While Amazon Prime dumped the entire season at once, Andrea and I took our time with Spider-Noir, serving up one episode a week. Just like it says in the Bible.
"Yea and the Lord sayeth unto thee, thoust should take unto thee a television series one episode at a time, less ye succumb to the pits of sin, depair and a numb posterior."
It's somewhere in... Deuteromony, I think?
Anyway...
We finished up Spider-Noir a week or so back.
Set in Depression era 1930's New York City, life is hard for a stressed out populace caught between the machinations of Mayor Morris and crimes boss Finn Byrne, aka the Silvermane.
It's the story of Spider Man but with a twist in time and concept.
Let's talk about the look of Spider Noir for a moment. The series was available in black & white as well as in color. Below are two image of Ben's ascrebic, long suffering secretary Janet (my favorite supporting cast member) to compare the two formats.
Andrea and I chose the B&W version which effectively conjures the film noir vibe of a classic Humphrey Bogart detective film. The B&W doesn't do as well with some of the latter effects heavy scenes with electrically powered Megawatt.
But the B&W really works well when Ben Reilly is brooding in his darkened office or Cat Hardy is oozing sex appeal while seducing Ben.
Ben should watch out. As is the case with film noir, the dame is not to be trusted and will do him wrong.
Such as betraying Ben's identity as the Spider to Dr. Alethea Faber, a mad scientist type looking for a cure for metahumans. Cat only has eyes for Flint Marko and his Sandman powers are killing him. Perhaps Ben, whose Spider powers haven't killed him yet, holds to the key.
Episode 6 is a rough one to get through as Dr. Faber does all sorts of unspeakable things to a captured Ben Reilly to extract what makes the Spider tick and can it be used to save her son (whose mutation is prematurely aging him) and other metahumans as well.
Ben manages to escape but not in the best of shape. His powers are on the fritz just as the war between the mayor and Silvermane is heating up.
For all the intensity of the drama inherent in Spider Noir, the show has a remarkable sense of humor. A lot of this comes from Ben's snarky, irascible nature brought to ingenious light by Nicholas Cage. Cage mostly plays Ben Reilly like a repressed coiled spring but then he cracks that veneer to go nuts.
Lamorne Morris and Karen Rodriguez keep up the pace with the sharpy witten banter as Robbie Robertson and Janet Ruiz.
Brendan Gleeson dominates the proceedings as Silvermane, a brutally cold calculating criminal mastermind who hasn't lived this long and gotten where he is in this life by playing nice.
Spider Noir ends on a fairly positive note and if Nicholas Cage can be talked into it, I would very much like to see another season to explore this unique take on the Spider Man mythos.
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Jeopardy ended it's 42nd season last week. Not much to say other than does that seem too long? It's the end of July and the show returns in September.
That is that for this week's Tuesday TV Touchbase.
Next time: Stuart Fails To Save the Universe
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
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From Spider Noir to film noir, this Saturday's Movie Time post will be about an American film noir from 1947.
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