What TV SHOWS are you watching?

ChristopherMD wrote: At this point I would recommend new watchers stop The Expanse after season three. It's got a better series ending than the actual series ending.

This is what I tell people about Buffy the Vampire Slayer

All this talk about streaming services. Talking about how over $10 is too much. And no one mentions Discovery+??? $7 a month with no ads. Or is everyone too burned out from COVID they just need to watch fiction?

Been watching Top Chef Canada (wife's pick). Building off the grid (my pick). Strangest Things. Forged in Fire (when it's just me and the boys). Unwrapped or Flip or Flop when we only have 20 minutes before bed. Natures Strangest Mysteries: Solved. And an occasional How It's Made.

Also now that The Book of Boba Fett will wrap up we started that one. It's been pretty meh so far. One of the weaker ones by far. Boba just comes off as a CRPG character like Shepard in Mass Effect trying for a paragon path of never killing anyone and trying to recruit all the villains.

After the kids go to bed it's been Reacher on Amazon Prime. Love all the scenes with Reacher in them, hate the scenes without him. The main actor carries the show. Still worth a watch despite a bad first episode when the police go all unreasonable on Reacher throwing him in prison (not jail, prison) on a flimsy premise. The first episode is unrealistic in order to push the plot forward a whole bunch at once.

I am not a reality TV guy by any stretch, so I am largely immune to the charms of Discovery+. There are a lot of solid documentaries on the other channels I have, so that one draw isn't enough to pull me in. I wish Discovery was more science-based, actually, but they went kind of nuts on the UFO stuff and never looked back once the money rolled in. Glad you are digging it though; if there was an actual science channel out there I would be super into it, but I just tide myself over with Ars Technica and Quanta.

Expanse heads back to politics in seasons 5 and 6 so if the planet based season 4 wasn't your cuppa then don't let that stop you.

Lovecraft Country, written by a white guy, was a pretty chilling juxtaposition of being black (and female in some stories) and dealing with the occult. The show just ran ran ran with the racism stuff and plugged it in when it wasn't necessary. I bailed after 3-4 episodes. I felt the book was extremely adaptable as is, it just hit the wrong wave of producers and writers.

We are all gonna die or whatever the latest Korean zombie drama/gorefest on netlfix is called is pretty good. It may be one of the first zombie shows that acknowledges the preexisting zombie lore, if only a little bit. Everyone references dracula in a vamp flick or silver versus werewolves but zombies always seem to get a new name and a clean slate.

Anyway, this one has TONS of hyperkinetic zombie attacks with fast, but very clumsy, zombies. Sort of a combo of 28 days later super fast infection paired with World War Z human wave attacks which leads to a really depressing "how the hell are we gonna survive this??" vibe of nihilistic doom versus "we just gotta live till daylight" optimism.

And, as always, the most dangerous thing in zombie films are the people you are stuck with, never the zombies

All of Us are Dead. Yeah, it's really enjoyable!

jason10mm wrote: Lovecraft Country... just ran ran ran with the racism stuff and plugged it in when it wasn't necessary... I felt the book was extremely adaptable as is, it just hit the wrong wave of producers and writers.

I hate to snipe while everyone else is doing longer, well-considered posts, but this is worth mentioning because the conversation has turned towards Lovecraft Country. Have you guys seen any of the head writers' notes for season 2? It would have been a trainwreck.

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I think I checked out when the shapeshifting black/white female supervisor anally raped her store manager with a high-heeled shoe to "Bodak Yellow" by Cardi B. At least when Westworld incorporated on-the-nose musical cues they turned them into player piano tracks.

Yeah, outrunning the actual source material is a real problem!

The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window (Netflix)
A weird parody of murder mystery movies played straight. It gets more ridiculous the farther in you get.

Murderville (Netflix)
Basically a dinner party murder mystery game presented as a police procedural where the celebrity guest is trying to solve the murder. Because the guest has to improvise everything, I found that most of the funny moments were where they made the actors laugh. So I thought Marshawn Lynch's episode was a bit weak, as he's not a comedian/improvisor.

jeb wrote: I am not a reality TV guy by any stretch, so I am largely immune to the charms of Discovery+. There are a lot of solid documentaries on the other channels I have, so that one draw isn't enough to pull me in. I wish Discovery was more science-based, actually, but they went kind of nuts on the UFO stuff and never looked back once the money rolled in. Glad you are digging it though; if there was an actual science channel out there I would be super into it, but I just tide myself over with Ars Technica and Quanta.

All the BBC stuff is worthy of a single month sub. Gotta admit, I front loaded the history of science stuff from BBC.

Gary Sax wrote: Yeah, outrunning the actual source material is a real problem!

This is what TERRIFIES me about the LOTR show from amazon. If they are mining mostly from the Silmarillion then there is gonna be a TON of filler content and dialogue to pad out those stories.

I get that book pacing, book evocative scenes, and book characterizations can be difficult to film or even counter-productive to a film (my love for 1984 Dune illustrates this) but at the same time why mess with a global success? It's one thing to take a mediocre work, polish that diamond until it gleams, and sell that, but mostly what I see are people taking literary gems and running them through a gravel bath to get some sort of dingy ruin at the end.

I read that the LotR series wasn't allowed to use The Silmarillion. That they could use a lot of Tolkien's Second Age notes, plus footnotes in The Lord of the Rings novels.

Began watching the Book of Boba Fett once it hit binge-ability (one a night for the entire season). This has to be one of the weaker shows in the Star Wars franchise if not the weakest. We watched the one that doesn't have Boba Fett at all in it (episode five) and it was the best by far. Temuera just isn't cutting it as a ruthless mysterious bounty hunter, but I mostly blame the script. Boba Fett should be mysterious and less is more.

Reacher was good. Had the problem of the scenes without the main character sucked, the ones with him were great. Averaged out to a good show since he is in most scenes.

Futurama is coming back again!

n815e wrote: Futurama is coming back again!

I have no strong feelings one way or the other.

ChristopherMD wrote:

n815e wrote: Futurama is coming back again!

I have no strong feelings one way or the other.

That’s my line!