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On telly this week

Started by Emperor, 24 December, 2011, 04:01:53 PM

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Dandontdare

Quote from: Link Prime on 29 March, 2017, 10:43:22 PM
Quite surprised to find that Film 4 are airing 2016's High Rise tonight.
Kudos to my other half for hitting record earlier - it's already showing (likely still available on catch-up though).

One to delete from the Amazon wish list...

Based on the very familiar premise, I had to google the date Ballard wrote that last night to see if he'd had been reading Dredd or Wagner had been reading Ballard - turns out to be 1975 so old J.G. got there first!

Steve Green


Link Prime

Future Shock style Sci-fi on The Horror Channel at 9.00pm tomorrow night; The Signal.

Predictable (I twigged the twist as soon as they mentioned the clocks weren't working) but nevertheless satisfying genre film.

Theblazeuk

American Gods on the Amazon-telly-thing. S'good! Bit naff, but then Neil Gaiman's stuff has always been a little bit naff. Embrace the naffness and silliness and enjoy the creepy, slightly cracked world within a world that still encompasses all of the wonder of faith and sacrifice. Would watch just for Ian McShane of course.

CrazyFoxMachine

I'm watching it - yeah it's a bit "atmospherically intriguing" (aka 'more metaphorical allegory than narrative') but visually intriguing and... yeah, I could just watch Ian McShane read from a coobook and be satisfied.

Theblazeuk

"Take 500 grams of flours, sift, and shove it up your ass"

Bolt-01

ITV 4 are showing Unforgiven tonight. My youngest have never seen this- time to fix that.

Mardroid

Unforgiven. Yeah, I think that might be my favourite Western. Well it's up there, anyway.

I, Cosh

If you can't stand watching the election results tonight, Film4 has a cracking double bill of Lucy and Haywire.

Both better than Unforgiven.
We never really die.

Theblazeuk

Cosh has just lost his seat (in the cinema).

CrazyFoxMachine

Another delve into the unusually involved telly-consumption of LG and I for the pleasure of my rambleglands alone possibly.

American Dad: Season 14
This is still rumbling on and despite having shifted networks and lost producers it's still surprisingly solid but most certainly treading water a little bit at this point. I gave up Family Guy a long time ago but I still find I have time for its weirder cousin.

Bosch: Season 3
Titus Welliver's buttoned-down LA detective Harry Bosch is as sombre as they come. Absurdly dense crime drama played out in a world of desaturated motels and empty parking lots. I first watched it because it has writing/casting ties to the evergreen The Wire but it's actually closer to Homicide in tone - wrestling between bleak normality and the unbelievable. If you like detective stuff but actually want to sit and watch it rather than let it dumbly wash over you then this is worth a go I think.

Game of Thrones: Season 7
Obviously everybody and their dog and their dog's tiny dog and their dog's tiny dog's pet flea called Chris is watching this. Our household is doing it even more intently than most as LG writes for Watchers on the Wall and stays up to watch it AMERICAN TIME. At like two in the morning. I don't have nearly that much enthusiasm for it so I wait and watch it at my own sweet slow leisure. Leaves me vulnerable to spoilers but ffuuuuuck it. Without the books to guide it it now only has the lore it's established to run off which seems to be motivating them to tie up a lot of fraying loose ends from the first few seasons. Which is actually quite pleasing - ten out of ten for Jim Broadbent showing up this season as well.

GLOW
We've talked about this on other threads but I'm enjoying the indulgently dense 80's tone of this women's wrestling league drama/comedy thing. It's chokka with striking characters - also there's a streak of genuine nastiness in it. The neurotically earnest (or earnestly neurotic) Alison Brie character is a great faulty lead - and KATE NASH IS THERE WTF. Only on episode 3 but I'm compelled to watch more.

Grace & Frankie: Season 3
This often surprisingly touching comedy about the doings of two 70 year old women whose husbands marry eachother went a bit astray in Season 2 for me. They chose to suddenly crowbar a character in (doing the "OH THEY'VE ALWAYS BEEN FRIENDS YOU JUST NEVER MET THEM" thing) only to then kill them off for a bit of cheap emotional resonance in the finale. Three has been far stronger though - choosing to tighten the focus in on the central cast and featured a genuinely touching arc where Martin Sheen's particularly likeable character [spoiler]disastrously comes out to and then subsequently loses his homophobic mother.[/spoiler] It's all a bit soapy but there are some great performances and it's a refreshing to watch a demographic you rarely see looked at in such detail.

The Mash Report
Nish Kumar hosts a weekly satirical thing with the writers of the Daily Mash website. Sort of a cross between a tame On the Hour and the Daily Show. On paper it's an excellent idea but some of the staged studio banter is cringy and perhaps it could use a bit more of a Jon Oliver style analytical edge. Nice to see No Such Thing as a Fish's Andrew Hunter-Murray on here as well. Patchy but promising. More satire is never a bad thing.

