Wow! What an ending. Loved the series -- hope there's a second (and third) one.
Just perfect, up to and including the apocalyptic ending. Justice got served, hell on earth, the weight of the world on unready shoulders -- plus WINGS! (Okay, rather pathetic CGI wings, but still. I loved them.)
And Neil's still around to anti-mentor Paul.
Brilliant series.
His dead ex-wife tried to kill him. That's pretty much a big clue that the relationship is over.
Not sure about the wings, they only popped up once, why didn't they pop up when he was with Jay, or did they, we don't know.
He didn't know his ex-wife was trying to kill him though, he went off to get her some water.
As someone else mentioned his exit was very odd.
This series really could have benefitted from a couple more episodes, lots of (relatively) cheap internal shots and establishing dialogue.
Happy enough with it overall though.
I'll watch a second series.
I stuck with the series which I found hard going at first but I enjoyed the end. I found some scenes too violent for my liking, not the supernatural ones but when Paul is being beaten up by John for example. Too much like the real world for comfort.
John isn't killing for need anymore. If that was true he could have tried to work with Paul but decided he didn't want it.
And yes I think Sarah turned into white birds, John just burnt up and then turned into black birds! Hopefully we get to find out what it all means!
my first thoughts on that were white birds represented doves which represented heaven and the black birds represented crows which represented hell.
I really hope they do a season 2 to this as it was fantastic tv.
Helen turned into a white bird Escher tesselation too. So it seems pretty standard for angelic ascension. The normal reborns just kind of went glowy. John burned and did a black bird thing.
I love how they incorporated winged things so much in the series (not counting Paul, there were the moths, butterflies, and all those birds -- both the ones he brought back to life, starting with episode 2, and the ones that were "collateral damage".) The reborn grew back in cocoons, and emerged for a new life as well.
I also love that Neil was completely right in his advice, even though he was utterly wrong in his methods. (Killing Jaye? Not cool, man.) Messing with ascension and not getting rid of the murderous reborns to save lives has put the world in a perilous place.
Caught up with the final episode last night, and find myself agreeing with pretty much everyone - a great end to an excellent series. I've really enjoyed this, have just downloaded all 6 eps from iplayer so I can watch it back.
Great show, kudos to BBC3 and the writers/producers for running with a completely new (to me, anyway) take on the whole ghost/vampire/zombie set of myths. Fingers crossed for a second series, and hopefully the first will get a rerun on BBC2 and reach a wider audience.
Loved this series - very dark, gritty, unique and most of all hugely enjoyable. I was pretty much sat on the edge of my seat during the latter scenes.
Only thing I didn't like was the character Mac - his summing up of each episode was fine but his prattling on about middle aged geek memorabilia just didn't work most of the time. Also found it just about impossible to work out what he was saying half the time.
Hopefully a second series will be in the works and a bit of fine-tuning is done on some of the characters and Mac learns how to have a semi-normal conversation next series ...
Naaaaaaah, Mac was great! He tries to put up an unshakable front by using his geek references but you can tell in the boot at the start of episode 6 he's shaking underneath
Loved this series - very dark, gritty, unique and most of all hugely enjoyable. I was pretty much sat on the edge of my seat during the latter scenes.
Only thing I didn't like was the character Mac - his summing up of each episode was fine but his prattling on about middle aged geek memorabilia just didn't work most of the time. Also found it just about impossible to work out what he was saying half the time.
Hopefully a second series will be in the works and a bit of fine-tuning is done on some of the characters and Mac learns how to have a semi-normal conversation next series ...
What Mac is the best character and brilliantly acted.
If this show was bigger he'd be the breakout character
I just wanted to say, I really enjoyed this show as well, it's only a shame I had to catch up the first couple of episodes online and so couldn't record them to watch again later. I've seen some people saying some of the acting was not so great and the characters too young, but I never really noticed that myself, though that could be because I am more used to reading, and because I am immature for my age.
Anyway, I don't like that they went and killed Jay off. At first, I thought it was, just as I don't like reading short books, that I was introduced to a character that had some potential deep down, that I would be interested in finding more about later and seeing develop, and suddenly they were gone.
