Apple TV has renewed its epic space opera series Foundation for a second season.
The show, an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels, is currently halfway through airing its first season on streaming service Apple TV+. Despite a mixed critical reception, the show has apparently picked up an impressive number of viewers, part of a boom in the success of the service alongside its hit football comedy show Ted Lasso (which just concluded its second season and has begun work on a third).
The show's first season adapts storylines from the first novel in the series, Foundation (1951), alongside some elements from prequel novels Prelude to Foundation (1989) and Forward the Foundation (1992). The second season will round off material from Foundation and will start drawing on the second book in the series, Foundation and Empire (1952), including the rise to power of master trader Hober Mallow and the depiction of the conflict between the Foundation and imperial general Bel Riose. It's likely that the series' most famous storyline, the conflict between the Foundation and the genetic mutant known as the Mule, will follow in a potential third season.
Foundation is currently releasing new episodes every Friday worldwide on Apple TV+.
Amazon has released a number of new clips and some information related to their upcoming Wheel of Time television series.
First up was a clip from the first episode, Leavetaking. This is a dramatisation of the scene where Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) and Lan (Daniel Henney) arrive at the Winespring Inn in the village of Emond's Field. In the novel, this scene takes place off-page and is told to Rand al'Thor (Josha Stradowski) later on. For the more time-pressed TV series, Rand has simply been included in the scene to view it firsthand. Another change is that Moiraine's identity as an Aes Sedai is made clear from the start, whilst in the book she tries to hide her status until becomes clear later on.
Secondly was an excerpt from the musical score. "Al'Naito" is composed by Lorne Balfe with a title that translates from the Old Tongue (a fictional language in the Wheel of Time setting) roughly as "For the Flame." The song has lyrics that also appear to be in the Old Tongue.
Rounding things off is a number of new casting announcements for Season 2 of the show, currently shooting in the Czech Republic.
British newcomer Ceara Coveney will play the role of Elayne Trakand, the Daughter-Heir to the Kingdom of Andor and a novice Aes Sedai. As the first heir to a throne to be trained as Aes Sedai in almost fifteen centuries, Elayne is a potentially powerful player in the politics of the Aes Sedai and the Westlands themselves.
Natasha O'Keeffe is a British actress best-known for playing Lizzie Shelby in Peaky Blinders, Emilia Ricoletti in Sherlock and Abbey in Misfits. What role she is playing in Wheel of Time is unknown, save that it is "one of the most important" roles in the series. Based on her looks, it is possible she is playing Lanfear, one of the most powerful Forsaken, the servants of the Dark One who have been imprisoned alongside that entity for almost three and a half thousand years and released as its prison weakens. It is also possible she might be playing Elaida, an antagonistic Aes Sedai, or possibly Suroth, an important political and military commander among the Seanchan. Lanfear seems to be the most popular guess at present.
Rounding off the new arrivals is veteran British writer, comedian, actress and singer Meera Syal. A hugely-respected actress with a formidable body of work behind her (including comedy series Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No. 42 and a huge array of British dramas, including Doctor Who and Broadchurch), Syal's role is also said to be crucial to the Wheel of Time mythos. The smart money would be on the role of Verin Mathwin, an Aes Sedai of the Brown Ajah, who becomes a key ally of the adventurers from the Two Rivers.
The Wheel of Time debuts on Amazon Prime on 19 November this year.
HBO have unveiled the first teaser trailer for House of the Dragon, their prequel spin-off from Game of Thrones.
The series begins almost 200 years before the events of the original series and depicts a time period when House Targaryen is secure on the Iron Throne, with King Viserys I ruling over a land of plenty and peace. King Viserys has raised his daughter Rhaenyra to be his heir and the lords of Westeros have accepted her as such...until the king remarries and has more children, which throws the line of succession into doubt. With different factions feuding for the throne and the king's volatile and ambitious younger brother, Prince Daemon, also in play, the stage is set for war...a war where both sides possess dragons.
