Sci-Fi and Fantasy Rule the Tube This Weekend
Three Premieres Headline Saturday
Despite my regrettably late post, this will still be an excellent weekend for TV watchers since three networks are offering three series that are almost guaranteed to satisfy—or at the very least mildly entertain—many fans of the science-fiction and fantasy genres.
Fallen | ABC Family
Following an encore presentation Friday-night at 8pm EST of the original two-hour movie that began the series last summer, Fallen, basic-cable’s ABC family will debut the two remaining two-hour installments in the Fallen trilogy at 8pm on Saturday and Sunday. If you missed Friday’s encore of Part One, The Beginning, an instant replay is also scheduled for tomorrow at 6pm, right before the premiere of Part Two, The Journey, which includes “The Time of the Redeemer” and “Mysterious Ways & All That.” The trilogy then concludes Sunday night with Part Three, The Destiny, comprised of “Someone Always Has to Die” and “Il Gran Rifiuto.”
Based on the Fallen thrillers, a successful quartet of young-adult supernatural books by Thomas Sniegoski, the televised trilogy follows the plight of Aaron Corbett (Paul Wesley), a recently adopted teenager who discovers on his 18th birthday that he is a Nephilim, or a half-human/half-angel hybrid. Moreover, he belongs to an ancient group of fallen angels, the Fallen, who are hotly pursued by a murderous army of killer angels called the Powers. Unfortunately for Aaron, regardless of his former ignorance of his true nature, the Powers are out to get him, too.
Fallen also features Will Yun Lee of the forthcoming NBC sci-fi reimagination Bionic Woman. This is notable because the star of that show, British actress Michelle Ryan, likewise stars in BBC America’s new horror series Jekyll, discussed below, which debuts on American television this weekend, too. In addition, hapless Malcolm in the Middle dad Bryan Cranston plays big bad Lucifer in Fallen.
Masters of Science Fiction | ABC
Second, on ABC, is Saturday night’s premiere of the long-anticipated and long-shelved (episodes actually completed filming in 2006) anthology series Masters of Science Fiction. The network will debut hour-long episodes over the course of four consecutive Saturdays in August at 10pm EST. There are two remaining produced episodes in the series, however, that have not been scheduled.
Narrated by renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking, Masters of Science Fiction is a clear extension of the premise underlying Showtime’s popular two-seasons-old Masters of Horror. The similarity is logical since both series are brought to us courtesy of IDT Entertainment in association with Industry Entertainment.
Uniting prominent directors and writers with talented thespians, each episode of Masters of Science Fiction aims to deliver an especially high-quality hour of science-fiction television adapted from noteworthy sci-fi short fiction. The premiere episode, “A Clean Escape,” is based on a short story by 1982 Nebula Award winner John Kessel. Mark Rydell (On Golden Pond) directed, Sam Egan (The Outer Limits) wrote the adapted screenplay, and The Starter Wife‘s Judy Davis and Law & Order veteran Sam Waterston star.
Jekyll | BBC America
Saturday night also features the debut on BBC America of the United Kingdom’s Jekyll, a horror series adapted, of course, from the classic novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. It stars James Nesbitt (Murphy’s Law), the rumored next Doctor in the current Doctor Who series, as Tom Jackman, a descendant of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde who accordingly undergoes his own bizarre personality transformations. Bionic Woman‘s Ryan plays Jackman’s nurse assistant Katherine Reimer, while former U.K. Coupling star Gina Bellman portrays his understandably confused wife Claire.
James Nesbitt/Jekyll photo courtesy of the BBC
