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"Ballard" is a terrible spin-off series set in Michael Connelly's "Bosch" universe, desperately trying to cash-in on the Titus Welliver led series which aired for seven seasons on Amazon Prime, followed by it's lesser counterpart "Bosch: Legacy", whose third and final season concluded in March 2025.

"Ballard" is based on another of Connelly's characters, Renee Ballard, subject of her own novels. In the show Ballard is played by Maggie Q, who appeared in the final episode of "Bosch Legacy's" third season as a kind of set up for her standalone series.

Maggie Q. Is usually a dependable actress with a pleasant and engaging on-screen presence, but here that is not enough to make up for how badly written, directed, cast and acted "Ballard" is.

It is dull, boring and feels flat and uninteresting populated with typical, clichéd, one-dimensional characters or rather caricatures of characters.

When the best thing mainstream media critics can come up with about this show is the fact that "it is led by two women of colour", you know you have a problem.

This must be also one of the last few shows still in the pipeline from the Jennifer Salke era, which would explain quite a lot about the nature of this show.

The series would have been a hard watch to begin with based solely on it's lack of overall quality...but its misandrist, bigoted and racist (mostly against white people) tone, make it downright unwatchable.

It is another piece of content used as an ideological platform for various modern-day progressive messages, made to appeal to the never materializing "modern day" audiences.

"Ballard" could have been an interesting and entertaining show if the creative process had been respected and actual effort had been put into the production of a well told story with interesting characters. However the final result is anything but.

Season One - 10/10

The first season of "Andor" was one of the best I had the pleasure to watch in many years. The writing, directing, casting and acting were all top notch, oftentimes brilliant. The same for the production values. The show looked amazing, with a lived-in feel to it. It was gritty, raw and captivating. The twelve episode season was divided in four, three episode blocks. Thankfully the episodes were long and gave the needed time for the story to unfold and characters to grow. So basically the audience was treated to four movies. Everything was underlined by an excellent score courtesy of Nicholas Britell who added untold dimensions with his exquisite themes. Tony Gilroy and his team delivered a classic, content fit to be up there with "The Empire Strikes Back",, "A New Hope" and "Rogue One".

Then after an incredibly long two and a half year wait (one extended by the strikes)...we got the second season...

Season Two: 5/10 (trying to be generous)

Originally "Andor" was envisioned as a five-season series, a prequel to the only good and solid "Star Wars" movie Disney has been able to put out in more than a decade of it's ownership of the franchise and Lucasfilm, namely "Rogue One".

It became quite clear early on, as per Gilroy and co., that due to the extremely long time needed to produce just one season (an average of two years for each), the five-season arc was untenable, due to logistics, finances and the fact that the cast was ageing, especially Diego Luna who in the show is supposed to be/look younger than when we eventually meet him in "Rogue One".

The decision was then made to shorten the series from five down to two seasons. The plan was to once again group the second season in four blocks or three episodes, the same as the first one. But unlike Season One which covered one year (5 BBY), Season Two was going to cover the last four years (4-1 BBY), with each block of three episodes covering one year. It was a gamble no doubt.

BBY by the way refers to the Before The Battle Of Yavin from "Star Wars Episode 1: A New Hope" which culminates with the destruction of the (first) Death Star at the hands of Luke Skywalker.

Yet the gamble did not pay off. Season Two came out and just fell flat. It seems to be an unfortunate and even maddening trend with modern-day entertainment...that plenty of series come out and deliver a good, solid or at the very least decent first season with room to improve and grow...only to badly fail and miss the landing with the second one, oftentimes resulting in lowered viewership numbers, decrease in audiences and eventually the dreaded cancellation.

The drop in quality was quite evident out of the gate and it was as sad as it was jarring. It is as if Season Two of "Andor" was made by a completely different group of people, even though it was still Tony Gilroy and his team, with some new additions. Everything was supbar this time around, the writing, directing, cast and acting. Everything that made Season One soo memorable, was completely gone in Season Two. Even the excellent soundtrack from the first season was largely absent this time around because the talented Nicholas Britell was by enlarge sidelined in the second one, due to the strikes and a personal loss he suffered. The choice to replace Britell, Brandon Roberts, could only deliver a very generic and underwhelming score for Season Two.

Season Two was all-over the place concerning the storylines, plots and sub-plots, the characters and the eventual outcomes. The season seemed to have run out of steam quite early on and was at times an uncoherent, badly paced, low-energy mess.

Even worse, all the modern-day so-called "progressive" ideological and wokistani political rethoric reared their ugly heads. At times the show became a preachy, morality laden sermon, telling a large part of the audience in no uncertain terms that they were not welcome. Tony Gilroy and Diego Luna, to their detriment, made sure to pass that message along.

The production values still held up for the most part, helped, just like in the first season, by shooting in real locations on physical sets, with a lot of practical effects and props.

Yet out of the twelve episodes in Season Two, really only episodes 9, 10 and 11 were relevant and approached the quality of those in Season One. The rest ranged from barely okay to really bad and served no other purpose than filler. Also the one year gaps between each block of episodes lend to some loss of narrative coherence and even confusion.

The price tag for both seasons of "Andor" sits somewhere in the very expensive neigbourhood of $650 million dollars. That is a hefty price tag to say the least, considering the end result.

"Andor" could have been one of the best shows of all time, a true contender for the classic label for sure. But it was done in by hubris, mediocrity and an absolute failure to stick the landing. One masterful first season was followed-up by a lackluster, barely-there second season.

That is why "Andor" is the show that started out with a bang and ended with a thud.

When I first started watching "The Bondsman", those two shows came first to mind...because this show is very much a mixture of those two.

It wouldn't necessarily be a stretch to throw "Reaper" (2007) , "The Collector" (2004) and "Dead Like Me" (2003) in there as well. But in tone, look and even story, "The Bondsman" takes a lot of cues from "Brimstone" (1998) and "Supernatural" (2005).

However that was also the show's weakness as well. It was too bland, too generic and had a feel of a "been there done that". While Kevin Bacon was excellent and the highlight of the series, ultimately it wasn't enough for it to stand out.

The show's cancellation did not come as a surprise. There wasn't enough there to justify it's continued run. If there is any kind of regret at the show's ending, is not seeing Kevin Bacon continuing in the role, because he clearly enjoyed himself and that came through in his performance.