Good TV (aka, the TV series spamthread), the second series

[Raid]

Finished The Last Kingdom a couple of days ago. I can't speak for the historical accuracy (although I doubt many can given it's set when years only had three figures in them), but it's a good popcorn drama series which certainly looks like it was expensive. The acting's generally pretty good, with special mention to Alfred and Edward, but I'm not entirely convinced by Uhtred's accent. You'll also need to get used to a lot of characters with Æthel in their name somewhere.

[Snowy]

Historically speaking it is fairly accurate when referencing the books, as Bernard Cornwell uses his novels mainly to place the reader at particular battles and give reasons why they turned out how they did. The TV series is accurate insofar as the historical characters (several of the Norse chieftains, the English monarchy and aristocracy) and their machinations, but a lot of the focus on the military aspects gets murky.

It is by far the best show set in that time period though. Vikings had so much potential but got hopelessly lost with characters that made no sense at all. How it was kept running so long and now has a spin-off series, when The Last Kingdom has been shelved, is a bit of a travesty tbh.

[Raid]

I'd read that the show ended because they'd got to the end of the book series.

Apparently Netflix are developing a film sequel to the series, although there's not a lot of detail as to what that'll entail. I'm hoping given how the series ends that it'll just pick up where the show stopped because there's clearly further room to resolve some of the plot threads.

[Snowy]

I'd read that the show ended because they'd got to the end of the book series.

Not so, each series covers two books. The book series recently finished with the publication of the 13th in the series.

[Animalmother]

Y The Last Man
Watched some of this last night and it's not bad, not great either mind you but it kept me wanting to watch the next episode so that's something. An unknown disease suddenly kills all male mammals on the planet except one guy and his pet monkey. I assumed it was going to be a bit more on the comedic side but it's pretty grim and the guy is a bit of an unlikeable dipshit. I think there's just one season and then it got cancelled not long after. I'll finish it and move on to something else.

Disney + is so far a lot better than Netflix in having stuff I actually want to watch, same terrible interface though.

[Animalmother]

Mr Inbetween
Australian crime/black comedy series. It's pretty low budget in the first few episodes (looks a bit like Home & Away) but you can see the quality improve over the episodes. Follows a Ray a small time criminal and occasional hitman as he deals with domestic and work hassles. He's a scary looking Edwin with a very intimidating grin. Watched the first season which is only 6 episodes long and again they get better as it moves along. It's directed by Joel Edgerton's brother and there's a few familiar faces in the cast (people from Riddick and Upgrade that I recognized). Will keep at it as I think it's just 3 short seasons and done

[Alan]

Speaking of pish we just started the Chucky TV show which was apparently written by people who have never heard humans speak before. First episode is gash. We might watch another.... maybe.

Finished Chucky now and it absolutely won me over. It keeps almost 100% of the movies bullshit intact, ignoring that shitey reboot. All the dumb plotlines from splintering souls to Jennifer Tilly playing herself as possessed by a doll who was possessed by Chuckys ex. It brings back all the old actors too, Andy, the kid from Childs Play is played by the same actor as is Kyle from Childs Play 2. So yeah I was wrong, its great. Its a bit too tween in the main characters but its kind of great. Way better than I expected from how dodgy it starts. Some great kills and it has some good laughs its just the interpersonal dialogue is pretty bad.

It ends of a cliffhanger so fingers crossed for another.

[Solitaire]

The Expanse

I'm just now on Season 6, after binging the whole show from last week. I've never seen it before. I haven't seen every last episode yet, but I thought I'd go ahead and toss in my opinions, in no particular fashion apart from "thumbs up, thumbs down" ratings.

