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Current TV Boxset Addiction

Started by radiator, 20 November, 2012, 02:23:29 PM

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Colin YNWA


TordelBack

#2026
Rome is one of very few modern series* I watch over and over,  usually in a double bill with I, Clavdivs. This way I can mentally smush the brilliance of the latter's plot, acting and dialogue together with the visual scope and production values of the former to make two perfect shows. Thirteenth!

Just slid into the 3rd season of Rick and Morty and it's now comfortably my favourite modern cartoon (I think I can move the first decade of The Simpsons to the 'classic' category now,  right?), pushing Archer aside.  It's given up some of its anarchic freshness in favour of wonderfully rich continuity,  but for now that's a very successful trade.


*Deadwood,  Firefly, Black Books, Father Ted and Buffy.

TordelBack

Finally finished Sabrina, bar the Christmas special, after a fairly leisurely watch. After a tonally uneven start it definitely settles down about halfway through, and takes its finger off the reset button to good effect.  The finale was particularly enjoyable, with at least one surprise resolution and plenty of enjoyable new threads setting a-dangling.

Its biggest strength is the supporting cast,  especially Miranda Otto, Chance Perdomo, Tati Gabrielle and the wonderful Lucy Davis, all of whom light up any scene they're in. There's a lot of borrowing from Gaiman here,  but as a master of supernatural bricolage himself that's only fitting.

Surprisingly good.

Dandontdare

Quote from: TordelBack on 09 December, 2018, 11:00:22 AM
Just slid into the 3rd season of Rick and Morty and it's now comfortably my favourite modern cartoon (I think I can move the first decade of The Simpsons to the 'classic' category now,  right?), pushing Archer aside.  It's given up some of its anarchic freshness in favour of wonderfully rich continuity,  but for now that's a very successful trade.

Netfilx is pretty good for mature cartoons - Final Space is a lot of scifi fun, Big Mouth is hilariously filthy and Bojack Horseman is pure unadulterated genius. Just avoid "F is for Family" - it's crap.

Currently trying to cram as much Buffy and Angel as I can into my Amazon Prime 30 day trial period! I haven't watched much Buffy since it was on and I'd almost forgotten how good it was - there are two distinct trilogies separated by one bad season - the fun trilogy of monster-of the week stories, the stupid 'cyborg vs Mission Impossible' 4th season, and then the 'dark' trilogy where relationships break down and everything gets a bit grim.

The Legendary Shark


I've never watched Buffy but, from what I hear, that is a mistake I need to rectify. (I remember enjoying the few episodes of "Angel" I saw way back in the day - is that worth revisiting, d'ya think?)

I've just finished seasons six and seven of Homeland, which I nearly gave up on because it was getting a bit samey. I felt S6 took the narrative in an interesting direction but S7 returned, frustratingly, to a more traditional narrative. Claire Dane's character carries the series for me - she's an absolute nightmare of a character, manipulative and annoying, but very empathetic for all that. She's essentially a single mum with mental health problems and a good counterbalace to to character of the president, a divorcee with a dead son and (arguably) mental health problems and the awful flaws both characters display are precisely what make them so good at their respective jobs.

[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




Smith

I missed a while season of Venture Bros.Im getting to that.

broodblik

Just finished Season 3 of The Man in the High Castle. This is everyone that likes some alternative history where the Axis powers won the Second World War.
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

Professor Bear

Nightflyers is - shockingly for a Syfy show - derivative shite based on a bunch of different things and filtered through whatever sci-fi show is currently popular and/or achievable on a SyFy budget, which mostly manifests as a bunch of plot beats and reveals cribbed from Westworld.  Craftily billed as a George RR Martin adaptation, they're sure to append talking heads interviews with him at the end of each episode to ram the notion of his involvement home despite his being under exclusive contract to HBO - the series is based on a 1987 straight-to-video b-movie adaptation of one of GRR's 1970s short stories that was made to cash in on Aliens rather than the original story or any new input from the man himself.
Anyhoo, it's all pretty bad, and the best way to describe it would be "if someone took all the stuff in Event Horizon that was interesting and made it... not."  Occasionally it looks shockingly cheap, but sometimes, if you squint a bit at it, it almost looks like they had some money to spend (just not on new ideas), and around the halfway mark you might start thinking "if they spend the whole series getting there and then just pull some rehashed Solaris shit on us with the aliens right at the end I will lose my fucking shit entirely" in which case you should probably stop watching.