The trailer opens with Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) venturing down some stairs with a lit torch. He arrives on a moonlit beach, where he meets his niece Princess Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy). We cut to an array of candles illuminating what appears to be the skull of Balerion the Black Dread, the greatest of the Targaryen dragons. Balerion died only a few years before the events of the series.
We then see Lord Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), the Lord of Oldtown and the Hand of the King, clutching his symbol of office, followed by King Viserys himself (Paddy Considine), sitting on the Iron Throne and clashing the hilt of one of House Targaryen's Valyrian steel blades. This is probably Blackfyre, since Dark Sister is in the keeping of his brother Daemon. Viserys, being a peaceable king, never wielded Blackfyre in battle and probably only uses it for ceremonial occasions, like Ned Stark with Ice.
The camera then cuts back many years to the very young Princess Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock), sitting on the Iron Throne, and then to a tourney, with a Targaryen knight in black (possibly Daemon) besting a foe in single combat. The camera then cuts to Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), the Lord of the Tides and the the master of Driftmark, an even larger island in Blackwater Bay then Dragonstone. By the time of Game of Thrones the family has become relatively weak and obscure, but in this time period they are one of the richest and most powerful houses in Westeros, rivalling the Lannisters, due to their control of the Seven Kingdoms' maritime trade. Corlys is the most famed naval explorer in the world, having travelled to far Asshai, Yi Ti and the Thousand Islands. One of the most powerful lords in the Seven Kingdoms, he choices to back Princess Rhaenyra by offering her the hand of his son in marriage.
Subsequent scenes show Corlys arriving at the Red Keep with his infamous wife, Princess Rhaenys (Eve Best), who was once in line for the Iron Throne but passed over due to her gender. Suffice to say this makes her unhappy with tradition and keen to see her prospective daughter-in-law succeed to the throne.
The camera cuts to the Lady Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno), a dancer from the far east who arrives in the Seven Kingdoms as a paramour to Prince Daemon and quickly rises high in his confidences to become his unofficial spymaster, and prospective Lady of Whisperers.
The scene then cuts to Lady Alicent Highertower (Olivia Cooke) clutching a dagger during what appears to be an important meeting; members of the Kingsguard including Ser Harrold Westerling (Graham MacTavish) and Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) are present behind her. I'm not 100% sure on this, but one of the other actors might be David Horovitch (Grand Maester Mellos), and the actor on the left hand side of the screen might be Jefferson Hall (who is playing both Lord Jason Lannister of Casterly Rock and his twin brother Tytos). This scene is interesting because it shows Harrold Westerling apparently being alive later in the timeline than is the case in the books.
The action then cuts to a tourney where knights bearing the arms of House Cole and House Tarly clash in the joust, whilst Princess Rhaenyra watches on. Notably, Rhaenyra is wearing red in this scene, indicating it might be the famous tourney where Rhaenyra wears red and black, leading to her faction for the throne becoming known as "the blacks," whilst her enemies wear green.
The scene then cuts to a sword fight between a white-haired young warrior and unknown assailant. The location is unclear, though it bears a slight resemblance to the Eyrie (the absence of the Moon Door and the fact the stairs are facing in the opposite direction suggests this is not the case). This is most likely a variation on the fight between Prince Lucerys Velaryon (one of Rhaenyra's sons) and Prince Aemond Targaryen at Storm's End, though Aemond himself does not seem to be present. The other fighter is possibly a retainer.
The trailer then ends with someone approaching the Iron Throne. Although the Red Keep set is almost identical to the one from the later series (although it has been moved from the Titanic Studios in Belfast to the Warner Brothers Studios in Leavesden), with a different window, the Iron Throne itself is different, much spikier and more obviously covered in swords and blades, with other melted blades surrounding the throne. It's clearly the same throne, but the Red Keep's Health & Safety Department clearly get their hands on it at some point and file it down to the simpler design seen later.
