Sense8

At first, I was a bit weary about this Netflix Original show - a group of twenty-something’s with special powers and they use their powers to help each other out. It sounded a lot like Heroes to me, but boy, was I wrong. I watched this season of perfection in a day and a half. I stopped to eat and go to work and to get the right amount of sleep so I could wake up in the morning and start watching it again.

The concept of the show sounds quite simple yet when you watch it, it’s quite complex. A group of twenty-something’s are connected by a suicide – even though they are in different countries - and after they get some killer migraines, they have special powers and they use their powers to help each other out in their different life situations. Sounds simple? It’s complex because it’s so many genres rolled into one; there’s sci-fi, romance, drama and thriller, but it works so well.

The Wachowskis and J Michael Straczynski are the creators of this magnificent show and you’ve got to give it to them, they’ve done 
such a brilliant job at making a show that you will want to binge, at making a show where you - I guarantee it – will not want to miss a second. You know what I love about this show? All of the different people types of people in it. Sure, there’s a bit of tokenism in there with the stereotypical “Whoo! Gay pride!” lesbians, the Korean who loves martial arts and the American cop, but that’s what I love. It brings together eight different people, from eight different corners of the world.

This show will make you laugh, it will make you cry – I kept a box of tissues by me throughout the twelve episodes – it will knock you breathless because you’ll be thinking “can that even be put in a TV show”, but it pushes the boundaries of TV and doesn’t make you feel like you’ve wasted your time binge watching it.

There wasn’t much of a cliffhanger at the end of the finale but I felt like you didn’t need one. There’s still a lot more to be told about the eight main characters, their backgrounds, their connections with each other (warning: you will ship characters, it’s inevitable), and that’s what makes me so excited for season two. Looks like I’ll be waiting a while, because season one has just come out, but I’m willing to wait for a show so perfect.

Grace and Frankie S1 Review

I'm not normally one to watch sitcoms, they don't really appeal to me. Sure, I'll watch the odd episode of Friends or The Big Bang Theory, but I could never binge watch it. I think it’s because I think that they are all the same and they can get a bit tedious.

The foundations of the show: relationships, budding friendships and funny one-liners, are all the same as any other sitcoms and it may seem very cliché, but this show seems different.

Grace (Jane Fonda) and Frankie (Lily Tomlin) is about two women in their seventies who are trying to move on from one simple fact: their husbands left them for each other. Grace is a vodka sipping, poised and retired business woman and Frankie is a pot-smoking wannabe “physic”. It’s a brilliant idea and each minute in the twenty minute long episodes is not wasted. The Netflix original fills you with all the emotions you want to feel during a TV show - happiness, sadness, anger, anxious, and empathy.

Casting is pure brilliance in this show; it’s like a big reunion for the cast. Fonda is reunited with Tomlin from the satirical “9 to 5”, Tomlin gets to – yet again – work with her co-star from “The West Wing”, Martin Sheen who plays Grace’s husband, Robert. Finally, Fonda is reunited with Sam Waterston – her co-star from “The Newsroom” – who plays Frankie’s husband, Sol. So as you can see, the casting is huge and they’ve already had previous chemistry with each other, which is one of the reasons why the show is so brilliant.

After they find out that their husbands have fallen in love with each other, Grace and Frankie – who, in the past haven’t gotten along at all – can only now rely on the other to get through their nadir.

I think this show is genius but the only downside is that there are too many different relationships going on. I think the main focus for the premiere season should be that Grace and Frankie’s husbands have left them to get married to each other. That should be the main focus throughout the whole thing. But then you’ve got these little relationships in the background that you don’t really need. For instance, Coyote (Ethan Embry) – who is fresh out of rehab – has this weird infatuation with one of Grace’s daughters, Mallory (Brooklyn Decker) – who is, by the way, married to another man. I just think that there’s no need to incorporate small, meaningless background relationships for fillers if you’re not going to expand on them.

However, all in all this show is good, it’s different to the other things that I watch and it was a breath of fresh air. I just hope that in season two, the co-creator’s of Friends have a proper sit down with each other and decide what they want their show to be. A heart-felt show about two women leaning on each other after a big shock to their lives, or a comedy where the two women want to feel young again by keep on going on dating sites, taking drugs and making out with ex-convicts. I do fully recommend this show, I really do and I can’t wait until season two comes out.