Now, though, thinking on it more, what they've done is gotten rid of the normal one, they needed someone that could be outside the bizzare world the others have created for themselves and just on occasion say 'you know, you really are quite weird sometimes', just like Johnny Maxwell had that girl with too many names.
Oddly, quite a while ago I imagined coming somewhere like this, which I had never heard of at the time, and saying how unfair I thought it was that she was the one they singled out to kill off (maybe I'm predicting the future, perhaps that's how it starts?)
What I think might work, though, is if she is still barely alive, after all you never see her ghost, hanging around or popping up to talk him into doing the right thing, if she is slowly recovering in hospital through series two, a couple of episodes just lying there unresponsive, then she starts moving slightly, even opening her eyes, by the end she is sitting up and talking normally, and it looks like everything is going to be OK, except...
That would create a place where all the other characters, off doing their own thing, would all be in the same place at the same time over and over, where they could meet up and chat and plan and whatever. I may have to use that in my book, I think.
OK, a lot said now, but one last thing, on a lighter note, at the start it is clear they quite like Terry Pratchett's work, and yet they don't understand LOTR, which is clearly teleological, Gandalf is perhaps thousands of years old and does things like that for fun, sending people off on dangerous quests to force them to develop, why did he choose Bilbo to start with, because he was a boring, normal person that needed to get out more. So of course he is not going to just solve everything with magic and render all the other characters irrelevant, where is the fun in that for him?
And one more thing I managed to forget in all that, I have been wondering how their relationship might have turned out. I mean, he's admired her from afar all this time, then when they actually start talking, he knows nothing about her, they have no interests in common, then he drags her through all these dangerous situations, explodes a couple of people in front of her and gets her shot, would their relationship actually have lasted long-term after all that?
Fades was a great series. Well scripted and with believable actors who were not all stunningly beautiful as in most American series. I believe it must be returning as the ending was left in the air - exactly what did Paul release?
The only problem I had was with Mac's incessant inane chat. It was funny sometimes but most of the time I just wanted to scream shut up at him. Apart from that excellent.
I also love that Neil was completely right in his advice, even though he was utterly wrong in his methods. (Killing Jaye? Not cool, man.) Messing with ascension and not getting rid of the murderous reborns to save lives has put the world in a perilous place.
I am not sure Neil was wrong in his methods. He was in the middle of an all out war with the safety of the entire living population at stake. Killing Jaye was a small price to pay if potentially billions of lives were saved as a consequence. But then the roles of the angelics and the fades became increasingly ambiguous over the series. Natalie Dormer was prepared to eat human flesh in order to infiltrate the fades and Neil was prepared to torture to get information about them. Hardly saintly behaviour.
really enjoyed this series although it was a bit slow to start it got better towards the end
I enjoyed Macs recaps at the start, to me it seemed to fit his character. Geeks can be any age, my son is 9 and he knows more about Star Wars etc than i ever have lol
Regarding Olivers comment about Jay maybe being alive since we didnt see her ghost, I thought the point was when Paul died and came back to life there were no more ascensions so there were no more fades to speak of, since we didnt see anyone elses who died ie the Police Chief guy and the other Angelic who im sure woulda either made contact or been seen by Neil and other Angelic lady (forgotten her name already doh!) thats why Helen the minister could ascend.
I really do hope it is a trilogy and the next series is soon in coming maybe they'll find out his sister has powers since they are twins etc. i actually felt sorry for his sister being the way she was by the last episode as she seemed to be pushed to the side by her mother, her father left when they were youngsters etc so some people can act out like that, being bitchy and sleeping with people for "love and attention" (not everyone but some people could hehe)
Just see the last one.. This is the best series I've seen this year by far in my humble opinion. It will will be Interesting to see where they take the second series and there will certainly be one. "It is inevitable"
Really glad i gave this series a chance becuase i loved it!
About Jaye's murder - at first i was :eek: but then a few minutes later i found out that i didn't really care that she was dead (really harsh i know) . What i didn't get was, why didn't she leave town with her family? If she was my daughter i would have made her come away with me.
Really glad i gave this series a chance becuase i loved it!
About Jaye's murder - at first i was :eek: but then a few minutes later i found out that i didn't really care that she was dead (really harsh i know) . What i didn't get was, why didn't she leave town with her family? If she was my daughter i would have made her come away with me.
