Things I am watching
May. 26th, 2010 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenI have to catch up on my list of movies that I've finished, but I just wanted to drop a recommendation for my friends with premium channels and/or Netflix Watch It Now.
Starz has a show called Gravity on right now that is very odd and oddly compelling. The show is centered on a group of suicide survivors--as in people who tried to commit suicide and failed--and their various tribulations. Thus far, five episodes in, we've seen how just about every one of them tried to kill themselves, and even the "funny" attempts are still kind of heartbreaking. I really like the lead characters, Robert and Lily, who are entirely believable as being definite suicides who are only just figuring out that they want to live. Lily skates perilously close to being a manic pixie dream girl, but she's grounded in her depression and serious enough to escape that categorization. The show is shot in better-quality video, meaning it looks almost like it's an expose on the news, which lends weight to the reality of the situation in which the characters wallow.
I don't know if this subject just is more engrossing for me (having known a suicide) or what, but I watched all five currently available episodes almost in one night. (If not for an internet break down, I would have.) I think part of the appeal is that it harkens back to a book I read and enjoyed until its ending went nowhere: Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down. Good book about desperate people forming a bond after almost killing themselves, but the ending is just another one of his go-nowhere-with-the-premise endings. Just ruins it. Gravity also bests A Long Way Down in that it features people who haven't come close to attempting suicide, but people who did and failed. If you'll pardon the pun, I think Gravity has the greater dramatic weight for the difference.
Starz has a show called Gravity on right now that is very odd and oddly compelling. The show is centered on a group of suicide survivors--as in people who tried to commit suicide and failed--and their various tribulations. Thus far, five episodes in, we've seen how just about every one of them tried to kill themselves, and even the "funny" attempts are still kind of heartbreaking. I really like the lead characters, Robert and Lily, who are entirely believable as being definite suicides who are only just figuring out that they want to live. Lily skates perilously close to being a manic pixie dream girl, but she's grounded in her depression and serious enough to escape that categorization. The show is shot in better-quality video, meaning it looks almost like it's an expose on the news, which lends weight to the reality of the situation in which the characters wallow.
I don't know if this subject just is more engrossing for me (having known a suicide) or what, but I watched all five currently available episodes almost in one night. (If not for an internet break down, I would have.) I think part of the appeal is that it harkens back to a book I read and enjoyed until its ending went nowhere: Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down. Good book about desperate people forming a bond after almost killing themselves, but the ending is just another one of his go-nowhere-with-the-premise endings. Just ruins it. Gravity also bests A Long Way Down in that it features people who haven't come close to attempting suicide, but people who did and failed. If you'll pardon the pun, I think Gravity has the greater dramatic weight for the difference.
