What TV SHOWS are you watching?

We just recently finished The IT Crowd, which I somehow missed the first time around. It started out a bit rough, got good, and then got great once Matt Berry joined the cast.

Speaking of Matt Berry, we've also been watching the second season of What We Do in the Shadows. The show really found its voice by the end of the first season and it hasn't lost a step. There's a good mix of stand-alone and story arc episodes and the cast continues to impress. Natasia Demetriou (Nadja) and Matt Berry (Lazlo) have fantastic chemistry and I could spend all day listening to Berry say, "Oh, what is this shit?" in his stentorian tones. But Nandor, Guillermo (his familiar) and Colin (the energy vampire) all have their moments, too, and they do a good job of adding guest stars/characters to liven things up, like when Haley Joel Osment(!) showed up in the season premiere as Lazlo and Nadjia's new familiar.

I very much enjoyed the first season of what we do in the shadows and am prepared to lose a thousand geek cred points by saying that I preferred it to the original. I would recommend watching Toast if you can, a slightly more surrealist Matt Berry gig where he gets plenty of room to flex his very particular vocal talents.

Also been watching "What we do in the shadows", and the very tail end of Community, the "Yahoo" season.

It was very strange to see Matt Berry show up in Community s6e09 as "the grifting teacher" and say "hey, that's Lazslo!"

I have a vague memory of watching part of Toast a long time ago, but I'll have to go back and revisit it.

SebastianBludd wrote: We just recently finished The IT Crowd, which I somehow missed the first time around. It started out a bit rough, got good, and then got great once Matt Berry joined the cast.

Speaking of Matt Berry, we've also been watching the second season of What We Do in the Shadows. The show really found its voice by the end of the first season and it hasn't lost a step. There's a good mix of stand-alone and story arc episodes and the cast continues to impress. Natasia Demetriou (Nadja) and Matt Berry (Lazlo) have fantastic chemistry and I could spend all day listening to Berry say, "Oh, what is this shit?" in his stentorian tones. But Nandor, Guillermo (his familiar) and Colin (the energy vampire) all have their moments, too, and they do a good job of adding guest stars/characters to liven things up, like when Haley Joel Osment(!) showed up in the season premiere as Lazlo and Nadjia's new familiar.

Agree on both fronts. We watched all of the IT Crowd last year and it landed much better than I expected. I'm a software developer and find myself pretty regularly doing the 'did you turn it off and back on again' line in Roy voice.

I've just started season 2 of What We Do in the Shadows but I'm still shocked that it lives up to the film.

Started watching #blackAF on Netflix after a friend recommended it and found it pretty enjoyable.

I thought Matt Berry was great in The IT Crowd but less so with his subsequent work (it feels a little too "same-y"). If you're looking for more obscure Matt Berry material, I suggest hunting down Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. It's hard to find, but worth the effort.

Finally, I'm mostly a fan of Berry due to his musical work. It's... odd. I sometimes feel as though it's a inside joke that's too deadpan for me to detect, but damn he can write a catchy riff!

the_jake_1973 wrote: Started watching #blackAF on Netflix after a friend recommended it and found it pretty enjoyable.

Quite enjoyed that myself after being turned on by my GF

Oof. Can't do Matt Berry. I could just handle it in his episodes of the Mighty Boosh, got by in IT Crowd, but I've had to draw the line at anything where he's the main character. Something just rubs the wrong way, and, yeah, it's all a bit repetitive I find. I didn't realise he was in the Shadows TV series, which has probably put it down the list a bit for me unfortunately.

jay718 wrote:

the_jake_1973 wrote: Started watching #blackAF on Netflix after a friend recommended it and found it pretty enjoyable.

Quite enjoyed that myself after being turned on by my GF

PHRASING!

I started watching The Wire second season with my Advanced Profanity Chrome extension, but that show is just a wee bit too dark for me right now, and the filter only works about 50 percent of the time on Amazon Prime, and that is after the developer worked with me.

Gangs of London - From the creator of The Raid/The Raid 2 and as expected just about every episode has a kick-ass fight scene in it. Plot is around the power vacuum left after the head of a crime family dies and the mystery of who did it. I watched the whole season and it was quite good.

Nancy Drew on CW - I note the channel because whatever you're expecting is what you'll get. I never read the books and this apparently a sort of sequel/reimagining with 18 year-old Nancy and ghosts added. Like she'll be haunted by a ghost until she solves its murder kind of thing. I'd say its above-average for a CW show but that makes it average for anything else.

Finished season 2 of Dead to Me on Netflix. Great stuff, although I think it leans on coincidence a bit too much. For example, you might have someone get in a car accident, and both parties just happen to know each other. The city isn't that small.

Same as last time, sort of.

The Wire Season 3 - just wrapped that up last night. That's some good stuff. Episode 11 - "Middle Ground" is considered the best episode of the entire series, and it's the best one that I've ever seen.

Compare and contrast to Bosch. Bosch is more straight-up police procedural, and there are a couple of The Wire alums on the show. It's not breaking any new ground for me, but it's well-executed. Political double-dealing in Bosch is strictly bush league compared to everyday events on The Wire. But it's a good show.

The Amazing Race - we're working though seasons 17+ right now. It's not bad for a reality show.

A question: Does Amazon Prime + Roku suck for anybody out there as badly as it does for me? Everything is choppy, and the soundtrack will lose sync with the video. I don't see this if I watch shows on my laptop, nor do we see that with other sources like HBO and Netflix. Yeah, yeah, First World problem.

“You need a Day of the Jackal type motherfucker basically to do some shit like that !”

Watched Upload on Amazon. Pretty fun lighthearted romcom about being able to "upload" yourself into a digital heaven. It touches on a lot of tech and social concepts but never lingers long on anything, so while it never reaches the philosophical depths of something like Black Mirror, it is also way more funny and enjoyable to watch. Their use of VR will infuriate anyone who actually has any experience with it, so be forewarned if that's your thing.