Yes I wondered about Jaye's family and where they were. Also Pauls mother kept forgetting she had a daughter who was also in trouble, kept putting her son first and didn't really seem to care about her daughter. Poor girl she kept having to remind her mother she was her child too. Surely she should have got her daughter away to safety first then stay behind to look for Paul. Still wouldn't fit in with the plot line I guess but I found it somewhat annoying.
Regarding Olivers comment about Jay maybe being alive since we didnt see her ghost, I thought the point was when Paul died and came back to life there were no more ascensions so there were no more fades to speak of, since we didnt see anyone elses who died ie the Police Chief guy and the other Angelic who im sure woulda either made contact or been seen by Neil and other Angelic lady (forgotten her name already doh!) thats why Helen the minister could ascend.
The impression I got from the way this was described was that he had only closed off that one gate, the last in the town, and that everyone would have to try somewhere further away. However, I guess the writers know, we do not, and all we can really do is wait and find out next time around.
Meanwhile, were I to be allowed only the one criticism of the series, it would have to be about the timing of the various parts. We got a few minutes introduction of the main characters, a little bit of making us worry what is going to happen at the end with a lot of pessimism and repeated visions, and then they rushed into the climax just as fast as they could, filling the whole rest of the series with running, fighting and being shot at. Whilst that is important to the story, of course, it means a large part of the program relies entirely for its drama on people wondering what is going to happen and hoping everyone is OK at the end. Now I know what happens, and it hardly seems worth watching it ever again. Whereas, had they perhaps taken episodes two and three, made those both twice as long, then we get a decent amount of time for getting to know and care about characters, understand them, and see them develop, plenty of time to show the effects of recent events on their lives whilst the final threat slowly and ominously comes closer, and that would be something I might want to watch again, and again.
Which nicely brings me onto the original reason I came here, near the end of the series, I started thinking it was such a shame I had been unable to record it all, and therefore could not watch it again in a few weeks or months, until I started thinking perhaps I could buy the DVD instead. As above, I now do not think this would be worth it, but thinking on that, I started wondering how many other similarly good, or better, programs and films I had missed, same as I had not heard of this until last week. Perhaps, then, given that I have recently started thinking I need to actually spend money on things I like rather than letting it pile up uselessly, there are plenty of other DVDs I could go and buy and wach again, so I thought to find somewhere like this, and though there is a good chance I am not supposed to, I thought with plenty of similar interests in the same place, someone here could reccomend stuff I might like.
So, in brief, then I am looking for suggestions of upcoming programs, former drama serieses and films that I might like to watch over and over. I have previously watched both Being Human and Misfits, but though I quite enjoyed both at the time, neither was something I ever considered watching back again. However, I remember someone back there a bit mentioning the film of Constantine, which I remember I did very much enjoy when it was on, and quite possibly will be buying myself some time soon. So, if I am allowed to ask such a question here, based on this, any ideas?
And finally, just so I have said just about everything I possibly could on this topic, I quite liked the way they had different music at the end of each epsiode, but I think next series, perhaps they could look to Within Temptation for at least one? Just off the top of my head, both Dark Wings and Forsaken seem particularly apt for this sort of program. I was going to quote a few lines from some to prove my point, but listening through my collection, I cannot begin to narrow it down far enough, and have no interest in filling pages with lists of quotes noone really cares about. Indeed, they could fill all three serieses with nothing else if they had so wanted. So, if anyone is interested, go and listen to them yourself, and see what I mean.
And I'm back again, I have no idea why I seem to have so much to say here rather than anywhere else, perhaps because it is new still, and so not everything has already been said by someone else.
Anyway, just wanted to add for anyone still interested, that I disagree with the above comments that Neil was doing the right thing considering what might come now. the way I see it, ths is not just confined to the one town, there must have been millions of others all over the world that could not escape, what happens when others of them start killing? There could be outbreaks of zombies all over the world all the time, and they would have to travel from one place to another dealing with them, whilst so many more people are killed and society breaks down around them.
Seriously, short of a seven horned lamb breaking open the first seal, what could be coming that is worse than that?
