What TV Shows are you watching? ζ: The seventh-season itch

[lymond]

Isn't the Saxon series all about Uthred's relationahip with Alfred and the struggle between the Saxons and the Danes? Æthelstan had more-or-less united England by 930 and the last Danish ruler was kicked in in the 950s. I don't think you'd have even a vaguely similar situation until Canute in 1016.

That’s my understanding. I was mainly thinking of Canute’s time up through the Normans. England was also attacked by Norway at the same time as William. So kinda a two -way Viking attack. (Canute is in Viking: Valhalla)

Although some stuff with Aethelstan would be cool.

 

[Arakhor]

I'm biting my fingernails in anticipation of She-Hulk. I really want Maslany to be in another show I like. I miss her. As to North Americans doing British accents, everyone seemed to think Californian James Marsters did well in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, even right alongside genuine Londoner Anthony Head (and also alongside Juliet Landau, whose accent wasn't quite so convincing...). For a while, people on this side of The Pond just figured Marsters was English.

Landau's accent was not great, no. James Marsters has a great British accent, whereas David Anders (Julian Sark in Alias/Adam in Heroes) has such a good accent, I thought he was British!

 

[EgonSpengler]

Landau's accent was not great, no. James Marsters has a great British accent, whereas David Anders (Julian Sark in Alias/Adam in Heroes) has such a good accent, I thought he was British!

I'd forgotten about Anders. He plays a great smarmy villain. You want him to eat a knuckle sandwich, but not to get killed or thrown in prison, 'cause then you wouldn't get to see him anymore. He was also in iZombie with Rose McIver. Another show that ended with a dull thud, but it was a great superhero-horror-comedy for a while, there. Anders played a pompous [donkey] named Blaine, whose villainous lair was a funeral home called Shady Plots. I mean, what else do you need to know..?

 

[warpus]

The worst thing about Foundation that now popped back in my head again. They really need to hire somebody who has an even vague understanding of military tactics. There is a plot element where the Foundation is being attacked by a group of militants. So what do these militants do when engaging the enemy? They gather as a packed group, take absolutely zero cover, and run head-first at the enemy firing their guns forward, like a bunch of idiots.

We've all been watching combat footage from the Russian invasion of Ukraine recently. We all know that tactics like that are the stupidest thing you can do. It makes zero sense. The Foundation defenders didn't even have any defenses set up! When the shields went down just started running around like a bunch of headless chickens. No trenches dug, no cover set up, it's like their military is coordinated by an 3 legged armchair.

Overall it was like watching two groups of idiots with zero military experience attempting to fight each other. Would it have been so hard to make that part a bit more realistic? It makes me cringe at the thought of future military confrontations we are going to see on the show going forward.

 

[Synobun]

I am quite enjoying it, but I agree with you they are failing to make any interesting political points about the "what if". When it started I totally thought it was going to be some utopia that evolved from the changing balance of power, but it is not that.

I really liked that For All Mankind didn't focus much on the political stuff. I liked it as a character drama with the alt history and political stuff in the background. Some of the alt history stuff is basically Easter Eggs, such as when, after the Soviets plant their flag on the Moon, a tv news report notes that Sen. Kennedy cut short his planned vacation to Chappaquiddick Island to attend congressional hearings.

Yes, I probably need to alter my expectations. All I knew before going in was the alt-history angle, so I figured that it would be akin to Man in the High Castle. I wasn't expecting it to be an in-the-weeds character drama about women rocketing up in the social order because of the Soviet propaganda machine. That is probably a fine story to tell, but definitely outside what I was expecting—and I generally don't like meandering character dramas.

I did enjoy the fourth episode more than the first three, so maybe it just takes a while to get good and for me to adjust.

 

[warpus]

I had fun watching For All Mankind but found long stretches to be too slow for my liking. My fav parts of the show are the shots of the moon and exciting stuff happening there.. All the character interplay back on Earth is interesting too, but the pacing could have been better for my tastes and a better balance between "cool space/moon stuff" and the rest. Maybe I would be complaining less about this if I was American and a lot more of this historical backdrop was interesting to me. It's interesting, but sometimes they'll just keep jabbering on and on and on and I'm sitting there going "CAN WE GET BACK TO COOL SPACE STUFF ALREADY KTHX"

I also noticed some of their burn sequences don't make sense, but I could be wrong about that. Like, the wrong engines would be on at the wrong time sort of thing. It wasn't nearly as blatant of an error compared to let's say Gravity (the movie), so it didn't stuck out a ton, but it did a bit.

 

[lymond]

David Anders (Julian Sark in Alias/Adam in Heroes) has such a good accent, I thought he was British!

I thought he was a Brit pretty much during the whole run, only finding out later he is not.

 

[Samson]

I had fun watching For All Mankind but found long stretches to be too slow for my liking. My fav parts of the show are the shots of the moon and exciting stuff happening there.. All the character interplay back on Earth is interesting too, but the pacing could have been better for my tastes and a better balance between "cool space/moon stuff" and the rest. Maybe I would be complaining less about this if I was American and a lot more of this historical backdrop was interesting to me. It's interesting, but sometimes they'll just keep jabbering on and on and on and I'm sitting there going "CAN WE GET BACK TO COOL SPACE STUFF ALREADY KTHX"

I also noticed some of their burn sequences don't make sense, but I could be wrong about that. Like, the wrong engines would be on at the wrong time sort of thing. It wasn't nearly as blatant of an error compared to let's say Gravity (the movie), so it didn't stuck out a ton, but it did a bit.

