What TV SHOWS are you watching?

mc wrote: FInally got around to watching Dark.

It gets pretty convoluted. If you watch the whole thing and are never surprised, well that would surprise me.

the_jake_1973 wrote: Avenue 5 on Amazon is pretty funny in an English absurdist comedy sort of way. It stars Hugh Laurie as the captain of a starliner on a maiden voyage around Saturn. Shit goes wrong. Worth checking out.

Given the pedigree of this show (made by the guy who created Veep, stars Hugh Laurie and Zach Woods, etc.), I feel like show should be WAY funnier than it actually is. It's just .... okay.

In particular, I find the passenger characters to be one-note and monotonous. The bickering married couple are about as clever and witty as an old Married With Children episode.

Zach Woods though ... that guy steals every scene he's in. He's essentially doing a variation on Jared from Silicon Valley (seemingly nice, bland guy filled with quietly seething rage).

Giri/Haji on Netflix is the best thing I've seen there since Mindhunter. It's originally a BBC production, of course. Yes, it's a melodrama, but there's a lot of style attached to it (the anime memory sequence in episode 2, for example) and it's intelligently written with human characters that have human emotions and reactions, which is a large part of what I'm looking for these days (in addition to the SF, fantasy, crime, whathaveyou.) Up to episode 6 and can't recommend it enough.

I never read the comics but I found Locke & Key to be pretty average. Had some good stuff and some bad stuff. Can't say I'm excited about another season but I'll keep it on the radar.

The comic series has already finished the complete story of Locke and Key. I read it in hard cover volumes, and the sixth volume finishes the story. Although I wouldn't mind more stories in that setting, it was a satisfactory ending that didn't really need a sequel.

I tried the new Amazon Prime series Hunters. Not quite finished with the second episode yet, but it looks promising. Edgy, and sometimes veers into unexpected territory, but the basic concept is solid. Nazi war criminals and their hunters stalking each other in late '70s America, with some Tarantinoesque flourishes.

Didn't they just announce Locke and Key in the Neil gaiman sandman universe last week? (Comics not TV)

I finished season 2 of Narcos: Mexico on Netflix. Squarely average. A pale imitation of seasons 1 and 2 of the original series.

Right now the two shows I'm digging the most are Hunters (Netflix) and The Outsider (HBO).

Hunters is a brassy Nazi hunter show that doesn't pretend it's about anything else but looking like the best version of the 1970s, doing some blatant satire, sending up some contemporary film and TV tropes, and doing it with style... mostly. Flawless? No, but compelling, well made, well written and charming. The Nazi's are all evil fuckers, and they still hold up as villains because we seem to constantly have to remind ourselves that they were and are some evil fuckers.

The Outsider is just some Stephen King done right. They do right by the book without being precious with the original text, a thing that can get a lot of King adaptations in trouble. Much of King's literary output lately seems to be underrated, and this was a good book. The show takes what works, and puts it through a filter that keeps the drama, keeps the weird, and keeps the likable characters but tightens it up (I don't think King's editors bother with trying to get him to do that anymore) that keeps everything on track, in a good way. There is enough difference that picking up on the similarities and picking out the changes is actually an enjoyable part of the watch.

I agree that Hunters is compelling, though not great. The show is a visual feast, really nailing the look of NYC in the '70s. The music has been disappointing, given that they have a great decade to work with and the best use of a song so far was a Stones song from the mid-'60s. The writing is fairly good, but a bit uneven. Sometimes there are plot holes, and sometimes a key moment just doesn't land well. A key character gets stabbed in the stomach by an experienced assassin, but shows up a couple of scenes later standing around and joking with no excuses. Every episode opens with an age warning, either 16+ or 18+. The first episode featured a shocking amount of nudity of an overweight old woman. The tone veers between Marathon Man and Inglorious Basterds.

