New stuff

In addition to hurtling with great joy through Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold (more on that later) and getting caught up on S5 of Dexter, I've been sampling some of the new mid-season television shows.  While I haven't found anything yet that I love, I'm generally liking them more than what fall brought us.

Alcatraz - I'm intrigued by what happened to the prison's denizens, I'm enjoying Jorge Garcia a lot and I don't dislike Sam Neill's character as much as many other critics do, who've pegged him as overly curmugeonly and hostile to the little blonde girl cop.  They need to get into the mythology a little and back off the procedural aspect - us Lost fans are missing some mystery.

Touch - I liked the preview episode but didn't love it.  Things wrapped up a little too neatly at the end.  I'm hoping Danny Glover gets a bigger role - and maybe reins in some of the crackpot - and I like Gugu Whatsername.  Kiefer is sort of just playing Jack Bauer-lite, though, right?  As if Jack had been a baggage handler instead of a world-class ass-kicker.

The Fades - BBC America sci-fi ghost story wherein lots of dead people aren't moving on after they die, and some of them are getting pissed off about it and eating people which makes them tangible and mean zombie-ghosts, and apparently they're going to take over the world unless a bunch of people with mystical powers can defeat them.  And the apparent savior of the mystical power people is a geeky British teenager who's never had a date.  Pretty scary in bits, gory too.  Big exposition dump in the first couple of episodes so maybe things will move along/get a little more fun now.

Lost Girl - American SyFy Channel supernatural/urban fantasy show wherein the world is overrun by fey folk (altho' spelled "fae" in this show, I think) - all kinds too, like succubi and incubi and will-o-the-wisps and possibly werewolves and vampires and "doulihans" which are headless horsemen-assassins - who are divided into the Light and Dark Armies and always on the verge of fighting with each other, except for this one girl, a succubus (who is trying to learn how not to drain her sexual partners' life force but, dang, she's got a serious sex drive), who won't choose sides and is probably the savior who will unite the fae into one big happy family.  I'm interested to see more varieties of the fae; and it's a fairly sexy show what with the succubus and all, so that's fun.  The lead is not that charismatic (which I think is poor casting because she's supposed to be all irresistible) but her human sidekick is cute and feisty.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that The River will be good and am counting the days until The Walking Dead comes back.  What are you guys watching?