Graceful retirement award,

For me, there’s only one real contender for this award (especially since most series these days get axed rather than conclude properly).

Battlestar Galactica

I’d had a bit of a mixed history with Galactica.   Seasons 1 and 2 I absolutely adored, however once the New Caprica stuff in season 3 was resolved, I really felt the show started to go off the boil.  I found myself increasingly bored by some of the episodes, and felt there was a noticable degree of padding sneaking in (season 2 had had similar issues, although it was here they really got to me).  With the first 10 episodes of season 4 I was hopeful things would start moving towards a conclusion, however again I just felt like the show was plodding towards the end and some of the episodes I really didn’t like.

However, the last 10 episodes changed everything.  Tighter, and with a focus on the end game, the final Cylon was quickly revealed, and we got a real feeling that everything was coming to a head.  However with the finale looming, I found old doubts creeping in to my head again.  With so much left to be resolved and answered, would the previous sluggish pace mean a rushed ending?

Nope.  Instead Galactica delivered in a way better than I think even the biggest fans were expecting.  Dangling questions were addressed, and what had been a grim sometimes depressing show to watch, surprised everyone by having an optimistic, happy ending for the characters.   It was a brilliant finale, that cast aside any doubts I had developed about the show and cemented its place as one of the landmark Sci-Fi series others will be compared to for years to come.

The McMillan’s Pasties – now with over 20% real cow, a true lunch treat – award for shameless product placement

Its the award for shameless marketing, and there’s one main contender

Knight Rider

Its completely understandable, with Ford co-financing the series, but there was always much amusement to be had when excuses were found for KITT to transform into a different Ford vehicle every week.  There were a few notable transformations (the classic Mustang), but towards the end of the series, they seemed to try and standardise the transformations more, for example, KITT would generally rely on the same pickup truck mode a lot more rather than turning into a random transit or the like (infact the transformations in general seemed to get cut down, with even the Attack Mode’s appearances dropping off sharply).

Its hard to be too critical of Knight Rider though.  Many shows tend to have a specific vehicle supplier, its just that they had a specific mechanism built into the show to show off Ford vehicles that drew more attention to it.   I didn’t mind it as much as other viewers seemed to.  Once you accepted KITT’s transformation abilities (and lets be honest, the original KITT would do things that required just as much, if not more, suspension of disbelief) I found there was fun to be had watching KITT transform into that pickup.

Guilty pleasure award,

Its a series that was widely panned, was riddled with problems, but despite myself I found myself really enjoying.  And I’m going to agree with Pie Man here as well (infact agreeing with Pie Man is a main feature of Part 4).

Bonekickers

It took itself far too seriously, but still there was so much fun to be had watching the intrepid team of archaeologists improbably unearth some irreplaceable historical treasure only to then destroy it utterly (usually involving setting it on fire).  Legendary sword Excalibur survives for hundreds of years underwater with not a single sign of decay or rust, but three seconds in the hands of Dr Magwilde and its trashed.

The shows failure in the ratings and critical mauling weren’t really a surprise, but it gave me a good chuckle every week.

Worst treatment of a series.

There’s a lot of crossover for this award with previous awards, so I’ll name:

NBC

I was sorely tempted to have this award target Sarah Connor Chronicals and Virgin 1, but instead I have to really bring up Knight Rider again.

I should prefix this by saying, I think that NBC actually had the right idea for what a Knight Rider series should be.  While studio interference is usually portrayed as wrong, I think Gary Scott Thompson’s dark, arc-driven vision for Knight Rider was probably at odds with the fun-loving, Mike and KITT-focused show that it needed to be, at least for the first season to establish itself.  There’s no doubt in my mind that the later episodes of the show were much stronger and had a great feeling of confidence.

