What TV Shows Are You Watching? 8: Streaming Is the New Cable

[Smellincoffee]

Started the fifth season of SNL, opening with Steve Martin. Belushi and Akryod were missing in action -- I'm guessing they were involved with Blues Brothers at that time. Always nice to see Fr Guido Sarducci.

Pondering an apple TV+ trial to see what kind of adaptation Foundation is.

 

[Zardnaar]

Started the fifth season of SNL, opening with Steve Martin. Belushi and Akryod were missing in action -- I'm guessing they were involved with Blues Brothers at that time. Always nice to see Fr Guido Sarducci.

Pondering an apple TV+ trial to see what kind of adaptation Foundation is.

Half of season 1 of Foundation is good, second season is good. Not that accurate adaption from the books.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Pondering an apple TV+ trial[...]

They have a small library, but so far they've maintained a high level of quality. I plan to resubscribe next month, myself. I can recommend Severance, Slow Horses, For All Mankind, and Silo. Five Days at Memorial and Shining Girls were almost great, but each nagged at me, in their own ways. I tried Invasion and Foundation, but they didn't grab me by the [lapels] and I didn't finish either one before my last sub expired. I don't know if I'll go back to those.

Apple shows I plan to check out:
Hijack. Idris Elba playing the Liam Neeson role aboard a hijacked plane, with the device (gimmick?) that it plays in real-time.
Liaison. Vincent Cassel and Eva Green are "agents" in some kind of techno-thriller.
The Changeling. LaKeith Stanfield in a strange (magical?) present-day New York City.
Lessons in Chemistry starts tomorrow. Brie Larson hosts a television cooking show in the 1950s. Hey, I'll try anything once.
For All Mankind s4, Nov 10. Alt-history sci-fi; big cast, nobody famous, but lots of people you might recognize from around the way.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Nov 17. Kurt & Wyatt Russel in a follow-up to the Godzilla & King Kong movies of the last few years, which I thought were very up-and-down. Godzilla (2014) and Kong: Skull Island (2017) were good; Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) was godawful; Godzilla vs Kong (2021) was super stupid but kind of fun if your brain is in power-saver mode.
Slow Horses s3, Dec 1. Gary Oldman spy show.
Masters of the Air starts January 26. I don't know if I'll still be subbed by then, but if I am, I'll definitely be checking that out.

Movies on Apple that I liked: Causeway (2022); Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022); Tom Hanks double-feature, Greyhound (2020) and Finch (2021). Of these, Causeway is the only one I want to watch again, but the other 3 were definitely worth watching once.
Another movie I plan to watch is Flora and Son (2023). Somebody here recommended Tetris (2023) so I might give that a whirl.

 

[Zardnaar]

Ted Lasso is on Apple as well?

They don't have a lot of content but would keep you happy for a few months.

 

[lymond]

Note on Hijack is that there is not really an "action hero" role here.

Yes, Tetris is very good. I've seen it twice now

 

[Synobun]

What exactly is the appeal behind Silo? I checked it out after all the hype and found it mind-numbingly boring with exceptionally poor story structure and pacing. Bad structure isn't new, but usually shows have some element of eye candy or rule of cool to keep one's attention. Silo had neither, being mired entirely in dreary aesthetic and empty worldbuilding. I made it halfway, watching my last two episodes at 1.5x speed, before finally calling it quits.

 

[Synobun]

As for what I've been watching, I embarked on a months-long trek of getting through Bones, which I finally managed to complete last month. Overall worth it, though the last few seasons suffered from "keeping it fresh" syndrome.

With Black Mirror finally having a new season, I decided to do a rewatch. I'm on season four right now. While I was going through season two, I found it interesting that almost every tech/problem depicted there is happening IRL now. Did I say interesting? I meant horrible.

What else? Oh, The Bear. Season one was decent. Season two was silly. The Christmas episode was mostly just an uncomfortable PTSD flashback where my best friend and I exchanged horror stories that hewed closely to what happened in the show. Did not enjoy that, really. And to be honest, most of season two's story was incredibly contrived. The characters were irredeemable, the relationships terse and unrelatable. I did like the Copenhagen side arc.

 

[EvaDK]

Two episodes into The Fall Of The House Of Usher.
It has similar ingredients to Flanagan's other Netflix horror series; family, guilt, regret, the supernatural (perhaps), but a distinctly different vibe and tone. I don't think I've experienced Mike Flanagan being so savage to his characters before.

