I’ve mentioned a few times here that Andrew and I are addicted to watching TV series. We go through them at superhuman speeds and, while I’m frequently scared we’re seriously going to run out of things to watch at this rate, we always manage to find something new to watch. This means that we sometimes end up watching some shows which aren’t all that great, but it also means we sometimes find some hidden gems.
One such gem is Persons Unknown. While a lot of people on message boards who fancy themselves critics have been bashing the series, calling it ‘drivel’ and such, Andrew and I loved it.
It’s basically about seven strangers who wake up one morning in a hotel, in a ghost town, with cameras all over the place. I wish I could say more without giving too much away.
The series is very plot-driven and does not build its characters too much – except perhaps for its female protagonist Janet Cooper. This is, perhaps, a fault – we do not sympathise with many of the characters and they only briefly, if ever, talk about their life before they were taken hostage.
However, the plot is pretty damn good and makes up for this. While I feel the series could definitely benefit from a second season (not a third – that would be milking it for what it’s worth; kind of like what happened with LOST), the first season could easily be a stand-alone. A good thing, considering it’s been made pretty clear they won’t be picking it up for another season.
I could not understand why so many people online gave it such scathing reviews, or why they felt cheated by NBC, who’d advertised the series by saying ‘all would be revealed’ in the end. All was revealed, wasn’t it? And so what if it’s quite open-ended? Just because you don’t get to know all the answers to every single question doesn’t mean something isn’t good. They answered enough. The LOST finale answered much less anyway (I won’t get started on how betrayed I felt by LOST because I’d never stop).
The series kept me hooked, and I enjoyed watching it. That’s really what counts in the end. I hope somewhere along the line they’ll pick it up for a second season, only because I was a bit sad it had ended.
Still this means I can move on to a different show now. And we’ve just started True Blood, which features my new TV boyfriend, Stephen Moyer:
