Kevin Can F Himself: Season 1

In the mind of Kevin McRoberts, he has a great life. He lives in a comfortable house in Massachusetts with a beautiful wife, is visited daily by a close coterie of friends and he gets to indulge his childish whims on a regular basis without any thought to responsibility or consequences. His life is a big, happy sitcom. For his wife Allison, life is different: claustrophobic and repetitive, trapping her in a lifetime of misery and trying to indulge the irresponsible manchild in the house. Allison eventually makes a decision on how to free herself, and build a new life for herself in the process.

Kevin Can F Himself is a drama-comedy which is built around a very interesting idea. Every scene in the show focusing on the character of Allison is filmed like a modern, prestige, single-camera drama, with carefully constructed shots and naturalistic dialogue and shooting. Every scene featuring her husband Kevin is shot like a mid-1990s American sitcom, with bright, overlit sets, a multiple-camera setup and a full-on laughter track, with screams of laughter greeting the most tediously inane "jokes." It's like two shows from completely different genres have been mashed into one.

It's a great idea, but it's questionable if it can be sustained over an entire eight-episode season. The good news is yes, it can, although the format definitely creaks a few times over the run. It also helps that the sitcom scenes are very much in the minority of the show, accounting for much less than half of each episode and barely showing up in a couple of episodes. It also helps that the sitcom scenes are sometimes used to push forward the drama part of the story, whilst the serious scenes are sometimes also very (if often very darkly) comedic.

The show is held together by its star, Annie Murphy. Hot off of Schitt's Creek, where she played the spoiled daughter Alexis, here she plays the put-upon Allison with formidable skill. She is adept at scenes of emotional turmoil and dramatic intensity as she is at comedy, and her comedy skills are obviously outrageously good, honed by six seasons on Canada's finest. Murphy's performance is terrific and helps nail Allison's complex characterisation, where although Allison is set up to receive the audience's sympathies, she also does have a number of character flaws and is partially responsible for some of her own misfortune.

Murphy is matched by Mary Hollis Inboden as Patty, a low-key player in the first episode or two who then quickly elevates into becoming a co-lead. Patty is forthright, self-assertive and "tough" in a way that Allison isn't, but whose observations of Allison gradually turning on her inane lifestyle encourages her to also realise that hanging out with the loutish Kevin is tedious and she needs to be doing something more interesting with her life. Patty and Allison's evolution from indifferent neighbours to a near Thelma and Louise level of conspiratorial plotting and support is a brilliantly-played arc.

It's also fair to praise Eric Petersen, who has the toughest job on the show in playing Kevin. Kevin only appears in the sitcom part of the show (aside from a brief dream sequence) so Petersen has to be "on" at 110% all of the time, in that broad, brash and insufferable way that loutish husbands are in sitcoms. Kevin is meant to be loud, obnoxious and irritating, which is easy, but he also has an undercurrent of controlling obsession over his wife and friends, and Petersen nails that darker undercurrent as well.

The show has been called a teardown of sitcoms, which I think misses the point. The show isn't really saying anything about the strengths and minuses of traditional-format sitcoms at all, as instead using the format shifts to reflect the characters' psychologies. Kevin lives his life in a cotton candy cocoon of comfort and privilege, whilst Allison's life is far harder, bleaker and more complicated, and the format shift accentuates that in a very instinctively clever way.

The show does occasionally falter: the only episode that is very heavy on the sitcom format also has the misfortune to coincide with the worst of the sitcom storylines (Kevin turns a basement into an escape room), and the idea of "the sitcom is supposed to be terrible" spills over and almost drags the episode down, until the drama part of the episode saves it. And that's kind of it. The show otherwise sells itself thanks to electric performances and some very clever writing that is often brutally honest about its characters whilst making you sympathise with them.

The first season of Kevin Can F Himself (****½) is, after perhaps a slightly shaky start, funny, tremendously well-acted and quite clever. The show has been renewed for a second season, which will conclude the story, which is probably a good idea as I'm not sure the format can be sustained for 20+ episodes. The season is available to watch on AMC and AMC+ in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in much of the rest of the world.

