What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Surely we in the UK have demonstrated beyond any doubt over the past few years that we are all magnificently smart, and capable of the most well-educated and considered decision making?

jason10mm wrote: I read somewhere that the london accent circa the time of Shakespeare is thought to be better preserved in Boston than in England today.

This hoary old chestnut has been doing the rounds in some form or other in every English speaking locale around the world for longer than I can remember. I’ve heard it so many times, you can’t all be right It also comes up every now and then even over here, with people from various locales seeking to establish one local accent over all others as being ‘true’. It’s all bullshit anyway, this toffee-nosed Received Pronunciation of idealised English is a construct itself, and the people on the boats emigrating would have had a mixture of more genuine local accents most likely from all over the country.

The thing with accents and dialects is that the closer and more familiar you are to a people/place then the more likely you are to pick up on the nuances. There are always dozens and hundreds of inflections too subtle for a non-native (and even non-local) to pick up, regardless of country or language. I’m not even sure what my own accent is as it most definitely is neither from my place of birth nor from where I grew up. I’ve always figured it to be some kind of RP that I’ve adopted through social conventions but, really, I couldn’t care less. Somebody told me once that I sound like David Bowie which I still find hilarious. Ziggy Stardust certainly makes for a much finer barometer than a bunch of inbred Teutons.

And for anyone labouring under the misapprehension that a plummy accent equates to any form of high educational standard I invite you to watch any random episode of “made in Chelsea”.

Oh yeah, TV.

Better Call Saul has got a bit weird in the last couple of episodes. The first one after the restart felt like a rush to tie up loose ends, then the next seemed to be an ending itself in the way that it has that sudden “and then years later...” moment. I was surprised that there were several more episodes still to come and wondering what they were going to fill them with - then I saw this weeks one and realised the answer is “not much”. I’m getting a vibe that they might not be able to stick the landing on this one. So far I’ve enjoyed it more than Breaking Bad but this last season has been a mix of absolute highs (Nachos increasingly desperate escape at the start) and some other stuff that has increasingly stretched credulity (super-Lalo and perfect-Mike being big culprits for me)

RobertB wrote: America's Got Talent - if you have to take care of your in-laws, be sure to lock them in a room or else stuff like this ends up on your TV. Occasionally someone interesting shows up, but at the audition level it's mostly mediocre singers, mediocre comedians, and dance acts.

With my folks it's HGTV. Good god, how many terribly fake and awkwardly scripted "which of these three houses, NONE OF WHICH meet the criteria I laid out on the beginning, will I buy?" shows can there be? Even the cheesy renovation ones where they show some gloriously wealthy guy swinging a hammer at a wall and then WHAMMO there is an entire immaculate renovation done the next day (how do they get concrete to dry and inspections so quickly?) full of $4 knick-nacks picked up at a local flea market (just wait, the flea market knick-nack show is up next!) are exhaustingly plentiful.

I remember when HGTV, much like The Food Network, had shows that TAUGHT YOU SHIT. But somehow that ultra thin veener of a "reality show" has just infected everything.

My wife would watch House Hunters and stuff like that before we cut the cable. "She's a dog walker, and he makes and sells artisanal pencil shavings. Their limit is $540,000."

House Hunters international is even worse I think. Although, it is just comparing two piles of dog poo. I nope right out of the room when my wife has those shows on.

mezike wrote: Better Call Saul has got a bit weird in the last couple of episodes.

Yeah, I'm getting a little leery, too. Aside from the "this is the super-drama that allows us to clean out almost all of the cast before Breaking Bad starts!", I think they're going for the tragedy angle ("Jimmy can never stop being Jimmy, even when he's on the lam in Nebraska") so that it wraps up Saul even as we've now reached Saul in the main storyline. I can see the storytelling logic behind that, but it still feels a little off. I really would've been fine if they'd just gotten to the end of the last episode where he sits down at the desk and gives his "Let justice be done!" and ended it, because we all know where it goes from there. But I can see where a lot of people would've felt shortchanged about the Nebraska stuff. I would've been fine with that part ending as it did the last time we'd seen Gene at Cinnabon, since it kind of emphasizes the tragedy that I think they're aiming for. Dunno.

RobertB wrote: My wife would watch House Hunters and stuff like that before we cut the cable. "She's a dog walker, and he makes and sells artisanal pencil shavings. Their limit is $540,000."

There’s a reason that is a meme.

That's why Grand Designs is the king of those programs. The artisinal pencil shaver ends up hugely in debt with a half finished house, the windows still en route from Finland. Schadenfraude galore.

Watching season one of a show called Counterpart. My wife said it reminded her of Severance a bit (I think only at the beginning), which to me is high praise.

Background, 30+ years ago an experiment opened a door to an identical parallel world. In the proceeding years the two world have started to diverge, with the other world going through some massive depopulation plague. The relationship is more akin to US/USSR at the height of the cold war. The show starts with an assassin coming through to our world killing specific people in a power struggle in the PRIME side.

Also sounds a bit like the Empire Games books by Charles Stross.

Jackwraith wrote: Aside from the "this is the super-drama that allows us to clean out almost all of the cast before Breaking Bad starts!”.

I agree with everything you said, particularly the juxtaposition of fully-formed Saul behind his Cocobolo desk and Gene in drab greys at Cinnabon being a fine way to close the circle. But this particular comment stood out to me in regards to Kim’s exit which was a total shoulder shrug of “well, I guess this character is done now but we can’t get away with shooting all of them” she just kind of walks off stage and then we anti-climactically crash into Saul a few years later like nothing mattered there.
Another three still to come though so who knows if there is still another curve ball on the way. I’m hoping it’s not just Gene morphing back into Saul.

I have only encountered these mundane sort of reality tv shows at my dental appointments. My dentist has a tv screen mounted on the ceiling of each exam room, facing down at the chair so that the patient can watch mundane reality shows during the exam. Or dental surgery or whatever. So I have seen the house flipping one, the house shopping one, the glass blowing one, and something about interior design. I feel that if I spent a full day watching these shows it would be like watching someone else's boring life instead of living mine.

I like the knife making one but can't watch more than one at a time. There is so much baked in artificial drama and loooooooooong pauses till "This blade will cut....this blade will kiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllll" that I gotta pace them out.

Not so for the "Men with a pot" youtube show. These guys do primitive gourmet cooking filmed with no dialogue and lots of ASMR audio. Great for background ambiance or pre-bedtime relaxing.

Due to Jason's suggestion, I tried Primal. It's very good, comparable in quality to Samurai Jack of course, but I found the violence to be disturbing because it was emotionally-charged. Will probably continue at some point, but not right now.

Two episodes in, and I am becoming intrigued by Paper Girls. It is clearly an attempt to capture the Stranger Things audience, but is less interested in nostalgia and more interested in exploring the characters. Also, there is time travel.

@Shell: The first episode is darker than I would have expected, but it successfully establishes some pathos for the series. The rest of the violence is window dressing. Have you seen the Shin Godzilla-inspired blood disease episode yet?