Anyway, just wanted to add for anyone still interested, that I disagree with the above comments that Neil was doing the right thing considering what might come now. the way I see it, ths is not just confined to the one town, there must have been millions of others all over the world that could not escape, what happens when others of them start killing? There could be outbreaks of zombies all over the world all the time, and they would have to travel from one place to another dealing with them, whilst so many more people are killed and society breaks down around them.
Seriously, short of a seven horned lamb breaking open the first seal, what could be coming that is worse than that?
Umm, whilst you are of course entitled to think whatever you like there was absolutely nothing in the programme to indicate that this event (fades becoming flesh) was a worldwide problem with millions of people endangered.
Obviously the issue of fades would have been worldwide (because it was said that they had travelled across Europe looking for a working ascension point), and there may have been other angelics. But the tale told on screen was that one fade had accidently learned the secret way back (his wife's blood dripping into his mouth) and was then teaching others himself. He even told them they had to deal with Paul and only then could they leave town. In other words it was currently a locally contained issue.
They will of course expand the story if they get future series, but judging the actions of characters on the basis of an additional story that you have made up and tacked on seems rather unfair.
I liked it from the first episode even if it was a bit slow but I guess the characters and storyline have to be explained so as not to leave us all thinking: what was that all about!
My favourite character is Mac - I love his attitude and he just makes me smile, a nice offset to the darker side of Fades. It might also be a repeat of a supporting actor stealing the show.
I'm also pleased that the BBC have gone for fairly unkown characters - I get so tired of seeing the same old faces in everything.
It's a good concept too - has anything similar been done before? I love sci-fi so I hope this doesn't end after the first series. Also, why on BBC3?
Umm, whilst you are of course entitled to think whatever you like there was absolutely nothing in the programme to indicate that this event (fades becoming flesh) was a worldwide problem with millions of people endangered.
Obviously the issue of fades would have been worldwide (because it was said that they had travelled across Europe looking for a working ascension point), and there may have been other angelics. But the tale told on screen was that one fade had accidently learned the secret way back (his wife's blood dripping into his mouth) and was then teaching others himself. He even told them they had to deal with Paul and only then could they leave town. In other words it was currently a locally contained issue.
They will of course expand the story if they get future series, but judging the actions of characters on the basis of an additional story that you have made up and tacked on seems rather unfair.
If one can learn, then so can another, it may take some time, but if it can happen once, it can happen again, surely? Like Mac says, the chances may be a million to one, but there are 60 million people in the country...
There may be nothing within the story so far to say that it would have happened worldwide, but there was certainly also nothing to say that it couldn't. I was just wondering if he had considered that possibility, having been thinking on the problem rather longer than I had.
Anyway, great program, eagerly awaiting the next series. Might go and watch them all again whilst I wait. Or at least the first four, might skip through some of the slow drawn out suspense scenes now I know the ending, such as the one between their arriving at school and where he leaps over what we in the business call the void space.
Good show - it's strange how BBC3 can produce so much tripe but then come up with a gem like this (Being Human, Pulling and Mongrels being other notables)
Just hope they can continue the quality - though not sure it would benefit from more episodes per series, shows often seem to drag then.
Comments
Not sure about the wings, they only popped up once, why didn't they pop up when he was with Jay, or did they, we don't know.
He didn't know his ex-wife was trying to kill him though, he went off to get her some water.
As someone else mentioned his exit was very odd.
This series really could have benefitted from a couple more episodes, lots of (relatively) cheap internal shots and establishing dialogue.
Happy enough with it overall though.
I'll watch a second series.
One thing a discussion thread about a program that's currently running is going to contain is discussion of the storyline, can't be avoided.
my first thoughts on that were white birds represented doves which represented heaven and the black birds represented crows which represented hell.
I really hope they do a season 2 to this as it was fantastic tv.
I love how they incorporated winged things so much in the series (not counting Paul, there were the moths, butterflies, and all those birds -- both the ones he brought back to life, starting with episode 2, and the ones that were "collateral damage".) The reborn grew back in cocoons, and emerged for a new life as well.
I also love that Neil was completely right in his advice, even though he was utterly wrong in his methods. (Killing Jaye? Not cool, man.) Messing with ascension and not getting rid of the murderous reborns to save lives has put the world in a perilous place.
