Woo-hoo! China Mieville’s ‘The City and The City’ Coming to BBC 2 Next Friday!

Next Friday, 6th April 2018, BBC 2 screens the first part of its four part adaptation of China Mieville’s SF novel, The City and the City. The blurb for it in the Radio Times read

Detective thriller based on the novel by China Mieville, starring David Morrissey. A dead girl is recovered at Bulkya Docks on the border between Beszel and Ul Qoma – two cities with a division like no other – and inspector Borlu is surprised by the similarities to an old case that still haunts him. The entire series will be available on iPlayer. (p. 114).

There’s more information on the series earlier, on page 112, where the series is declared ‘pick of the day’ by the magazine. David Butcher’s description of the show runs

Imagine a kind of double city where citizens on either side are forbidden from looking at each other, and the frontier between the two – a frontier of the mind, partly – is ruthlessly policed. That’s the premise of China Mieville’s fantasy novel, adapted into a queasy, unsettling drama.

It has the air of a slow-motion Philip K. Dick fable, layered with retro seediness. David Morrissey plays a hangdog copper investigating the murder of an American woman stabbed with a glass shard. But he is haunted by the loss of someone dear to him and by parallels between her case and this one. “I knew there was another city I dare not see,’ he growls, ‘Just on the other side of where I was permitted to look.”

Gradually, we gather what the characters mean by words like “unseeing” and “Breach”,, so it’s best not to explain too much here. As a procedural, the plot moves through treacle, but the look and feel of the story create an oppressive mood that is hard to shift.

This looks very interesting, and I need my dose of TV SF now that the X-Files and Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams have ended.

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Woohoo! Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams Is Coming Back!

More good news for fans of mature SF. The bad news is that the new set of programmes, which continue from last year, is on Channel 4 at 10 O’clock in the evening, bang opposite the X-Files, which is on channel at the same time. Grrr! Better set your videos, peeps.

The new set of programmes begins with ‘The Father Thing’. The blurb for this on page 67 of the Radio Times runs

The sci-fi anthology series inspired by Philip K. Dick’s short stories returns. In this episode, the world is under attack as aliens quietly invade people’s homes young hero Charlie must make difficult decisions to protect his mother on the human race.

Another small article about it on page 65 states

The sci-fi anthology returns with a version of Philip K. Dick’s The Father Thing. That was published in 1954, the same year as the serialisation of the novel that inspired the movie version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers-and it you’ve seen that, or just know the premise of it, you can skip this.

Jack Gore and Greg Kinnear are both excellent as ayoung boy and his dad, shadowed by the threat of marital strife until the kid starts to have more serious concerns.

A possible theme about children fearing the loss of a divorcing parent never coalesces. Instead, as the boy’s mates get involved, we veer into a half-cocked Stranger Things homage. A well-performed, nicle shot dud.

I’ve noticed that one of the perennial themes in Dick’s work is that the hero is always in a rocky marriage, and the wife, or one of the female characters, is always bitch queen from hell, to use the words of Arnie Rimmer. Dick’s was married several times, but he comes across as something of a misgynist.

Despite the Radio Time’s critic’s sniffs, The Father Thing is one of the pieces that’s been republished recently, and I look forward to seeing it. But we’ll decide whether it’s a dud or not, thank you.

Two New Trailers for ‘Electric Dreams’ Episode ‘The Hood Maker’

I’ve just found these trailers from Channel 4 on YouTube for episode 1 of Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, ‘The Hood Maker. This is set in a dystopian Britain where telepaths – Teeps – are used to monitor the thoughts of the population.

It looks really good, and I’m really looking forward to seeing it!

As for dictatorial governments monitoring people’s thoughts, Pat Mills, one of the writers for 2000 AD, used it in Nemesis the Warlock and the ABC Warriors. In Nemesis the Warlock, Torquemada and his terminators, a brutal military religious order, who had imposed a genocidally racist dictatorship on Earth in the far future, monitored the poplation’s thoughts mechanically. And there was a story in the ABC Warriors where another future dictatorship, this time on Mars, also used mechanical devices to keep their people in order.

