The Stranger
I'll be honest, The Stranger almost slipped right under my radar. I saw it on the front page of Netflix and was like, is that Dutch from Killjoys? And once I figured out that yes, it was Hannah John-Kamen, my interest disappeared until an episode of The Graham Norton Show. I literally watch every episode of Graham's show even if I hate the guests because he somehow makes everyone come alive, though the one big exception was Laura Linney's recent appearance. Laura was working her ass off and the other guests, Saoirse Ronan, Timothée Chalamet, and Stephen Mangan, fell painfully flat. Shame on you three! Yet it gave me a new respect for Laura, so good on her. Anyway, Jennifer Saunders was on with Patrick Stewart, Jamie Foxx, and Michael B. Jordan, so a typical Graham couch, tons of A-listers and a comedian at the end of the couch. Only Jennifer was there to promote her first dramatic outing, The Stranger. I was all, what!?! Huh!?! Tell me more about walking across this car park!?! So I looked into the show more and saw it stared Richard Armitage!?! Be still my heart! So yes, thanks to Graham I didn't miss this show about a stranger played by Hannah John-Kamen arriving in a small yet tony British town and upsetting everyone's lives with a little helping of the truth and a whole lot of blackmail. There's a LOT of Broadchurch thrown in when they decided to move Harlan Coben's story from America to the British Isles, but that's part of the charm. It's nothing too original and many of the plot twists I saw coming from a long way off, but the acting and the cast made it enjoyable. Could I always have Antony Stewart Head play Richard Armitage's father? Because that would be a joy I would love to repeat. Seriously, when Rupert Giles appeared in the credits I squeed. This is very much a mystery I would have been sad to have missed.
Seeing how Vagrant Queen seemed to come and go at lightning speed I view it as my duty to say that this show deserved so much better than being quickly shuffled to a bad time slot and then unceremoniously dumped. The show is fun and colorful and zany and kitschy, like the best 80s science fiction series you could ever hope to encounter with heart and humor. What other show has their battle in the "mandatory science fiction fight club episode" be a karaoke sing-off to the theme from Mannequin!?! Seriously, if there's another show that has done this I need to know to fill the Vagrant Queen sized hole in my life. Perhaps I embraced this show because it reminded me a bit of Killjoys with a dash of Farscape, or perhaps it's because I actually subscribe to comiXology and had targeted ads for the comics so when I got my SyFy newsletter announcing the show I instantly set up a recording for the series on my DVR and was therefore lucky enough to catch the show being one of the few who saw the advertisements in advance. Because seriously, the SyFy Channel just didn't advertise this show enough, as I said before, it deserved better than being just sent out to die. Plus it has something for every science fiction fan! For those who like lots of mythology and a space opera with a crown, there's Elida, the deposed ruler. For those who like their shows full of vengeance, there's Lazaro and his big chip on his shoulder where it comes to Elida. For those who like a funny man with a tragic backstory, there's Isacc, flung into another galaxy, not yours, far from Earth and his wife and child. And for those who like a love story, there's Elida and the gadget wizard Amae. I ship these two so hard. But to top it all off in their episode "No Clue" they do the best send up of the movie Clue only superseded by the Psych episode "100 Clues" because they had most of the cast from the movie in it. And it's Psych.
