Be Excellent To Each Other

If you're going to have a TV series about a nefarious, scheming, murderous man who lives amongst your close family in a dangerous situation and you don't want to follow the route of logic that would have his brains beaten out by episode two, you'd best go the other route and cast him as a campy, cowardly, blustering professor type who says "Ninny" and "Nincompoop!" and lots of other words beginning with 'N' a lot. ("I can do that," Samuel L. Jackson.)

I'd love for a gritty Nolan remake that inexplicably just had the original Dr Smith in it undermining all the po-faced guff with comedy histronics.

Sad iZombie is over but as endings go it was pretty good. I scoffed at the name and the premise at first, but it ended up being one of my all-time favourites.

I lost interest in Season 3. The whole Zombie City state thing. Did it improve?

Well it was still like that in season 5 so if you didn’t like that you probably wouldn’t like it two seasons later.

Things I have recently been watching on Netflix, years after everyone else:

Trigger Warning (OK, this is only half a year old). Killer Mike seems fun and smart but also undermines many of his good points. El-P looks old and middle agedly geeky without his sunnies on. Decent watch.

Stranger Things. Quite creepy and interesting so far. Me and Lady T are enjoying a couple of episodes of this each week.

People Just Do Nothing. With a fondness for early-mid 00s pirate radio hi-jinks this is fun to watch, it's got both silly and subtle humour and farce. Lady T doesn't like it, which I think is kind-of a good sign when it comes to comedy.




Ha ha, something like that would be incredible. I did like how Jonathan Harris basically stole the show and made it all about his character, to the reported chagrin of the other adult cast

I still have an incredible fondness for the memories of the original series and the general concept. Huge nostalgia thing for sure.




GIMME GIMME GIMME PLZ

I watched this for the first time earlier in the year. I liked it (especially Chabuddy G), but I kept feeling so sorry for Miche. I don't know why, but I just couldn't get her life out of my head.

I think my favourite bit is where he builds a cot out of a disused BBQ.



Similar but different, I watched the first episode of that BBC documentary, Broke.

Essentially following the lives of a series of families who are employed but barely managing to get by. Some are working zero hours contracts, living in tents on the beach. Others are driving an Uber 60-hours a week, while being 60-years old and facing a future with no pension, property or savings.

Very sobering (and heart-warming at times, the Welsh family in particular are lovely), and it's been rattling around my head ever since.

I'll sort these out later... How do I do that remind me thing again?

Tell your missus

Use any one of the billion reminder/task tracking apps available on your phone or PC?

I'm on the penultimate episode of this.

It's been... too much, if I'm honest. The violence, the gore, the obscenity. It's been cranked up way beyond 11, and it's affected the characters and their behaviour. I'm obviously not looking for realism with a show like Happy, but I feel like Nick, McCarthy, Amanda, none of them are behaving as their characters actually would. Personality is neatly side-stepped to smash into the next insane set-piece.

That all said, it's horribly bonkers and Netflix will be a much poorer place without it.

now I want to watch Gimme gimme gimme

We watched Stranger things S3 which was good
We watched Lucifer S4 which was fun
Now we're watching Altered Carbon which is interesting and intriguing but some bits are super extreme upclose sadisticly violent which Im not such a fan of

I heard that Russian Doll has been nominated for 13 emmys

GLOW is back tomorrow.

WAIT WHAT?

HE SAID GLOW IS BACK TOMORROW

WOOO HOOO

I've been watching Wu Assassins and... it's not bad. I wanted to make a Sat-esque 'poo assassins' comment but it's a reasonably enjoyable if incredibly cliched and full of hokum and stereotypes (some monks, some magic, chosen one blah blah) with the guy from The Night Comes For Us. He can do a fight scene really well and can almost kinda act alright too.

It's quite well made, although I do wonder if there are hidden messages to pick up

Price has gone up.

I hope the person who's password I'm using doesn't find out.

It seems using a VPN to log in to the Turkish site then changing your plan will get you cheaper bills.
No need to use anything while you are viewing afterwards.

Punisher season 2 - not as good as Punisher's outings in Daredevil and P S1, and definitely a slow start. The one with the police station in Hicksville was a bit trope laden, and Madani remains somewhat dull. Similarly Billy. However, ep 5 (Russians!) and 6 it seem to have started picking up the pace. And the sidekick is growing on me.

Yeah 1st season was better, still enjoyed watching dear old Frank fucking people up though. Shame there's no more as Jon Bernthal is perfectly cast.

Just finished Stranger Things 3. I think Lady T had some pretty serious hots for Chief Hopper.

Would have been far more powerful if they'd not had the last few moments around the credits.

1>2>3



Yeah, I know what you mean, Miche is played in quite an honest and sympathetically naive way.

I finished it a few weeks ago and felt genuinely sad that it had ended, a feeling of loss. But - I'm glad it didn't get dragged out as the later series were showing signs of tiredness, I felt.

So this week, I started watching it again. The first few series are ace. Also, the actress that plays Miche's boss is super hot.

As time goes by, the Coke scene and the song scene from Stranger Things 3 get weirder and weirder.

What the fuck where they doing there?

It was awkward, and it really didn't fit the tone of the scene but I didn't hate it. Adverts stick in kids heads.

As I was watching ST, especially the later series, it felt more to me like I was watching stories as told through the lens of a youngsters imagination - with scenes lifted from/inspired by/pariodied from something they'd seen recently, be it a cool scene in a movie, an advert, an earworm of a song, the slightly jarring pop culture references. Also, the ramping up of the stakes each time, and the switching between serious and silly moments within the same scene.