Rick & Morty: Season 3
Haven't got stuck into this yet but obviously the first episode aired on April 1st so I'VE TECHNICALLY STARTED WATCHING IT. 2017 marks the year when Rick & Morty have truly gone mentally massive. To the degree that MacDonalds are basing marketing stunts around it (which, to be fair, even they seem freaked out about). It's an odd feeling given I remember how keen I was to see it do well after seeing the first few episodes in the winter of 2013. There's a lot of pressure on it to maintain the bewildering and wildly imaginative tone that makes it so unique and I hope they do that - they're obviously quite keen on getting continuity more involved in the picture this time around as well so I hope that doesn't dilute the freshness of it all.

The Strain: Season 4
Things went utterly cataclysmic at the end of the last season and now everything's gone a bit dystopian. All of the team are in complete disarray and The Strain continues to be a compelling watch. Trashy - slightly - but genuinely gripping at points with a good slew of characters THAT COULD DIE AT ANY TIME. It has come a looong way from the first season (they even have a bonafide title sequence now) but it's been remarkably consistent. Casting bonus: the awesome Martian Alex from The Expanse seems to be a central figure this series which I'm well up for.

Trollhunters
We watch one episode every week and a half roughly - and so the 26-episode behemoth that is Trollhunters first season has taken us over half a year to conquer. As I said before it feels closer to a Dreamworks animation in longform than anything I've seen - bright, colourful, action-packed and with a nice set of central characters. There's a good plot running through it and has kept us watching these long months. It's slightly tempered by the sad fact that the engaging central kid Jim was voiced by Anton Yelchin who died suddenly last summer. A character talking about Jim said in the last episode we saw that "he's getting older - his voice might change" and when I suddenly realized the implications of that I was caught with unexpected grief.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Season 3
A third season about the madly positive former bunker prisoner trying to make it out in the real world still finds it as a profoundly weird show which features a slew of consistently good characters and funny moments but it's driven by less of a narrative than the last series and I can't decide whether that's a good thing or not. I can never get enough Titus though. He's basically the hypnotoad for me. I'd just watch him sitting there.

The Windsors: Series 2
This soap-opera-styled satire of the Royal Family is still engagingly bonkers telly. It's cheap. The impressions are terrible. The schtick is wearing a bit thin. There are very few shows where you can see Prince Charles accidentally shooting his empathically-atuned identical twin who'd been locked in an attic for decades. You can't fault it for that. Also the criminally underrated Vicki Pepperdine as a sinister Princess Anne is genuinely magical.

RETRO CORNER

We've decided in the past few months to crack on with some series that we've been "meant to get around to" and found that we never were. Watching one episode a week as if THEN WERE NOW AND ALL WAS SWEET.

Breaking Bad: Season 3 (2010)
I love how Machiavellian BB is - with a relatively small cast making it so twisty is a real work of art. The lulls that S1 fell into are a distant memory and every episode here is rattling along marvelously. We're aboot halfway through - [spoiler]Hank totally owning the two twins was a stunning development and I didn't see it coming at all[/spoiler] I'm sure it's all going be fine.......

The Golden Girls: Season 5 (1989-1990)
I WON'T BE DISSUADED ON THIS. I've been watching these pastel-coloured Florida OAPs for years now and it's genuinely magical TV. Surprisingly progressive, bizarrely witty and brilliantly performed. The four are underrated comedy legends. I say underrated but they have opened aGolden Girls cafe:o TO NEW YORK!

Homicide - Life on the Street: Season 5 (1996-1997)
I've really enjoyed the weird tonal dissonance of this show over the years watching it. It's got one foot in more realist fare like what would become The Wire and all that - and one foot entirely in 90's earnest melodrama. The season finale with the stroke the season before was... genuinely harrowing and seeing the character readjusting to life has been quite fascinating. Also Ro Laren showed up which is fair enough. Engagingly nineties.

JLC

Quote from: I, Cosh on 08 June, 2017, 09:56:20 PM
If you can't stand watching the election results tonight, Film4 has a cracking double bill of Lucy and Haywire.

Both better than Unforgiven.
:lol: :lol: :lol:

Frank


Despite his trademark positivity, Professor Brain Cox's survey of capitalism's attempts to replace public sector space exploration with space exploitation is grimmer than Matt Damon and Heath Ledger.

The solar system is so wonderful and inspirational we mustn't waste any time finding ways to drill it to fuck.

Even more unnerving is the mute sex mek spouse of the world's first billionaire space tourist, whose corpse bride cosmetics and white gold hair and wardrobe appear to be chosen to coordinate with the decor of his mansion, meaning she disappears into the background like the Predator.

Elon Musk's plan to save the human race seems to involve shooting giant dildos into the heavens, presumably to plug the butt of Galactus?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b094f595



Jim_Campbell

Quote from: CrazyFoxMachine on 05 August, 2017, 03:57:56 PM
The Strain: Season 4
Things went utterly cataclysmic at the end of the last season and now everything's gone a bit dystopian.

I'm quite enjoying this season. The fact that it's definitely the last adds a certain 'they could kill any of these characters' frisson to the proceedings, but episode seven delivers a pay-off nearly as worthy of an air-punch [spoiler]as Ramsay Bolton getting his face chewed off by his own dogs.[/spoiler] <--Game of Thrones S6 spoiler under that tag!

It's been a patchy old ride, but I've enjoyed this more than I haven't. On balance, I'm strangely pleased to see it wrap up before it outstays its welcome, but I'll be sorry to see it go. 
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