Current TV Boxset Addiction

[Jim_Campbell]

* Iron Fist S2 - Very good indeed with an amazing final episode season 3 set-up -- only for the series to then be canceled.

I believe the wording of the cancellation announcement strongly suggests that the characters/plot lines will carry over into the remaining Netflix Marvel shows. I haven't been paying attention too closely because I haven't watched Iron Fist S2 yet.

[Professor Bear]

I found Luke Cage and Iron Fist's sophomore seasons to suffer from the same problem: they took the major tropes and themes of fun, outrageous genres originating outside the honky cultural monopoly (blaxploitation, kung fu) and saddled them with white television's embarrassment with genre fiction for which it overcompensates with po-facedness and violent excess.
A lot of Luke Cage just transplants its parent genre's nastiness and fetishism of the debasement of minorities and ditches everything positive.  Likewise with Iron Fist, which also just sort of meanders through some really dated superhero story tropes about stealing superpowers and being worthy, which would have simply been disappointing on its own terms if not for the fact that this iteration of the powers-stealing plot has been lifted wholesale from the cutscenes of the PS1 videogame Wu-Tang: Taste The Pain, and the fact that they don't acknowledge this in an age where lampshade-hanging is a Freudian compulsion in every single writing room in North America just shows how desperate they are to be taken seriously.
These shows were equally boring and unoriginal - though special mention goes to Luke Cage's terrible fight direction - but Iron Fist's utterly stupid ending probably takes the biscuit for no other reason than making me happy this show is dead.

And can we talk about how overlong these dumbass superhero shows are?  Better Call Saul only gets 10 episodes a season, FFS.  These superhero shows are at least 3 episodes too long - especially if you're playing Luke Cage's dad.

[TordelBack]

And can we talk about how overlong these dumbass superhero shows are?  Better Call Saul only gets 10 episodes a season, FFS. 

It's a sign of being utterly spoiled with great telly,  but the missus and I look at the prospect of several loooong seasons of backlog of these superhero shows and just retreat to something more focused like the aforementioned BCS (near-perfect jewels, each to be savoured), or Inside No. 9, just 6 lovely little slices a year.

Worse,  if something can cover the ground in just 30 minutes, we're all over it - The Good Place or Santa Clarita Diet, yum-yum,  I'll take two please.   But 39 hours of Daredevil, tying into 100 hours of other stuff, cheeses just no.

[TordelBack]

Finished off Season 2 of Glow, which remained great fun but seemed to shift tone a little oddly right at the end, with an overly-neat wrap-up that somehow avoided the grimmer subplots (Bash's [spoiler]reaction to the AIDS death of his unrequited love, for example[/spoiler]) . Felt a bit like the end of Almost Famous,  where all the conflict evaporates on a coach ride. There was also a veritable avalanche of bare boobs in the last two episodes,  it almost seemed like some kind of collective dare. Not that I'm complaining, you understand. 

In the light of what felt like a slightly forced conclusion,  I'm a bit surprised to hear that it had been renewed for a third season.  But also delighted!

Season highlight was the episode that was actually a full episode of the show-within-the-show - although the climactic wedding bout was hard to beat!

Also finished Finnish nonsense thriller Deadwind, a cop show so dumb that we twigged the killer in the first (of 12 episodes) and then spent the rest wondering why female lead Karrpi never exhibited a single bruise or cut despite repeatedly being beaten bloody about the head in every other episode, while her male partner Nurmi sported a giant scab from being hit just the once. Just how dumb can be summarised by the killer [spoiler]having an unlocked room plastered with stalker-pics of the victim adjacent to a room the cops intensively searched with corpse-dogs etc on his own say-so[/spoiler].   Still, all the leads were engaging,  and it was fun watching them leave a trail of corpses across Helsinki and surrounds that nobody seemed that bothered about.

[Apestrife]

Finished Better Call Saul S1-4 the other night. To sum it up. I really like Jimmy and Kim. Kim especially. She's such a great character. And I probably like the series better than Breaking bad. To which it serves as a brilliant continuation in the form of sequel and prequel. S4:s ending had me laughing so much, and then the second later feeling all sad for one of the characters. Brilliant story telling.

Watching Sacred games on Netflix now. 3 eps in. Big mystery tv taking place in 80s and present time India, jumping back and forth between a gangster becoming a god (in his own words) and a cop trying to solve a big big myster (something taking place in 25 days). I quite enjoy it so far. One thing I really like is how different India feels. Like the movie City of God (albeight Brazil), much of it really feels new to me. Even having seen docus and stuff from either countries the stories takes place in. The word I'm looking for is probably "fresh". Pretty sure I'll watch the whole season.

