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Gracepoint: An Inexact Copy
Dear David Tennant: the next time you’re cast in an American drama series and some network honcho tells you to lose your beautiful Scottish brogue, you fight it.
My own biases aside, there’s much to be said about Fox’s new drama Gracepoint. I don’t want to be yet another person stuck in the abysmal “British originals trump American remakes” mindset, nor do I necessarily want to focus on how foreign Tennant’s accent sounds to me, a fan of both his run on Doctor Who and the original Broadchurch, from which Gracepoint is directly influenced. But in its relocation from the English county of Dorset to a northern California town, it seems to have forgotten parts of itself along the way.
The pilot episode of Gracepoint is structurally almost identical to its cousin. Young mother Beth Solano (Virginia Kull) wakes up one day to discover her son Danny is mysteriously missing, and makes the usual calls and inquiries into his whereabouts. Meanwhile, Detective Ellie Miller (Breaking Bad alum Anna Gunn) returns to work after a vacation to find that the job she was being considered for has been given to Detective Emmett Carver (David Tennant With An American Accent, whoops, there I go. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.). Carver is an out-of-towner hoping to put some demons of an undetermined nature to rest, and Miller is rightly pissed that he’s muscled his way into her limelight. But these characters’ normal lives all come crashing together when Danny Solano’s body turns up on a Gracepoint beach, jump-starting the worst breakdown of “love thy neighbor” in TV history.
Top Dramas Coming Out This Fall
Mid-August is upon us. That means it is officially time to start preparing for the most wonderful time of the year. No not the holidays or the onset of school, but rather the fall season of Television. To say I’m excited for this season is an understatement, especially after last year, which which fell flat. This year however the networks have 57 new shows slated as of right now.
Basically, I should probably drop all my classes for the fall to make time… Or actually get DVR, dump my boyfriend, and start getting groceries delivered to my house to make time for all the awesomeness in store for this season. Thankfully, I have a couple weeks to decide my course of action. That being said, here are the dramas I’m most excited for this fall, in no particular order.
1. The 100 (CW)
The 100 follows a group of rebellious young adults, roughly 100 years after Nuclear Armageddon destroys the planet. These individuals are deemed expendable because of their crimes and as such are chosen to be part of an experiment to see if the Earth is once again safe for the human race to live on.
Why I’m excited: For one this show is buying into the post apocalyptic fad that is taking over now that vampires are starting to fade away. While this show ties into the trend, it doesn’t take too much influence from the Hunger Games. I also really enjoy that their lead, Clarke, is a female and seemingly strong from the previews. Aesthetically, the show is stunning and really well put together visually, which is also somewhat hysterical considering some of the radiation impacted animals, which are horrifying. It’s unique that the characters are all criminals in one way or another, which will bring a lot of interesting characters into the mix with strong personalities and story lines.
Wait! What's A Dial? 