Paper Girls S1 (based on the sci-fi comic from Brian K. Vaughan

[Small Man Big Horse]

This dropped on Amazon on Friday, and fairly quietly it seems as not many of my normally tv savvy friends were aware of it. Anyhow, it's based on the Image comic series which ran for 30 issues a few years back, and initially seems very Stranger Things as it's the eighties and four young teenagers are hanging out and getting in to scrapes, and though perhaps it's realistic as they delivered papers at 4am (which seems mad to me, I mean in the UK I didn't start til 6am) it means it looks quite murkily filmed as the girls bicker and slowly bond while riding their bikes around in the dark. Then there's a pretty big deviation from the comic

COMIC SPOILERS (and tv spoilers for past the 25 minute point)

Spoiler alert

where instead of finding the time machine, the enter a house, hear some people speaking, something goes wrong with the power and when they look out of the window the sky has turned purple - but it's nowhere near as strange as the comic version and there aren't the giant flying dinosaur things (at least not yet, anyhow). Also cut is Mac's Step-Mum being all mental, though Mac does gets the family gun and accidentally shoots Erin, so that parts in it, they try to get to hospital but are kidnapped and the next thing you know they're emerging from the time machine, finally running around in daylight, being shot at by white dressed weirdos with laser guns, before it leaps ahead with both young and middle aged Erin meeting.

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Overall, well, it feels more serious than the comic, and I'm not too sure what to make of it, I think a more faithful adaptation would have been more exciting, but it seems well written and shot so I'll definitely give the second episode a go.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Episode 2 - Oof, this was bad, 44 minutes of the gang hanging out with

Spoiler alert

older Erin

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and it's all talk, talk, talk for I'd say about 42 of them? A mixture of bonding and bickering, there's the odd appearance from a villain and the plot moves on a tiny amount, but yeah, fuck this show, the comic was fast paced and mad and fun and this is just going for the Stranger Things audience and moving at a glacial pace that I can't be arsed with. I might have given the first episode a generous 3.5/5, but this gets 0.5/5.

[Artie Fufkin]

Oh dear.
Thanks for this review @Small Man Big Horse
Was looking forward to watching this after reading the comics.
Will give it a swerve now, no doubt.
Too many good things on tv to watch already.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Oh dear.
Thanks for this review @Small Man Big Horse
Was looking forward to watching this after reading the comics.
Will give it a swerve now, no doubt.
Too many good things on tv to watch already.

I do wonder what anyone who hasn't read the comics will make of it, and they may well like it a lot more, but I get really frustrated when a comic is adapted but they strip out the crazier aspects.

[Artie Fufkin]

I do wonder what anyone who hasn't read the comics will make of it, and they may well like it a lot more, but I get really frustrated when a comic is adapted but they strip out the crazier aspects.

Shall I be crazy and watch the series before reading the comics?? What d'ya think?
I'm just coming to the end of The Boys, so will need something else to watch.

[13 schoolyards]

I really liked the way the comic got increasingly nuts and was looking forward to this but as pretty much every review I've read has been "it's great that it really, really really focuses on the characters and their relationships rather than the big concepts," I don't think I'm going to bother.

I mean, pretty much all the classic character-driven TV series start out with some big concept they explore and slowly the character stuff takes over once we're hooked. This sounds like it's already skipped to season three and they've started to run out of ideas

[Small Man Big Horse]

Shall I be crazy and watch the series before reading the comics?? What d'ya think?
I'm just coming to the end of The Boys, so will need something else to watch.

I think you should, I mean, the two episodes aren't badly written or performed or anything, just not what I was hoping for from a quite high concept comic.

I really liked the way the comic got increasingly nuts and was looking forward to this but as pretty much every review I've read has been "it's great that it really, really really focuses on the characters and their relationships rather than the big concepts," I don't think I'm going to bother.

I mean, pretty much all the classic character-driven TV series start out with some big concept they explore and slowly the character stuff takes over once we're hooked. This sounds like it's already skipped to season three and they've started to run out of ideas

It's weird, the first episode begins with a really poorly lit scene as

Spoiler alert

Older Erin

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thinks the house is being broken in to, we hear some voices, but then it cuts back to the eighties and there was no real sense of tension or excitement at all. Then by the end of the first episode it connects with the beginning and if you hadn't read the comics it'd be a shock, but I can't imagine anyone who hadn't read the comics from feeling they'd missed enormously entertaining segments out.

[Pete23]

I haven't read the comics but episode 3 was great.

Spoiler alert

Loved Mac's relationship with her brother and there's a big fucking robot at the end!

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[SweetPomPom]

Loved the comics, hated this - it's lost everything that made the comics fun. Only good thing was the song choices for the soundtrack, everything else just misses the point.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Amazon have now cancelled this, which isn't a surprise given how little they promoted it in the first place, the producers are doing the standard shopping it around to other networks thing but I'd surprised if any were interested.