The final week of September can be quite nicely summed up as the changing of the guard. A veteran comedian steps down to be replaced by a younger, fresher one, and CBS finally decides to stop flogging the proverbial dead horse, only for the BBC to take up the standard (which we don’t want. Put it down, BBC, we pay for this shit). A cartoon from the 80s gets a remake, and there’s some fun looking new stuff too. Yay for everyone.
First up this week is the return of a show that only just wrapped up its first season in the UK this summer. Last Man on Earth has been picked up by Dave for one of those “night after” deals (like what Sky Atlantic have with HBO) from the start of its second season. The show, produced by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (the guys who gave us The Lego Movie and The Jump Street remakes), and created by/starring Will Forte, follows a man left alive after some undisclosed apocalyptic event . It quickly becomes apparent, however, that he is not alone, as more and more survivors pop up, and hilarity ensues. The show’s first season performed fairly well with critics and audiences alike, and even garnered a brace of Emmy nominations. It premieres at 9pm on Monday.
Also jumping straight on Monday is the reboot of children’s show Danger Mouse. The show, which originally ran through the 80s up until 1992, follows the dazzling exploits of the eponymous Danger Mouse, a secret agent who lives in a postbox and regularly does battle against Baron Greenback, a toad. A cartoonish spoof of the James Bond films, the show is basically just awesome, plus the remake is set to star the voices of Alexander Armstrong, Stephen Fry, and John Oliver. You don’t have to watch it, it is for kids after all, but you’ll be missing out. Danger Mouse airs on CBBC.
On now to Tuesday, where a giant of TV will be laid to rest, as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation ends its fifteen year run with a feature-length finale entitle Immortality. Previous stars William Peterson and Marg Helgenburger will reprise their roles for this final installment (I don’t know what they’re called, I don’t watch the show and I’ll be damned if I have to read the Wikipedia page for more than a few seconds), which takes the place of the show’s sixteenth season, following its cancellation by CBS earlier this year. Finally, after the veritable orgy of police procedurals that is primetime TV, one of them has been allowed to die. The finale airs at 10pm on Channel 5.
Up next is The Daily Show, one of America’s famous late-night talk shows. This one, which for a long time (sixteen years) was hosted by Jon Stewart, has found a new host in the form of South African comedian Trevor Noah, after Stewart announced he was stepping down. The show (now called The Daily Show with Trevor Noah) is a satirical news program which, with Stewart as the host, won 21 Emmy awards, a success that Noah will hopefully be able to continue. Spawning a number of successful spin-offs and launching the careers of several of America’s biggest new comedians (including Stephen Colbert and John Oliver), the show airs on Comedy Central, with its first episode premiering at 11pm on Tuesday.
A new show now – You, Me and the Apocalypse. Starring Mathew Baynton (Horrible Histories, The Wrong Mans), Megan Mullally (Will & Grace, Parks and Recreation), and Rob Lowe (the 80s), the show is a British-American made sci-fi comedy thingy. It follows an odd group of people forced to survive together when it is announced that a comet will shortly bring the End Times and, in a shocking turn of events, the show is actually going to be shown in the UK before the US. Hell Yeah! The show premieres on Sky1 at 9pm on Wednesday.
Our final show this week is another newbie, though it will doubtless be a bit less light-hearted than its colleague. From Darkness (see, even the name is a bit forbidding), is a new BBC drama about a woman who comes to Manchester from the Western Isles (I had to look this up, it’s the Hebrides, the scraggly bits of rock to the west of Scotland), in an attempt to escape her violent past, only to be caught up in her violent past (it’s unclear whether or not it’s the same violent past). Also she’s a police officer (God damn it, I thought we said earlier that the police procedurals were dying and now there’s another one, it’s like the fucking hydra). The show stars Anne-Marie Duff (Shameless, Nowhere Boy), and premieres on BBC One at 9pm on Sunday.