HBO have also announced additional casting for the series: Wil Johnson (Outlander) as Ser Vaemond Velaryon, Lord Corlys's younger brother; John Macmillan (The Nevers) as Ser Laenor Velaryon, the only son of Lord Corlys; Savannah Steyn (Intergalactic, The Tunnel) as Lady Laena Velaryon, the only daughter of Lord Corlys; and Theo Nate (Time) as the younger version of Ser Laenor Velaryon.
Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon, as the show now seems to be called, will air on HBO and HBO Max in 2022, probably somewhere around Easter or early summer.
1983. NASA is running away with the Space Race. It has a permanently-manned lunar outpost, Jamestown, and an entire fleet of space shuttles to service installations in orbit. It is already developing a second-generation, nuclear-powered shuttle called Pathfinder and has its eyes set firmly on Mars. However, mixed support in Congress threatens to derail its Martian ambitions and escalating tensions with the Soviet Union, including armed confrontations over contested lithium mining sites on the moon, put the safety of the entire world in doubt. The astronauts of NASA and their families find themselves on the front line of what could be the start of World War III, or the beginning of a new, peaceful age of cooperation.
For All Mankind's journey through an alternate history of the 20th and 21st centuries continues in the second of seven planned seasons (a third has already wrapped filming and should air in 2022). A ten-year time jump between seasons brings us almost to a Utopian view of the 1980s, where technology is more advanced than it really was thanks to the advances of America's hyper-charged space programme. Electric cars are becoming commonplace, the Columbia-class space shuttle has already been in service for years, and a combination of extremely lucrative patents and the heartfelt support of President Reagan means NASA has funds and resources it couldn't even dream of in reality. It's a giddy view of the Space Race which masks deeper problems.
As in reality, the growing gulf in technology and capability between the rapidly-advancing United States and the stagnating Soviet Union is creating renewed, dangerous tensions on Earth, in orbit and on the moon. The US military is getting more and more involved with the space programme, advocating putting weapons on shuttles and on the moon, and using the "high ground" of orbital space to overcome the USSR's ability to launch a nuclear first strike or respond in kind to one. Like Battlestar Galactica before it, For All Mankind dips into an interesting place where the military, ethical, scientific and political ramifications of events overlap, throwing up thorny dilemmas where each perspective makes valid points so it's hard to entirely come down on one side or another. For All Mankind also introduces more Russian characters and has the USA making some horrendous misjudgements, meaning the Soviet perspective is also more readily understood.
As with the first year, For All Mankind roots the fascination of its alternate history (where John Lennon survived his assassination attempt, but Pope John Paul II did not) in compelling character arcs. Our primary POV characters are once again the Baldwin family, astronaut Ed now working as the head of the astronaut programme at NASA and his wife Karen having taken over the Outpost, the old astronaut drinking ground which has now become a tourist trap. Recovering from their death of their son Shane in the first season, they have adopted a Vietnamese orphan, Kelly. During the season Ed makes the decision to return to space and Kelly decides to apply to join the US Navy and find her birth parents, all decisions which stress out Karen, leading her to make some questionable choices.
A second major story arc follows the ongoing issues of the family Stevens. Gordo has left front-line space service after his mini-breakdown in Season 1, and now works as a public speaker and in the back office. An opportunity to return to Jamestown forces him to confront his demons. His now ex-wife Tracy has become the public face of the space programme, to the consternation of fellow astronauts who think she's putting more effort into appearing on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show than on her actual job. Their sons have taken dramatically differing career paths, one living at home with his father and the other joining the US military.
Further storylines follow retiring astronaut Ellen, who takes over as a senior administrator at NASA and quickly wins the admiration and wholehearted political support of President Reagan and the Republican Party, to her consternation as a closeted lesbian. However, she also believes her growing political profile will help get NASA and humanity to Mars. Margo continues in her role as a senior NASA figure, but her loneliness leads her to making some potentially dangerous decisions. Subplots follow Aleida, the young girl dreaming of the stars in the first season, as she joins NASA as an engineer; Molly Cobb's health after she ill-advisedly sustains a massive dose of radiation during a solar storm; and a Russian cosmonaut trying to defect to the United States via their moonbase.
