Serenity Preview Brit Hit

Wednesday, February 2, 2005 8:39 PM

So now all the tickets to the Serenity preview in London have gone and in double quick time too. Apparently Universal are fairly surprised at this and you can kind of see their point: a show that has never been broadcast here on terrestial TV and only shown on satellite on a minority channel in a succession of fairly poor timeslots. But nonetheless, the tickets were snapped up. Granted, they knew 800 people were prepared to spend a few hundred quid to go to a convention so this was doubtlessly a secure market but that also begs the question: how did Firefly get to be so popular?

I think the obvious answer is Buffy and Angel. These shows already had a strong cult and mainstream audience over here and it's not particularly surprising that followers of Joss would want to see what he did next. But then the X-Files was a much bigger smash than Buffy, plus it had just as strong a set of devoted followers and yet where are the devotees of Harsh Realm? I'm sure there's some but are they getting a movie? Heck, even the X-Files might not get a second movie (which is bizarre considering that the first one piled in the money).

I think the UK always was a good audience for Firefly. For one thing, 14 episodes seems like quite a lot to us (other classic cult shows here have similar lengths: 12 for Fawlty Towers, 17 for the Prisoner, 679 for Doctor Who... er, bad example) Anyway, we don't expect 22 episodes a year, every year. Also, we tend towards the more cerebral in our cult viewing (shows that are fun but shallow like Andromeda are shown at about 2 in the morning, whereas the more intense things like Angel and Alias have made an appearance in terrestrial prime time).

Ultimately though, quality will shine through. Sometimes it takes a while for it to reach the masses (remember all the "hit movies" that were actually box office flops like The Blues Brothers and The Shawshank Redemption) but it will get there.

Anyway, I'm going to see Serenity, or at least the rough sketch of it, in less than a week. That gives me 270 days to spread the word.

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