Play it again, just one more time

Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

Don’t forget to click the purple button to see what everyone else has to say on this week’s subject. It’s at the end of my post.

What TV show/or Movie, or book do you binge/return to/ re-watch the most?

There’s a problem with questions like this. I could spend all day listing the shows and movies that I’ve watched, ever since my interest in Sci-fi was kindled back in the last 1960s, with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

As you might expect from a Sci-fi author, I binge-watch old sci-fi series like Star Trek, Fringe, Quantum Leap, Firefly and The X-Files, to name but a few. I actually bought some of them on VHS, then again on DVD, back when they were first released.

I also like old police procedurals and espionage series such as Life (remember that one?) Line of Duty and Alias, or shows with amateur detectives like Miss Marple/Agatha Raisin/Jonathon Creek.

All these shows are good enough to bear repeated watching, with each viewing, you spot something you missed last time around.

As for movies, I have to admit that I don’t watch as many new releases as I used to. Not that it really matters when there are so many classics that bear repeated viewing. My all-time favourites are fantasies like Lord of the Rings, comedies like Galaxy Quest and sci-fi like Avatar. As well as some little-known ones, such as Sky Captain or Dark City.

The cozy mystery Foul Play (great plot, shame about the Barry Manilow soundtrack) or The Godfather trilogy are also favourites.

There’s little in the way of Steampunk though. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Mortal Engines are the only movies that spring to mind while, on T.V., the nearest there is to Steampunk are probably The Nevers or Miss Scarlet.

These and many others have influenced my writing in so many ways. The styles and tropes of everything that I watch can be mashed up and re-imagined.

In that way, you have Cozy Crime of even Mafia gangs in a futuristic setting. Or a present-day robotic human controlled by telepathy, living among us. As well as the usual space opera adventures or mad scientists in an alternative Victorian setting.

Until next time.

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