What TV SHOWS are you watching?

ThirstyMan wrote: Also, I just CANNOT get into GoT after watching one and half seasons. It just does not grip me in any way whatsoever. I see it as soft core porn for the neckbeards.

Same here. It does look impressive, but after about two seasons my wife said: 'I just can't make myself care about the problems of any of those people.' Neither could I.

What a mess of a show the Witcher is, esp the last few episodes. The whole meta structure is a nightmare. Years between episodes, only hitting big Plot Relevant plot progressing points. This is that rare, rare show which would have been vastly better with a Kung Fu style episodic structure with many many enjoyable monster of the week episodes between plot relevant eps. It's like watching only X Files conspiracy episodes with a character whose best traits show in monster of the week eps.

Gary Sax wrote: What a mess of a show the Witcher is, esp the last few episodes. The whole meta structure is a nightmare. Years between episodes, only hitting big Plot Relevant plot progressing points. This is that rare, rare show which would have been vastly better with a Kung Fu style episodic structure with many many enjoyable monster of the week episodes between plot relevant eps. It's like watching only X Files conspiracy episodes with a character whose best traits show in monster of the week eps.

I haven't finished the season yet, but I already agree with you. I was probably 3 or 4 episodes in before I even realized that the show was jumping around to different points in time. The show certainly doesn't signpost it for you, which is fine. I don't mind having to pay attention. I'm just not sure what's gained by telling the story this way.

I feel like non-linear narratives are the cool, trendy thing right now, like Westworld or Watchmen. My opinion is that screenwriters are just trying to make themselves look clever, but all they're really doing is making a mess of their story. In Watchmen, the technique worked great. In The Witcher, it just makes things confusing, and I'm not sure that it brings any particular insight or depth to tell the story in this way.

Like you said, if they'd just told the story in a traditional, linear fashion, I think it would have been a solid show. Mix in some monster-of-the-week episodes with some larger, ongoing plots. TV shows have been doing this shit for a long time. It works.

I'm also almost done with His Dark Materials, and it really is the equivalent of the first Harry Potter movie. It mechanically hits the story beats, but it has lost all the flavor and themes and originality of the source novel. It's so frustrating. I'm not even sure if the showrunner even read the book, or if he just read the Wikipedia synopsis. The book is fundamentally about humans and their relationships with their daemons. That relationship underpins everything that happens. The TV show totally misses that.

Joebot wrote: I feel like non-linear narratives are the cool, trendy thing right now, like Westworld or Watchmen. My opinion is that screenwriters are just trying to make themselves look clever, but all they're really doing is making a mess of their story. In Watchmen, the technique worked great. In The Witcher, it just makes things confusing, and I'm not sure that it brings any particular insight or depth to tell the story in this way.

I've been thinking the same thing lately. Sometimes a non-linear narrative can be brilliant, because the juxtaposition of two scenes from different time periods can really drive home a plot point or some character development. And sometimes it feels like a non-linear narrative just muddles the story-telling to no particular advantage. Or maybe it can partially conceal that the underlying writing is not great.

The first season of The Witcher is based on the two prequel books, which are anthologies where the stories aren't in any particular order. I believe the show tried to emulate that with mixed results. On the bright side the next season and rest of the series should be straight-forward.

I watched the first two (the only ones released as of this writing) episodes of the new HBO drama, The Outsider. The premise is that Jason Bateman plays an elementary school baseball coach who is accused of murdering a boy in a most grievous manner. The investigation is led by Ben Mendelsohn (Bloodline, Rogue One) and they are absolutely convinced they have their guy because they have video, eye witnesses, fingerprints, etc.

But Jason Bateman's character was not even in town that day, and he can prove it.

If this show keeps its momentum, it will be difficult to wait on each coming episode. It's a good mystery, and while I *think* I know what is going on, episode 2 did throw a curve ball that was unexpected.

Check it out, and I'll warn you, the first two minutes shows a disgusting corpse.

Huh, I didn't know that was going to be a series. I think it is one of King's better books in recent years. If they can follow everything in the book in the series, then it is going to be pretty good with a lot of cool reveals....I don't know how much is shown in the first two episodes, but you might be still be surprised on what the final reveal is.

