In a week of Apple announcements, Digital Hollywood and other new media events, it’s worth taking note of a rather heavy week of web series premieres. Some went seasonal for Halloween while others went a little racy trying to crack through the crowded web series field this fall.
New series premieres this week:
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Timed for the Halloween season of darker fare, this Vampire vs. Zombies comedy from creator director Brendan Fong in his scripted web series directing debut. It’s produced by Streamy-nominee Joel Bryant from After Judgment along with iBallz founder Danny Ohman. The creators are billing this one as: “1 part Zombieland, 1 part Shaun of the Dead, and 2 parts Clerks, this satirical web series follows a group of overly analytical vampires who find themselves knee deep in a race to preserve a newly dwindling food source.”
Only one episode in, it’s too early to tell whether Suck and Moan is going to live up to such lofty comps, though its low-budget feel is closer to a dark talky Clerks than the gore action joy ride of Zombieland. For its release, it’s doing it the weekly route, with one new episode per week until the end of the year for a 10-episode first season run.
The always funny Jon Daly bows this new series—yes, he confirms there are more in the works with buddy “Fab”—on Funny or Die this week. Who needs Will Smith’s kid when let’s face it, Fabio owns the wet hair whip? For now all we get is this first episode, but more coming when “Fab gets back from Italy” says Daly.
The New York based comedy picks up with the owners of a “hipster third-wave feminist magazine” called Vag who have just bought out fashion mag Gemma. Comedy duo Caitlin Tegart and Leila Cohan-Miccio created and wrote the series, tapping a number of fellow UCBers and other comedians in their quirky cast: Kate McKinnon (Logo’s Big Gay Sketch Show, Adult Swim’s Venture Brothers), Nicole Drespel, Jocelyn Guest, Sarah Claspell, Veronica Osorio, Morgan Grace Jarrett, and Leslie Meisel.
It’s a fresh spin on faux-feminist satire with jabs at everything from roller derby culture to Etsy crafting and veganism. No hiding anything with its intro song: “Girl Power! Vag Magazine, the power is in the Vag.” Feather ruffling? Possibly. Sprinkled with laughs for calling it like it is? Yes.
It’s not every day that you see KoldCast adding a hosted tech show to their lineup, or a hosted show of any sort for that matter. But this week they launched weekly tech series Your Brain on Tech with host Eric Hurst. While the scope does seem a bit broad in its description— “technology to gadgets to the world of video gaming and the Internet”—it’s a watchable, well crafted entry into the crowded tech news game. It did, for example, let me know about the Verizon data plan for iPads with their MiFi device. And here I was cursing AT&T as the only option for the add-on.
