What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Been watching Lupin on Netflix. It's nothing surprising but it's just my spouse and I's speed right now.

Is Lupin supposed to be a live action version of the classic anime?

No, of the ~1900 French serial book inspiration---that almost undoubtedly inspired the Lupin master thief anime thing too.

jason10mm wrote: My kids watch Bluey and all this time I thought they were dingos Seemed odd to me but blue heelers make waaay more sense

Worth noting that Blue/Bluey was once a standard nickname for someone with red hair, so Bluey the Dingo would still kind of fit.

I resisted Bluey because the universal praise it was getting from certain sections here flicked on my automatic popularity=bad sensors but it is some low key genius. My kids are basically too old for it but it sort of caught them at that tail end of "this is probably too young for me but i'm gonna pretend I enjoy it ironically" kind of space so we ended up watching it a bit for a while there. Very nice understated slices of family life. Dad is not too much of a caricatured buffoon, mum not too much of a know it all, kids not to saccarine. It's a winner.

Blueys Dad is played by a guy from an indie band who were very popular in these parts in the 90s, so that's a kind of generational spin out as well.

Also, agreed on Lupin, a nice little meringue as a tv critic I used to enjoy reading used to say. Don't need to think about it, not much to it really, but fun and enjoyable.


We've been watching Future Man which is some arch-silliness time travel spoofing. This no-hoper defeats a trash video game that turns out to be a recruiting exercise from these future rebels who zero in on him to be their saviour. Lots of low-brow stuff ensues riffing on various time-travel pop cultural things. Probably won't think about it much after we finish but it's entertaining. Especially the killing machine character who discovers homo-erotic volleyball, Corey Hart, nouveau cuisine and cocaine when they travel to the 80s.

Before, during, and after Ida I'd been binging Netflix nonstop.

The shows I finished were It's Okay Not to Be Okay, which deals with mental health, love, and loss. A sociopathic children's book writer meets up with a medical nurse who turns out to be the boy who had a crush on her, and she him, when they were children. The series deals with murder, mental issues, and one of the best portrayals of people with autism since Rain Man. The soundtrack was excellent as well.

Another show that I had to watch was Hyena, since it dealt with law firms and the legal field. A really good drama with a bit of comedy thrown in to lighten the mood from time to time.

Finished the live action version of Way of the House Husband, which deals with a former Yakuza living life and dealing with mundane chores as a house husband. The animated version that preceded this was hysterical, because you saw the main character interact with his wife, a former mob brother who turns to his way of thinking, and the cops-who still think he's up to no good. The live action version, unfortunately, isn't nearly as good. They decided to only focus on two characters - The husband and their cat. You never see any other characters except them. In other words, dull.

I'm currently watching The Defeated on Netflix that deals with the post WWII occupation of Germany and the efforts of a Brooklyn cop trying to find his mentally disturbed brother. I'm on the second to last episode, and it's really good. I'm also watching Law & Order: UK on Prime. Yes, it's L&O, it has the doink doink, but it's simply refreshing to watch.

mc wrote: We've been watching Future Man which is some arch-silliness time travel spoofing.

I was a big fan so an easy second recommend here for Future Man. It's frequently hilarious with some great lines - especially from the 80s style, action man Wolf. The show was also low-key progressive with its character Tiger - a woman warrior who wears proper armour and is the no-nonsense leader of the time-travellers. There's also an abundance of dick jokes.

It's been out a while but I also quickly binged through Netflix's entertaining and slick 3-part doco series Heist. This snazzy show sees the real life heisters explaining how they pulled off their famous heist over Ocean's 11 style re-enactments.

And like a lot of folks I'm currently enjoying Steve Martin and Martin Short's true-crime riffing on Only Murders in the Building.

Watched the first ep of Y: The Last Man on hulu (maybe network FX as well?). Never read the comic. The premise is a disease (?) suddenly kills all the male humans, maybe mammals (all species?), leaving females to carry on. The exception is Yorick, aka "Y".

This first ep is mostly pre-death setting up all the characters and this is where this show goes horribly wrong right from the get go. NONE of the characters are likable, except maybe senator Diane Lane's hairdresser or the presidents Psaki-like PR lady. But everyone else, including Y, are basically horrible exploitative people in terrible relationships or just blank slates despite getting considerable screen time. There are some politicks in there of course but the real failing of this pilot is that by the end I didn't really care about the crippling loss any of the characters SHOULD be feeling, other than the 2 mothers of young boys shown in the show.

