2 Best TV Shows Similar to Santuario
Orphan Black: Echoes
It is perhaps unfair to compare a single 10-episode season of Orphan Black Echoes against its predecessor’s 50 episodes over five seasons run. After all, that much more real estate allows a show so much more time to explore and resolve its mythos satisfactorily. But if one stacks up Echoes’ season against the original’s debut, the newest member of the franchise still suffers by comparison. Created by Anna Fishko and taking place about 40 years after the events of Orphan Black, Orphan Black Echoes opens with an immediate hook. A woman (Krysten Ritter)—who we’ll eventually know as Lucy—awakens in a well-appointed living room. She has no memory of who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Dr. Kira Manning (Keeley Hawes)—the adult daughter of Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany), who is sadly only glimpsed in a photo—attempts to calm and remind Lucy of her past. It fails and the amnesiac has to be chemically restrained. Later, she manages to escape the room, only to discover that it is little more than a set built inside a massive warehouse. In 2052, the cloning process at the center of the original series may be illegal, but science has found a workaround, creating a different kind of copy called, colloquially, “printouts.” From there, the series follows Lucy’s attempts to discover her past and protect those she cares about. The quest sweeps up several others in its quake, including a teen, Jules Lee (Amanda Fix), who’s deeply connected to Lucy and Kira. Others pulled into the situation include Kira’s wife (Rya Kihlstedt), a seemingly altruistic billionaire, Paul Darrios (James Hiroyuki Liao), a shoot-first-ask-questions-later enforcer Tom (Reed Diamond), and a single father (Avan Jogia) and his tween daughter (Zariella Langford). Continue Reading →
Death and Other Details
Hulu’s entry in the massive cast mystery trend starts with sexy confidence before collapsing under its own weight. Mysteries have steadily made a comeback on screens and in multiplexes over the past several years. Kenneth Branagh offered old-school fun with his triptych (so far) take on master of the genre Agatha Christie’s works. Rian Johnson took Christie into modern times with a helping of class insight in Knives Out and Glass Onion. Things even get meta with the murder at an Agatha Christie play shenanigans of See How They Run. Series like The Afterparty and Murder at the End of the World took the genre to the small screen. With all this competition, of course Death and Other Details would try to find a new way of telling a familiar tale. Early on, it seems series’ creators Heidi Cole McAdams and Mike Weiss have hit upon a simple but ingenious solution. Let’s get some sex in here! For all the delights of the massive cast mystery revival, each project has been noticeably short on heat. Daniel Craig can still fill out some swim trunks with the best of them, but he’s a married man with a barely glimpsed sweet hubby back home. Emma Corin’s Darby Hart had a romance with Harris Dickinson’s Bill in End of the World, but by the time we know them, those days are over. Death and Other Details, however, boldly declares that, to paraphrase High Fidelity, it’s ok to be investigating a murder and horny at the same time. Continue Reading →