Last television show you watched

Somerset wrote:

CJB wrote:

It was all about the right to big arms, wasn't it?

Excellent.

Some might even say the right to bare arms.

Freedom of the (overhead) press.

The right to a speedy mile.

Etc.

Salomé wrote:

Station Eleven

Very enjoyable but ultimately I still ended up much preferring the novel.
I did not care for the changes they made to the source material though I can understand why they made them (mostly to bring various story lines a bit closer together). The Miranda scenes ultimately felt closest to the spirit of Emily St. John Mandel's book.

First I’d heard of this (book or show). Surprised as it seems to have sold over a million copies according to wiki. Also interesting that the whole production began (if I’m reading this right) right before Covid and finished only recently, considering the swine flu component of the narrative itself.

There was some talk about this. A show where the actors had to wear face masks to simulate the measures that might be taken in response to the outbreak of an airborne pandemic. And then production got shut down because all of that stuff became a reality. Must have been pretty surreal for the cast and crew.

The new season of UPLOAD has finally arrived, and we blew through it in 2 nights. They did some daring things, keeping the dead guy and the girl apart for nearly the whole run, while introducing a lot of interesting science fiction concepts and doing some more over political stuff (like revealing the cigarette smoking man from THE X-FILES as being sort of the equivalent of an intelligently crafty Trump), but the end result is that they have deepened the universe immensely while still ultimately delivering something like emotional satisfaction regarding the main couple. WAY too short of a season, and it definitely feels like some of the beats in character arcs were omitted, but leaving you wanting more can be a virtue, I guess. Glad they are already writing s3, and will probably have this season on the rewatch list along with the first season.

Also saw the new season of MRS MAISEL, and, while each season seems to be draggy in spots and WAY too chirpy, it do have its moments. Mainly the moments have to do with the actor playing Lenny Bruce, who gets a huge hunk of the last episode to absolutely shine. As in, he is excellent here like Matthew Good in the new 'making of THE GODFATHER' series THE OFFER [I've seen screeners of the first 3 eps of that one, it arrives end of April] is excellent, mindblowingly so. He handles the big speeches adroitly and you just feel what he feels, down in the curled toes of your feet.

I don't really like the Mrs. Maisel character too much (being a plucky, ahead-of-her-time-by-decades heroine in a color-coordinated period environment means the show has a couple strikes against it from the get-go), and think the actress did less-lauded, much better work in the early going of that Kevin Spacey President show and in the little-season-but-by-me-much-loved MANHATTAN.

I sat down to watch the first ep of the newest season of Maisel but got sidetracked since they were releasing them one per week. It was a bit difficult to get into, mostly because it’s been so long since the last season I’ve forgotten where the story is at. I understand the season’s out in full now so I will have to go back and try again — for a couple years there it was one of only two or three shows I was really looking out for.

Only Murders in the Building

Charming and occasionally genuinely funny. Made almost entirely by the large quantities of on-screen chemistry between the three leads: old pals Steve Martin and Martin Short joined by Selena Gomez.

Less sure about the second season, but then any remotely successful U.S. series always gets another season. So it was kind of inevitable, regardless of whether or not it made sense within the story.

Salomé wrote:

Less sure about the second season, but then any remotely successful U.S. series always gets another season.

I am astounded at the number of shows currently that I’ve never heard of and which seem to have like five seasons.

Yet I'm still pissing & moaning 20 years later about how BOOMTOWN only got about a season and a third (that last part due to the NBC network forcing the creatives to gut their own concept and bring in a 'hottie' in order to secure a renewal) and FIREFLY didn't even air a full half-season (and Fox didn't even put the pilot up till the end of the run.)

Firefly was a travesty. In the age of streaming, that show 100% gets picked up by Netflix or Amazon Prime or any of their competitors.
Similar to how Prime saved the Expanse after Syfy inexplicably dropped it even though it was by far the best show on their channel (and this wasn't remotely close).

As I think I said elsewhere in this thread having finally gotten around to watching Firefly during the pandemic, it had a cool Western-in-space vibe, an attractive cast, had good action sequences and it was funny too ... should've been a six-season smash-hit.

Salomé wrote:

Firefly was a travesty. In the age of streaming, that show 100% gets picked up by Netflix or Amazon Prime or any of their competitors.
Similar to how Prime saved the Expanse after Syfy inexplicably dropped it even though it was by far the best show on their channel (and this wasn't remotely close).

SyFy killed FARSCAPE when it was the only thing they had going that was good. I think Diller, the guy who ran SyFy,has always said he hated space shows (he was running Paramount pre-Eisner and probably had a lot to do with STAR TREK not happening till after STAR WARS hit.)

Well, NATURALLY you hire someone who 'hates space shows' to run a network called SyFy.