QUANTUM LEAP continuation picks up its pilot director

NBC has tapped the acclaimed director Helen Shaver to direct the pilot episode of their Quantum Leap reboot/continuation.

Shaver has a lengthy and storied career as an actress, producer and director, but in recent years has made her name for directing high-profile shows including Station Eleven, Lovecraft Country, Snowpiercer, Westworld, 13 Reasons Why, Vikings, Orphan Black and Person of Interest.

Shaver will also executive produce the pilot and may return to work on the first season further if the show is picked up.

The Quantum Leap pilot has been written by Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt, with original Quantum Leap writer-producer Donald P. Bellisario serving as a producer and consultant.

The show is set thirty years after the events of the original show and sees a new team of scientists trying to figure out how the Quantum Leap Accelerator works and if it is possible to use it to track down the still-missing Dr. Sam Beckett. The show will mostly serve up new adventures with a new cast, with the fate of Sam Beckett serving as a lingering mystery. Original star Scott Bakula is not currently attached, but is understood to be in talks with NBC over being kept informed on its status and may join it later on.

So far this is only a pilot order, with NBC waiting on pushing the trigger on a full season order.

First pictures, plot and character details emerge about LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER

Vanity Fair has the inside scoop on Amazon's bank-flattening Tolkien TV series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, revealing new plot and character information about the series along with exclusive images and confirming some of the show's cast.

Elrond (Robert Aramayo) and Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) meet in the elven kingdom of Lindon.

The article confirms that the show is set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before the events of The Lord of the Rings. The story is set after the defeat of the Dark Lord Morgoth at the end of the War of the Jewels and the destruction of the western lands of Beleriand. The surviving elves have established new kingdoms in the north-west of Middle-earth, most notably the coastal kingdom of Lindon and the inland nation of Eregion. Their human allies from the war have been given a great gift, a new island home in the midst of the Sundering Seas, Númenor. Over the intervening centuries Númenor has become a powerful island nation, sending its ships to explore every corner of the world. Likewise, the dwarves have established new holdings and reestablished contact with old ones, such as the great subterranean empire of Khazad-dûm, lying beneath the Misty Mountains (and whose dusty ruins will one day be explored by the Fellowship of the Ring, when it is known as Moria).

Despite the defeat of Morgoth, evil has not left Middle-earth. Morgoth's lieutenant, Sauron, is missing, presumed destroyed, and some of his fell followers, including orcs and trolls, remain a problem. It is probably not a massive spoiler to reveal that Sauron (not, at this point, a flaming giant eyeball) is not dead and is plotting a comeback involving the forging of some rather familiar hand-ornaments...

The story of the Second Age is not relayed in any novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, but in historical summaries at the end of The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) and an essay called The Akallabeth, which is published at the end of Tolkien's mythic account of the wars of the First Age, The Silmarillion (1977). Additional essays, such as a detailed lineage of the Kings and Queens of Númenor, an incomplete short story about a Númenorean mariner-king and a character study of the elven leaders Galadriel and Celeborn can all be found in Tolkien's Unfinished Tales (1980). But these accounts only reveal the grand, over-arcing history of the time period, omitting the close-up details. The writing team, led by Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, has taken advantage of this to create a narrative that both explores the unfolding main narrative but also introduce a host of new characters who will be our eyes and ears into these epic events.

The character list includes some familiar names: Galadriel and Elrond are key and important characters who play a major role in The Lord of the Rings. As the show is set thousands of years before the novels and earlier Peter Jackson film trilogy, these roles have been recast with younger actors. Characters who appeared briefly in the film trilogy, such as the Númenorean king Elendil and his son and heir Isildur (who both briefly appear in the prologue to the first movie), will play a larger role here, and of course Sauron will be the chief (but not sole) threat.