Since this is a game site, it is maybe worth mentioning games in the show. There was a scene depicting a human chess game being played at a concentration camp, and some holocaust museum complained to the media about it. They were unhappy because such a chess game never happened and they want the show to be either more or less fictional. Okay. The opening credits feature a chess set with Nazis on one side of the board and the hunters on the other side, with the pieces apparently moving themselves. Some of the miniatures are painted in exquisite detail. There is a scene in an early episode where two characters play chess, and the young genius manages a checkmate on turn two. I didn't get a close look at the board and I'm not a good chess player, but it appeared to be a legit foolsmate. However, I don't think the chess metaphor really works well for this show, because chess is all open information and this show is shrouded in the fog of war. There was also an early episode in a toy store with some board games visible on a shelf, but I didn't think to pause the scene and check to see if any of the games were anachronisms.

I actually find it a little difficult to watch. Maybe this juxtaposition of fiction and reality is a little disturbing.

I think it also has something to do with painting the nazis as psychopaths when all the research seems to suggest that the majority were 'normal' people caught up in the situation. I want to emphasise, lest someone thinks otherwise, that I am no nazi fanboy but I do think everyone struggles to see how a previously high cultured society can degenerate so quickly. I think situational psychology may have some of the answers.

This portrayal of the situation as a 'battle' between good and evil can distort the reality of the historical situation. This is maybe why I don't find it entertainment to watch.

ThirstyMan wrote: I actually find it a little difficult to watch. Maybe this juxtaposition of fiction and reality is a little disturbing.

I think it also has something to do with painting the nazis as psychopaths when all the research seems to suggest that the majority were 'normal' people caught up in the situation. I want to emphasise, lest someone thinks otherwise, that I am no nazi fanboy but I do think everyone struggles to see how a previously high cultured society can degenerate so quickly. I think situational psychology may have some of the answers.

This portrayal of the situation as a 'battle' between good and evil can distort the reality of the historical situation. This is maybe why I don't find it entertainment to watch.

I agree that most Nazis were probably normal people who were caught up in events. They looked away from some bad things that didn't directly affect them, and most had no clue about the worst atrocities. But the targets of the hunters are not regular Nazis, they are the worst of the worst. I once read somewhere that roughly 5% of Americans are either sociopaths or psychopaths, and thought that sounded ridiculously high. But I had a long daily commute at that time, and started to notice that roughly 5% of my fellow commuters seemed to be dangerously aggressive drivers. Now imagine such people in a situation where they have some authority over an entire disenfrachised segment of the population. They are able to torture and kill their victims without restraint, and have the freedom to express those urges in strange and even creative ways. We live in jaded times, though, so the writers of this show probably felt the need to go all the way over the top for shock value.

Edit - Already mentioned.

Hunters: I don't buy it. This smells like "both sides"- the TV show to me. Sorry if this comment is too crass for the site (kindly delete if so). I know I might be a little influenced by being German and having been around in 1991/2 when they resurfaced in numbers and started to threaten people again. The thing is, people died then, hunted by dumb mobs with not too much historical knowledge calling themselves Nazis. People were killed by fascists in Germany since the 20s, but nobody ever recorded a political murder by a mob of leftists.

One eye-opening element of Hunters is based on reality: Operation Paperclip. You can even read about it at NASA's website.

history.nasa.gov/SP-4202/chapter1.html

" "Operation Paperclip." the first official Army project aimed at acquiring German know-how about rocketry and technology, grew out of the capture of a hundred of the notorious V-2s and out of interrogations of key scientists and engineers who had worked at the Nazi's rocket research and development base at Peenemuende. Hence the decision to bring to the United States about one hundred twenty of the German experts along with the captured missiles and spare parts. Before the arrival of the Germans, General Donald Putt of the Army Air Forces outlined to officers at Wright Field some of the Nazi schemes for putting space platforms into the ionosphere; when his listeners laughed at what appeared to be a tall tale, he assured them that these were far from silly vaporings and were likely to materialize before the end of the century."