What TV SHOWS are you watching?

I think Episodes might be the best work Matt Le Blanc has done. Which is, I know, another ringing endorsement. He seems to be having so much fun with that despicable caricature of himself.

Related to Episodes, I am currently watching Daisy Haggard in Back to Life where her character returns to her family home having spent her entire adult life in prison. Each slowly peeling layer of often uncomfortable drama is accompanied by gusts of darkest black comedy. Performances and scripting are excellent. No idea if its one of the shows licensed to Britbox but it did air on Showtime.

I've been watching the Blood of Zeus cartoon on Netflix. It's ok. I like the subject matter but the story is paper thin ssttrreettcchheedd over the 8 episodes. The animation, while good in still shots, is very low frame rate, some action scenes are literally slide shows. It makes following the action kinda hard because everything is so jerky and stiff. They do a LOT of flashbacks, both to do exposition dumps and often, I think, to reuse footage to eat up time.

Still, it hits a lot of Greek myths. It is UBER VIOLENT though, not so much sex and nudity, so watch out for the kiddos. If they continue it I hope they get the time/budget needed to increase the frame rate. The character design is cool, other than almost all of the greeks (and Hera for some reason) having very similar face structure.

I watched THE BOYS S1, and it was like all the other shows Amazon/Netflix/Showtime poop out. Kind of soulless. Uneven writing. Violence without consequences. HBO is making better stuff, and even they miss some sometimes. I am watching S2E1 now and it's ...fine.

Everyone is raving about THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT, Anya Taylor-Joy is a chess wizard/drug addict managing in 1960s American Mid-Atlantic area. It's pretty good so far, but I figure it'll follow the laid-so-low, brings-it-all back arc that's standard fare. She's a good actress though.

Hey: who's under 25 and going to make it big? Who is Natalie Portman circa THE PROFESSIONAL/BEAUTIFUL GIRLS? My guesses:
--Sure Things--
Anya Taylor-Joy
Timothy Chalamet

--Maybes--
Kiernan Shipka
Tom Holland

Tom Holland has a lot of talent, but he might age into a difficult casting proposition by his early 30s. He is relatively short for a leading man for most action or rom-com movies, but might be good for straight up comedy.

Tom Cruise is also pretty short. Tom Holland just has to get in on that sweet Scientology path.

jason10mm wrote: I've been watching the Blood of Zeus cartoon on Netflix. It's ok. I like the subject matter but the story is paper thin ssttrreettcchheedd over the 8 episodes. The animation, while good in still shots, is very low frame rate, some action scenes are literally slide shows. It makes following the action kinda hard because everything is so jerky and stiff. They do a LOT of flashbacks, both to do exposition dumps and often, I think, to reuse footage to eat up time.

Still, it hits a lot of Greek myths. It is UBER VIOLENT though, not so much sex and nudity, so watch out for the kiddos. If they continue it I hope they get the time/budget needed to increase the frame rate. The character design is cool, other than almost all of the greeks (and Hera for some reason) having very similar face structure.

Finished watching that last Friday, and I only thought was, "Well, there's 8 hours of my life I will not get back."

I admit, it did start strong, but became so tedious to watch. Jason's right about the animation. Frame rate goes all over the place, it's especially egregious in the final scenes of the last episode. Castlevania is still MUCH better.

Pacing myself on Bordertown, so I watched the entire 2 seasons of Deadwind. The twists in the series were really good, in my opinion, along with the "will they/won't they boink" between Nurmi and Karppi. I'm already jonesing for a season 3.

I'm now starting Young Wallender and so far, it's pretty good. My wife does not like the actor playing Wallender, saying he sounds clueless and needs to be beat up every episode (her words).

I'm just wondering how long until I burn out on police procedurals.

Rliyen wrote: I'm just wondering how long until I burn out on police procedurals.

