TV series in general face the Grim Reaper of being canceled -even Star Trek's 5- year journey was nipped in the bud. I have suffered through paste-up finales ("Jericho" likely the worst) and ridiculous loose-ends non-endings, as in the memorably enjoyable but never completed "Vanished" a few years back. In the current age where elaborate mini-series have returned with a vengeance, "Apocalypse" should have been logically planned out to have an organic finish, but such is not the case.
Instead we get a breathlessly paced, with idiotic "24" style time warnings flashed repeatedly as if the viewer were brain-dead and after 10 weeks wasn't aware the end was near. Characters are snuffed out and coincidences piled upon coincidences in the worst way, as the filmmakers have assumed the audience will buy any type of snake oil they're peddling. If this script were submitted as a homework assignment in any Film School class, it would be returned to the student with an F scrawled across the cover page, and a demand to be done over.
I watched for 10 episodes as a dutiful, old-fashioned TV addict, and was hardly prepared for the crap that purportedly tied things up. It would take far more than 1000 words in IMDb to amply criticize all the episode's shortcomings, but the lowlights for me included: nearly satirical dragging out suspense at the very end with the contrivance of a vault door that won't close and fake-heroics with the vehicle to save the day; callous treatment of so many characters, especially the Southern- fried female sidekick who's actions and script treatment are horribly inconsistent; cheesy "parting of the Red Thames" sequence to inject some supernatural hokum into what had already maxed out on dramatic hokum; utter misuse of TV icon Diana Rigg in a baddie role as flimsy as could be - they should have given it to Rula Lenska and been done with it; and finally the Brian De Palma "Carrie" inspired switcheroo ending - always pleasing to morons who dig bad horror movies but way past insulting in this context.
Garbage in, garbage out: the writers and directors from Saul Metzstein on down have ridden current TV and movie trends to provide some of the worst of what I was deeming "Cinema of the Facetious" several decades ago when filmmakers, currently Tarantino being the worst, decided to treat their craft as one big joke on the audience, throwing any sort of sincerity out with the bathwater.
It's all gimmick, send-up and a Mike Myers' view of the world, and these UK hacks swallowed the whole decadent concept and spit it back out as a terrible TV "event". Like pornographers who have recently become obsessed with so-called parodies, this would-be comedy minus the laughs is a disaster only Irwin Allen might wish for.
Instead we get a breathlessly paced, with idiotic "24" style time warnings flashed repeatedly as if the viewer were brain-dead and after 10 weeks wasn't aware the end was near. Characters are snuffed out and coincidences piled upon coincidences in the worst way, as the filmmakers have assumed the audience will buy any type of snake oil they're peddling. If this script were submitted as a homework assignment in any Film School class, it would be returned to the student with an F scrawled across the cover page, and a demand to be done over.
I watched for 10 episodes as a dutiful, old-fashioned TV addict, and was hardly prepared for the crap that purportedly tied things up. It would take far more than 1000 words in IMDb to amply criticize all the episode's shortcomings, but the lowlights for me included: nearly satirical dragging out suspense at the very end with the contrivance of a vault door that won't close and fake-heroics with the vehicle to save the day; callous treatment of so many characters, especially the Southern- fried female sidekick who's actions and script treatment are horribly inconsistent; cheesy "parting of the Red Thames" sequence to inject some supernatural hokum into what had already maxed out on dramatic hokum; utter misuse of TV icon Diana Rigg in a baddie role as flimsy as could be - they should have given it to Rula Lenska and been done with it; and finally the Brian De Palma "Carrie" inspired switcheroo ending - always pleasing to morons who dig bad horror movies but way past insulting in this context.
Garbage in, garbage out: the writers and directors from Saul Metzstein on down have ridden current TV and movie trends to provide some of the worst of what I was deeming "Cinema of the Facetious" several decades ago when filmmakers, currently Tarantino being the worst, decided to treat their craft as one big joke on the audience, throwing any sort of sincerity out with the bathwater.
It's all gimmick, send-up and a Mike Myers' view of the world, and these UK hacks swallowed the whole decadent concept and spit it back out as a terrible TV "event". Like pornographers who have recently become obsessed with so-called parodies, this would-be comedy minus the laughs is a disaster only Irwin Allen might wish for.