Irreverent premieres today on Peacock. The series follows a criminal mediator, Paulo, who on the run from the Chicago mob, assumes the identity of Reverend Mackenzie Boyd (Colin Donnell) and flees to the small Australian reef community of Clump in Far North Queensland, posing as clergy. Things there, however, are not what he expected when he finds himself in a small town with no phone or internet, and the townspeople are desperate for a leader. Can he keep up the illusion and settle into the new life? What starts off as an escape and pretending to care may just become a bit real for the criminal.

SciFi Vision recently spoke with members of the cast as well as the showrunner and executive producers about the new series.

The idea for the series came from showrunner Paddy Macrae, whose father is a church minister. “I grew up with my mom and my dad and my sisters and my brother in a very, very remote church, in a little house right next to a church, where the Minister is relied on for absolutely everything,” Macrae explained to SciFi Vision. “They're involved with the sports in the town, with every community event, every wedding, every funeral, every time there's a police matter…I thought [about how] I grew up in a small community. I love the sense of community and family around people. So, I wanted to make a show about community, and I thought, ‘What better place to put it than a small church?’…I didn't want to make a show about religion so much as about people and about connection.”

The Walking Dead - Live Finale Event - 11/20/22

SciFi Vision was invited to the finale special of The Walking Dead on Sunday, and our writer, Christiane Elin attended.

Below are photos from the event, after the jump.

Daniel Craig is back on the big screen as Detective Benoit Blanc, last of the gentleman sleuths. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is out today for one week only, as a special sneak preview before the film jumps to streaming. Catch it in theaters now until November 29, or you'll be forced to wait until the film premieres globally on Netflix on December 23.

In the sequel to 2019 hit Knives Out, Blanc's latest case takes him to a tech billionaire's private island, where he encounters a new cast of colorful suspects. As in all the best murder mysteries, each character harbors their own secrets, lies, and motivations, and when someone turns up dead, everyone is a suspect. Returning to the franchise he began, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Rian Johnson wrote and directed Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and assembled another all-star ensemble cast to star alongside Craig, including Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Kate Hudson, and Dave Bautista.

“[Despite the upcoming spin-offs] it ends with a really definitive conclusion for both the series and then each individual character.”
--(Scott Gimple on the series finale, interview with Entertainment Weekly, 25 October 2022)

The first stories most Western children hear end with happily ever after, and that phrase settles into their subconscious as the model for what an ending should look like—an ending in life as much as in fiction. With maturity comes the understanding that happily ever after is as fantastic an element of those stories as are the dragons and fairies. Nonetheless, fiction, for adults as well as children, exists not only to reflect reality, but also to redress it. Stories hold up a mirror, and are, too, a window into somewhere else: a place not subject to the whims of fate, but controlled by storytellers.

In The Christmas Challenge, during their “Modernly Independent” podcast, host Laura Ross (Jennica Schwartzman) and her best friend and producer, Paul (Zack Gold), receive the “Christmas Challenge,” from a listener: an advent calendar of daily holiday activities that promotes togetherness, which proves a bit difficult for Laura, who always displays her strength of independence. When they get a chance to be picked up by a national podcast network, network executive Michale (Galadriel Stineman) joins them for December, and like Paul, loves everything about Christmas. Will Laura be able to make room for new traditions, or will she spend her holidays alone?

To promote the film, SciFi Vision recently spoke with director star Schwartzman and Director Hunter West about making the film, their favorite Christmas traditions, and more. Read the full transcript below. The Christmas Challenge is currently available on Up Faith & Family’s streaming service, and starting today, on other platforms.

Last week Gangs of London returned to AMC+ for its second season. To promote the return of the series, SciFi Vision spoke with stars Waleed Zuaiter, who plays villain Koba, and Narges Rashidi, who plays Lale, at a recent roundtable where they spoke about their characters’ darkness, connecting with it, and more.

Read the full transcript below, and be sure to tune into Gangs of London on AMC+.

The fan-favorite series Manifest recently returned for a fourth season on Netflix. The series follows a group of people that took a flight only to return and find five years had past. The 828ers start to experience callings, or visions of future events, that some of them come to believe they need use to help others and change their future to survive.

Creator and showrunner of the series, Jeff Rake, recently spoke to SciFi Vision about his reactions to the series being picked up by Netflix and how much his initial plans changed over the course of the series. Watch the full interview below. 

With its new series, Dangerous Liaisons, Starz takes on a well-known story from a fresh new angle. 

Since its publication in 1782, the French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses has been adapted dozens of times. Modern audiences are probably most familiar with 1988’s Oscar-winning Dangerous Liaisons, which starred Glenn Close and John Malkovitch as the Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont, bitter exes who use sex and secrets to manipulate and destroy their fellow aristocrats.

But the Starz production is not a retelling; rather, it’s a prequel. Throughout the first season (and presumably the second; it has already been renewed), we see happy couple Camille and Pascal (played by Alice Englert and Nicholas Denton) take the first steps toward becoming the Marquise and Vicomte. It all starts with a collection of sexy letters that fall into the wrong hands, setting the stage for blackmail.

Tomorrow, the hugely popular series, The Walking Dead, takes its final bow as the last episode airs. Earlier in the week, SciFi Vision spoke with cast members of the series and asked them to look back at their characters’ journeys and talk about what they felt was the most defining moment of the series for their character and how it changed them.

For Seth Gilliam, who plays Father Gabriel in the series, it was when he lost his vision in his right eye. “It seems to coincide with him seeing things a lot clearer and being a little more devout in his belief in himself and his decision-making process and his courage level and his conviction levels,” the actor told SciFi Vision. “I think he went partially blind and gained a bit more insight into himself.”

“It's always been Shiva for Ezekiel,” said Khary Payton about his character’s tiger, “because, to me, Shiva dying, it coincided with Ezekiel losing half of his Kingdom in the war, in all out war, and I think he has been fighting to come back from that ever since…She was always, for me, the embodiment of the Kingdom itself. So, when [he] was grieving her and mourning her, it was Ezekiel mourning his people and his worth as a leader, and as a person, for thinking that the power of positive thinking means that everything's always going to be okay, and coming to find that really, it's about persevering. It's not that everything's going to be okay; it's how you get through and still make life worth living.”

Tomorrow night marks the end of an era when the hugely popular series, The Walking Dead, airs for the final time. To promote the series finale, SciFi Vision caught up with cast members and asked them to look back at their characters’ journeys and talk about what the defining moment was that changed their characters and how.

For Josh McDermitt, this season his character Eugene was most affected by finding out the truth about Stephanie/Max. “[I]t's just finding out the truth about the decoy Stephanie (Chelle Ramos), who turned out to be Shira, and who Max (Margot Bingham) really was,” the actor explained to SciFi Vision. “I think that that brought him down to his lowest point, but then meeting Max kind of brought him up again and gave him a new outlook on life…When he came to the Commonwealth, it was definitely when he felt like all hope was lost that he saw this little tiny light off in the distance, and that light has grown to then shine the light on all the misdeeds and the bad things going on in the Commonwealth.”

For Eleanor Matsuura, who plays Yumiko, it was finding her brother Tomi (Ian Anthony Dale)’s picture on the wall. “It was the beginning of drawing everyone into the Commonwealth by virtue of making the group that I was with stay in that moment,” said the actress. “It was this glimpse into her past, this pull that was keeping her from leaving with the group, an opportunity to sort of see where she came from. How that's unfolded in this season with the courtroom stuff and representing Eugene, it felt like the past and the present were all just brought together.”