Great show, kudos to BBC3 and the writers/producers for running with a completely new (to me, anyway) take on the whole ghost/vampire/zombie set of myths. Fingers crossed for a second series, and hopefully the first will get a rerun on BBC2 and reach a wider audience.
I'm glad that it had a different feel from say Being Human. It felt darker (yes yes, the Box tunnel incident in BH was dark too).
Easily deserves a second series. And a longer run this time please
Only thing I didn't like was the character Mac - his summing up of each episode was fine but his prattling on about middle aged geek memorabilia just didn't work most of the time. Also found it just about impossible to work out what he was saying half the time.
Hopefully a second series will be in the works and a bit of fine-tuning is done on some of the characters and Mac learns how to have a semi-normal conversation next series ...
What Mac is the best character and brilliantly acted.
If this show was bigger he'd be the breakout character
Anyway, I don't like that they went and killed Jay off. At first, I thought it was, just as I don't like reading short books, that I was introduced to a character that had some potential deep down, that I would be interested in finding more about later and seeing develop, and suddenly they were gone.
Now, though, thinking on it more, what they've done is gotten rid of the normal one, they needed someone that could be outside the bizzare world the others have created for themselves and just on occasion say 'you know, you really are quite weird sometimes', just like Johnny Maxwell had that girl with too many names.
Oddly, quite a while ago I imagined coming somewhere like this, which I had never heard of at the time, and saying how unfair I thought it was that she was the one they singled out to kill off (maybe I'm predicting the future, perhaps that's how it starts?)
What I think might work, though, is if she is still barely alive, after all you never see her ghost, hanging around or popping up to talk him into doing the right thing, if she is slowly recovering in hospital through series two, a couple of episodes just lying there unresponsive, then she starts moving slightly, even opening her eyes, by the end she is sitting up and talking normally, and it looks like everything is going to be OK, except...
That would create a place where all the other characters, off doing their own thing, would all be in the same place at the same time over and over, where they could meet up and chat and plan and whatever. I may have to use that in my book, I think.
OK, a lot said now, but one last thing, on a lighter note, at the start it is clear they quite like Terry Pratchett's work, and yet they don't understand LOTR, which is clearly teleological, Gandalf is perhaps thousands of years old and does things like that for fun, sending people off on dangerous quests to force them to develop, why did he choose Bilbo to start with, because he was a boring, normal person that needed to get out more. So of course he is not going to just solve everything with magic and render all the other characters irrelevant, where is the fun in that for him?
The only problem I had was with Mac's incessant inane chat. It was funny sometimes but most of the time I just wanted to scream shut up at him. Apart from that excellent.
I enjoyed Macs recaps at the start, to me it seemed to fit his character. Geeks can be any age, my son is 9 and he knows more about Star Wars etc than i ever have lol
Regarding Olivers comment about Jay maybe being alive since we didnt see her ghost, I thought the point was when Paul died and came back to life there were no more ascensions so there were no more fades to speak of, since we didnt see anyone elses who died ie the Police Chief guy and the other Angelic who im sure woulda either made contact or been seen by Neil and other Angelic lady (forgotten her name already doh!) thats why Helen the minister could ascend.
I really do hope it is a trilogy and the next series is soon in coming
About Jaye's murder - at first i was :eek: but then a few minutes later i found out that i didn't really care that she was dead (really harsh i know)
Yes I wondered about Jaye's family and where they were. Also Pauls mother kept forgetting she had a daughter who was also in trouble, kept putting her son first and didn't really seem to care about her daughter. Poor girl she kept having to remind her mother she was her child too. Surely she should have got her daughter away to safety first then stay behind to look for Paul. Still wouldn't fit in with the plot line I guess but I found it somewhat annoying.
The impression I got from the way this was described was that he had only closed off that one gate, the last in the town, and that everyone would have to try somewhere further away. However, I guess the writers know, we do not, and all we can really do is wait and find out next time around.
