Apocalyse now!

You can blame the CW for this one. I recently learned about a new show of theirs called The Messengers. The show sounds like it’s about these angels that fall to earth who are apparently heralds of the coming apocalypse. This sort of created a bit of a tipping point for me that I promise was not caused just because I’m not religious. We now have four, count ’em four, new genre tv series that are based upon the biblical book of Revelations. The other three are Dominion on SyFy (Legion the tv series), The After (an Amazon original series) and, finally, The Leftovers on HBO. This seems to be the normal television practice of networks predating on each other concepts which, in this case, has probably been fueled by the current rise of religious fervor in America. What really puzzles me about this flood of these shows is that the excellent series Supernatural has already covered this ground and covered it well, I might add. On top of that we had the highly successful new series Sleepy Hollow show up last year which is also covering the same ground. Normally this would be a big turn off for me but, the show does it differently enough, with it’s own unique panache and features a lead actor who totally owns his role. While I’m not surprised by this run to what seems to be popular as well as successful, the quantity here is pretty staggering. I mean, I get that the Bible is public domain which seriously cuts down on the royalty payments and all but I still find myself asking at what point do we hit the whole market saturation wall with all this apocalypse stuff? Are Christians, ignoring the two previously existing series for now, likely to tune into all four of these new shows? I’m going to hazard a guess of not likely. More specifically my complaint, if one can call it that, here is that it seems one or more of these new series are seriously hammering their potential survivability by stomping on each other toes as far as subject matter. And the only reason it gets close to complaint territory for me is that I’m probably just annoyed over the lack of space based genre tv content at the moment. I know that I’ll be getting Ascension and The Expanse from SyFy sometime soon but, I guess I’m getting less patient with age. I’m also more aware that I’m not exactly getting any younger here although I’m not quite at the point of telling these shows to “get off my tv” yet. Ultimately, I’m not begrudging anyone who likes any of the four new series mentioned above and I’m always a fan of more rather than less genre content on television. However, I also feel that variety is not only the spice of life but, something that also helps to keep your show’s ratings from tanking and, thus, improving your chances at further seasons.