The second season is more serialised than the first, which at times felt almost like an anthology series as it spanned four years and various topics including the recruitment of female astronauts, the intersection of civil rights and the space programme, and the psychological impact of space travel. The second season is instead focused around a pivotal period of a few months. This is good in that the season feels more of a piece and more epic, but it also strains the show's ability to give everyone a compelling story arc. In particular, Karen feels a little lost in the mix and Aleida's thread starts and stops a lot, in contrast to the much meatier and more satisfying storyline for the Stevens, Ed and the crew of Jamestown.
The series also feels like it's lost its scientific credentials, or at least strained them. In real life, the space shuttle could not fly to the moon and certainly couldn't land after returning (the shuttle would not survive re-entry at the speeds reached on lunar return mission). Given there's only a couple of shots of the shuttle flying to the moon and other spacecraft are available (including upgraded Apollos and the spectacular Sea Dragon seen in the Season 1 finale and throughout Season 2), it's odd why they insist on depicting it as a lunar return vehicle.
Season 2 also deals with the realities of characters ageing by...not bothering to depict them. The characters were already older than the actors playing them by some years in Season 1, so extending that by another decade in Season 2 with no effort to make up the actors is sometimes distractingly weird (with a 35-year-old actress playing a 53-year old character supposedly having an affair with a 20-ish-year-old played by an actor in his mid-twenties, making that storyline not land at all the way it was supposed to). It's only a few cases of child actors being swapped out for newcomers where it feels that any time has passed at all. I'm assuming that for Season 3, which picks up twelve years after the end of Season 2, they'll have no choice but to age up the characters more convincingly.
Season 2 also has a bit of a mid-season dip into melodrama. Kelly looking for her birth parents, the Stevens' marriage woes and Karen's business and personal decisions aren't bad storylines per se, but they feel a bit too soap-opera-ish and divorced from the big-picture storylines elsewhere, in contrast to say Ellen's personal storyline which dovetails superbly into the grander political picture.
Still, if things dip a little in the middle, they pick up momentum towards the end. The final two episodes form a season finale as outrageously good as any other show's in the last decade, packed with human drama, heroism and political brinksmanship, although we could have maybe done without the BSG trope of allies aiming handguns at one another whilst making speeches, and everyone being just fine with that five minutes later. The finale transitions us, via a surprisingly well-judged use of Nirvana, into the 1990s and another shift in geopolitical fortunes which should give us a very interesting third season.
For All Mankind's (****½) second season starts well, dips in the middle, but roars back strong at the end with an outstanding run of episodes that make the wait for Season 3 feel very interminable indeed. The season is available now worldwide on Apple TV.
It's been rumoured and discussed many times over the years, but something is now officially happening: a Babylon 5 reboot is in the planning stages with original creator and writer J. Michael Straczynski attached.
The new project is being helmed by the CW, although reportedly the show will retain a similar sensibility to the original and will not skew younger, as a lot of their content does. The show will open with Earthforce officer John Sheridan being assigned to Babylon 5, a massive space station serving as a diplomatic exchange and trade hub. Simultaneously with his arrival, an exploratory Earth mission inadvertently triggers a conflict with a more advanced alien civilisation, threatening humanity and several other races.
So far, this is only a development announcement and the show has not yet been greenlit to series or a pilot stage. It is unclear if any of Babylon 5's other creative forces are involved, such as fellow executive producer John Copeland, composer Christopher Franke or the visual effects team, or if any of the actors from the original series such as Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Patricia Tallman, Peter Jurasik or Bill Mumy may return in new roles.