Thumbs Up: The depiction of astrophysics in a solar system. The Epstein Drive (kinda unfortunate name, after all) is a cool plot device overall, makes the entire setting possible, and gives some fun stuff for the cast to pretend about, such as pulling heavy g's, blacking out, having aneurysms, etc. I've picked around in the /expanse sub for a few minutes, just to see what kind of debates the science wonks are having about it all. It's refreshing to see a sci-fi show, set in space, with space combat that doesn't involve magical shields and gravity generators and such. The fights are over in moments, with a single tactical error equaling death and destruction for the loser. Some (or rather, precious few) of the relationships are believable and have developed depth over the course of time, which is nice to see depicted. I like the philosophical ideas that are discussed or shown, relating to our place in the universe, life and death, etc; it's nice that the source material is so obviously rich with such notions, which gives the show more impact than what is typical of shallow Hollywood Writers Guild horseshit that passes for television. It's a brutal yet interesting setting, and makes one ponder what life would be like, what one might choose to do, if given a chance to live in this fictional solar system.

Thumbs Down: All the directors got the same sticky note regarding the acting, which equals lots of sneering and baring of teeth. I've never seen a more hateful cast of characters, overall. It's tough to have any sympathy for a majority of them, though a few begin to show another side to themselves in later seasons. I realize that there has to be a main cast and reasons for the show to move forward, but the idea that this handful of people, in a system of billions and billions, are at the very epicenter of anything significant over the course of years is really stretching my suspension of disbelief - but I've gotten over it, by now. It's just how the show rolls.

Spoiler

The goofy ball of brown alien eels is super-duper fucking annoying to me. After spending so much effort making inter-solar system space travel as believable as possible for a tv show, they toss in sentient zipping blobs of light... It's so lazy and overdone, a trope for the century of sci-fi film-making. I don't know if it's in the books, because I haven't read them, but if I find out they are I'll be seriously disappointed in the author. I'm not going to waste any brainpower trying to come up with something to replace them, but almost anything would be more believable.

Special Emmy Award for Most Center-of-Forehead GSWs in a Television Series. These guys in the future are snipers with their handguns, man

[Snowy]

I've never seen a more hateful cast of characters, overall.

Then allow me to infroduce you to Gomorrah, 'available' online from the usual sources. It has been mentioned here a few times, and I am just getting to the end of the fifth and final season at the moment. It is an Italian-made show, in Italian with subtitles, about the mafia in Naples. I was warned when holidaying in Italy to avoid Naples as a lethal shithole of a city and having now watched this show I can see that they were not kidding. The characters are all loathesome, the worst kind of people who simply can't stop infighting as they struggle to be the last man standing on the huge pile of corpses the fighting creates. The show mainly follows two characters with a host of supporting cast (when the cast members are killed at the rate it happens here, you need a lot of actors!).

Thing is it is hugely compelling at the same time as being utterly brutal. You still root for characters that are utterly loathesome. Nothing seems off-limits - things other shows would draw the line at, Gomorrah embraces. Definitely worth watching.

[Achtung Englander]

For me season 1 is some of the best TV I have ever seen. A superb show that suffered minor diminishing returns with every season but overall it's an amazing experience

[Raid]

Bojack Horseman

Another show that I watched the first episode of, absolutely hated it, then didn't re-try until years later after I discovered its reputation and adored. I did the same thing with Rick and Morty - I guess it maybe just takes me a while to get used to what I initially see as ugly animation in these modern adult cartoons. Anyway, what I'd initially dismissed as cult-of-celebrity worshipping, largely unfunny drivel turned out to be a frequently quite touching tour of fucked up lives and depression, with characters immensely more likeable than I think they at first come across. You really have to sit through the fairly lousy first half of season one which is setting all of this up, when the show doesn't feel like it's going to do anything interesting, but it's absolutely worth the time.

There's one particular episode which is just 20 continuous minutes of pain and catharsis, but with a payoff at the end that, without the preceding dialogue would have been an obvious and not particularly funny joke, but it's such a spectacular release after all of the building emotion. I couldn't stop belly laughing for the entire duration of the end credits, and I don't recall another TV show or film ever having such a dramatic effect like that. I don't know whether it'll have that effect on anyone else, but I reckon it's going in my "TV history" headspace with the ending of Blackadder Goes Forth or the Red Wedding (not remotely similar but equally memorable).