I'll watch two episodes each evening until its conclusion for me on Sunday.

 

[Kyriakos]

^The original story is one of my least favorite ones by Poe.
The only positive I recall from it is the inverted image of the house, on a pool of water.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Watched the latest episode of LD, "A Few Badgeys More". Jeffrey Combs is back! Badgey is back! Peanut Hamper is back! "We can still be friends without vanquishing people!" Fun fun fun.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Well, I finished the 6 episodes of Copenhagen Cowboy. The end is a set up for Season 2, but that does not appear on the horizon. While I'm glad I waded through to the end, I can't recommend it because it is so out of the ordinary for me. There was a "How we made this show" extra at the end that was worth the time. NWR is a pretty strange guy.

Spoiler :

The show was highly stylized similarly how Kill Bill was (different styles though). I found they style annoying. The pace was very very slow and at the end, no resolution of the story. The story lie was interesting but the series left too many unanswered questions. Art for the sake of art in movies and TV is not feature for me. The story needs to be the focus. I would say if you get through episode 1 and are enjoying it, keep moving, but don't expect resolution by the end.[/spoiler.

 

[EvaDK]

Never heard of Copenhagen Cowboy, which is kind of embarrassing on my part. And NWR is a bit delusional from time to time. Cinema maestro William Friedkin put him in his place, when NWR declared himself to be the greatest film director in a 1-to-1 interview and it was absolutely glorious to watch

Six episodes into Usher, two to go. The unlikable characters (by design) are entertaining to observe, but unfortunately I'm not really emotionally invested in any of them in the 'now' timeline of the narrative. They are just too exaggerated and animated; they don't feel 'real'. That's the biggest issue I have with the series.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Never heard of Copenhagen Cowboy, which is kind of embarrassing on my part. And NWR is a bit delusional from time to time. Cinema maestro William Friedkin put him in his place, when NWR declared himself to be the greatest film director in a 1-to-1 interview and it was absolutely glorious to watch

Maybe the sparse dialogue would be better in Danish?

 

[Grendeldef]

I've been watching absolutely nothing on TV (apart from sports, obviously) for months now, mostly on purpose but yesterday I started the 2nd season of James May's Oh Cook on Amazon and it's still fine as I like his style in general. I'm not a fan of cooking programs nor is May a cook but he reminds me, a lot, of the best (very limited sample size) TV cook Keith Floyd. Good stuff as entertainment but I'm likely to forget by tomorrow what he made in the first episode.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I've been watching absolutely nothing on TV (apart from sports, obviously) for months now, mostly on purpose[...]

I've been in a lull lately myself. Not really on purpose. I've only been watching Loki and C.B. Strike, and rugby. It's not like there's nothing on. If anything, there's too much.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Fargo S4 has been totally excellent. Hulu. Organized crime in Kansas City in 1950.

 

[EvaDK]

The Fall Of The House If Usher

Fairly good and entertaining; not as effective on the emotions and not as scary as Flagagan's best series. Usher also lacked that Flanagan tension spike in the middle of the series of Hill House, Bly Manor and Midnight Mass; the most famous probably being 5th and 6th episode of Hill House. It's definitely worth watching for Bruce Greenwood, Garla Gugino and Mary McDonnell chewing scenery and the visuals.

7.5/10

 

[Grendeldef]

. It's not like there's nothing on. If anything, there's too much.

This was part of my problem, too. I had too many new things to watch but also too many things I started watching with only one eye as side shows which turned out to be worth watching properly so I paused everything to forget as much possible. Now I'm only starting again, slowly but as I'll presumably watch much, much less football than in previous years I'll hopefully catch up during the winter months.

 

[Synobun]

I've been watching a Norwegian show over the years called Ragnarok. It's mostly a CW-style show, so not the best story structure, but characters are a strong point. Anyway, the final season just released, and the finale was... insulting. It used one of the unforgivable sins of storycraft*. Luckily, it's only the very last episode that it happens, and the episode before it is perfectly acceptable as its own finale. So I would recommend it to anyone who likes Scandinavian (urban) fantasy and can remember to stop at the second last episode.

* It was all a schizophrenic dream by the MC.

 

[Arakhor]

That just reminds me of how the very last episode of Star Trek: Enterprise was a total letdown and virtual slap in the face to long-time fans.