Current TV Boxset Addiction

[Hawkmumbler]

Finally half working my way through Season 2 of WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS.

Still probably the funniest show in years, now with added Mark Hamill.

[Professor Bear]

Kolchak The Night Stalker - I love this daffy old series, mildly obsessed as I am with urban America circa the 1970s, and seeing Chicago up close like this as I have another rewatch is a treat.  The monster-of-the-week formula works best when we don't see the often-terrible creature work and the threat remains offscreen or filmed in the first person, but the lizard monster rampaging around the mining colony on Janus VI secret laboratory is simultaneously laughable and fantastic, having the ability to smash through any wall at any moment and murder everyone in the room, yet also for some reason appearing out of thin air in these incredibly long, empty tunnels.  Great fun.

Condor - tv series remake of Six Days Of The Condor (most probably know its movie adaptation Three Days of the Condor), and while it covers the same ground as the likes of Jack Ryan, it has more focus on character and less explodey setpieces, making it feel a lot more like a conventional tv viewing experience.  Its politics are also a lot less laughably propagandist than Jack Ryan's, the central character arc of the series focusing on how the protagonist knows full well he's been played into supporting CIA lawbreaking but doing it anyway because he doesn't have any better ideas, which is a pretty accurate paradigm of the hostage politics that comprises Western democracy.  To be fair, the denouement hinges on the character accepting that constantly choosing the least worst option available is just managing the decline, but things still wrap up a bit too neatly for my tastes.

Titans - laughably juvenile adaptation of the DC superhero comic, but I swing wildly between loving its goofy excesses and hating its clunky and often-embarrassing dialogue and plotting.  There's a bit where Dick Grayson (the former Robin The Boy Wonder) hallucinates Bruce Wayne following him around saying what Dick refuses to, but then Dick goes into a strip club and Bruce is onstage dancing with the strippers and I was really confused as to what the subtext was, because the whole thing had been played completely straight-faced until the point it became about incest, and then the actor - Iain Glen - starts dancing the fucking Batusi and he looks just like Adam West in close-up - don't get me wrong, this is clearly all fantastic stuff under normal circumstances, but it is diminished because of the show in which it appears, which is, well... shite.
The cast are mostly good, and Dick Grayson is perfectly cast even if his character and dialogue are gash, the actors who play Hawk, Donna Troy and Raven are similarly spot-on, but the others veer wildly between acceptable (Gar/Connor/Jason Todd) to terrible (Kori/Doctor Light/Rose).

[Hawkmumbler]

Kolchak The Night Stalker - I love this daffy old series, mildly obsessed as I am with urban America circa the 1970s, and seeing Chicago up close like this as I have another rewatch is a treat.  The monster-of-the-week formula works best when we don't see the often-terrible creature work and the threat remains offscreen or filmed in the first person, but the lizard monster rampaging around the mining colony on Janus VI secret laboratory is simultaneously laughable and fantastic, having the ability to smash through any wall at any moment and murder everyone in the room, yet also for some reason appearing out of thin air in these incredibly long, empty tunnels.  Great fun.

The best Kolchak episodes are the ones that just go all the way into eldritichian, mythic abominations. Energy eating native american bear spirits, geometrically summoned elder beings accidentally invoked through architecture, invisible extraterrestrials using earth as a galactic pit stop, or a Jewish guardian demon protecting the Hebrew quarter of run down Chicago.

The show never quiet reached the heights of the first pilot movie, but it's an entertaining urban wyrd serial with one of the great 70's lead performance by McGavin. I really gotta give it a rewatch soon too.

[Robin Low]

Kolchak The Night Stalker - I love this daffy old series, mildly obsessed as I am with urban America circa the 1970s, and seeing Chicago up close like this as I have another rewatch is a treat.  The monster-of-the-week formula works best when we don't see the often-terrible creature work and the threat remains offscreen or filmed in the first person, but the lizard monster rampaging around the mining colony on Janus VI secret laboratory is simultaneously laughable and fantastic, having the ability to smash through any wall at any moment and murder everyone in the room, yet also for some reason appearing out of thin air in these incredibly long, empty tunnels.  Great fun.

It is a rather wonderful little series. I particularly like the office scenes and the relationships between Kolchak and his colleagues. I've never seen the first film, though, and I need to remedy that.