Most of the characters will be new. A young elven warrior named Arondir has found love with a human woman, something this forbidden by his culture. A mysterious human named Halbrand strikes up an alliance with Galadriel after they are both shipwrecked in a storm. Prince Durin, the heir to Khazad-dûm, has to navigate a difficult path.

Showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne have relatively few credits, but were recommended for the job by J.J. Abrams, who'd worked with them on the script for Star Trek Beyond (2016). The two writers also had a take on the Second Age story that excited Amazon. The showrunners quickly assembled an experienced writing team including Gennifer Hutchison (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul), Jason Cahill (The Sopranos, Fringe) and Stephany Folsom (Toy Story 4, Thor: Ragnarok), whilst director J.A. Bayona (The Orphanage, The Impossible, A Monster Calls, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) was assigned to produce and direct the first two episodes.

There is one major deviation with this show from the source material. In Tolkien's works, the major events of the Second Age are largely compressed into two time periods, one revolving around the forging of the Rings of Power and the resulting war between Sauron and the elves, during which Numenor makes its presence felt, and another period some fifteen centuries later when the Númenoreans capture and imprison Sauron on their home island, leading to an apocalyptic series of events culminating in the War of the Last Alliance (which opened the original move trilogy). Here the two time periods have been collapsed into one period, presumably lasting a few years or decades.

This isn't completely unprecedented - Jackson collapsed a seventeen-year time gap in the opening chapters of The Lord of the Rings into a few weeks - but the scale here is extreme, with most of the second half of the Second Age being erased. This already seems to be the most contentious change, when the writers could have either instead used a flashback framing device or multiple timelines, or simply done a mid-series time jump. How successful it is remains to be seen.

Confirmed Cast of Characters

• Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), a much younger version of the character played by Cate Blanchett in the original trilogy. Galadriel is younger, prouder and perhaps less measured than in the Third Age. A senior leader of the elves of Middle-earth, she is utterly opposed to the machinations of the Dark Lord Sauron but is tempted by the trappings of power.
• Elrond (Robert Aramayo), a younger version of the character played by Hugo Weaving in the original movie trilogy. Elrond Half-elven has forsaken his human heritage to become a senior leader of the elves of Middle-earth, standing as advisor to the elven High King, Gil-galad.
• Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), one of the highest-ranking elven survivors from the War of the Jewels. Founder and ruler of the inland elven kingdom of Eregion, which borders the dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dum. Celebrimbor is a master-smith driven by pride and the desire to forge the most beautiful artifacts ever created. Unfortunately, his pride is something that can be manipulated and used against him.
• Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova), a silvan elf warrior who finds a forbidden love with Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi), the healer of the village of Tirharad.
• Prince Durin (Owain Arthur), the future King Durin IV, heir to the dwarven throne of Khazad-dûm, which in later ages would be known as Moria. 
• Princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete) of Khazad-dûm.
• Isildur (Maxim Baldry), a young nobleman of Númenor.
• Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), a human fleeing from his own past.
• A Harfoot Elder (Sir Lenny Henry), a leader of the harfoot people, an early tribe of Hobbits who have come west centuries before the rest of their kin. Megan Richards and Markella Kavenagh play two harfoot youngsters who encounter a "mysterious lost man" whose identity becomes a key mystery in the story (Kavenagh's character may be called Tyra).

Rumoured Cast

• Joseph Mawle and Simon Merrells are playing new (?) characters called Adar and Trevyn. Adar is an antagonist.
• Gil-Galad (Benjamin Walker), High King of the Elves in Middle-earth, overlord of Lindon and the senior-most elven leader in Middle-earth.
• Carine (Ema Horvath), Isildur's sister and a young noblewoman of Númenor.
• Elendil (Lloyd Owen), a nobleman of Númenor, father of Isildur and Carine and a kinsman of the king.
• Pharazon (Trystan Gravelle), a royal prince of Númenor.

The first episode of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is called Shadow of the Past and will debut on 2 September 2022 on Amazon Prime worldwide. The first trailer for the show will air on Sunday during the US Super Bowl.