Meanwhile, were I to be allowed only the one criticism of the series, it would have to be about the timing of the various parts. We got a few minutes introduction of the main characters, a little bit of making us worry what is going to happen at the end with a lot of pessimism and repeated visions, and then they rushed into the climax just as fast as they could, filling the whole rest of the series with running, fighting and being shot at. Whilst that is important to the story, of course, it means a large part of the program relies entirely for its drama on people wondering what is going to happen and hoping everyone is OK at the end. Now I know what happens, and it hardly seems worth watching it ever again. Whereas, had they perhaps taken episodes two and three, made those both twice as long, then we get a decent amount of time for getting to know and care about characters, understand them, and see them develop, plenty of time to show the effects of recent events on their lives whilst the final threat slowly and ominously comes closer, and that would be something I might want to watch again, and again.
Which nicely brings me onto the original reason I came here, near the end of the series, I started thinking it was such a shame I had been unable to record it all, and therefore could not watch it again in a few weeks or months, until I started thinking perhaps I could buy the DVD instead. As above, I now do not think this would be worth it, but thinking on that, I started wondering how many other similarly good, or better, programs and films I had missed, same as I had not heard of this until last week. Perhaps, then, given that I have recently started thinking I need to actually spend money on things I like rather than letting it pile up uselessly, there are plenty of other DVDs I could go and buy and wach again, so I thought to find somewhere like this, and though there is a good chance I am not supposed to, I thought with plenty of similar interests in the same place, someone here could reccomend stuff I might like.
So, in brief, then I am looking for suggestions of upcoming programs, former drama serieses and films that I might like to watch over and over. I have previously watched both Being Human and Misfits, but though I quite enjoyed both at the time, neither was something I ever considered watching back again. However, I remember someone back there a bit mentioning the film of Constantine, which I remember I did very much enjoy when it was on, and quite possibly will be buying myself some time soon. So, if I am allowed to ask such a question here, based on this, any ideas?
And finally, just so I have said just about everything I possibly could on this topic, I quite liked the way they had different music at the end of each epsiode, but I think next series, perhaps they could look to Within Temptation for at least one? Just off the top of my head, both Dark Wings and Forsaken seem particularly apt for this sort of program. I was going to quote a few lines from some to prove my point, but listening through my collection, I cannot begin to narrow it down far enough, and have no interest in filling pages with lists of quotes noone really cares about. Indeed, they could fill all three serieses with nothing else if they had so wanted. So, if anyone is interested, go and listen to them yourself, and see what I mean.
Anyway, just wanted to add for anyone still interested, that I disagree with the above comments that Neil was doing the right thing considering what might come now. the way I see it, ths is not just confined to the one town, there must have been millions of others all over the world that could not escape, what happens when others of them start killing? There could be outbreaks of zombies all over the world all the time, and they would have to travel from one place to another dealing with them, whilst so many more people are killed and society breaks down around them.
Seriously, short of a seven horned lamb breaking open the first seal, what could be coming that is worse than that?
Actually that's not a bad call
Obviously the issue of fades would have been worldwide (because it was said that they had travelled across Europe looking for a working ascension point), and there may have been other angelics. But the tale told on screen was that one fade had accidently learned the secret way back (his wife's blood dripping into his mouth) and was then teaching others himself. He even told them they had to deal with Paul and only then could they leave town. In other words it was currently a locally contained issue.
They will of course expand the story if they get future series, but judging the actions of characters on the basis of an additional story that you have made up and tacked on seems rather unfair.
My favourite character is Mac - I love his attitude and he just makes me smile, a nice offset to the darker side of Fades. It might also be a repeat of a supporting actor stealing the show.
I'm also pleased that the BBC have gone for fairly unkown characters - I get so tired of seeing the same old faces in everything.
It's a good concept too - has anything similar been done before? I love sci-fi so I hope this doesn't end after the first series. Also, why on BBC3?
If one can learn, then so can another, it may take some time, but if it can happen once, it can happen again, surely? Like Mac says, the chances may be a million to one, but there are 60 million people in the country...
There may be nothing within the story so far to say that it would have happened worldwide, but there was certainly also nothing to say that it couldn't. I was just wondering if he had considered that possibility, having been thinking on the problem rather longer than I had.
Anyway, great program, eagerly awaiting the next series. Might go and watch them all again whilst I wait. Or at least the first four, might skip through some of the slow drawn out suspense scenes now I know the ending, such as the one between their arriving at school and where he leaps over what we in the business call the void space.
Just hope they can continue the quality - though not sure it would benefit from more episodes per series, shows often seem to drag then.