Have you watched Bosch on Prime? Probably my favorite police procedural. The first season is pretty lackluster and can easily be caught up on in the 5 minute recap at the beginning of the second season when it really starts to shine.

jay718 wrote:

Rliyen wrote: I'm just wondering how long until I burn out on police procedurals.

Have you watched Bosch on Prime? Probably my favorite police procedural. The first season is pretty lackluster and can easily be caught up on in the 5 minute recap at the beginning of the second season when it really starts to shine.

I've enjoyed Bosch quite a bit, so I second this recommendation. But the seasons (and shows within) have been really up and down.

jay718 wrote:

Rliyen wrote: I'm just wondering how long until I burn out on police procedurals.

Have you watched Bosch on Prime? Probably my favorite police procedural. The first season is pretty lackluster and can easily be caught up on in the 5 minute recap at the beginning of the second season when it really starts to shine.

I shot that visual crack straight into my eyeballs. Especially love the intro song. I haven't started the latest season as of yet, but I will turn my eyes back to it again.

DarthJoJo wrote: Haven’t mentioned it despite being well into season four of Episodes. That probably means something. Two British writers travel to LA to adapt their BAFTA-winning series for American audiences. Indignities ensue. Matt LeBlanc plays a terrible version of himself, and Tamsin Greig is there, too.

My wife likes it a lot more than me. It’s not bad, and I do laugh enough, but its rhythms are strange. There are exaggerated characters who wouldn’t be out of place in a 30 Rock or Office, but the pace of jokes is a lot slower. The drama is a bit heavier.

It’s on Netflix if you want to check it out after this glowing recommendation.

This was the last thing I watched and literally watched all of the seasons, which is pretty easy considering it's "British seasons." My, whoa, moment was when one of the "boys" left Pucks and wasn't really mentioned directly... it was the actor who played Greyworm on GOT.

We just finished up Queens Gambit which was sat in our watch list for a while and we gave it a go after the talk about it here. We liked it, it was very watchable. On the negative side it is fairly formulaic and predictable, there are times where the show telegraphs the plot turns really hard at you and then plods along on the expected course. Having said that we ended up binging the final three in a row earlier tonight because it had hooked us good and proper.

As for the final episode...

Yep. Totally agreed. I enjoyed it because game nerd (obvsly) and because I really liked Anya Taylor-Joy's performance. But it was completely formulaic and rooted in Cold War perspectives (and not elegant ones, either.) Still worth the watch, but not memorable like Chernobyl or anything of that sort.

What I loved about Queen's Gambit was the interaction between Beth and the various grandfather figures in the show -- how elderly poor men and the orphan find community the street or the basement, the places of strangers, the anonymous and forgotten. The real story for me is about how one relates to the war game in life. When Beth learns the game, she is learning about loss, but as this propels her to dominate the board, she misses the deeper point about knowing when one "must resign". The elderly men playing chess will play to the bitter end, but since they all know they must, eventually, resign, this makes the game so much sweeter. The deep and knowing interaction between Beth and the elderly grandmaster moved me to tears. The final scene was perfect.

The only downside to the show is the same one that infects so many shows and movies: the inability (or unwillingness) of writers to move beyond an infantile portrayal of experiences of loss. Almost always, emotions of loss are dealt with in either addiction spirals, with the jilted or bereaved lover melodramatically pouring booze over their face for a dizzy camera, or the perma-rage of revenge fantasies. I find these clichés boring, and I think they make the world dumber.

I'd like to see actual examples of people who are masters of a game that translates into real world victory. It is a common media trope with chess, go, and I guess tic tac toe in one case. Maybe Napoleon (I think he was supposed to be good at chess)? Movies love to portray a chess master out maneuvering his opponents (the whole 4D chess thing) but I can't think of anyone in modern history at least where I can draw a direct link between game derived theory and practical action.

Still, it is a fantastic trope and gets me every time. There was a whole book series (Chung Kuo IIRC) that used Go extensively to describe the tactics of political maneuvering.