Netflix releases trailer and airdate for the final season of THE LAST KINGDOM

Netflix has released the trailer for the fifth and final season of The Last Kingdom. They also confirmed that the series will air on 9 March.

The Last Kingdom's fifth season will adapt the ninth and tenth books in the series, Warriors of the Storm and The Flame Bearer. The thrust of the season will be on the final showdown between Uhtred and his former lover, Brida, a key ally turned into a longstanding enemy. Their enmity also takes place as Uhtred finally assembles the forces needed to retake his ancestral homeland of Bebbanburg, as once again Uhtred finds himself potentially at odds with his liege, King Edward.

There are three more books in the series, but Netflix has decided to not adapt them traditionally. Instead, their events will form the basis for a sequel movie, Seven Kings Must Die, which will act as the grand coda for the entire series. Production on the movie is expected to begin shortly for release in 2023.

STAR WARS: OBI-WAN KENOBI to hit screens on 25 May

Disney have confirmed that Obi-Wan Kenobi, their six-part mini-series about the titular Jedi, will hit the Disney+ platform on 25 May.

Obi-Wan Kenobi sees Ewan McGregor reprise his role as Obi-Wan, whom he last played on-screen in Revenge of the Sith in 2003. The series is set a decade after Revenge of the Sith and nine years before the events of A New Hope, and sees Obi-Wan's semi-retirement on Tatooine interrupted by a new adventure.

In addition to McGregor, Hayden Christensen will reprise his role as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, most likely in flashbacks and dream sequences, whilst Bonnie Piesse and Joel Edgerton will reprise their roles as Beru and Owen Lars from Revenge of the Sith. It is likely that a new actor will also play a 10-year-old Luke Skywalker.

Additional roles will be played by Kumail Nanjiani (Eternals) and Indira Varma (Rome, Game of Thrones), among others.

25 May is also known as "Star Wars Day," this year marking the 45th anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars (subsequently retitled A New Hope).

FUTURAMA revival ordered at Hulu

Animated SF sitcom Futurama is returning with new episodes for Hulu. The streamer has ordered a 20-episode eighth season of the show, which last aired new episodes in 2013 (although a Simpsons/Futurama crossover episode aired in 2014).

Created by Simpsons creator Matt Groening, Futurama debuted in March 1999 and ran for four seasons on Fox. Although critically acclaimed, the show never attracted audience figures close to that of The Simpsons and was cancelled in 2003. Comedy Central subsequently resurrected the show with four feature-length episodes in 2008, which were later split into four episodes apiece to make up fifth season. Comedy Central then commissioned two more seasons which aired from 2010 to 2013 before cancelling the show again. The show won six Emmy Awards during its time on the air.

Groening has subsequently created the animated fantasy comedy Disenchantment for Netflix, which released its fourth set of episodes today.

Groening and Futurama producer/developer David X. Cohen are producing the revival. Most of the original cast will return, with the only outstanding actor currently being John DiMaggio, who voiced sarcastic, alcoholic robot Bender. Hulu are currently negotiating with DiMaggio, but are willing to recast if necessary.

Production of the new season will begin this month, to air in 2023.

Saul Zaentz Company to sell its LORD OF THE RINGS screen and merchandising rights

The Saul Zaentz Company is to sell its long-standing screen and merchandising rights to J.R.R. Tolkien's work, which it has held since 1976.

United Artists struck a deal with J.R.R. Tolkien in 1968 to secure the screen rights to Tolkien's novels The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-55), along with related merchandising rights. Tolkien had been reluctant to sell the screen rights, but had wanted to secure a legacy for his children and, in particular, to provide for the education of his grandchildren. United Artists worked on several prospective movie projects over the next decade, most notably a live-action collaboration with John Boorman which ultimately did not reach the screen (during research, Boorman developed ideas which led to his 1981 Arthurian movie Excalibur instead).