A reboot was considered the more likely form for the show to take, due to the deaths of so many original series actors (including Michael O'Hare, Jerry Doyle, Richard Biggs, Mira Furlan, Andreas Katsulas and Stephen Furst) making a sequel series unlikely. The original show is also considered a cult success without the familiarity of, say, a Star Trek or Star Wars, making a reboot of the original story more viable.
The original incarnation of Babylon 5 debuted in 1993 with a TV movie called The Gathering. Five seasons followed, totalling 110 episodes (with Straczynski writing 93 episodes in total), along with four TV movies and a spin-off series, Crusade, which ran for one season. Straczynski later penned a potential pilot for a second spin-off, Legends of the Rangers, and a straight-to-DVD movie in 2007 called Babylon 5: The Lost Tales. Warner Brothers expressed an interest in developing more content, but Straczynski bailed out of the project due to a lack of budget and interest in developing a spin-off feature film he'd penned. The franchise also extended to tabletop roleplaying games, miniatures wargames and a line of novels.
Babylon 5 won two Hugo Awards during its time on air and attracted immense acclaim for its heavily serialised, pre-planned story arc at a time when most TV shows were still episodic. Babylon 5's structure and storytelling ambitions inspired other writers, including Damon Lindelof, Joss Whedon and the Wachowskis, whilst Ronald D. Moore consulted with Straczynski during the development of his take on Battlestar Galactica. Babylon 5's epic story and meticulous worldbuilding drew on sources such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury and British SFF shows Blake's 7, The Prisoner and Doctor Who for inspiration, as well as the original Star Trek (Straczynski tapped a number of writers from the original Star Trek to work on the show in its first season). The show also won numerous awards for its cutting-edge (for the time) digital effects, which paved the way for CGI dominate the TV visual effects industry.
Warner Brothers recently released a high definition remaster of the original series on streaming services worldwide. Although the live action footage looks vastly superior, the CGI is variably upscaled.
Straczynski's star has risen since Babylon 5, with him penning multiple successful comic books, developing the story for the 2011 Thor movie (as well as cameoing in the film), being nominated for an Oscar for his script for the 2008 movie Changeling and co-writing the Netflix series Sense8 with the Wachowskis. Straczynski recently released a well-received autobiography, Becoming Superman, and a new novel called Together We Will Go. He also recently completed the editing of his friend Harlan Ellison's fifty-year-gestating short story anthology The Last Dangerous Visions, which is expected for publication next year.
This is a promising development, although fans will likely be concerned that the CW is developing the property rather than HBO or HBO Max, which could perhaps give the series the resources and exposure it deserves. It will be interesting to see how this develops.
June, 1969. The world watches with bated breath as the first manned mission to the moon touches down. The mission is a success, and cosmonaut Alexei Leonov makes his name in history as the first human to successfully land on another astronomical body. American President Nixon is utterly furious and extols NASA to greater lengths to catch up to the Soviet Union and overtake it. When the Soviets land a woman on the moon, NASA is forced to dust off the Mercury 13 proposal to send female astronauts into space. When the Soviets begin prospecting for water, the organisation is told to go one better and land the first-ever permanantly-manned base on the surface.
For All Mankind is a counterfactual or alt-history SF story, taking as the point of divergence the premature death of Sergei Korolev in 1966. Korolev was a prime mover in the Soviet space programme and helped push the USSR into putting the first satellite and the first man in space, ahead of the Americans. His death and the resulting infighting to succeed him delayed Soviet plans for their own lunar programme. With him surviving in this alternate timeline, the USA and USSR remain locked in the space programme for many more years, trading "firsts" as they seek to outdo one another.
