hence I really enjoyed it. The past was definitely exaggerated, but to the shows effect,...

Spartacus is a surprising series for me. I first watched it when there were only two seasons out, and back then it was kinda OK for me. Now, after re-watching the first two seasons along with the rest, I found it to be a pretty good series, great even. The series is about Spartacus and how he journey's from being a free man to a gladiator, and then to a leader. The whole series is structured in such a way that their is an overall forward progression with each season focused on a specific part. This results in focus on each area and ultimately they all come together quite nicely. Also, the series is divided into spartacus' related scenes and the roman leaders etc related scenes, developing both sides, side by side, throughout. This not only makes it easy to develop a large number of characters, it also develops both sides and not making it plain black and white. It makes things more interesting, and makes some outcomes way more satisfying. There are A LOT of characters t...