Titans - laughably juvenile adaptation of the DC superhero comic, but I swing wildly between loving its goofy excesses and hating its clunky and often-embarrassing dialogue and plotting.  There's a bit where Dick Grayson (the former Robin The Boy Wonder) hallucinates Bruce Wayne following him around saying what Dick refuses to, but then Dick goes into a strip club and Bruce is onstage dancing with the strippers and I was really confused as to what the subtext was, because the whole thing had been played completely straight-faced until the point it became about incest, and then the actor - Iain Glen - starts dancing the fucking Batusi and he looks just like Adam West in close-up - don't get me wrong, this is clearly all fantastic stuff under normal circumstances, but it is diminished because of the show in which it appears, which is, well... shite.
The cast are mostly good, and Dick Grayson is perfectly cast even if his character and dialogue are gash, the actors who play Hawk, Donna Troy and Raven are similarly spot-on, but the others veer wildly between acceptable (Gar/Connor/Jason Todd) to terrible (Kori/Doctor Light/Rose).

On the whole I've loved these two series and there have been some episodes I've thought were fantastic. I was, however, frustrated by the big dramatic scene in the final episode, which was monstrously clunky and unconvincing. It was as though they blew the action budget on one especially entertaining action scene in an earlier episode, [spoiler]the scene in old man Luther's place with Connor and Krypto[/spoiler]: anyone who didn't enjoy that is an arse.

Regards,
Robin

[Dandontdare]

Finally half working my way through Season 2 of WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS.

Still probably the funniest show in years, now with added Mark Hamill.

I've just finished that, it's superb. "What kind of goat sorcery is this?"

As an office-drone, I loved Colin Robinson's promotion - I swear I've worked with energy vampires. And I didn't recognise Hamill at all until the pool-queue gag! "BAT" still makes me smile every time.

Titans - laughably juvenile adaptation of the DC superhero comic, but I swing wildly between loving its goofy excesses and hating its clunky and often-embarrassing dialogue and plotting.  There's a bit where Dick Grayson (the former Robin The Boy Wonder) hallucinates Bruce Wayne following him around saying what Dick refuses to, but then Dick goes into a strip club and Bruce is onstage dancing with the strippers and I was really confused as to what the subtext was, because the whole thing had been played completely straight-faced until the point it became about incest, and then the actor - Iain Glen - starts dancing the fucking Batusi and he looks just like Adam West in close-up - don't get me wrong, this is clearly all fantastic stuff under normal circumstances, but it is diminished because of the show in which it appears, which is, well... shite.
The cast are mostly good, and Dick Grayson is perfectly cast even if his character and dialogue are gash, the actors who play Hawk, Donna Troy and Raven are similarly spot-on, but the others veer wildly between acceptable (Gar/Connor/Jason Todd) to terrible (Kori/Doctor Light/Rose).

On the whole I've loved these two series and there have been some episodes I've thought were fantastic. I was, however, frustrated by the big dramatic scene in the final episode, which was monstrously clunky and unconvincing. It was as though they blew the action budget on one especially entertaining action scene in an earlier episode, [spoiler]the scene in old man Luther's place with Connor and Krypto[/spoiler]: anyone who didn't enjoy that is an arse.

Regards,
Robin

The imaginary Batman one was my favourite episode! It does get a bit cringingly emo at times, and that finale was weak - [spoiler]Donna Troy deserved better than that[/spoiler] - but there was a whole heap of stuff to enjoy, like [spoiler]Conor's stroll through Metropolis and Hank having to get his suit back after a bender. [/spoiler]. Season 1 was stronger IMO

[Tiplodocus]

All of MRS. AMERICA is available on the iPlayer at the moment. Only two episodes in but it's great cast taking us on a very entertaining stroll through the Women's Lib movement and their struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment in 70s America.

And Phwoar! It's got some total babes in the cast!



What? What did I say? Is that not allowed now?

[Jim_Campbell]

Picking our way, largely at random, through the bewildering range of fare offered by our newly-expanded range of subscription services,* we tried The Order on Netflix. I've stuck with it for about half-a-dozen episodes because of the engagingly schlocky concept: young working class man gets into posh university with the aim of infiltrating The Order, a secret society of magicians whose leader is responsible for the death of his mother, only to discover that they're at war with a rival sect of werewolves.

The effects are decent enough, and there are some familiar faces in the supporting cast (Matt Frewer, Jewel Staite) but I doubt I'm going to make to the end of S1 simply because every single character is a complete arsehole. Every last one is as irritating as all fuck, to the extent that I have to believe that this is some deliberate choice by the writers, but whatever they're trying to achieve with that choice makes watching each episode a chore.

*Worked out that if we cancelled our barely-used cable TV package then we could upgrade to Virgin's top-tier broadband and save about £20 a month, even when adding the cost of Netflix, Disney+ and BritBox subs on top of my existing Prime Video account.