More discussion, but extremely spoilery:

Spoiler

It was Bojack's eulogy for Beatrice. So massively inappropriate but pitch-perfect for how the character would react to his mother's death. I know the punchline of Bojack not noticing he was in the wrong funeral wasn't the entire reason for the monologue that precedes it, but it completely blindsided me, and I didn't realise how perfect it was until minutes after when I finally stitched my sides back together.

I honestly found the fact that Bojack is unredeemed by the end of the show to be really quite refreshing, even if it's maybe narratively unsatisfying. He does some genuinely reprehensible stuff throughout this, and I think most shows would have glossed over it all by the time the final credits roll, but the very last scene has him yet again apologising for something awful he did, and not really being forgiven. He can't get away from his past, and I adore that they altered the title sequence for the last season to have him walking through all of the terrible things he'd done.

The funny thing is, I think it has that effect on the audience too. I don't think the final season is as strong as the rest of the show, it just sorta peters out a bit, it doesn't really feel like there's any big payoff. Hollyhock's letter is a perfect example; the show doesn't feel the need for us to know what was actually in it, it's pretty clear from the fact that Bojack immediately relapses after reading it that it's everything he'd feared it was. I get the feeling that most other shows would have had it saying that she needs time away from him, but I think from context that she's cutting him out of her life for good, which is both entirely realistic but utterly crushing. Hollyhock seemed to be the only relationship Bojack seemed genuinely invested in rather than maybe going through the motions. There's no suggestion that there's a happy ending for them. And it's painful for the audience because Hollyhock was a fantastic addition to the series; a character that arrives free of the trauma most of the other characters suffer, a relief from the Hollywood bullshit, and she just disappears from the show in the same way that she disappears from Bojack's life. There's no real closure.

The show delivers gut-punch moments like that with surprising frequency, and I'm genuinely curious whether others find the lack of payoff to be refreshing or just utterly depressing. As someone that's lived with depression for years now, I'm not sure if thoroughly enjoying this show is worrying because it's acceptance that this is just what life is like sometimes. Either way, it feels like it was written by someone with experience.

It's up there with some of the best TV shows I've watched. I sorta wish I hadn't binge watched the entire thing in three weeks, but honestly there were times I had to tear myself away from it to go and do other things.

[Raid]

And from one of the best things I've seen in the last ten years to one of the most disappointing....

Star Trek: Picard (season 2)

Urgh. The quick summary; although it starts off reasonably well, it's just as badly written and ill-fitting of the source material as Discovery is. It's marginally better than the first season. My professional opinion is to not bother.

Stewart's performance seems to fit the Picard of TNG better than in the first season, and there are some cool looking spaceships in the first and last episode, but I think that's as much as I can say that's positive. Everyone still speaks like they're trying to dictate bad poetry. There's an entire plot arc that has no bearing whatsoever on the rest of the story; hell, the character in question never even meets the main cast, and ends with a profoundly stupid payoff. In fact there are two profoundly stupid payoffs, one of which directly contradicts something else from a far more popular show.

And for some reason I can't work out, it keeps referencing Star Trek IV: The One With the Whales. They're actually pretty fun call-backs but I don't understand why they're there.

[Sly Boots]

Bojack Horseman

Another show that I watched the first episode of, absolutely hated it, then didn't re-try until years later after I discovered its reputation and adored. I did the same thing with Rick and Morty - I guess it maybe just takes me a while to get used to what I initially see as ugly animation in these modern adult cartoons. Anyway, what I'd initially dismissed as cult-of-celebrity worshipping, largely unfunny drivel turned out to be a frequently quite touching tour of fucked up lives and depression, with characters immensely more likeable than I think they at first come across. You really have to sit through the fairly lousy first half of season one which is setting all of this up, when the show doesn't feel like it's going to do anything interesting, but it's absolutely worth the time.

