7/8/15

Dramas Underway: UnREAL and Stitchers

Two new dramas appeared last month - UnREAL (June 1) and Stitchers (June 2) - that you may want to know about, though I only recommend the first one.

Lifetime's UnREAL is a scripted drama about the unscripted reality industry. In this case, the reality show is another iteration of The Bachelor where woman fawn over the male and scratch at each other.  And while I am not one to watch reality shows, this drama is similar to the earlier hit The Newsroom in that it shows the sausage-making behind the sausage, though in this case the production is better than the product.  The show is dark and distasteful at times, but it also draws you in. 

Here is Lifetime's summary of the show:

Set against the backdrop of the hit dating competition show "Everlasting," "UnREAL" is led by flawed heroine Rachel Goldberg (Appleby), a young producer whose sole job is to manipulate her relationships with, and among, the contestants to get the vital dramatic and outrageous footage that the program’s dispassionate executive producer, Quinn King (Zimmer), demands. What ensues is an eye-opening look at what happens in the outrageous world of unscripted television, where being a contestant can be vicious and being a producer a whole other reality.

Stitchers is a new ABC Family show that seems to take one episode from Fringe and turn it into a weekly series.  The first episode started out fine, though I was getting a headache from the camera angles, but it quickly went downhill when the main character was placed in a vat of water (sound familiar) to get into the head of a dead man and the banter of the quirky team assisting her made the plot line laughable.  What should have been snappy one-liners was simply too painful to watch.  Nice try, but this did not work for me.   

Here is ABC's summary of what you can expect (it sounds so much better than what you really get): 

"Stitchers” follows Kirsten (Emma Ishta), a young woman recruited into a covert government agency to be ‘stitched’ into the minds of the recently deceased, using their memories to investigate murders and decipher mysteries that otherwise would have gone to the grave. Working alongside Kirsten is Cameron (Kyle Harris), a brilliant neuroscientist whose passion for the program is evident in his work. The secret program is headed by Maggie (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), a skilled veteran of covert operations, and includes Linus (Ritesh Rajan), a socially immature bioelectrical engineer and communications technician. Kirsten’s roommate, Camille (Allison Scagliotti), a gifted computer science grad student, is also recruited to use her skills to assist Kirsten in her new role as a ‘stitcher.’

As I noted,  check out UnREAL for some fun and only stop by Stitchers if you want to see a train wreck in the making. 

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