Always Be Watching - 17 September 2018 - Always Be WatchingCommentShareCommentShare

In the past week I have had the pleasure of seeing two fantastic moments in television. I’ll be honest: years of watching high quality TV has me pretty jaded. I usually spend my time looking at how a scene is constructed, so it is pretty rare that I find myself absolutely lost in the moment. But twice in the past week or so, I have found myself absolutely caught up in a high tension moment. The first was in a mid-season episode of the new Amazon Jack Ryan series, with Ryan on a beach involved in a tense stand-off. The second was in the first episode of the new BBC drama The Bodyguard. For the first 20 minutes of the series, we, the audience, are held captive to the screen as the tension builds over our protagonist (played by Game of Thrones star Richard Madden) looking for a suicide bomber on a passenger train that he is riding with his kids. It is incredible.

The opening scene has been sneakily uploaded to YouTube:

One of the high-points of Season 1 of Star Trek Discovery was Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd. According to his Twitter feed, he’s coming back. Wilson reports it will be part of a big announcement. Is it as simple as his return being officially announced (hopefully with a trailer), or could it be bigger? Could he be starring in one of the promised 10-15 minute short films that will be released via CBS All Access? Or could it even be a solo series, kind of like CBS’ planned Jen-Luc Picard series?

Matthew Perry has apparently been in hospital for the past three months due to a gastrointestinal perforation.

Character actor Peter Donat has passed away, aged 90. I knew him best as Mulder’s father in The X-Files, but he was also seen in shows including Dallas, The FBI, Hill Street Blues, Mannix, Hawaii Five-O, and Murder She Wrote.

Elisabeth Olsen is always worth keeping an eye on, so perhaps don’t let her upcoming Facebook Watch drama series, Sorry For Your Loss, pass you by.

DC has launched its direct-to-consumer streaming service over the weekend. It promises to be the one-stop place to go for all of your DC Comics needs - though you will still have to go elsewhere for the popular live action DC shows like The Flash, Arrow, Supergirl, and the other CW superhero shows. It will also only have a limited number of comics to read at any given time - likely tasters to intrigue readers enough to go and buy the rest of the series.

The service promises new live action shows produced for the platform - eventually production will ramp up to provide two new episodes per week.

I tried to sample the service, but much like a whole lot of other iOS users, I wasn’t able to get past the initial sign-up.

Related: is DC planning a Batgirl series for the streaming service?

After 40 years, Young and The Restless actor Doug Davidson has been let go from the show. He believes that there was still story to tell with the character.

Each year in the US, Universal Studios puts together large scale haunted-house style horror attractions timed with Halloween. This year’s Stranger Things house sounds very impressive.