In a way I feel it's a kids story presented for adults, and I really enjoyed it for that.

Or it could be that ST1 had been meticulously written and curated over years by The Duffer Brothers so they knew exactly what they were doing, and how they wanted to do it, whereas with ST2 and ST3 they were literally making it up as they went along. (Which is totally what happened.)

I liked the song scene in ST3 just for the juxtaposition of everyone being in ludicrously dangerous situations and looking bemused while it happened, but other than that I thought it was a little bit weird.

Unbelievable.

I can't really say anything much about it without ruining it so I won't, other than I watched it all yesterday.

Utterly awesome.

Surviving R.Kelly.

What a disgrace of a human being. Glad he's where he kept all of his 13 year olds, locked up.

Quite enjoyed the first Episode of Carnival Row. It has the elf in it from Lotr.

I got bored of it half way through.

As someone who watched 4 episodes, it varies from ep1 being a bit beat you around the head with on the nose immigration stuff. I think give it time. Ep 2 being better with some okay character development. Ep 3 being like ep 1 and Ep 4 being, "oh no, it's another example of cretins being given too much money to make something and having all the nuance of a bunch of earnest 14 year olds doing am-dram. SHIT! Did I really recommend this to doccyG's other half after two episodes!"

You'll love it!

Fantastic. I love Hugo Weaving

He means Liv Tyler.

Really enjoyed the Netflix Top Boy revival. Fantastic telly.

Ace.

Speaking of which, Riverdale series four is out soon!

Wahay and we are off again! Bloody beautiful.

You are a one, Mali.

Started Haunted last night. Loved it, didn't love the atrocious nightmare I had last night. I had to literally get up, wash my face and sit up for a while to get back to sleep without it recurring.

Over the last few days I've watched When they see us, Unbelievable and (most of) Tell me who I am.

When they see us did get better in the second two episodes, but I didn't feel that the first two were particularly well done, the whole story felt rushed and I didn't really buy in to the characters, which is a shame because it carries an important message.

Unbelievable was frustrating to watch due to what was happening to the first victim. I could feel myself cringing as I was watching it! Definitely glad that I watched it to the last episode though. Kaitlyn Denver played the role so well. Knowing that this was based on true events, I've noticed a real trend in focusing on the victims/survivors rather than the perpetrators lately which is refreshing.

Half way through Tell me who I am. Only just getting to how he found out about his past (then my phone rang and I was typing this), but it's quite a moral conundrum. I'm a big advocate of honesty and hate lies, but in those circumstances, I'm not sure that I wouldn't have withheld information about past abuse too.

Unbelievable was awesome. Poor girl

It's sad when people express things in a non standard way.

Managed to finish watching this before Joan's got home. Not exactly Sunday afternoon watching to be fair. Selfishly I always feel a little relieved to hear that someone else has had an abusive mother. Not because I want it to happen to anyone, but because it seems to be something that isn't spoken or heard about in society and I have experienced the assumption that I must have done something bad because 'Mothers don't behave that way for no reason, you must have done something wrong' when females can be just as abusive as males, and not all mothers are maternal.

I watched Carnival Row on Amazon Prime and liked it though I found it depressing in the majority hatred of "strangers" theme
I started watching Unbelievable but had to turn it off after like half an hour because the sad feelings
Steve and I have been watching The Ranch which used to be funny but has turned tragic

Due to all sort of awfulness in personal life I am in dire need of cheerful, people being nice and/or funny series to watch
I tried The Good Place but I just don't get what's funny about it

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt has a dark premise but is not at all that.

And I love a bit of Doc Martin, if you've never seen it. Idealised coastal Britain, what could be better?

It’s not a series, but I really liked the film Swimming With Men. We also watch Last Vegas last night, about four old guys that go to Las Vegas for a stag do (Robert De Nero and Morgan Freeman) and that’s warm and about friendship, though does have a few bikini jokes.

For light hearted comedies I like short burst episodes of things like Brooklyn 99, Parks and Rec, 30 Rock, though there’s a good chance you’ve seen all those.

I hope that your sadnesses start to ease with time. So sorry to hear you are experiencing so many bad things at the moment. Sending hugs across the sea. PS: Russell was going to answer this earlier, so these shows are partly his suggestion, but he couldn’t type then so I e basically stolen his response, so really the hugs are definitely doubled by him also xxx

thank you for the ideas and for the double hugs
Didn't mean to be vague, it's mostly my health for the past year and now after months of uncertainty we know that steves father has pancreatic cancer and cant be operated on and the distance (NL / UK) and the uncertainty about how long he has and sadness and worry for his mom etc etc
should be in a different topic I know, but was looking for distraction TV



JBR: I love Kimmy, except for the last season , I will look to see if Doc Martin is on the Dutch Netflix, I think it's Clunes? I've never seen an episode but idealised coastal Britain sounds perfect

Mimi I will look up your films, and I have actually never watched the series you named, though I remember trying Parcs and Rec and not getting the funny, but I might not have given it a chance


I forgot to say we're now watching Fresh Prince of Bel Air with Katie, nicely retro, and the glass blowing competition Blown away which is very cool.
But was looking something for after she goes off to bed in the evenings

Parks and Rec S1 is not very good (but thankfully short). S2 onwards is glorious.

Agreed, however Aziz Ansari has ruined it for me by being a slimy fuck.