Is critically acclaimed Halt and Catch Fire all its cracked up to be?
Lee Pace stars as Joe MacMillan, a former IBM man who tricks Cardiff Electric into developing a PC clone. He ropes in disillusioned computer engineer Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy) and prodigy programmer Cameron (Mackenzie Davis) to work on the project, but why he so badly wants to take out IBM is never made clear. If three people yelling at each other over a BIOS code  nope, I dont know what it is either  sounds appealing, Halt and Catch Fire is for you. Set in Texas Silicon Prairie of Dallas-Fort Worth, the tech drama attempts to make the personal computing revolution of the 1980s sexy, as local firm Cardiff Electric takes on the big guy IBM with its PC clone. Hence the grandiose speeches quoting that Apple guy Steve Jobs and passionate speeches about how computers could be more; what if they could all talk to each other and  hang on!  what if they could play chess. Oh my god  its all going to come true! Thats not to say its not entertaining; it is, but more in a grit-your-teeth we gotta get through the first season kinda way ahead of critically acclaimed seasons two, three and four. The show is a product of prestige US cable network AMC, who made their mark with Mad Men and were looking for something to fill the gap when the critically acclaimed advertising drama finished in 2015. In one sense, AMC got what they needed, as Halt and Catch Fire ticks many of Mad Mens boxes  its a period workplace drama with an egotistical leading man and women fighting to be recognised for their abilities. Like Mad Men, its art directed to perfection 1980s Texas couldnt be more daggy with its brown houses, brown skirts, yellow shirts, dorky wire-rimmed glasses and big hair for the ladies (except for Cameron, who, of course, shows off her outsider status by not wearing a bra). But where Mad Men had the charming Don Draper (Jon Hamm) at its centre, Paces Joe MacMillan is, well, a douche-bag. He has little to no regard for others and his mysterious backstory is more annoying than intriguing. Like Don Draper, he is a compulsive liar, but whereas Hamms charisma made this somewhat forgivable, Pace is all bluster.