However, what grates, was the way the support for the show completely fell off.  At the beginning, there were lots of trailers and publicity.  GST’s episodes start coming in and they’re not what NBC wants, so they demand changes.  These changes are implemented, however by the time those episodes come to screen, there’s no longer any publicity at all.  No trailers or hype.  What’s the point in demanding a show changes direction if you’re not going to give those changes a chance?  Given the lack of backing, they’d have been as well to leave GST’s earlier plans alone and just see if the audience would’ve gone for a darker Knight Rider.

There’s the aspect of the show’s non-cancellation as well.  As far as I’m aware, they’ve still not officially said “its axed”.  They’re doing the old BBC/Doctor Who trick, circa 1987 of just not scheduling a new season, and hoping no one notices that the show’s gone away.

The soon-to-be-released DVD set is apparently quite weak as well.  While the episodes are all present and correct with nice transfers, apparently no time has been given at all to special features.  We know there’s deleted scenes from the early stuff that was cut.  There’s also all those TV trailers.  They could be put on.  Interviews with the cast and crew would be interesting as well, with documentaries surrounding the original plans for the series, and what might’ve happened in the missing five episodes of season 1, and any potential season 2.  Again, it just comes across as a studio that completely gave up on the show.  This despite a core audience of 5 million viewers who stuck by it despite opposition from American Idol (or Got Talent, I forget) and other big name cult shows like Lost.

Anyway.  That’s the end of the Pie Man Television Awards 2009.  Its meant as a bit of fun, although probably turned into a bit of a ranty marathon.

Overall, I felt this was a pretty good year for TV that’s sadly culminated in a lot of those shows not making it back next year.  There was a lot of good stuff made in both the US and UK.  One show that springs to mind that I never mentioned was the remake of Survivors which I enjoyed greatly, and True Blood’s only just started here but had an intriguing start.  Smallville had a great year, launching its 8th season with a new team behind the scenes with confidence, moving the show forward very much towards its “Superman” endgame, and even rising above the loss of Michael Rosenbaum.  Lots of good stuff out there, and with new shows coming in next year to replace those that didn’t get a second season, I’ll be intrigued to see what we get next.

Best UK Network/Channel.

I’m really torn on this one.  There’s not many real contenders, although some of the smaller channels are quietly building themselves up a solid programming base, be it Sci-Fi UK with quite a few new shows lately that I’m enjoying (in fact a large percentage of my TV viewing at the moment is in their direction with Knight Rider, Dollhouse and My Own Worst Enemy).  Likewise FX has some notable shows, including Dexter, and True Blood which starts this week.

I’m really torn for this award, and I think I’ll have to wimp out and split it.

BBC/Sky One

Both have distinct merits.  Sky One for me is one of my favourite channels for import shows as they treat them very well.  Yes, its a subscription channel, and yes, there’s adverts, but they show them very close to the US broadcaster (in some cases only a couple of days afterwards, and in some cases before the US).  Its a pet peeve of mine the channels like Channel 4 and Virgin 1 who buy high profile shows, and then sit on them for 6 months.   Sky One’s also recently started developing its original programming with the Terry Pratchet TV movies, and Skellig (which, granted I never watched, but its nice to see them trying).

The BBC has become the stronghold of British-made cult TV.  Obviously, Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures, but also Robin Hood, Merlin and Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes.  Yes, they’ve also made utter rubbish like Spooks: Code 9 and Bonekickers, but its just nice to see cult TV being treated seriously in this country again.   The only real black mark was when the Beeb put Ashes to Ashes opposite its own showing of Heroes series 3.  That really annoyed me.

The Pirate Bay award for Services to bit-torrent,

This is basically the opposite of the previous award, and as I mentioned above, there’s really two contenders for me, in the form of Virgin 1 and Channel 4.  Both of which have a habit of buying high-profile US shows, and then sitting on them, meaning we get to hear from all the US people online all the spoilers and how great/bad the season was, and then just as they’re about to get the next season, we’ll finally get it.

