Have you heard about the series that's set in New York and features a chap that's immortal, living with his son that is elderly, and helps solve crime? Yeah, I've seen both of those shows! When I started watching Forever I felt there was something familiar, but couldn't put my finger on it. Then someone reminded me of New Amsterdam. [Amusingly, there's a book called Forever that claims to have a similar premise, but neither series claims to be set on it.]
New Amsterdam was a series that only lasted eight episodes (because Fox) that screened in 2008. The main guy, currently going by John Amsterdam, was around when New York was New Amsterdam, and he was made immortal until he found the woman who was his soul mate. In the pilot, he appears to do this, but it's obvious that the series would be over quickly if he actually did meet your mother (I see what I did there), so of course he picked the wrong woman, but the current part of the series was focused on that storyline while solving mysteries.
However, while Forever has gone for 11 episodes so far, New Amsterdam did so much more in the fewer episodes it had. In Forever, the main chap is afraid people will find out he's immortal, and meets someone else who claims to be immortal... and that's about as exciting a premise as they are getting to. However, in New Amsterdam, they discussed racism, alcoholism, police corruption, rape, conning people... yeah, it went for the big punches, and they worked too. What the hell is Forever doing? [Although Forever does have Burn Gorman, so that's something.]
Basically, for a better, and gustier, take on the idea, go look up the older series.
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Thursday 18 December 2014
New Amsterdam Forever
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2 comments:
I keep meaning to watch these two series. In your opinion should I watch Forever and then the 'superior' New Amersterdam or the other way around in the hopes that as Forever has more episodes it will get better as it is still ongoing?
Interesting question (he says, stalling for time... in a text medium).
I would say... watch Forever first up to the current mid-season break, then go watch New Amsterdam. That was you might be invested in Forever enough to come back to it once you see how much better NA is. (It's not that Forever is bad, it's that it fails in comparison to NA.)
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