In 1976 United Artists decided to sell some of its rights to Tolkien's works to raise funds for more original projects. Film producer Saul Zaentz, fresh from the success of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, acquired the full rights to The Lord of the Rings and the production rights to The Hobbit; United Artists held onto the distribution rights to The Hobbit, figuring that any film adaptation would want to start with the earlier novel (these rights were later acquired by MGM when they bought United Artists). This led Zaentz to produce an animated version of the first half of The Lord of the Rings in 1978 with director Ralph Bakshi; the film was not successful enough to allow a sequel to be produced.

Zaentz established a new company called Tolkien Enterprises to handle the rights he'd acquired; the name was later changed to Middle-earth Enterprises to avoid confusion with the Tolkien Estate. Tolkien Enterprises entered into licencing and merchandising deals for various merchandise related to the property, including video games and a tabletop roleplaying game from Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE). In 1997, Zaentz entered into an agreement with New Line Cinema for a new, live-action film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, to be directed by Peter Jackson. Released as three movies between 2001 and 2003, the the trilogy made $3 billion at the box office and was critically acclaimed.

Zaentz continued to benefit from various licencing deals related to the books and films. Several years later, a complex deal was worked out between New Line, their new owners Warner Brothers and Hobbit rights-holders MGM to produce a film series based on The Hobbit. This trilogy was released between 2012 and 2014 to financial success, but a much more muted critical reception. Zaentz died in January 2014, shortly after the release of the second film in the trilogy.

Zaentz's death and the subsequent reversion of the live-action film rights from New Line to the Zaentz Company in 2020 seems to have spurred the company's decision to sell. The package includes the live-action film rights to The Lord of the Rings in full, the production rights to The Hobbit, spin-off merchandising rights to both properties (including tabletop games, video games, miniatures), theme park rights and rights related to live events based on both novels. The package is expected to raise at least $2 billion before any potential bidding begins.

The logical home for the rights is Amazon. Amazon reached a deal with New Line and Warner Brothers in 2017 as part of their project to bring a Lord of the Rings-branded television series to the air, boosted by an unprecedented $250 million deal with the Tolkien Estate granting them certain limited rights to other Tolkien writings (believed to incorporate strictly-limited rights to Tolkien's posthumous works The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales). Amazon subsequently acquired MGM, meaning they also now own the distribution rights to The Hobbit. Acquiring the Saul Zaentz Company's rights would reunite the full rights to The Hobbit for the first time since 1976, and would also clear the way for Amazon to helm any future remake of the films.

Amazon entered production on its Middle-earth prequel television series, The Rings of Power, in February 2020. The series, which has become the most expensive single television series ever made, is expected to debut its first trailer during the Super Bowl on Sunday. The show is currently scheduled to hit the air on 2 September this year.

It's possible other companies might also be interested in the deal, with Warner Brothers likely keen to investigate following their production (via subsidiary New Line) of the six successful live-action Middle-earth movies to date. Warner Brothers are also currently developing an animated Middle-earth movie, War of the Rohirrim, and that project entered production early enough to not be affected by this reversion of rights. However, the likely high price tag may dissuade Warner Brothers, or encourage them to enter into a partnership with Amazon over future possible projects.

The Book of Boba Fett: Season 1

Famed mercenary Boba Fett has laid claim to the former palace and territory of the crime lord Jabba the Hutt. The civic and criminal gangs which rule Tatooine warily watch to see how events will pan out, with Fett having to fend off challenges from Jabba's cousins, the Twins, and the merciless Pyke Syndicate. As Fett struggles to rule through respect, rather than fear, he revisits his past, how he escaped the Sarlaac beast and how his recovery was helped by unxpected allies.

The Book of Boba Fett is the long, long-awaited Star Wars spin-off focusing on the titular bounty hunter. A fan-favourite character ever since since he debuted in the otherwise woeful Star Wars Holiday Special, Fett received only limited screentime in the original trilogy, adding to his mystique, but was given more backstory in the prequel trilogy and the Clone Wars animated series. The second season of The Mandalorian saw his return as a grizzled veteran out to settle scores.

