One of the inspirations for relaunching spudWorks was the news that Dark Matter, the AppleTV series was actually renewed and coming back for a second season.
If this seems like an odd reason to dust off a URL and bring it back to life as a hobby/fiction/review site, that could be understood. After all, shows are renewed all the time. Bigger shows. On bigger networks. Who cares about Dark Matter?
What makes this show particularly interesting is that it was based on a book by an author named Blake Crouch. His is a name that’s been around for a little while now. He wrote the excellent sci-fi book Recursion, the Wayward Pines series, and also adapted the latter for television on Fox. So… I wouldn’t say he’s Michael Crichton, but that’s only because I’d need to modify it to say, “He’s not Michael Crichton… yet.”
The book Dark Matter came out in 2016 but I don’t think I got around to reading it until 2019 or so, after I’d already moved to Germany and was looking for stuff to entertain myself with. I’d yet to get back into the hobby.
Then I saw that AppleTV was launching it as a limited series. And it would helmed by Crouch and staring Jennifer Connelly and some dude named Joel Edgerton. A few stills showing me Jimmi Simpson and all you had to say was, “A book you liked with the girl you had a crush on as a teenager and a McPoyle is turning into a TV show” and I was set to go.
Because I’m writing about it now, it’s a bit of giving away the game to say that I really enjoyed the adaptation. Never knew or cared who Joel Edgerton was before but I really liked him in this. And it’s why a season two announcement perked up my ears.
A book you liked with the girl you had a crush on as a teenager and a McPoyle is turning into a TV show
Season two? For a limited-series that completed the source book’s story?
Ordinarily, I’d be suspicious. But, as I mentioned before, the show is helmed by the author of the book. It’s his adaptation of his baby. And that makes me curious. It’s not often that we get a sequel to a work in one medium expressed in another. And, when we do, it’s usually something like Jaws II or Jurassic World. It’s never quite as good.
But if we could go back to the original author. If the author himself was manning the ship? That could be interesting, no?
So, next week will be a fresh review of Dark Matter, the novel. I re-read it with fresh eyes after six or seven years. I took copious notes, too, because I plan on doing a compare and contrast article that looks at the differences, similarities, and themes of the book versus the show and how they line up. But that will be after I re-review the show. Then, naturally, there will be a review of the first episode of the new season, to share thoughts and expectations, and totally uninformed, wild guesses about where the season might end up.
If this is a series that sounds interesting or one that you would like to see more of, make sure to leave a comment about other works that should be examined and we can start a mini book or movie club with a lot of crossover potential.
