Sanctuary

Funny what happens when a good group of people get together with a great idea...

This internet series was made on next to nothing, and it still turned out this good..? It's no wonder Sci-Fi has picked up this gem. Fantastic premise, cutting edge production technology, established stars and fresh new faces...

Amanda Tapping totally re-invents herself as an eloquent British matriarch, complete with the full on accent, and a classy brunette look (befitting her new, more serious character). Stargate fans are gonna go bananas...

Robin Dunne is the heartthrob Hamlet of this strange group of heroes, and Emilie Ullerup is the sleek, sexy, leather-clad bad ass. Bad guy Chris Heyerdahl is awesome as Druitt, a nasty "Jack the Ripper" immortal who just can't seem to stop... Add to the mix a whole new level of strange creatures that go bump in the night, and you've got the recipe for a Sci-Fi, TV stew of epic proportions. Looking forward to seeing what they do with it next...

This is a review of the first season on TV, which should really be known as season 1 on IMDb, and the webisodes season 0.

Essentially there are three main characters, all of which believable, even Tapping's accent, and I'm saying that as a Brit. She's great as Magnus, not overdone, but sensitive, slightly badass and played right. She has a daughter, Ashley. She's instantly likable and Emelie Ullerup doesn't fall into the trap of making her the typical blond 'Yeah, uhuh I like totally, like, kick- ass. Isn't that cool!' character. Instead she's much better and thankfully without a teenage crisis. I'll get onto Robin Dunne's excellent Will in a sec.

Sanctuary is more than just the sum of its parts. It has a great grittiness to it, a real world, almost familiar environment. It's slightly dark, but optimistic at the same part. 30 minutes into the pilot and I really liked it. Will was believable, I even liked and sympathised with him. the way it was done felt like a feature, not really like an hour long weekly show. The whole actual Sanctuary concept wasn't done too fantastically. However I felt it wasn't perfect but it's taken me 2 more episodes to think that actually it's worth continuing to watch.

For Brits, its on ITV 4, mondays at 9. Or 8. Pretty sure it's 9, but check. if you don't have ITV 4, it's on their catch up thing on the site. For Americans it's on Hulu and Sci Fi's Rewind.

Have fun getting into it, looking forward to see where it goes.

What else can a Sci Fi fan ask for? This show has the potential to be one of the best original shows on SciFi channel. I can't wait for the new episodes to start.

I especially enjoy the acting. Amanda Tapping, Christopher Heyerdahl, and Robin Dunne give great performances. I wouldn't be surprised if they were nominated for several acting awards.

Some of the episodes standout more than the others. "Edward", "The Five", "Requiem", and "Revelations" are episodes that capture the soul of the series. The stories are compelling. Besides being well planned and acted, these episodes give important background and pushed the story arch further.

I too am a Stargate buff & like Amanda Tapping. It is my opinion that the show is worth the watch. On watching the first episode I liked what I saw, then after a few I didn't so much. However, my son had continued to watch it & told me not to give up on it just yet. So I went back to it & got pleasantly surprised. Some episodes were as good as full length movies. I particularly liked Jonathon young's character, Nikola Tesla:) Amanda played an extremely believable lady from England & I thought her accent was just great. It was a complete transformation from Samantha Carter of SG1. This character was a more domineering in control person who knew what she wanted and how to get it. The settings & special effects were pretty darn good I thought. It seemed a fair amount of thought and time went into these areas. Like all TV shows there is going to be an episode or three that doesn't appeal or seems to loose focus to the individual. However, overall I felt good about watching the show.

Interesting way to release this new series - webisodes every couple of weeks that are about 15 minutes long. Put them all together and you potentially have a pilot of just over two hours.

For Amanda Tapping, this is a good move - she's not Sam Carter anymore, playing the enigmatic and potentially very sexy Helen Magnus, aided by her slightly stereotypical teen-angst-ed daughter Ashley, some gentle-monster beast and a newly inducted fish out of water type, Will.

The concept is nice, 'Sanctuary for all' - being 'all' are non-humans, (but it does come across that they're all sort of imprisoned anyway). There's a sort of 'Gothic Buffy' feel about the scenario and the circumstances, but minus the classic Whedon Buffy humour.

The production values aren't superior and it's obviously CGI, there are some sub-par blue/green screens going on in places...but you can forgive this for a decent enough premise and storyline. Knowing that this hasn't been funded by a studio and Tapping herself is an executive producer, one should actually give the production some credit.

Tapping is fairly good in this role - we see her move out of the clever and cute Samantha Carter and flex her acting muscles somewhat in the portrayal of an 18th century English woman. Her accent isn't flawless, but you can forgive this - I'm sure it would be explained away that Magnus has been living in the USA for some time. There is no explanation as to why she's in the USA - or if she even is in the USA - the location is not revealed, but one assumes it's in North America.

Other actors put in decent enough performances, but there's nothing outstanding. Character wise the weak link here is the character of Ashley. Far too stereotypical, hard and cold. One supposes that she is in some way meant to contrast her mother, but we've seen characters like this far too many times before...she needs some depth.

This will be compared to Buffy - the characters aren't immediately associated with the former series - but it's there in the design of the monsters - the characters are also somewhat similar - the blonde fighting machine(Ashley/Buffy), the clever researcher (Magnus/Will/Giles) and monsters that work for the 'good guys'.

This 'pilot' doesn't go that far and we need a whole season of this to make a judgement call really. Based on this pilot though, I am intrigued and would like to see more.