Bloody hell.

trevanian wrote:

Salomé wrote:

Firefly was a travesty. In the age of streaming, that show 100% gets picked up by Netflix or Amazon Prime or any of their competitors.
Similar to how Prime saved the Expanse after Syfy inexplicably dropped it even though it was by far the best show on their channel (and this wasn't remotely close).

SyFy killed FARSCAPE when it was the only thing they had going that was good. I think Diller, the guy who ran SyFy,has always said he hated space shows (he was running Paramount pre-Eisner and probably had a lot to do with STAR TREK not happening till after STAR WARS hit.)

How do you manage to hire a guy to run SyFy who hates space shows?

I'm a little hazy on the details, but I'm pretty sure Diller bought USA network around 25 years back, and had his henchwoman 'save' the SciFiChannel by instituting a lot of changes.

hit pause on that ... looked on reddit ... okay, the channel isn't blameless on this (putting the show on at 5 in the morning, threatening to cancel the show as a negotiating ploy), but it may have had more to do with Henson's company being sold to German investors who weren't thrilled about deficit-financing more years of the show.

Yeah, Diller was a devout Catholic who rejected the early STAR TREK script from Roddenberry because I guess it offended him. That would have been the story called THE GOD THING, which if I remember right, has got Vulcans raising eyebrows at humans over the concept of eating God during Church and spending every seventh day at rest in honor of said deity. (It also had a lot of similarities to what was done with Scott's PROMETHEUS ... apparently there was a setting to give man a boost 2000 years ago with a Jesus figure, but somehow the record got stuck in that same groove and didn't advance past that, so mankind was kind of turning into a bad crop. This is all from memory, but you can see how this wouldn't have flown with Diller at all.)

After putting it off for decades, finally started watching BAND OF BROTHERS (lucked into a dvd box set with both that and THE PACIFIC) after realizing so many BOOMTOWN cast worked together first on this, dug myself a trench and waited for the shells to start falling.

Wow, damned good. Gone through six installments in three days, and not a lemon in the bunch so far. They haven't overused the no-blur PVT RYAN look the way I thought they might have, and while the color treatment is a bit extreme for my taste, it isn't objectionable, which is probably a credit to the material.

BoB was great TV. In general I do think The Pacific is the superior war show.
Specifically because it also deals with the cost of these men's service after they returned home.

I don't recall if I watched The Pacific in its entirety, but I just remember the Australia-based episode being very cringe.

BoB is a hell of a series, undeniably.

I am watching...



...for the first time since catching it on TvLand as a kid.

Needed a pace change from anything 90s and newer.

The only western I ever liked growing up. My mom and dad, being of that generation, were always really into the genre. I remember both watching Gunsmoke on the westerns channel all the time. I could never get into westerns at that age, even now I don’t think of myself as a fan of the genre itself.

But Maverick was always different. Can’t say I remembered much before staring this rewatch but I do remember the joy of the show, as that’s why I liked it. Maverick — both of them in these early years, still haven’t got to Sir Rog yet — is a great character. Garner is wonderful in particular. Born to the part.

Entire show is simply what a wonderful hour of television looks like.

Highlights so far:

"Shady Deal at Sunny Acres“ deserves its reputation. Maverick is swindled out of money and wants it back. Cue an ensemble cast of characters from the show’s past in a large scale con job operation. Guy who wrote it maintains it was the basis for The Sting. Maybe so.

“Gun-Shy” is an amazing send up of b&w Gunsmoke. “I’m just as far out of range as you are.”

“The Saga of Waco Williams“ shows what a great character Garner plays. Waco Williams is an honorable, courageous man who faces his fate with dignity. Garner breaking the fourth wall at the end to marvel at this man who goes so against his own philosophy was spot on, didn’t feel at all strange — and having it fly over Bret’s head that he was just as courageous and honorable is brilliant.

“Riverboat, ring your bell,
Fare thee well, Annabel.
Luck is the lady that he loves the best

“Natchez to New Orleans
Livin on jacks and queens
Maverick is a legend of the west.”

Rewatched a lot of the 'mythology' episodes of X-FILES, along with the comedy ones, in recent weeks, and enjoyed them all more than ever. Am also finishing each evening with an episodic rewatch of PARKS & REC, which provides mild escapism from real world before bed.

This week, got a free month of Paramount+, mainly to finish watching THE OFFER and to try the Trek series STRANGE NEW WORLDS -- which, with the exception of its lead actor, I had a very bad feeling about, as it is run by the same folks mismanaging the rest of current trek.