As various mechanisms are being developed to ‘read’ minds, albeit simply to use nerve impulses from the brain to operate various systems, and some IT engineers are talking about developing artificial telepathy, this particular dystopian idea may not be entirely fantasy after all.

Philip K. Dick’s ‘Electric Dreams’ Begin Channel 4 Next Sunday

Good news for SF fans. Next Sunday, 17th September 2017, Channel 4 start their anthology series of ten standalone stories adapted from the tales of Philip K. Dick. Dick’s famous as the writer of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the book on which the film Blade Runner is based on, and which inspired the series’ title. Apparently, the show will be screened in chunks, with Channel 4 showing the first block of six episodes. These begin with ‘The Hood Maker’, at 9 pm. The blurb for this in the Radio Times reads

In the aftermath of a catastrophic meteor shower, war brews between surviving humans and telepathic mutants. (p. 65).

The description of the programme’s contents on page 62 also adds the following information

A series of dystopian one-offs aims to fill the hole left when Black Mirror moved to Netflix. Channel 4 has specialized in this sort of disquieting Sci-Fi (Utopia and Humans were in roughly the same vein), and Electric Dreams begins with The Hood Maker, the kind of dark fable that leaves you longing for a gasp of fresh air and the real world.

Adapted from one of Philip K. Dick’s visionary short stories, it takes us to a future that feels like the past. We’re in a low-tech city of slums, concrete and 1970s cars, where tension is growing between Normals and Teeps – the latter a race of mutant telepaths whose grapevine acts as a kind of human internet.

Agent Ross (Richard Madden) is assigned to work with a Teep called Honor (Holliday Grainger) to trace the origin of some dangerous new contraband: linen hoods that block telepathy. Form there we follow a moody parable about trust, prejudice and surveillance, skillfully adapted by Matthew Graham of
Life on Mars fame.
There’s also a feature about Bryan Cranston, one of the stars of the series, and its producer, The Dream Life of Bryan, on pages 22-25, with a brief synopsis of the first 6 episodes on page 25.

These include episode 1, The Hood Maker, Episode 2, Impossible Planet, Episode 3, The Communter, Episode 4, Real Life, Episode 5, Crazy Diamond and Episode 6, Human Is.

Black Mirror never appealed to me, but from what I’ve read and the trailers for it, this looks really promising and I’m looking forward to it.

Another Trailer for Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams

Channel 4 have put up another trailer for their forthcoming SF anthology series, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, based on ten of his short stories. This definitely looks like one to watch.

New SF Series Coming to Channel 4: Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams

Last Sunday I caught this trailer on Channel 4 for a new science fiction series, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams.

The title is obviously an homage to Dick’s most famous work, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which became one of the great, classic SF films of all time, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

The series will consist of ten, self-contained episodes, each based on a different Dick short story, starring some of film and TV’s top actors. These include Timothy Spall, Steve Buscemi, Jack Raynor, Benedict Wong, Bryan Cranston, Essie Davis, Greg Kinnear, Anna Paquin, Richard Madden, Holliday Grainger, Anneika Rose, Mel Rodriguez, Vera Formiga, Annalisa Basso, Maura Tierney, Juno Temple and Janelle Monae.

One of the executive producers is Ronald D. Moore, who worked on the Star Trek series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyage, as well as Battlestar Galactica and Outlander.

More information, including plot summaries, can be found on Channel 4’s website at http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/philip-k-dicks-electric-dreams And Den of Geek, http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/philip-k-dick-s-electric-dreams/50380/philip-k-dicks-electric-dreams-7-reasons-to-get-excited.

This looks really promising. Den of Geek say in their article that the anthology format already recalls Channel 4’s Black Mirror, and The Twilight Zone. I have to say I wasn’t drawn to watch Black Mirror. It was created by Charlie Brooker, and was an intelligent, dark examination of the dystopian elements of our media-saturated modern culture and its increasing reliance on information technology. However, it just wasn’t weird enough for me. Near future SF is great, but I also like spacecraft, aliens, ray guns and robots. And this promises to have some of them, at least.

Channel 4 have also produced another intelligent, critically SF series, Humans, based on the Swedish series, Real Humans. With Black Mirror, it seems Channel 4 is one of the leading broadcasters for creating intelligent, mature Science Fiction.