There's one particular episode which is just 20 continuous minutes of pain and catharsis, but with a payoff at the end that, without the preceding dialogue would have been an obvious and not particularly funny joke, but it's such a spectacular release after all of the building emotion. I couldn't stop belly laughing for the entire duration of the end credits, and I don't recall another TV show or film ever having such a dramatic effect like that. I don't know whether it'll have that effect on anyone else, but I reckon it's going in my "TV history" headspace with the ending of Blackadder Goes Forth or the Red Wedding (not remotely similar but equally memorable).

More discussion, but extremely spoilery:

Spoiler

It was Bojack's eulogy for Beatrice. So massively inappropriate but pitch-perfect for how the character would react to his mother's death. I know the punchline of Bojack not noticing he was in the wrong funeral wasn't the entire reason for the monologue that precedes it, but it completely blindsided me, and I didn't realise how perfect it was until minutes after when I finally stitched my sides back together.

I honestly found the fact that Bojack is unredeemed by the end of the show to be really quite refreshing, even if it's maybe narratively unsatisfying. He does some genuinely reprehensible stuff throughout this, and I think most shows would have glossed over it all by the time the final credits roll, but the very last scene has him yet again apologising for something awful he did, and not really being forgiven. He can't get away from his past, and I adore that they altered the title sequence for the last season to have him walking through all of the terrible things he'd done.

The funny thing is, I think it has that effect on the audience too. I don't think the final season is as strong as the rest of the show, it just sorta peters out a bit, it doesn't really feel like there's any big payoff. Hollyhock's letter is a perfect example; the show doesn't feel the need for us to know what was actually in it, it's pretty clear from the fact that Bojack immediately relapses after reading it that it's everything he'd feared it was. I get the feeling that most other shows would have had it saying that she needs time away from him, but I think from context that she's cutting him out of her life for good, which is both entirely realistic but utterly crushing. Hollyhock seemed to be the only relationship Bojack seemed genuinely invested in rather than maybe going through the motions. There's no suggestion that there's a happy ending for them. And it's painful for the audience because Hollyhock was a fantastic addition to the series; a character that arrives free of the trauma most of the other characters suffer, a relief from the Hollywood bullshit, and she just disappears from the show in the same way that she disappears from Bojack's life. There's no real closure.

The show delivers gut-punch moments like that with surprising frequency, and I'm genuinely curious whether others find the lack of payoff to be refreshing or just utterly depressing. As someone that's lived with depression for years now, I'm not sure if thoroughly enjoying this show is worrying because it's acceptance that this is just what life is like sometimes. Either way, it feels like it was written by someone with experience.

It's up there with some of the best TV shows I've watched. I sorta wish I hadn't binge watched the entire thing in three weeks, but honestly there were times I had to tear myself away from it to go and do other things.

One of my favourite ever shows, 100%.

[Sly Boots]

And from one of the best things I've seen in the last ten years to one of the most disappointing....

Star Trek: Picard (season 2)

Urgh. The quick summary; although it starts off reasonably well, it's just as badly written and ill-fitting of the source material as Discovery is. It's marginally better than the first season. My professional opinion is to not bother.

Stewart's performance seems to fit the Picard of TNG better than in the first season, and there are some cool looking spaceships in the first and last episode, but I think that's as much as I can say that's positive. Everyone still speaks like they're trying to dictate bad poetry. There's an entire plot arc that has no bearing whatsoever on the rest of the story; hell, the character in question never even meets the main cast, and ends with a profoundly stupid payoff. In fact there are two profoundly stupid payoffs, one of which directly contradicts something else from a far more popular show.

And for some reason I can't work out, it keeps referencing Star Trek IV: The One With the Whales. They're actually pretty fun call-backs but I don't understand why they're there.

Not watching it, and won't, but I've enjoyed Angry Joe's episode reviews, including his first ever 0/10 for the penultimate episode. You can tell he genuinely loves Star Trek and is in almost physical pain due to how bad this is.

[Raid]

I haven't watched the AJ review, but yeah, that penultimate episode had me rolling my eyes constantly. It was awful.