[Tjm86]

TBH Netflix tends to be my cooking / washing up go to so I tend to plug for brain candy.  Stumbled across the rather curious "Scorpion" starring Robert Patrick.  Sort of a near-diverse A-team style series that seems somehow to have survived into a 2nd series.  Apparently based on the life of a real Walter O'brien who seems a little Walter Mitty-ish.

It's predictable, formulaic, occasionally narcissistic but watchable in a 'disengage brain and just go along for the ride without stretching yourself' kind of way.  The old tropes about intelligence versus emotion trotted out.  Lots of awkward 'humour'.  Plenty of cobbling together solutions from anything lying around.  All it misses to more closely emulate our go-to saturday night fare of choice is running gun battles with thousands of rounds flying around and hitting nothing.

[Link Prime]

Kolchak The Night Stalker - I love this daffy old series, mildly obsessed as I am with urban America circa the 1970s, and seeing Chicago up close like this as I have another rewatch is a treat.  The monster-of-the-week formula works best when we don't see the often-terrible creature work and the threat remains offscreen or filmed in the first person, but the lizard monster rampaging around the mining colony on Janus VI secret laboratory is simultaneously laughable and fantastic, having the ability to smash through any wall at any moment and murder everyone in the room, yet also for some reason appearing out of thin air in these incredibly long, empty tunnels.  Great fun.

Nothing as comforting as 70's / early 80's genre TV.
In the past 12 months I've consumed full DVD series of Night Gallery, Thriller, Armchair Thriller, Scorpion Tales, Shadows of Fear and Hammer House of Horror.

Always on the lookout for stuff like this, so will give Kolchak a try.

[Mardroid]

I just cancelled my subscription to Starzplay after finishing Mr Mercedes, only to find that the first 3 episodes of series 2 of Doom Patrol are now up! I guess they'll add these on a weekly basis so I think I'll be renewing the subscription again soon. (I still have to early August before the current runs out.)

Anyway, I enjoyed Mr Mercedes a lot. I already covered series 1 in a previous post. The second and third series harvest plenty of material from the second and third novels in the Finders Keepers series, but not in that order. I.e series 2 is primarily based on book 3 and series 3 is based mainly on book 2. They deviate much more from the novels in the last 2 series, but this isn't a bad thing. There was a whole plot in book 3 that was kind of set up in the second series but didn't really go anywhere. They may come back to that in a future series however.

The first 3 episodes of Doom Patrol series 2 were enjoyable and suitably mad. The new character introduced at the end of series 1 is quite endearing, rather twee and potentially very dangerous- an interesting combination.

I'm also a few episodes into Deadly Class. I think I may have read some of the comics this is based on. So far I'm quite enjoying it, although it's a bit silly in places.

[repoman]

Finished Future Man which started brilliantly and ended up being okay by the end.  Worth it overall.

Currently working through The Tick which is alright too. 

Rewatching The IT Crowd yet again.  Timeless stuff.

[von Boom]

Rewatching The IT Crowd yet again.  Timeless stuff.

But have you tried turning it off and on?

[Hawkmumbler]

Rewatching The IT Crowd yet again.  Timeless stuff.

Oh goddamn these electric sex pants!

[Radbacker]

Watching an episode a night of the Brave New World Series, I remember as a youngun we were supposed to read the original novel for year 11 English lit class but I bugged out and never read it (qt the time I was a Fantasy nerd and not really into sci-fi especially something from the 30's!!!), so I have a question for those that have read it - was it full of sex like the newer TV series because if so my teen self missed out.  I have no doubt the series has been modernised quite a bit from the original (a controlling AI probably didn't feature in the original or if it did Aldis really was way ahead of the curve) but it is quite interesting and certainly well acted, as he world is also very well realised and you can see a decent amount of money up on the screen, I'm enjoying it quite a bit but was wondering what book lovers think of it compared to the original novel, also is the original novel still worth a read (I'm not big into classic sci-fi the oldest novel I read wAs Tiger Tiger by Alfred Bester but I did really enjoy it as I could see the ideas some of my favourite modern authors stole from it).

CU Radbacker

[Dandontdare]

There's a new version of Brave New World out? Ooh, I'll seek that out.

It's been many many years since I read the book, but it's certainly worth a read - the final paragraph  is beautifully haunting, one of my favourite conclusions to a book ever. I don't remember much graphic descriptions of sex, but it's made clear that casual hook-ups are commonplace.

For themed background listening while reading, try Soma Holiday by G.O.L.