Theblazeuk

Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 20 December, 2018, 01:13:33 PM

I've never watched Buffy but, from what I hear, that is a mistake I need to rectify. (I remember enjoying the few episodes of "Angel" I saw way back in the day - is that worth revisiting, d'ya think?)
/quote]

Angel's final season is the best part of the whole Whedon-verse. But generally Buffy is more consistent than Angel. I reckon both are good anyway, just you can't really avoid the duff parts if you want to get the full flavour of the brilliant parts. That include a kind and benevolent and hungry god, a woman hollowed out by an elder thing, an episode with evil muppets, and .... damn I might just start rewatching them both again.

Mattofthespurs

Been working my way through the US version of The Office on Amazon Prime.
Never got past the first few episodes before because it always seemed a crap version of the original but I'm up to season 6 now and enjoying it a lot.

Smith

Angel is kinda like the American version of Torchwood.Actually Torchwood is a British version of Angel.

TordelBack

Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 13 August, 2018, 08:28:42 PM
Network recently (OK about 18 months ago, thats how long my too watch pile is) had a sale on, and I nabbed both boxsets covering all three seasons of Robin of Sherwood and so far, it's a bloody good romp. Props have to be given to try and expand the mythos into mystical territories and the relatively high production values must have made it quiet the treat at the time. Good stuff so far as I close out Season 1.

As promised, Santy brought my better half RoS Seasons 1&2 on Blu-Ray. Damn, it's a beautiful upgrade to an already-lovely looking series. Proper treatment for a classic.

JayzusB.Christ

#2037
Quote from: TordelBack on 27 December, 2018, 04:58:58 PM
Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 13 August, 2018, 08:28:42 PM
Network recently (OK about 18 months ago, thats how long my too watch pile is) had a sale on, and I nabbed both boxsets covering all three seasons of Robin of Sherwood and so far, it's a bloody good romp. Props have to be given to try and expand the mythos into mystical territories and the relatively high production values must have made it quiet the treat at the time. Good stuff so far as I close out Season 1.

As promised, Santy brought my better half RoS Seasons 1&2 on Blu-Ray. Damn, it's a beautiful upgrade to an already-lovely looking series. Proper treatment for a classic.

I loved it as a kid.  There was something hauntingly beautiful about the merging of pagan mythology and the Robin Hood story, especially with Clannad to provide the atmospheric music.  Also quite brave for a kids' show in the 80s to fly in the face of Christianity like that, and also lay on the ultraviolence so heavily.

Sadly things take a turn for the worse with the second Robin. Wish they'd gone with Neil Morrissey, back then the absolute image of Michael Praed, instead of the gimmicky choice of Sean Connery's wee lad.

The Costner film was a very poor rip-off, and that last revamp on telly was awful.  (Also lovely to notice that RoS's Little John is GoT's Greatjohn.)
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Tiplodocus

Worked my way through JACK RYAN on Amazon. It's a solid enough procedural type thing that gets the spirit of the Clancy books I remember reading 25 years ago (I.e. sometimes, it is basically a manual) and at other times, skips on that trademark detail and nerd stuff.  Equally it sometimes gets confused over understanding the motives of the baddie or just have him twirl a figurative moustache.

Krazinsky, as my 5th Ryan*, is great, I thought. Particularly making the boy scout aspect believable. And I like the way Greer is slightly less avuncular than normal.

Some of the action  set pieces are also pretty good for telly.

*And I think we'll be on the 6th Mrs. Ryan.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

radiator

Bodyguard.

Had heard good things about this, but I thought it started out with a fairly preposterous opening, and just got more silly from there. Lost my attention after the first episode.

Girlfriend liked it, though.