I think though I’ll go for:

Virgin 1

Largely for sitting on Chuck season 2 until Sarah Connor was finished, but also for the bizarre move of shifting Sarah Connor’s timeslot forward by an hour halfway through the run.  It moved it from something I would watch on Thursday nights, to something I would tape and watch later.  And it wasn’t like they were freeing up the earlier slot for some other high-profile show, just yet another of their reality ones.

For a channel that constantly used Terminator idents to hype their rights to the show, it just struck me as a weird and annoying move.

Only the Good Die young award,

Lord knows there’s plenty of competition of this one.  Middleman is an obvious contender, but Pie Man created an award for it anyway (next).  Knight Rider had just found its footing when the axe fell.  I believe My Own Worst Enemy got the chop at 9 episodes as well.  Journeyman is really tempting as well, but sadly falls outwith my 12 month limit.

So I’m going to go with:

Primeval

The show had always been one I’d enjoyed, not afraid to be a bit daft and revel in its own silliness.  The third season saw a lot of upheaval with several main cast members leaving and being replaced, but none-the-less the show did very well in the ratings, and the new cast were starting to gell.  The show also ended on a cliffhanger which the writers have admitted they’d have never done if they’d thought there was any danger of the axe falling.

There’s still the vague hope out there that the Beeb might buy the rights, but for now, Primeval will be missed next year.

Never given a proper chance award,

This award looks at the shows that were great, but never seemed to get the backing they deserved.  Knight Rider to an extent applies here.  While they initially got a lot of backing from the studio, creative differences between the producers and the studios led to problems early on.  The studio got the show to change direction, and in all fairness to them, it was the right move, with the later episodes showing a vast improvement in fun and quality.  However, despite their changes being made, by this point the studio seemed to have lost interest and gave the show virtually no advertising, which meant it was just left to fall in the ratings and die off.

However, despite this, I’m going to say:

Middleman

While Knight Rider could’ve been treated better in the later part of its run, Middleman got no hype or advertising attention straight out the gate.  A brilliant show that those who saw it only found by accident.  Annoyingly this has also translated into international markets as well, as I haven’t seen any UK network pick it up yet.  I’m holding out hope that Sci-Fi UK will nab it and give this brilliant show lots of backing and a chance at a great run over here.

Most promising 1^st Season.

Not counting shows that have been axed, there’s not many shows that fall into this category.  Merlin is a strong contender, but I’ll have to go with Pie Man on this one.

Being Human

A brilliant cast, a great storyline, some real horror and laughs along the way.  While I never saw the original pilot, this sucked me in straight away.  There were some brave plotlines, and you really sympathised with Mitchell as he attempted to be more human, despite the efforts of his fellow vampires.

Most Off the Boil Series.

Not necessarily a series that was once great but now failing, but just perhaps a series that needs to find its footing.  And for me its got to be

Heroes

Heroes exploded onto our screens with an amazing first season, but since then it’s really struggled to find its way.  Volume 2 got too soapy, Volume 3 faced criticism for being over complicated and full of technobabble.  Volume 4 seemed to go down better, although it didn’t really click for me.  While I really enjoyed volume 3, despite the complaints, I thought volume 4 required a little too much suspension of disbelief and the way they nerfed two of the show’s main powerhouses was disappointing.  Granted, I’m now getting used to Peter’s new powers, but Hiro without his mastery of time and space doesn’t seem as much fun.

Sometimes I wonder if they might’ve been better with their original idea to radically shake up the cast each season, allowing them to develop new heroes.  Instead they’ve built up a huge cast of regulars now that they sometimes struggle to give something to do.

I’m still looking forward to season 4 (volume 5).  The ending of season 3 promised to introduce a twist on the usual lingering menace of Sylar and how the characters approach the situation with “Nathan” will be interesting.  I’d like to see them try to build up more of a stable of super-powered menaces though.  Sylar’s really the only recurring big villain they’ve got and it’d be nice to have a few more characters built up as real threats.

Stay tuned for part 3.

You can check out his awards here: The Pie Man Television Awards 2009.

