Current TV Boxset Addiction

[Smith]

Well,so far fansubs have been the only way.But oddly enough I cant find Kuuga(I got this thing about starting at the beginning;of sort),best I got were 25 episodes.Im going to have to do some more digging.

[Professor Bear]

I think I got Kuuga from Jatoku, Dailymotion, or Youtube.

[radiator]

GLOW on Netflix - 1980s-set comedy drama about female wrestling starring Alison Brie (Community) and Marc Maron, from the makers of Orange is the New Black.

As with OITNB, it's a little goofy but extremely watchable and very well-made. Good stuff!

[CrazyFoxMachine]

GLOW on Netflix - 1980s-set comedy drama about female wrestling starring Alison Brie (Community) and Marc Maron, from the makers of Orange is the New Black.

As with OITNB, it's a little goofy but extremely watchable and very well-made. Good stuff!

Seconded for this. Sharp script, Brie's frustrated actor character is great and the 80s tone is spot on. Only seen the pilot so far but a strong start - surprising also to see the acting debut of Kate Nash of all people!

[radiator]

It gets better as it goes. We just finished the last ep and trust me - it'll leave a huge smile on your face. My girlfriend was literally whooping and cheering.

What a cast - everyone in it is great, but Maron steals the show - perfect casting.

Another smash from Netflix.

[Keef Monkey]

GLOW is great! The first show in a long time where Bea and I have burned through a couple of episodes a night. Have no previous experience of Mark Maron or Alison Brie, but they're absolutely brilliant in it, and the rest of the cast do a great job too. Witty and funny, but can hit you right in the emotions at times. Characters I liked immediately I went onto love, and even characters I was worried would grate over a season I ended up pretty attached to.

Glad I caught it because I almost didn't - Bea had decided it would be the show she watches when I'm out at band practice, because she assumed I'd have no interest in it. One night band practice got cancelled so I got home just as she was sticking the pilot on and was absolutely hooked, so a lucky catch!

It seems to have awoken our childhood love of wrestling too, just after we watched the last episode we took a free trial of WWE Network, threw on an old Royal Rumble and were whooping at the TV cheering on our old favourites like kids again. Felt good.   

Had no idea initially that it was a true story, but there's a doc on Netflix about the original tv show, which I'm not keen to watch yet in case it spoils any of the show's arcs.

[CalHab]

Perhaps an unusual one, but I've been enjoying Midnight Diner, a Japanese Netflix production based on a manga series about the customers of the eponymous cafe. Each episode focuses on a different customer and is themed around the food they order. It's got a very gentle pace, some nice humour and makes for very relaxing viewing. It has also taught me a couple of new recipes.

[Smith]

Castlevania- because when I think of Catlevania I think about bestiality jokes,kicks in the nuts and organized religion being evil.Whole thing ends up being a reminder that:
-Netflix plonkers dont know what pacing is.
-Ellis has some traumas from Catholic school
-And there will never be a good video game adaptation.
So just don't bother.

[Keef Monkey]

Castlevania- because when I think of Catlevania I think about bestiality jokes,kicks in the nuts and organized religion being evil.Whole thing ends up being a reminder that:
-Netflix plonkers dont know what pacing is.
-Ellis has some traumas from Catholic school
-And there will never be a good video game adaptation.
So just don't bother.

Made by Adi Shankar apparently, his incredibly poor animated Dredd series didn't bode too well for this.

[radiator]

GLOW is great! The first show in a long time where Bea and I have burned through a couple of episodes a night. Have no previous experience of Mark Maron or Alison Brie, but they're absolutely brilliant in it, and the rest of the cast do a great job too. Witty and funny, but can hit you right in the emotions at times. Characters I liked immediately I went onto love, and even characters I was worried would grate over a season I ended up pretty attached to.

Believe it or not, Maron has no previous acting experience other than playing himself in his own comedy series for a few years. I was already predisposed to like him as I'm a huge fan of his WTF podcast - I've found him grating in the past, but he seems to have mellowed a lot in recent years as he's found success in his career. His recent hatchet-burying interview with Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon was especially heartwarming.

Alison Brie is amazing - I don't know if you've seen Mad Men, but you may or may not recognise her as Pete Campbell's wife Trudy, and she also played Annie in Community. GLOW is one step closer to getting my girlfriend to finally give Community another chance - I've been going on about how great the Community cast was for years, and she now loves half the cast members from their subsequent projects (Donald Glover in Atlanta, Gillian Jacobs in Love and now Brie in GLOW).

It seems to have awoken our childhood love of wrestling too, just after we watched the last episode we took a free trial of WWE Network, threw on an old Royal Rumble and were whooping at the TV cheering on our old favourites like kids again. Felt good. It seems to have awoken our childhood love of wrestling too, just after we watched the last episode we took a free trial of WWE Network, threw on an old Royal Rumble and were whooping at the TV cheering on our old favourites like kids again. Felt good.