The idea of an alternate history is intriguing, but the show - spearheaded by Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek: The Next Generation veteran Ronald D. Moore - recognises that that is not enough by itself. The story needs to be rooted in its characters and their lives. The story pursues several story arcs across the first season to this end. In one, Edward Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) strives to overcome his inability to keep his mouth shut and his lack of confidence in being a father to win the manned moonflight mission he craves. His friend and colleague Gordo Stevens (Michael Dorman) enjoys the rock star elements of being a hotshot test pilot and astronaut a little too much, to the despair of his wife Tracy (Sarah Jones), herself a skilled pilot. Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt) is trying to become a NASA flight controller, but is held back by her lack of political acumen and her close association with Saturn V designer Wernher Von Braun (Colm Feore), whose brilliance has helped America get into space but whose Nazi affiliations during WWII continue to undermine public confidence.
Subplots follow the formation of a new training programme for female astronauts, including Molly Cobb (Sonya Walger), Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall) and Ellen Wilson (Jodi Baldfour), along with Tracy Stevens. Spanning as it does the late 1960s and early 1970s, the show touches base with the civil rights movement, with Danielle serving as the first African-American trainee astronaut, and lesbian Ellen trying to keep the details of her love life a secret.
The show is exacting in its commitment to real science and technology of the period, including some very clever ideas such as repurposing Skylab into a lunar base module when the President decides they need a moonbase yesterday. The early missions, using the actual Apollo technology of the day, are recreated in impressive detail, with some intriguing variances from the norm: Apollo 11 has such a rough landing (Neil Armstrong picking a different and more difficult landing spot than he did in reality) that later missions are checked over in greater detail, leading to Apollo 13 flying without a hitch. The show's absolute high point in terms of visual effects is the landing of Apollo 15 at the edge of Shackleton Crater in the fifth episode, which is just a jaw-dropping moment.
The first half of the season spans two years and takes in a lot of plot points and ideas, making the most of its long episodes (several top an hour) to tell almost self-contained stories about training, politics and the scientific challenges of space travel, not to mention the danger. In a clever move, although actors play key real NASA figures such as Von Braun and Armstrong, all the footage of politicians use real archival footage, sometimes slightly tweaked with effects, with sound-alike actors giving an air of authenticity to proceedings. This is particularly impressive when Ted Kennedy (who in this timeline misses a certain party because of Senate hearings on the greatly expanded space programme and thus avoids the major scandal that derailed his career) becomes President, since obviously there's no archival footage of him as President to use, so the vfx crew get pretty creative in how they sell that.
The second half of the season focuses onto a period of several months and kicks off with a major catastrophe which destroys a relief mission to the moon, leaving three astronauts stranded at their base without hope of relief in the near future. They struggle to deal with being stuck in close confines with one another, with mental health problems being compounded by evidence that a rival Soviet base is up to no good. This story becomes more epic, with family crises back on Earth and a second relief mission which also runs into trouble, in an Apollo 13-on-steroids kind of way, which requires some ingenious solutions. The shift in gears sees the show come into its own, and become a triumph of modern science fiction screen storytelling.
For All Mankind's first season (****½) is a success, with some outstanding writing, acting and extremely impressive effects (the odd ropy explosion here and there excepted). The show's alternate history is sold so convincingly that it's easy to forget that this never happened, and in real life we may be lucky to get back to the moon this decade, sixty years on. But the show does feel like a vindication of science fiction. The premise is similar to Stephen Baxter's novel Voyage, whilst a lot of it feels like it draws on Arthur C. Clarke's assertion that the Vietnam War would have paid for everything he and Stanley Kubrick depicted on screen in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Vietnam still happens, but ends much earlier in the show's timeline). It's a show that feels simultaneously nostalgic but forwards-thinking, and it always compelling to watch. The show is available worldwide now on Apple+.
King Orso has won an unlikely military victory over a rebel army led by the popular Leo dan Brock. Leo is badly wounded, his life spared only by the king's mercy (and love for Leo's wife, Savine dan Glokta). But Midderland, the heart of the Union, is in open rebellion. Revolutionary fervour has swept the island and the Great Change is underway. Fortunes rise and fall rapidly and the fate of nations will be decided by the wisdom of the crowds.