The only real rule I’m sticking to is that its focusing on cult/sci-fi/fantasy type TV shows.  The time frame is fairly vague, but pretty much anything in the last 12 months.

Best New Series

There’s been a load of good new shows over the last year.  Sadly most of them are now axed thanks to the recession and the usual keenness of US networks to axe anything that doesn’t have brilliant ratings from the get-go.   I was personally very tempted to give this to My Own Worst Enemy, which is currently airing on Sci-Fi UK and is ruddy brilliant.  However, its still halfway through its run, so in fairness I should give it to a show that’s shown all its episodes.  And this is the first award where I’m in complete agreement with Pie Man 70.

The Middleman

Its difficult to understate just how much I enjoyed this series, and how gutted I was when it was axed. Apparently ABC completely failed to realise what a potential hit they had on their hands and neglected to advertise it. Which has been a real shame, as every review I’ve seen of the series raves about it. Gloriously silly, great sense of humour and visuals and a great cast. Grab the DVDs, buy it on iTunes, pray Sci-Fi UK buy the rights, but see this show.

Best Returning Series

I’ve slightly tweaked the name of this award from PieMan’s version just for clarity.  There were loads of really good returning series this year.  Heroes followed up its slightly lackluster volume 2 with a great volume 3, but volume 4 didn’t click nearly as well for me.  Battlestar Galactica headed towards its finale with confidence, Prison Break delivered a brilliant payoff in its finale that was a real treat for fans following the show from the beginning, Dexter continues to be superb television, delivering a great story every year and Lost continued to be must-watch TV, revelling in its own backstory.  However for me, the ultimate winner has to be:

Chuck

Despite barely escaping cancellation this year, season 2 delivered on everything that made season 1 so popular.  A brilliant sense of humour, great action sequences, a stellar cast and most of all, heart.  Be it Chuck dealing with the carnage his double life causes to those closest to him, the Buymore staff dealing with their latest evil deputy manager, you really care about all these characters.  Cap it off with some superb guest stars, and really, its amazing this show had to struggle for a third season.

Most Improved Series,

This one’s very tough.  Partly due to so many shows getting the axe these days after their first season.  Galactica was a serious contender for me.  I felt that season 3 seemed to lack focus, and I wasn’t hugely impressed with the first ten episodes of season 4.  However the final ten episodes turned everything around and reminded me how much I loved this show.  Ashes to Ashes also improved a lot over its not-brilliant first season.

However for me the winner has to be:

Torchwood

Granted, the time period this is covering is pretty vague, but for me it works for either series 2 or especially series 3.  See the numerous other blog posts about how good series 3 was, but even series 2 was a marked improvement over a ropey first season, dispensing with the almost adolescent aspects in its approach to being the “adult” Who spinoff (a feeling they nailed with the third series), giving us a great new character in Captain John and delivering a great storyarc with Owen’s “death” leading up to his and Tosh’s final sacrifice.

Most gratuitous T&A in a series.

Dollhouse is probably the only other contender in this award, but even it doesn’t match up to the winner:

Knight Rider

Really the only choice.  Its arguably one of the main areas in which the show was misjudged and thankfully calmed down as the show went on.  They were a bit too fond of the gratuitous numbers of women in bikinis in the first half of the season.

The Andromeda WTF is this still running award.

Like Pie Man, I can’t really give this award to anything.  As shows have been axed left, right and centre.  There’s probably a soap opera or something that it applies to, but there’s nothing particularly on my radar for this.   Dollhouse is a potential contender for this next year unless it really blows me away, and Heroes is dangerously close to going off the bubble unless they manage to recapture some of that series 1 magic.

This is going on a bit long, so I think I’ll split it up a bit.  Look for parts 2 and 3 in the near future.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It was pretty well known that with the economic situation taking a heavy toll on advertising, and NBC’s new deal with Jay Leno that the axe was going to be falling pretty heavily on other shows to free up money and space in the schedules, but still, a lot of favourite shows have fallen.

