Metal Hurlant Chronicles
Season 1

THE KING'S CROWN

A group of warriors battle to the death to become the new king of a decaying country ruled over from a floating city and policed by drones and robots.

Metal Hurlant is a science fiction and fantasy magazine from France, known for its focus on adult storylines, including graphic sex and violence. It was adapated into an animated anthology movie in 1981, with limited success, despite some impressive visuals and rocking soundtrack. This 2012 anthology show takes actual comic strips from the magazine and adapts them to stories of half-hour or less.

This opening episode attempts to combine some of the the magazine's signature motifs. There are strong warriors killing each other, big robots, floating drones and women with relatively few clothes on. There is also a twist in the tale, though it can hardly be called when it is easily predictable.

There are some impressive visuals in the form of the floating city and the drones, but the show's budgetary limitations are evident in the robots and the paltry size of the crowd gathered to watch this tournament, which is supposed to be of national importance.

It also doesn't help that the actors seem to have been selected for their muscles rather than their acting ability, each of them being more wooden than the shield the hero carries. Either that or the horrible dialogue they are forced to spout is beyond the ability of anyone to make sound like anything other than a very bad school play.

Honestly, if this is the best the show has to offer, then the magazine has been very badly served.

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SHELTER ME

Jennifer wakes up to find herself inside her neighbour's bomb shelter. He explains that the missiles have flown and he knocked her out to get her inside in time to save her life. Slowly, she comes to terms with the fact that the life she knows has gone, and equally slowly she gets to know her neighbour. As their relationship grows, a surprising find leads her to wonder if he has been lying all along..

This is hardly a new story and its running time doesn't exactly give it the time to flesh out the characters or allow the relationship between them to grow at a believable pace. It is greatly assisted by the casting of James Marsters (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and Michelle Ryan (the rebooted BIONIC WOMAN. They are able to at least come across as real people having real words and emotions, which is a big step up from the previous episode. Unfortunately, the half-hour length of the episode doesn't allow them to progress at a more believable rate and so their falling into bed happens unbelievably quickly and the all-important (not to mention predictable) twist in the tale is rushed into. That might have been disappointing if it hadn't been done better before and since.

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RED LIGHT/ COLD HARD FACTS

RED LIGHT - A prisoner tries to escape the prison in which he is held by alien invaders who set the planetary tribes against each other with weapons they supplied and then mopped up the remnants. He is being driven mad by the unblinking red light and wants only to see other colours before he dies.

A short action tale in which the prisoner battles his way out through the armoured guards. There is no personality and almost no dialogue, just action. What dialogue there is exists only to set up the twist in the tale, which is nicely masked by the colour scheme of the production, but hardly revolutionary.

COLD HARD FACTS - In a world where only facts are important, joy is in short supply. A man recently revived from cryostasis is assessed for the threat his medical condition places on the general populace whilst he sits in a cell doodling..

This is a two-scene story that sets up a reveal which is partly predictable. That said, as extremely short-form storytelling, it is remarkably efficient.

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THREE ON A MATCH

When a warship is destroyed by a meteor strike, two marines and an engineer escape in an escape vessel. Damaged in the collision and the escape, the vessel is venting air and only one of them will survive until the safety ship arrives.

The central conceit of this story has been done time and again. There is only so much oxygen and the cold equations don't lie. The episode as a whole is a messy, uneven affair. It starts off with a female captain sexually abusing a junior officer in her quarters before going into the explosive destruction of the warship, a comedy skit of the engineer esconced in his spacesuit unable to do anything useful (Dominique Pignon's area of expertise), an action sequence in which the two marines waste their oxygen trying to kill each other and then the twist in the tale that is predictable in outline if not detail.

What this episode does showcase is the excellent effects. The warship is introduced at the start and is impressive enough, but its destruction is truly awesome. The pod racing through the starry backdrops of space are also impressive. If only the story had been up to their standard.

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MASTER OF DESTINY

Following the death of his partner, a bounty hunter travels across the galaxy and faces many dangers to encounter the Turtle-sapiens, creatures believed to know the date of every human's death. Instead, he finds the woman of his dreams.

The half-hour format of this show claims another episode by providing too little time for it to be played out properly. The opening sequences, in which the bounty hunter takes out his anger at the loss of his partner on the shady characters in a low life bar, are the most effective because they are given the most time to breathe and add detail. Other whole chunks of the plot are then laid out by the turtle-sapiens in voice-over narration rather than being seen on the screen. The whole second act, in which two space criminals carry out crime, make love and eventually betray each other is one long narration by the space turtles, leading up to the punchline last line of dialogue, which is no real punchline at all..

The first alien creatures of the series, whether the CGI space-dwelling Hydras or the people in suits turtle sapiens are really quite succesful. Certainly more succesful than Kelly Brook, whose limited screen time doesn't manage to mask her equally limited acting abilities..

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PLEDGE OF ANYA

A warrior travels across dimensions from the planet of immortals to the Earth of mortals in order to kill a dragon that has emerged there.

This is a nice episode to end the series on as it doesn't give up its secrets too early. When the inevitable twist in the tale comes, it is equally inevitably predictable, but for a while it is not clear precisely what the warrior's mission is. The backgrounds are nicely realised, though the land of immortal warriors appears only as a single cave set..

When you have Rutger Hauer in your cast list, you make use of him, even if all he really has to do is to stand on a pedestal and spout some mumbo jumbo in an ongoing narration. Though he makes the most of it, it is still annoying for being completely superfluous.

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