SNW is not as bad as the other live-action shows ... that sets the bar pretty low, I know ... but ep 6 LIFT US WHERE SUFFERING CANNOT REACH is sensational. Absolutely delivers as Trek, and as a good hour of drama, an example of how you can take all these b and c plots and braid them to the main story so that they don't feel like painful or obnoxious detours. Plus it had something of a downer ending, which suckers me in for Trek like you wouldn't believe.

It also has a moment of visual beauty near the end, which is remarkable given how CG-fake nearly everything effects-wise looks. Really miss the beauty of seeing a great physical miniature on close shots of spaceships, this thing seems very painterly in closeups, plus it has the current Trek problem of making space look like it is underwater with murk and flare and bluish hues.  

The series has tons of problems trading on established continuity and then flagrantly violating said continuity, and the interiors of the ship are ridiculous (captain's quarters are about the size of the engine room on the original series, and he has a fireplace in there!) but this is the one you oughta see to realize there is still tread left on the trek tire, and is probably by itself enough to keep me watching the remaining four eps in s1, even though I know they are going to be doing more trashing of what has gone before.

trevanian wrote:

Rewatched a lot of the 'mythology' episodes of X-FILES, along with the comedy ones, in recent weeks, and enjoyed them all more than ever. Am also finishing each evening with an episodic rewatch of PARKS & REC, which provides mild escapism from real world before bed.

I always think of tv working at different scales. Some of the best individual episodes I’ve seen are from shows that had mostly uninteresting duds 90% of the time. Then you have shows that had one or two of the greatest seasons ever...but fell off. Then you just have just the greatest shows that maintained a certain high level of consistency. But this is all to say that I think X Files hits all three lists. One of my favorite shows ever, with several great seasons and dozens of great individual episodes. I’ve been thinking of going back through them lately, as well. But I thought autumn might be more suitable.

I've never revisited X-Files ever since I watched a few episodes here and there during its original run.

Being a kid at the time, it all seemed genuinely spooky, unnerving and such. Is it actually more on the campy side when viewed in 2022?

Black Bird

Not bad, though very familiar material if you have watched any serial killer centric drama in the last decade.
But well-acted (Greg Kinnear especially is enjoyable as a competent cop) and nicely shot (first three episodes are helmed by Michael Roskam who did Bullhead and The Drop).

Forgot to add that Taron Egerton stars in it.
Has he never been mentioned as a possible next Bond or has the Kingsman association made that a non-starter?

CJB wrote:

Is it actually more on the campy side when viewed in 2022?

No not at all, at least I’ve never thought so. I think it plays exactly as it did at the time and as such it’s actually aged incredibly well. For example I think the “campiest” episode was probably “The Post Modern Prometheus” but it is deliberate and would absolutely have been taken as such back then.

Not sure why it’s aged so well. In part possibly because of the whole governmental paranoia thing. Possibly because they always seemed to lean into the horror more than the science fiction? The scariest of the “monsters-of-the-week” episodes never lost their bite.

And then the comedy episodes which come here and there were always very self-deprecating, which helps.

I used to be an avid viewer of The X-Files ... then the BBC starting shifting it around a (I guess some would argue appropriately) 'graveyard' slot (am not 100% sure with which season they started doing this) but it had previously had a regular 9:00 pm slot. This was in the days long before catch-up and streaming services, so a combo of this and then Duchovny bailing led to a loss of interest. I have still never seen the remaining seasons.

I enjoyed both the spin-off movies (although obviously the first is superior). The 2010s revival seasons were ... OK.

I have started on Evil (starring Katja Herbers & Mike Colter).
Which is essentially a supernatural procedural of sorts, where a small team led by a Seminarian conducts investigations of possible supernatural events (demonic possessions, miracles, ...) for the Vatican.
The writing is nothing especially noteworthy, but the performances are very good. Especially the two leads.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

This was in the days long before catch-up and streaming services, so a combo of this and then Duchovny bailing led to a loss of interest. I have still never seen the remaining seasons.

Season 6 was the last great one. There might be a few episodes from 7-9 I’ve seen more than once but I’d be hard pressed to name them.

Salomé wrote:

I have started on Evil (starring Katja Herbers & Mike Colter).
Which is essentially a supernatural procedural of sorts, where a small team led by a Seminarian conducts investigations of possible supernatural events (demonic possessions, miracles, ...) for the Vatican.
The writing is nothing especially noteworthy, but the performances are very good. Especially the two leads.

I was intrigued by the promos for Evil on first seeing them. To tie it back around to X Files, Evil was kinda giving me Millennium vibes. I say that having only seen a handful of Millennium eps. (I’ve always wanted to watch the whole series but it’s not streaming anywhere, nor have I ever seen it streaming anywhere.) Shame the writing isn’t anything to note. Guess I’ll keep it on the backburner for now and maybe try to track down Millennium “somehow.”