This series establishes a format it follows through its first four episodes: we follow both a present-day storyline as Fett wrestles with taking and keeping control of Mos Espa and also extensive flashbacks explaining how he survived the events of Return of the Jedi. Sometimes the flashbacks are dominant and the present-day storyline only gets a few scenes and sometimes the reverse. There is one key problem with this narrative structure: neither story has enough juice or momentum to warrant its screen time individually, let alone together.

The flashback stories flirt with dull colonialist tropes as Boba Fett teaches some Tusken Raiders how to be better warriors, whilst their acceptance of him into their tribe teaches him compassion and honour. This is set up to explain why Fett is now kinder, more willing to make friends and allies than the lone-wolf bounty hunter he was first introduced as. In the present day, we see Fett and ally Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen) attempting to bring justice to the streets of Mos Espa through respect rather than fear. However, it all feels a bit half-hearted. Jabba inspired fear and respect through his ruthless crushing of the opposition and his power being backed by the Hutts. Boba has no such power base and it's unclear how he and effectively one hired gun and a bunch of droids can hope to replicate Jabba's power. This sets up a storyline as he recruits allies, including an irate Wookie bounty-hunter, a new pet rancor and a bunch of cyborg "mods" who race around the streets of Most Espa on hover-Vespas. It all feels a bit random, especially as the show sets up formidable enemies in the form of a brother and sister team of Hutts, but then immediately exiles them from the story in favour of the altogether vaguer Pyke Syndicate.

The Book of Boba Fett loses its story thread several times in the first four episodes, leaving the viewer to scratch their head about what the through-line of this series is. If Fett is no longer a ruthless, amoral bounty-hunter, why does he want to be a ruthless, amoral crime lord? If he learned respect and honour from the Tuskens living a simple life in the desert, why is he proceeding to take over the big cities with morasses of competing interests? It doesn't help that the show introduces potentially interesting characters and subplots and then does nothing with them.

Jennifer Beals plays the owner of a high-class cantina in Mos Espa and it's hinted that she has an interesting agenda. However, neither her character nor the stories of her cantina are fleshed out in any way. The exceptional Sophie Thatcher from Yellowjackets plays Drash, the leader of the cyborgs biker gang, and gets virtually nothing to do other than take part in a couple of very half-heated action sequences. Why does the Mod gang join forces with Boba? How does he retain their loyalty? Why does everyone treat Boba as a respected and honoured warrior when five seconds ago he was a feared, amoral bounty hunter and ruthless criminal? Why cast Danny Trejo in a fun role and do absolutely nothing more with him?

The Book of Boba Fett does remain watchable thanks to some sharp action set-pieces (particularly a fun train heist), but these questions keep mounting, leaving the viewer scratching their head on why anything is happening. Then the show takes a hard left-turn into real non-sequitur randomness.

With its fifth and sixth episodes, The Book of Boba Fett abruptly turns into Season 2.5 of The Mandalorian. We rejoin the adventures of Din Djarin as he learns to master the Darksabre and tries to pay a visit to Grogu (aka Baby Yoda). The problems with the rest of the series abruptly disappear as the show gains focus and clarity...at the expense of its lead character. Boba Fett disappears for most of these two episodes and instead we get a concentrated thermonuclear blast of fan-service. R2-D2! Luke Skywalker! Ahsoka Tano! Cad Bane! Timothy Olyphant's lawman guy! That X-wing guy! It's all fun and well-handled, but also feels incredibly off-target.

Eventually the producers seem to remember this is the Boba Fett show and re-team the Mandalorian and Boba Fett for the finale, which does almost lives up to its billing. We get a reasonably impressive and long battle sequence, featuring rancors climbing buildings, gigantic versions of the destroyer droids from The Phantom Menace and more. It's visually impressive, if mildly incoherent: a droid fails to gun down Fett's assorted allies when they are standing five feet away and its powerful turbolasers, which took out an armoured personnel carrier in five seconds, is now unable to make much of an impression on a relatively thin stone wall.

