jmihalchik-67031

I love New Amsterdam.

Is it over the top corny? Absolutely.

No one dies, everything works out in the end, and Dr Max Goodwin is the most charming lead character since The Good Doctor himself.

But Great Ceasars Ghost, everyone on the show is gay-- not that there's anything wrong with that.

I'm not sure how America breaks down percentage wise (in terms of sexual orientation), but judging by the patient roster at New Amsterdam, one would think New York City is at least 80% gay or transsexual.

For a dramatic series to be believable, there needs to be a modicum of reality in the storytelling.

There is not.

Still, Dr Goodwin and cast are simply too darned cute not to like.

A guilty pleasure if ever there were one.

As an Absolute Beatles maniac and quasi-historian, I was looking forward to this documentary for a long time.

The footage itself is striking-- it looks like the band shot the material last week, not 50 years ago.

Excited anticipation was quickly replaced by yawning.

A great deal of yawning.

The atmosphere at Twickenham Studio was notoriously cold, and the Beatles themselves are soon yawning as well.

Garbled dialog and a general lack of enthusiasm by the Fabs is painful to watch.

Plodding through throw away songs from 10 years previous and barely formed new material (none of which would make a Beatles Greatest release) doesn't help matters.

One hour in I had enough and decided to wait until the group "Gets Back" to the studio.

Interesting as a piece of history, but for entertainment purposes, awful.

Hopefully episodes 2 and 3 pick up.

Two and a half hours of the Beatles half-assing it just isn't much fun.

Acting worthy of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffing? Roger that. Predictable plot line? Absolutely. But the most bizarre element of this utterly hopeless series is that it takes place on a post-apocalyptic train. Umm... it's a train that never stops. A train that is over 1,000 cars long. And it has people on it. The train, that is. It has a complete caste system from First Class to Common ("Tailies". Get it? Because they live in the tail). The dimensions of said train seem to vary by scene. By my estimation, the cars are at least the width of a double-wide trailer, and the ceilings at least 20 ft. high. If the story was fresh, one could look past the formalities of such small details (physics, practicality). But I just couldn't get past the whole concept of a Doomsday Train. "Mr. W., all reports indicate a natural phenomenon that will turn Earth into a frozen wasteland." "Well, gentleman" replied Mr. W., "It looks like I have a 1,000 car train to build." I watched as if it were a dark comedy. A train wreck if there ever was one.