[moly]

chilling adventure of Sabrina really enjoying this so far feels more like a lite version of Salem rather than the original Sabrina series

[TordelBack]

Yep,  it's quite fun (so far) - although there's some clunky dialogue of the "as you know, but I'm going to explain it in detail anyway..." variety, and it's not at all good at being scary. Sabrina and her outrageous eyebrows took some time to warm to,  but both the aunts are great, Michelle Gomez remains excellent value, and Cousin Ambrose is terrific - and welcome proof that the Chiwetel Ejiofor cloning programme has been successful.  I did raise a bushy eyebrow of my own at the some of the (partial) nudity from a character that's supposed to be 15, but maybe that's just how things are in teen dramas these days.

[moly]

Yeah thought the partial nudity was totally unnecessary, also think the British actors steal every scene

[Mardroid]

I have been watching the latest Daredevil series. Matt getting angsty is getting a bit old hat, but it's been pretty good so far. I have some reservations at how different [spoiler]Bullseye[/spoiler] is from the comics, (although Dex is an interesting character in his own right). [spoiler]That fight scene with Dex going into full bulls-eye mode where every mundane item suddenly becomes a potential lethal projectile, in Daredevil's costume was brilliant, though.[/spoiler]

[Professor Bear]

I did raise a bushy eyebrow of my own at the some of the (partial) nudity from a character that's supposed to be 15, but maybe that's just how things are in teen dramas these days.

No, that was pretty weird even by teen drama standards, as such shows usually have nebulously 20something actors playing characters who are ill-defined "teenagers" because, you know, Laws and that, but this goes out of its way to establish characters as underage.  I thought it might be going somewhere in exploring a lack of hang-ups about sex in the Wiccan philosophy, but if anything the onscreen witches and warlocks seem to fetishise sex even more than their arch-enemies The Catholics do, so it's clearly deliberate, either to titillate or for the ick factor.
I assume you haven't got all the way through just yet, but there's more dodgy sexual stuff coming up, including Sabrina being invited to join an onscreen orgy, and a few references to child sex abuse.

It's a shame, really, as the gore is nothing too drastic and it's the sexual content that generally lets things down for me.  The rest of the show is enjoyably atmospheric even if it rarely seems to capitalise on some great set-up (Sabrina's trip through Limbo and Harvey's gaming himself up to shoot someone seem like they could have been a lot more intense), but it's a great counterpoint to American Horror Story: Apocalypse, which is the first AHS series since the first one that I've managed to watch for longer than four episodes, and it is fucking terrible so far despite covering much the same ground as Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.  Are they all this bad?  They're all on Netflix so I guess I'll find out.

[Rara Avis]

I came all the way back to ask how you are getting on with this? I quit after season 5, I just couldn't take it anymore ..

I decided to watch Arrow instead. Considering it's made by the same people, it's darker than Supergirl and less comedic, although both shows do drift into both territories on occasion.

Two series in, I've enjoyed Arrow a lot

[Mardroid]

I came all the way back to ask how you are getting on with this? I quit after season 5, I just couldn't take it anymore ..

I decided to watch Arrow instead. Considering it's made by the same people, it's darker than Supergirl and less comedic, although both shows do drift into both territories on occasion.

Two series in, I've enjoyed Arrow a lot

I've basically got as far as one can on Amazon Prime without paying extra (so I think that is Series 5). I largely on on all right although it got a bit silly in places. I seem to have a higher tolerance for stuff, though, and enjoy stuff other people seem to review badly, so you can't read too much into my opinions.

Just finished the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix, which I largely enjoyed. I'll admit to being a bit uncomfortable with it, having grown up in a Christian household. These aren't your fantasy type Wiccan witches but seem to be fully fledged Satanists with the blasphemy stuff that entails. (To be fair, it's a real horror take on the idea, and the comic is just as bad in that regard, and the blasphemic stuff is from the POV of specific individuals, not some kind of preachy 'alternate' agenda.) That being said I still enjoyed it a lot. It was interesting recognising British actresses, including 'Missy' from Doctor Who and the receptionist character from The Office, in a very endearing role.

Currently watching Ash Vs Evil Dead Season 3. As silly and amusing (and sometimes a bit scary, but not all that much) as ever. A lot of fun... but there are a couple of scenes that are just wrong....

[Rara Avis]

I really enjoyed the first few seasons of Arrow but when he show became more about his personal relationships than him I lost interest. I never read the Arrow comics but his relationship with Black Canary is a huge part of his story but the tv show has rewritten that to the detriment of his overall story arc (imo). In Season 1 he fights crime and is pretty tech savvy himself but by season 5 he can barely boil a kettle without the assistance of his team, one member in particular. It's such a shame because I really liked that actor but as the show went on it became more about his assistant and what she is capable of than him. They had an opportunity to restart completely after the [spoiler]Adrian Chase[/spoiler] season but didn't go with it. I just couldn't take it anymore. It's interesting though than Marc Guggenheim who is the producer is the writer for X-Men Gold which I am really enjoying. So I know he's capable of writing good stuff; I just don't know why he's not doing that for Arrow.

[Smith]

First 2 seasons of Arrow are good,then it went downhill and I have up.

[von Boom]

The 1958 serial of Quatermass and the Pit is on iPlayer at the moment. It's a bit squiffy around the edges, but it's still a damn fine story.