I've never liked wrestling, but even I appreciated how respectful the show is of the form. It felt like the writers and actors had really done their research, and it never felt like they were mocking or belittling it.

Had no idea initially that it was a true story, but there's a doc on Netflix about the original tv show, which I'm not keen to watch yet in case it spoils any of the show's arcs.

I'm assuming that the premise of GLOW will be 'based on a true story' in the same way that OITNB is - ie that they take the basic premise of real events, but then quickly spin it off into 100% fiction from there.

If I had to nitpick, something that slightly bugged me was that, for a period piece, the characters seemed to have very modern attitudes and speak in a very modern parlance at times - using words like 'fanboy' and 'fangirl' (which I personally never heard used before maybe 2005). Also, there was quite a bit of characters being very pop culture aware, making geeky references to stuff in a way that, to my mind, wasn't really very common until the late nineties. It kind of broke the illusion of the period setting a bit, which they had put a lot of work into elsewhere in the production. There were a fair few examples of this, and I couldn't tell if the writers did this deliberately or not.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

If I had to nitpick, something that slightly bugged me was that, for a period piece, the characters seemed to have very modern attitudes and speak in a very modern parlance at times - using words like 'fanboy' and 'fangirl' (which I personally never heard used before maybe 2005).

Although I'm certain it wasn't as common in the 1980's as it is now the term fanboy did exist then at least - and it's got a really interesting ironic origin story as detailed here:

http://gizmodo.com/5540818/the-fascinating-origin-of-the-word-fanboy

Also - all power to anything convincing people to watch Community - it's still the holy grail of late 00's/early 10's American comedy for me.

[Mardroid]

Black Mirror

I caught part of the first and second series when it was on mainstream TV, and enjoyed it. I finally watched the rest (actually I watched it all from the beginning) on Netflix.

Great stuff, but boy does it go to dark places.... (Okay that's the point, it's a black mirror...)

The third Netflix based series appears to be a co-production with Americans as there are entire episodes set in the US or with just American characters, but it doesn't lose it's UK based episodes and actors, which is nice. I don't think any of the episodes were bad. (The one concerning the American lady going to be maid of honour grated a bit at first, (mostly the banality and falseness of the characters, but then that was intentional) but then it improved a lot during the road trip stuff.

[spoiler]I think only one episode had a happy ending (although the afore mentioned maid of hour episode sort of ended on a high in a strange way.)[/spoiler]* [spoiler]and that one actually made me feel like crying in places, albeit not in a bad way. I bet you'll know the one I mean if you've seen series 3. [/spoiler]

A lot of the stories wouldn't be out of place as future shocks. They're also thought provoking when you consider that we're not all that far off from the worlds that are conveyed.

*[spoiler]Sure it involved two characters cursing at each other in prison, but it showed them in a state of liberation now that near everything had been stripped away. Ironically they're at there most free while they're locked up.[/spoiler]

[radiator]

If I had to nitpick, something that slightly bugged me was that, for a period piece, the characters seemed to have very modern attitudes and speak in a very modern parlance at times - using words like 'fanboy' and 'fangirl' (which I personally never heard used before maybe 2005).

Although I'm certain it wasn't as common in the 1980's as it is now the term fanboy did exist then at least

Maybe, but as I say it was the whole way certain parts of dialogue was written - it just seemed to me to have a very modern sensibility about it - much more 2017 than 1985. For example characters quoting specific lines or moments from films etc like they're in a Kevin Smith movie - it just doesn't really ring true as something that happened in a pre ubiquitous home video, pre-internet world. These characters would have been born in the 1950s and 1960s, but seemed at times to be scripted more like Millennials. As I say, not sure whether this was a deliberate concession to modern audiences or not.

[TordelBack]

Ain't seen it so can't speak to specifics, or indeed adults of the period, but I know my group of friends in 1985 spent a very great deal of time quoting film and TV at each other. This was the era of Ghosbusters, the Terminator, Conan and Beverly Hills Cop, Blackadder, Yes Minister and Spitting Image. You couldn't shut us up - I know, because many tried.

[Professor Bear]

Same.
I suspect the reason pop-cultural awareness seems a modern invention (despite being a prevalent practice in the comedies of the early talky era) is a combination of elements: mainly because "contemporary" references date almost immediately and often are removed from later airings or printings of vintage material, but another factor is that tv and movie sponsors for decades would surgically remove not just mentions of competitors' products, but mentions of entire industries with which they were competing.
Rod Serling talked at length about the influence of such creative censors not just in interviews, but even did an episode of the Twilight Zone (The Bard) which heavily referenced the extent of such micromanagement, as by then entire scripts for shows were falling by the wayside because sponsor interference in content made them unfilmable, stating that characters couldn't ford a river in a show if Chevy was the sponsor.

A good counterpoint to all this would be to read some of those early Amazing Spider-Mans - as far back as the 60s the characters were referencing pop culture elements that are all but forgotten now, although Spidey shouting at protesters while quoting Ayn Rand never gets old.