This is weird, I remember walking home with a mate of mine, which dates it to like 3 years ago, where he described that plot line to me about a show he was watching, not a book. Have there been other riffs on that?

Ben Mendelsohn is great btw. Wasn't he also in Captain Marvel also, the skrull dude.

Watched the first episode of The Outsider and it was great. Not familiar with the King original story and am avoiding spoilers. I was bummed to see it's being advertised and openly discussed with some spoilery descriptions though.

Thanks for recommending it/discussing it here.

Regarding the Witcher's time stuff, I vaguely knew prior to watching about the three different timelines. However seeing this graphic really helped me understand how it was structured and how decades pass between episodes, which is not made clear at all. You don't need to study it too close if you are worried about spoilers, which doesn't seem to actually matter in this particular show.

www.witchernetflix.com/en-gb

Netflix also saw the need to set up an interactive timeline, so that should tell you something.

Speaking of timelines, S3 of WESTWORLD premieres in late March and it looks like a total reboot; no more old West. The latest trailer is rather bizarre.

Msample wrote: Speaking of timelines, S3 of WESTWORLD premieres in late March and it looks like a total reboot; no more old West. The latest trailer is rather bizarre.

After the end of season two, I wasn't sure if I was going to keep watching Westworld. It started well, but season two gave the appearance that the writing team was leaning too hard on the mystery box approach to storytelling. The mystery box usually ends up either empty or full of shit. But I will at least give season three a try.

I was too harsh on Space: 1999 before. I was wary because I knew that nostalgia might give me fond memories of a bad show that just happened to air when I was still young and impressionable. And it did start out weak, with thin stories and lots of talking about not very much. But it started to get significantly better by episode 5 or 6, which should be impressive to anybody who endured the first two seasons of Star Trek: the Next Generation.

The main characters are still underdeveloped, generic heroes, with the big three occupying the same roles as the big three on Star Trek (original series) of commander, science officer, and medical officer. The f/x looks cheap, and not even as good as early Star Trek. The stories are all still episodic, with no carryover beyond the basic premise from one show to the next. And the science is sometimes complete rubbish, starting with the idea that the moon would not be destroyed by nuclear blasts powerful enough to send it out of Earth's solar system at nearly warp speed.

But aside from some weak science, the show strives for plausibility. The Eagles look like very workable space shuttles. The space suits look very similar to the ones used in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The set dressing is fine. I really like the Moon Base Alpha uniforms. Quite a few episodes deal with first contact with alien races, and some of those races are really alien and not just humanoids with variant hair or skin color. But the best part is the ambitious ideas after the first few episodes. The writers put an impressive amount of thought and effort into ideas that are used for a single episode, and some of the episodes are surprisingly character-driven. And oh, that awesome theme song. It starts with thundering kettle drums and roaring brass (also reminiscent of 2001), and then the cheesy, eerie synthesizer melody rolls in.



Just for one example, there was an episode where they encounter a vast alien ship. The occupants fled a dying world, on a 1,000-year journey to a suitable planet where they could start over, with about a century left in their journey. But a disaster on the ship exposed most of their people to excessive radiation, leading to widespread mutations. The 14 remaining pure-strain aliens live near the bridge, sealed off by safety doors from the rest of the ship. The other survivors scrape by with a primitive and ignorant lifestyle that includes worship and human sacrifice to the occasional pure-strain visitors, who harvest the sacrifices for organs and nutrients that they used to live as near-immortals. I could build a whole role-playing campaign (like maybe Metamorphosis Alpha or Paranoia) around those ideas, but Space: 1999 uses them for a single fast-paced episode.

Shellhead wrote: ...And the science is sometimes complete rubbish, starting with the idea that the moon would not be destroyed by nuclear blasts powerful enough to send it out of Earth's solar system at nearly warp speed.

I was kind of an SF snob about stuff like that back then, and that was a deal-breaker for me. I watched a couple of shows, but would bitch and moan about the moon all through the episode. You can see how that enhanced my enjoyment.