Of course, applying cast-iron logic to Star Wars is not a winning strategy, so overlooking such pedantry there is some fun to be had from these battle scenes, particularly the two Mandalorian-armoured warriors working out a rhythm as they learn how to fight as a team (albeit a team that has apparently never heard of the term "cover"). Fett's assembled allies get a bit more time in the sun and story ends in a reasonably interesting place. But it all feels a bit underwhelming.

Some of the problems can be ascribed to the fact that The Mandalorian has just featured two seasons of a taciturn, badass warrior wearing Mandalorian armour and sorting out business, so having a third, and considerably more weakly-plotted, season of exactly the same thing feels redundant. Other issues can be perhaps ascribed to the problems of having a lead actor in his sixties being supposedly an accomplished warrior. Don't get me wrong, Temuera Morrison could certainly break most twenty-year olds in half, but Boba definitely does not live up to his lethal billing as a fighter here. The show also doesn't really address the age problem: Boba should only be around 41 years old at this point, so it's unclear why he looks and acts like a guy twenty years older, aside from the fanservice of using the "right" actor. They'd have been better using Daniel Logan who played the younger Fett in Attack of the Clones who is now in his mid-thirties and would be a better fit for the character's age, or setting the show twenty years later and focusing on a story about an older Boba facing retirement and obsolescence, although of course that would have reduced the chances for tying into the Mandalorian's storyline.

As the first season of The Book of Boba Fett (***), the show just about remains watchable through some effective action sequences, a few nice comic asides and Ming-Na Wen stealing every scene she's in. As an interlude of The Mandalorian (****), the show is altogether more successful, catching us up on what Din and Grogu are up to and setting up Season 3 of The Mandalorian in style. As a show overall, it feels lopsided, and, disappointingly, is at its weakest whenever Boba Fett and his confused motivations are on screen. The season is available now on Disney+ worldwide.

RIP Douglas Trumbull

Douglas Trumbull, a key pioneer of Hollywood special effects and the director of classic SF movie Silent Running, has passed away at the age of 79.

Douglas Trumbull with one of his most famous creations, the Tyrell Corporation Headquarters Building from Blade Runner (1982)

Trumbull was born in 1942, the son of Donald Trumbull, an earlier pioneer in Hollywood vfx who had worked on The Wizard of Oz in 1939. Unsurprisingly, Trumbull grew up enamoured of movies, particular science fiction films and movies involving aliens. He studied to become an architect and illustrator but side-lined in to movie vfx when he was hired to work on informative films for NASA and the US Air Force. His work for NASA, as part of Graphic Films, attracted the attention of Stanley Kubrick and he was one of a number of Graphic Films illustrators hired to work on Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey. When Kubrick moved production to the UK, Trumbull quite his job at Graphic Films to follow the production. Trumbull developed a solid working relationship with Kubrick, leading to him delivering arguably the film's crowning vfx achievement, the depiction of the Stargate sequence at the end of the film.

Despite the boost to his career from working on 2001, Trumbull found the experience of working for a perfectionist like Kubrick draining. Returning to Hollywood, he set up his own effects company and worked on The Andromeda Strain (1971), where he established a good working relationship with Robert Wise. He then directed his first feature film, Silent Running, which partially developed out of his frustration at not being able to realise the planet Saturn convincingly for 2001 (resulting in that movie switching its location from Saturn to Jupiter, famously too late for Arthur C. Clarke to change it in the accompanying novel). The "agro-ships" developed for Silent Running became a very popular design, and were redeployed several years later as part of the rag-tag, fugitive fleet in the original iteration of Battlestar Galactica (1978-79). Trumbull also worked on the TV series The Starlost (1973) as producer and vfx advisor.

Trumbull developed further projects as a director, but his career in that field stalled after Silent Running failed to make much of a dent at the box office. He returned to vfx work, first with The Towering Inferno (1974) and then for Steven Spielberg on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), a commitment which meant he was unable to work on Star Wars (1977) for George Lucas. Trumbull was called in at the last moment to provide the vfx for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), after the original effects house failed to produce usable footage. Trumbull worked around the clock for six months to deliver the number of shots required for his old colleague Robert Wise.

