Getting On
Big Love creators Mark V. Olsen & Will Scheffer are returning to HBO‘s primetime. The pay cable network has picked up the duo’s comedy pilot Getting On to series with a six-episode order. A U.S. version of the award-winning BBC Four medical comedy of the same name, HBO’s Getting On stars Laurie Metcalf, Alex Borstein and Niecy Nash. Centering on the put-upon nurses in a women’s geriatric extended-care wing of a down-at-the-heels hospital, it follows the anxious doctors and administrators as they struggle with the darkly comic, brutally honest and quietly compassionate realities of caring for the elderly in an overwhelmed healthcare system. BBC Worldwide Prods is producing. The creators and stars of the original series — Jo Brand, Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine — executive produce. Olsen and Scheffer, who wrote the adaptation through their overall deal at HBO, are executive producing though their Anima Sola Prods banner, with SVP Lisa Bellomo producing. BBC Worldwide Prods.’ Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner also executive produce, along with the British series’ producer Geoff Atkinson. Getting On joins another HBO comedy pilot recently picked up to series, Stephen Merchant’s Hello Ladies, with several other half-hour pilots in production.
Channeling
After enjoying the local short films it was back to an IHSFFF feature, Channeling, by writer/director Drew Thomas. This was easily one of the best films of the festival so far and was a thought-provoking statement on our social-media obsession and how media advertising rules our lives. This is a sci-fi action-thriller with very smart commentary on the state of our society and its potential path of destruction.
Channeling tells the story of a soldier who returns home for his brother’s funeral to find that his older sibling’s death is mired in a mystery involving social media “eyecasting,” where a user places a contact lens with a camera on their eye and broadcasts everything they do. The more hits you get on your “channel” the more sponsors you can acquire. This spawns casinos where gamblers can bet on people’s life events and unscrupulous channel producers who try to spice up the action on their eyecaster channels.
The best science-fiction films always have something important to say about our current world and Channeling ranks with movies like Robocop, Total Recall and They Live (which coincidentally would play later in the evening at this festival) as a genre film with something to say beyond its action/suspense wrapper. This movie is highly recommended and filmmaker Drew Thomas is a creator to keep an eye on.