I don't know much about the comics so I'm not sure if this is a "hunt the man for his seed" type deal or a "the world is a better place now after we get over the immediate shock and figure out how to reproduce just women and we better take out that man who will upset our plans". I'm not sure how all the characters will interact since most of them are geographically split into two places. It certainly doesn't look like a "I'm a man and I'm gonna solve this for you" story because Y is basically a total wimp.

Anyway, it is very well shot, looks like they spent a TON of money on it, and the comic is well received I think so despite my bashing I'm gonna give it a few more eps (this weekly stuff SUCKS for heavily serialized shows!) or at least until I drop Hulu just to see where it goes.

I only get Amazon Prime and HBO Max right now, because I don't want to spend money on additional streaming channels when I already watch too much. So I won't be watching Y the Last Man anytime soon. But for what it's worth, the comic was good. It ran for 60 issues, though it might have been a better story if it had left out about 20 issues in the middle. The core cast was small but they traveled a lot and met a variety of other characters along the way. Sounds like this show is going with a bigger main cast, which I suspect will force too many other changes and lose what was good about the comic.

When I was reading issue #56, my then-girlfriend noticed the title and asked me about the comic. I told her just enough to get her interested and then handed her the stack of 56 comics. It was her first experience reading a non-superhero comic and also reading a long run of consecutive comics. She stayed up all night to read them, and asked for issue #57 in the morning. She was annoyed to hear that it would be about four weeks until issue #57 would be available. To make matters worse, there were some production delays near the end, so it took six months for the last four issues to come out.

The last several issues of Y were very good, and the final issue was amazing, with perfect cinematic transitions between the scenes. I smiled, I shed a tear, and the final scene surprised me but was a very fitting ending. That was in 2008. Normally, I re-read my comics once every several years, but I haven't touched Y the Last Man since 2008. I guess that I'm worried that it won't match my fond memories, and that goes double for the show. But I have seen the casting photos, and at least the characters look right.

60 issues of a comic book can be 15 seasons of TV or 1 movie

No ssues with casting, though I have no frame of reference. The agent lady looks suitably tough, Diane Lane is always great, and Y looks like a hipster magician deadbeat

The casting of Yorick was good, except that this actor seems pretty hairy, while the comic book Yorick was clean-cut but did have heavy eyebrows. One missed bet for the show is that they are going have some transmen characters and Yorick is going to try to pass for a transman. In the comics, Yorick often wore a chador burka, which covered everything.

I have a 5 year old - I've watched a lot of Bluey. It's a great show. If you all get stuck snuck snuggling your grandkids and having to sit through a couple of episodes it will not be a bad thing

Just started a rewatch of The Tick (Amazon) after watching the first season a while ago - It wasn't as good as the first season, but it still snapped.

Currently not finding a lot to watch, right now, because of the HBO effect - It seems the studios think that every middling sci-fi/adventure program will be improved by leaning into the TVMA hard.

So got a few more eps into Y. There is a great show in there, but unfortunately it is only when the agent lady is doing her thing. She represents competence, duty, and determination. She drives the plot, displays initiative, and gets things done. Everyone else is in a soap opera of petty squabbles and melodrama with no real direction.

It is kinda interesting to see how all the women deal with the same kind of political infighting. Rather than overt threats, combat, and bravado it is all "nice on the outside" backstabbing and undermining.

Unfortunately I think there just isn't enough meat in the show. The shock value of the initial event wears off quickly. Of course any emotional momentum they get is gassed out by all the inane Hulu commercials.

I don't trust a TV Show or anything, really, to work with that premise without falling into deep-seated sexist bullshit.

While I agree with Erik I can't help thinking that's the whole point.
The comic book's premise is as old as that one french cheese in the back of my fridge. I view it as a very male fantasy. If that story wasn't playing with stereotypes and challenging assumptions I'd be disappointed.
That said, I liked the book ok back then. It was utterly mainstream and successfully not offensive. It went as far as having lesbian characters and not one step further.
Yorick in the book was kind of a boring nice slacker dude a little like if the writer didn't know any actual nice dudes and thought that's what they are like.