From this blog’s point of view, Knight Rider is chief among them. Although not entirely unexpected, its still disheartening to see the show cut down just as it had found its feet and was turning in some sterling, entertaining episodes.  However, there’s currently a campaign on Twitter being started to try and build interest in the show and see if it can be brought back.  So if you’re on Twitter, follow @savekitt and check out the #savekitt hashtag.

Its especially sad to see NBC wielding the axe just as Knight Rider has been launched in the UK and has been doing phenominally well.  The feature length pilot netted a half a million viewers, Sci Fi UK’s highest ratings since its first run of Heroes in 2007.   However this week, the combination of Knight Rider and Dollhouse proved to be a winner, and Knight Rider smashed that total, bringing in a whopping 700,000 viewers.   With the show doing so well over here it’ll be a huge shame if there’s no season two.

So please check out http://www.twitter.com/savekitt and maybe if we get insanely lucky there’ll be enough international interest to resurrect the show.

And while I’m here, check out http://twitter.com/EarlTwitition as the excellent My Name is Earl has also been axed by NBC.

Its nice to see the show doing well, although of course, the real test will be seeing how the ratings hold up over the course of the season. Hopefully it won’t suffer from the gaps in broadcast that the show had in the States (the first one after episode 5 especially dented the ratings), and also Knight Rider’s going to be shown before Dollhouse, which is guaranteed to pull in the Joss Whedon audience, so hopefully that’ll make for a good group of people who’ll just turn over at 8pm and watch the two back-to-back.

With NBC reportedly looking to the international performance as part of its second season decision, then good ratings in the UK will help (although again, I don’t think anyone’s too optimistic at this point).

There’s no denying it was a bit of an uneven season. Probably more than a little due to the conflict between Gary Scott Thompson’s idea for the show versus what the studio wanted. It was obvious on-screen how Thompson’s original plot ark with KARR and Mike’s past had been gutted in favour of the standalone episodes. However I don’t necessarily think its fair to say that the Knight Research phase of a show (as opposed to the reformed FLAG towards the end of the season) was entirely a misstep.

Yes, there was the feeling of “terrorist of the week”, however some episodes were very strong such as Knight of the Living Dead (nice character piece for KITT and KARR hints) and Hard Day’s Knight (wherein Mike is poisoned and must figure out what the villains are after before he dies).

There were definitely still problems though, and I’d say the chief of them was a bloated cast. While I liked Yancey Arias as Alex Torres, his character automatically pushed Carrie Rivai into the background as he was the main Government contact.  He also took over Charles Graiman’s main role of running the operation, resulting in many episodes where Bruce Davison had little to do.

This for me was one of the key things that improved once the show rebooted and the FLAG era of the show started. With fewer cast members to juggle, the screentime seemed more balanced. And with only Mike and KITT in the field it really allowed writers to focus on their relationship, and we saw the banter between the two grow, and its here the show really showed its strengths.

The show also excelled at its action scenes, and these were something we saw grow in confidence as the show went on. Be it either Mike and KITT being chased with a bomb in KITT’s boot, KITT vs KARR or the bank robbery at the beginning of Exit Light, Enter Knight, they really did pull off these set pieces well.  

Special mention must also go to the fight choreography. Whenever Mike was needed to get into a physical confrontation with someone it was always well put together. There was a real sense that this Michael Knight was not someone you’d want to end up in a fight against.

At this stage season 2 is still very much in doubt, with most fearing the worst.  I really feel the show deserves a second chance though.  While the ratings didn’t set the world alight, they did maintain a solid viewership while up against big names like American Idol and repeats of Lost.  And more than that, there was a real feeling, that after the to-ing and fro-ing early in the season, that this was a show that had found its feet.  Owing a lot to the original Knight Rider towards the end, the relationship between Mike and KITT was there, the cast had really settled into their roles, and the confidence of the production team in terms of the kinds of scripts they were after and the big action scenes they could do was there.  From the episode Don’t Stop the Knight onwards I really enjoyed every episode.  Only really Fight Knight fell a bit flat, and even then it was enjoyable enough, just not on a par with the rest of the episodes around it.

