Caught the first two episodes last night; and was much more entertained than I ever was with the last lame Star Wars series they threw at us,
'The Acolyte'
Just wanted to mention also, a very encouraging trend that I've noticed (this show had some great rear/surround audio happening for sure); is that a lot of the new/latest shows I'm catching this year, seems to me anyway, are putting more attention to the rear channels in their surround, and I'm really diggin' it!
anyone else notice the improved audio?
I went into watching this with quite a bit of trepidation - as I think I've said on this thread a time or two before, I really enjoyed The Mandalorian (though the quality fell off some in season 3) and Andor is probably the best Star Wars I've ever seen, but all of the other series have been of declining quality, starting with Book of Boba Fett, and continuing through Obi Wan, Ahsoka, and especially the thankfully-already-cancelled The Acolyte, which wasted a really good performance from Squid Game's Lee Jung-jae by putting it in one of the most trite, nonsensical and downright boring stories I've had the displeasure of watching.
Adding to my apprehension was that Skeleton Crew has four kids as the main characters, and it's so easy for that kind of thing to go wrong when you're asking them to carry the narrative. I was also kind of worried because from the trailer it seemed like they were suggesting that the people in this show lived in a place that was almost indiscernible from American suburbia with front lawns and school buses and stuff (not really my idea of compelling sci fi) but it seems those minor elements were kind of played up to give you a sense of the vibe they were going for. I think the failure of a lot of the "Disney Star Wars" era has been that they've been afraid to tell any 'new' kinds of stories - the sequel trilogy is a perfect example, it's like they took all the events/characters/ideas/archetypes etc. of the original trilogy shuffled them around, and tried to Frankenstein them into a new story, and failed miserably in the process. Boba Fett, Obi Wan, Ahsoka and The Acolyte were kind of the same, they purported to show and tell you more about the Star Wars universe but oftentimes made it feel smaller, cheaper, more boring and so on because they showed you unimaginative renderings of things that had been spoken about before, or demystified things that should've remained mysterious. The reason I think Andor succeeded so well is because it told a story the likes of which had never been told before, and in the process added context around the events of the original and prequel trilogies that only added to their weight, sort of like Better Call Saul did with Breaking Bad, and that's exactly what I want from every Star Wars show: a new story in a locale that feels familiar.
Obviously it's too early to make definitive conclusions, but I really enjoyed what I saw - ok, maybe not perfect (but what TV is?) but really enjoyable and it just
felt a lot more like Star Wars than the previous few series. Obviously they're going for a kind of Goonies/Stand By Me by way of Star Wars kind of thing, and wearing their heart on their sleeve about it too, but it doesn't feel like an entirely by-the-numbers exercise, and it seems to be setting up more than one intriguing mystery to be solved. If the subsequent episodes in the series are of the same quality, I'll be very happy with this indeed.
Dune Prophecy is on Sky Atlantic next week! 