Trumbull was exhausted by his work on Star Trek and vowed again to never work for another director, but was lured back to Hollywood by Ridley Scott for his 1982 movie Blade Runner. Trumbull then directed his second and final film, Brainstorm, but the film was overshadowed by the mysterious death of its star Natalia Wood by drowning. The investigations and inquiries delayed the film's release by two years.

The experience encouraged Trumbull to quit working directly in the movie business, instead becoming a technical consultant. He contributed to the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios Theme Park and worked on the IMAX cinema format. In 2011 he was again lured back to work in the movie business, this time by director Terrence Malick for his film The Tree of Life, which he wanted to make with traditional, non-CGI techniques. Trumbull signed on as effects consultant and provided ideas on how to accomplish results which were less CG-dependent. In the following years Trumbull noted that directors like James Cameron and Peter Jackson were using variants on his pioneering "Showscan" technology (which recorded films at a higher frame-rate to allow for more convincing 3D imagery), which he had developed in the late 1970s but not been able to get to market.

In the latter part of the 2010s, Trumbull developed additional technical ideas, including the Magi system, which would have captured native 3D in 4K at 120fps. However, the muted and sometimes hostile response to Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy and its enhanced 48fps motion seems to have dented the medium's appetite for faster frame rates in films.

Trumbull was an important pioneer in the field of Hollywood special effects, developing ideas and techniques that became commonplace in film, as well as working on several of the most iconic vfx sequences in movie history: the Stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the passage of Saturn's rings in Silent Running, the alien mothership landing in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the USS Enterprise's encounter with the V'Ger cloud in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and the iconic flying police car fly-by of Los Angeles in Blade Runner. A fantastic artist, he will be missed.

LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER will drop its first trailer on Sunday

Amazon have confirmed that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will drop its first trailer this coming Sunday, during the Super Bowl. This will be the first footage seen of the series, which began filming in Auckland, New Zealand almost exactly two years ago.

It is likely this will be a relatively brief teaser trailer rather than more in-depth footage. The show will not debut on Amazon until 2 September this year, so this is a continuation of the slow-burn marketing that kicked off in January with the unveiling of the show's title and continued last week with the unveiling of twenty-three posters for the show, each focusing on a different character (whose identity is obscured).

The Rings of Power is set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, more than three thousand years before the events of The Lord of the Rings, and will tell a number of different stories from different points in the Age's history. These include the forging of the Rings of Power by the elven-smiths of Eregion, led by Celebrimbor, and the rise to glory and power of the mighty island kingdom of Numenor, the distant ancestors of characters like Aragorn and Denethor. Familiar Lord of the Rings characters like Isildur, Galadriel, Sauron and Elrond are expected to play key roles (albeit with new actors compared to the Peter Jackson movie trilogy), although the bulk of the characters and subplots are expected to be new.

Unlike Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie trilogies, this new work is not based directly on a J.R.R. Tolkien novel. Instead it draws on material about the Second Age and Numenor scattered through Tolkien's writings, including the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, a history in The Silmarillion and several stories, lineages and a map presented in Unfinished Tales. This series marks the first time that material from Tolkien or Middle-earth works other The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit have ever been adapted, the result of an unprecedented $250 million deal between Amazon and the Tolkien Estate.

The Rings of Power is comfortably the most expensive ongoing television series ever made, with even the most conservative estimates putting a budget of $30 million per episode on it, twice that of the last two seasons of Game of Thrones. Some estimates suggest that Amazon have spent almost double that figure, which would mean that the show is having more money spent on it per-hour than Jackson's movie trilogy, even adjusted for inflation. Even for Amazon's effectively infinitely deep pockets, this is a huge project and much of the show's future television strategy hinges on it being a major success.

A second season of the show has already been commissioned and is expected to start shooting next month, although production has been moved from New Zealand to the United Kingdom for the second year.