I’d really like the show to get a shot at seeing what they could do with a second season.  Even if its only a short 13-episode order, as long as NBC gave it some backing in terms of advertising (something noticably absent as the show went on).  It’d be fun to see what kind of audience they could build up now they’ve found their feet.

The stronger of the two was undoubtedly Enter Light, Exit Knight, which started in classic Knight Rider style, with Mike and KITT heading home after a long mission, only to be sucked into a bank robbery.

The opening was incredibly strong, starting softly, with Mike asleep in KITT’s passenger seat (a nice touch) and KITT chatting to Sarah.   But from there it quickly kicked off, with Mike and KITT getting caught up in a giant gun battle infront the bank.

Out of all the episodes so far, its probably been the strongest opening. And in that regard it maybe doesn’t surprise that this episode had some of the highest ratings of the season. That big action-packed introduction must’ve been just the ticket to suck in some passing channel-surfers.

The second episode, Fight Knight continued the trend of entertaining episodes. While probably not quite as strong as the episodes since the 2-parter, it was still a fun episode, with a real feel of the old school Knight Rider, as Michael and KITT investigate a death in a small town, and there’s even a corrupt sherrif as well.

For me, the main thing that’s really working in this show since the reboot, has been the relationship between Michael and KITT. There’s a real bond between these two now, and KITT’s really developed a fun sense of humour. There’s a fair amount of playful banter between the pair and its great to watch (I love Mike’s nickname of “supercar” for KITT, and the exchange when Mike deliberately put the dead drill sergeant’s belongings on KITT’s bonnet was fun).

Its a pity there’s only three episodes to go in the season.  There’s a real feeling that this is a show that’s now found its feet.  The tighter cast is allowing for much more focus on the relationships (specifically Mike and KITT), and the characterisations seem to have really fallen into place.   My only concern is the declining ratings in the states may be beyond the point of no return, and a second season is perhaps now looking unlikely.   It’ll be a real shame, as this show has so much potential, that its really starting to live up to.

First thing to get out of the way, is that really the rematch was a disappointment. KARR himself was pretty much spot on. The Mustang with the yellow scanner was chilling (and underused to be honest), Cullen’s voice was a nice touch, and his personality suitably malevolent (owing more to the personality seen in KITT vs KARR, than Trust Doesn’t Rust). The main problem was that basically the fight was too short and we can thank budget cuts and the credit crunch for that.

But what we got was excellent. As I say, KARR himself was exactly as I’d hoped he’d be, and the CGI for KARR and the fight was brilliant. Its just a real shame that it got cut back. To be honest, this would’ve been a killer 2-parter, with KARR coming back online and breaking loose at the end of part 1, and chasing Mike and KITT for part 2.

However, despite the fight being a disappointment in its length, this was still a good episode. There was a lot of action and suspense, with the SSC and Knight Research being shutdown and Sarah desolate over her father’s death, its left to Mike, Billy and Zoey to break into the shutdown SSC and try to figure out where the NSA have taken KITT (as they needed his CPU to reactivate KARR). This gave us a look at the new direction for Knight Rider, with a much paired-down cast, no Government connections, and the NSA likely gunning for them.

While I worry about the show’s future in the wake of creative disagreements between NBC and the creators, budget cuts, and ratings that are debatable, I still honestly believe this is a show that would really benefit from a second season.  There’s been some really solid, fun episodes, none moreso than the previous 3.    And now the reboot is going through, I really think the show will be stronger for it.

And, of course, if they could resurrect KARR for a proper rematch that would be great.  It’d be a shame to see that yellow scanner go to waste.

Just a pity it’ll be well after my bedtime