The Wisdom of Crowds concludes the Age of Madness trilogy, Joe Abercrombie's latest work in his First Law world. This trilogy has been a remarkable success, Abercrombie doing what he does best - cynical humour, bone-crunching action and enjoyably knotty plotting - and adding a dash of satirical intrigue.
The Wisdom of Crowds goes full revolution on us, and anyone who's never studied the history of the French and Russian revolutions will be aware of how difficult it is to comprehend why a superficially well-ordered, law-abiding society will suddenly collapse into anarchy. Abercrombie used the first two novels in the series to lay the groundwork for the civil strife within the Union, which the victories in the first two novels only vaguely papered over, and here it explodes with full force. We get to see kangaroo courts, horrific crimes being justified by "the will of the people," and the walking-through-broken-glass maneuverings required by those who worked with the old order but are too useful for the new one to throw away. It's an unusual place for fantasy to go, but it mostly works well, even if the misery inflicted on specific characters and the Union in general feels like it might be a bit over-egged in the mid-running of the book.
The situation in the Union is broken up by a major subplot in the North, where Rikke has taken the throne in Carleon but her rule is shaky. Enemies are marching on the city, and Rikke's inability to charm and win people over sees her losing her allies just when she needs them. The North may feel like the most cyclical part of the First Law world - we've seen battles and conflicts up there repeatedly in the original trilogy, The Heroes and in this new trilogy - but Abercrombie is still able to make the politics and conflicts interesting, even if certain plot twists can be seen from a mile off.
As usual, Abercrombie's work is rooted in characterisation. The Age of Madness has probably his most complex and nuanced cast of characters to date, with it being possible to both hate and admire the likes of Savine, Leo and Orso, often in the same chapter. They are desperately flawed people who are trying to do what they feel is right, sometimes getting it right and sometimes making an apocalyptic excrement-sandwich of it, and are never less than interesting. This works better for some characters than others: the big three and Vic are very-well handled, but Broad's character development feels a bit limited and even somewhat contrived, as if he's a plot point a little too obviously being set up to do one particular thing in the finale. In addition, the character of Judge altogether lacks the rich depth we expect of Abercrombie antagonists, and comes across as just a psycho for the sake of it, which is disappointing.
The ending of the book is outstanding, though, being as gloriously messy as ever, with winners and losers and those winners and losers not necessarily being the ones you expect. There are some terrific reveals and terrifying reversals, and a lot of plot guns that have been set up over not just this trilogy but the preceding stand-alone novels being fired in a satisfying manner. The only big downside from the ending is that there is a bit too much setup work being down for more books in the First Law world (and, indeed, Abercrombie has indicated another trilogy is likely, possibly with more stand-alones first). We even get a last-chapter prophecy which feels like a trailer for what comes next. With Abercrombie off to a fresh world for his next project, The Devils, it may be a while before we get back to this world.
Reading like the demented literary love-child of Terry Pratchett and David Gemmell, The Wisdom of Crowds (****½) rounds off this trilogy in style. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.
Netflix have renewedThe Witcher for a third season, ahead of the second season dropping in December. The franchise will also be getting a second animated movie and a spin-off aimed at younger viewers.
The Witcher's first season was a huge success when it landed on Netflix in 2019. Production of the second season was repeatedly delayed due to the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, but wrapped several months ago. An animated spin-off movie, Nightmare of the Wolf, did well when it was released on Netflix last month.
Season 3 of The Witcher will shoot in 2022 for a likely 2023 premiere. Season 2 will debut on 17 December. A live-action spin-off series, Blood Origin, is currently shooting with Netflix.
Netflix have unveiled the title sequence and music for their live-action version of the anime Cowboy Bebop.
The title sequence is very closely based on the anime's original, and uses a fresh arrangement of the classic theme tune "Tank!" Original composer Yoko Kanno oversaw the new version of the theme and will be providing new music for the series itself.
Cowboy Bebop drops its first season on Netflix on 19 November.
