If you've spent the first few years of your life in space, and the last few in a jail cell, before being bolted into a turbulent, Earth-bound rocket, only to be dumped on terra firma, 97 years after a nuclear holocaust, what are the chances you'd look as radiant as a young Kardashian on arrival?
Pretty good, according to The 100 (Fridays, TVNZ On Demand). Like so many youth-oriented shows from the United States, this teenage sci-fi series is completely unapologetic about its high eye candy quotient. This reviewer is twice the age of the target audience but I'd hazard a guess that the show's symmetrically-faced guys and dewy-skinned chicks are almost too perfect to bank on instant heart-throb status. Either way, it's pretty clear they're all going to get it on at some stage. Even the brother and sister looked a little cosy, did they not?
TVNZ are screening The 100 two days behind the US, (screening later on TV2), so last night's episode was not available to watch in advance. That's okay. You can guess where it's heading. The teens will break into sub-tribes and take off for greener pastures, duke it out for leadership status, get in trouble with the grown-ups in the sky, die in cesspools of toxic mud and kiss a lot, under the romantic glow of radioactive glow worms. Ain't jungle love grand?
It'd be tempting to write it off as derivative of just about every other escapist teen fantasy you've ever read or seen (Jericho, The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies). But there are small differences. Adapted from the book by Kass Morgan, The 100 tells of the space-dwelling humans who survived the nuclear blasts and congregated in a hub known as "the Ark." The leaders, all of whom so far appear to be American, are low on resources. They need to downsize the population, but, as one of them insists, they must do it "by the book". Presumably this means humanely. In reality, it means dropping 100 of the less-desirables (again, all Americans), on to the potentially unsafe Earth, and monitoring their vitals to see if it's worth joining them.
The chosen ones are a group of juvenile prisoners, persecuted for (sometimes unfair) reasons, like being born illegally or, perhaps, for being too good-looking. The modelesque Bellamy Blake, for instance, has just shot the Chancellor and isn't supposed to be on the manifesto. This is all good stuff, and it has to be said, pretty tightly executed for a set-up. It's just a shame some of it feels so stagey, with some pretty patchy acting.