The bit I thought ridiculous:

Spoiler :

They have sent up, as a form of communication, a standard size dot matrix printer and a load of paper? How heavy is that per character?

 

[Takhisis]

The worst thing about Foundation

I thought you were going to talk about its null relationship to the source material outside of a few characters' names.

 

[warpus]

I thought you were going to talk about its null relationship to the source material outside of a few characters' names.

I last read the Foundation series over 20 years, so I'm probably more lenient in this department since I can't remember many details.. but I did get the sense that the main storylines were much different, whereas the grand things playing out in the background lined up with the novel.. stuff like the second foundation, the first crisis, the vault, the empire crumbling, etc.

 

[Grendeldef]

The Virginian done - 8 seasons 220+ episodes. 9th season apparently was done under name of The Men from Shiloh with major character swap and I already have an issue with that. Lee Majors with moustache is just not right.

It has all the flaws of bloated series and far too many episodes. Very inconsistent writing, people coming and going without apparent reason and usually without a hint nevermind reference and an explanation is most likely to be found epitaphs. Same people doing half a dozen characters over the years - who new Leslie Nielsen had all the arch-villain types in his collection - and the main characters rarely appearing together and so on. This could've been split in three shows - The Virginian, Trampas & Shiloh all with roughly 80 episodes. With different production teams running things simultaneously occasional all-staff meetings would've been handy.

On the good side are also numerous things so I can understand its popularity ~50y ago but now watching it for the first time it feels, not surprisingly, outdated.

For those who know - how was this shown on its day as 1h15min episodes seem an odd length? 15mins of commercials and a weekend afternoon spot seems most likely to me.

 

[Takhisis]

Oh, look, they're re-airing Drop Dead Diva!

I last read the Foundation series over 20 years, so I'm probably more lenient in this department since I can't remember many details.. but I did get the sense that the main storylines were much different, whereas the grand things playing out in the background lined up with the novel.. stuff like the second foundation, the first crisis, the vault, the empire crumbling, etc.

Eeeeehhh. Perhaps not even that.

 

[Birdjaguar]

This could've been split in three shows - The Virginian, Trampas & Shiloh all with roughly 80 episodes. With different production teams running things simultaneously occasional all-staff meetings would've been handy.

Modern series concepts were unknown back then. TV shows were mostly done one way and that was it.

The Virginian ran from 7:30 - 9:00 on Wednesday nights for all nine seasons. Back then there were three networks and the goal was to fill key time slots with shows that beat the competition in those slots. News ended at 7:00. 9:00 was adult fare until the 11:00 news. 7-9 was family time. IIRC most shows back then were 30 minutes so every half hour was an opportunity get viewers to change channels. If a show could hold an audience for 90 minutes, then that was so much better. Westerns were very popular and having regular guest stars show up enhanced thigs for viewers. Once NBC determined that the show would hold its audience though 90 minutes, there was no good reason to change its format.

 

[Takhisis]

Only Batman was innovative enough to do things like air two days in a week.

 

[Grendeldef]

The Virginian ran from 7:30 - 9:00 on Wednesday nights for all nine seasons.

At least one thing was consistent then.

I asked my father about the local broadcast schedule but he didn't remember. I'm not sure either as the details are few & vague but apparently it was done by YLE TV2 so no commercials and no summer broadcasts. TV2 was operated from Tampere without full national coverage no broadcasts at all during couple months of summers. Commercial TV had no own channel(s) back but few time slots on YLE's 2 channels. The wonders of TV in small markets.
B&W Estonian TV was for ice hockey especially when multitasking with Finnish radio commentator & occasional football but not for anything.
While modern TV has always been crap things were usually even worse few decades ago.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Only Batman was innovative enough to do things like air two days in a week.

Makes sense. Batman's adaptability and cunning is what makes him so dangerous.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I happened to see an invoice from a paving company that said they'd "patched several plotholes." I was thinking there's a few tv shows that could use their services.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Slow Horses is a cool one

I like it too, so far. I can't decide if I like River, but I also can't decide if I'm meant to. Olivia Cooke has real charm. I think I'd only seen her in Sound of Metal before. Saskia Reeves seems very familiar to me, but I can't think of what I know her from. I see that she was in the first season of Luther, with Idris Elba (which I'm shocked to see is 12-effing-years old now), so maybe that's where I know her from.

 

[lymond]

Saskia Reeves has been in absolutely tons of Brit TV and movies for decades. Relatively well known actress who has done feature films as well. The one thing I notice is she's really starting to age. She most recently was in Belgravia (good show if you've not seen it) She's just one of those ubiquitous Brit TV actress, like a Sarah Lancashire (who is now playing Julia Child in an HBO show), so you've probably seen her in quite a few things over the years.

I first saw Olivia Cooke as the lead in an Amazon production of Vanity Fair, which was pretty good - and she was great. Also, that show had the actress who plays the 2nd oldest sister in Bridgerton. Cooke was in another movie too that I can't remember - don't think I cared for it. But yep, she's good.

 

[Takhisis]

TV2 was operated from Tampere without full national coverage no broadcasts at all during couple months of summers.

Is this how the tradition of going to Tampere and stomping on the ground to try to sink it into the ground began?