What was the last TV show you watched?

[MisterCairo]

Doh!
Wallander.

Gotcha!

Try out Marcella too, if you like creepy crime dramas...

 

[MisterCairo]

Movie night last night was "tv catch up" night for mummy and daddy, so it was this week's Taboo (wow!) and Supernatural (okay only unfortunately).

 

[Fading Fast]

"Taboo" most recent episode

• UK, US and East India Company circling and firing at Delaney, but fortunately, keep shooting each other when they miss him - check
• One impressive looking white horse carrying Delaney's Satan-like silhouette to God-knows-what or where - check
• Some brutally visceral physical torture - thumb chopped-off in this episode / and crazy pseudo-religious ceremony - an exorcism just short of waterboarding - check
• Delaney's misfit cohorts of outcasts, urchins, whores and oddballs moving Delaney's schemes forward propelled by loyalty, fear and opportunism - check
• Creepy sexual tension increasing between Delaney and his father's widowed wife being greatly surpassed by the meaningfully creepier sexual tension between Delaney and his half-sister - check
• The same half sister, looking possessed, being physically abused by her husband and leaving everyone guessing as to what's going on in her confused mind behind her haunted, bony, bug-eyed, but oddly attractive face - check
• Sorry to see same half sister's husband not killed - check
• Crazy "scientists" working on some crazy gunpowder mixture for Delaney's scheme - check
• Disfigured body left for dead on waterfront - check

Yup, just another normal episode of "Taboo."

 

[Touchofevil]

Gotcha!

Try out Marcella too, if you like creepy crime dramas...

I do. Thank you for the recommendation. We are always looking for something new to watch.

 

[Touchofevil]

Vikngs last night. Ivar: oops...

 

[MisterCairo]

I do. Thank you for the recommendation. We are always looking for something new to watch.

FYI - it's pronounced "Mar-CHELL-a", not "Mar-SELL-a", as the character says in episode one...

 

[Touchofevil]

A couple of episodes of SIX. It was okay.

 

[Ernest P Shackleton]

Until The Americans starts again next month, Taboo has to be the best series on TV at the moment, and it might still be once that happens. If it has a weakness, besides the horrendous audio, it is the sidetracking, or at least dragging, of the sister's role. Her entire arc is too slow. Get on with it. As told so far, it isn't interesting. More abuse. More mysticism or witchery. I'm not advocating for more abuse or brutality, but something. It's a limp noodle as they're telling it, and they have a lot of other more interesting characters. They're toying with kinkiness. I couldn't tell if that rod she pulled out of the drawer was about to be a weapon or urethral sound.

 

[Touchofevil]

Until The Americans starts again next month, Taboo has to be the best series on TV at the moment, and it might still be once that happens. If it has a weakness, besides the horrendous audio, it is the sidetracking, or at least dragging, of the sister's role. Her entire arc is too slow. Get on with it. As told so far, it isn't interesting. More abuse. More mysticism or witchery. I'm not advocating for more abuse or brutality, but something. It's a limp noodle as they're telling it, and they have a lot of other more interesting characters. They're toying with kinkiness. I couldn't tell if that rod she pulled out of the drawer was about to be a weapon or urethral sound.

Subtitles and a sound bar have helped us get through the audio problems of Taboo.

 

[AmateisGal]

I'm having a Foyle's War marathon today. Thank goodness for Netflix.

 

[Fading Fast]

Subtitles and a sound bar have helped us get through the audio problems of Taboo.

We did a lot of homework and bought a Sonos sound bar. It was one of those days I'm glad my dad wasn't alive to know how much money I spent on some seemingly frivolous purchase. But is was money well spent. It was a stupid amount, but now we can hear most shows.

For some reason, the better shows seem to think that having their characters mumble is an important artistic component. "Taboo" is just the latest example - there was plenty of mumbling on "Boardwalk Empire," "Hell on Wells," "Mad Men," and others. We finally couldn't take it and broke down and bought the sound bar.

Only on rare occasions now do we have to go back and turn up the volume to hear something clearly. "Taboo" is the one show that still happens on because Tom Hardy clearly believes most of his dialogue is supposed to be spoken in an inaudible garble.

Sound bars are almost necessary accessories today. In an odd way, it "offset" the fall in TV prices so that - all in - a TV and sound bar cost you what a good TV used to. Sigh.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'm having a Foyle's War marathon today. Thank goodness for Netflix.

That show was a gem. Plots were a bit of a made up mess, but who cares, it was all about the characters (and wonderful period sets and details).

I know after the series ended, they came back and did a few follow up episodes that, at the time, they indicated they might do again. Does anyone know if new episodes have been or will be shot?

 

[Fading Fast]

Until The Americans starts again next month, Taboo has to be the best series on TV at the moment, and it might still be once that happens. If it has a weakness, besides the horrendous audio, it is the sidetracking, or at least dragging, of the sister's role. Her entire arc is too slow. Get on with it. As told so far, it isn't interesting. More abuse. More mysticism or witchery. I'm not advocating for more abuse or brutality, but something. It's a limp noodle as they're telling it, and they have a lot of other more interesting characters. They're toying with kinkiness. I couldn't tell if that rod she pulled out of the drawer was about to be a weapon or urethral sound.

I'd be satisfied if they'd simply kill her husband. Also, "toying with kinkiness" is kind - what she has going on with her half brother is full-on, squirm-in-your-seat kinkiness.

In the same vein, they have to clarify, expand, explain or do something with Delaney's voodoo or magic or what have you. I'm okay with that stuff if it is reasonably explained, delineated and treated with consistent rules and boundaries. When it becomes a flexible dues ex machina for every plot hole the writers buried themselves in - I lose interest quickly.

 

[scotrace]

Binged all of "The OA" yesterday on Netflix.

 

[Benzadmiral]

A 1962 episode of Have Gun - Will Travel, "The Waiting Room." It's a mystery variation on 3:10 to Yuma, except that Paladin isn't tasked with finding a murderer. He's escorting a murderous criminal (James Griffith) to jail. Griffith's character, Dave Wilder, says he has lots of "family" who'll spring him and shoot Paladin in the bargain . . . and so Paladin must discover which of the people waiting for the train (an old Indian woman, a young cowboy, a dance-hall girl, the station agent, or a middle-aged black man) is Wilder's ally.

The clues are planted fairly, especially since the major clue is right in front of the viewer for more than 10 minutes of the 30-minute show!

 

[MisterCairo]

Subtitles and a sound bar have helped us get through the audio problems of Taboo.

Our audio is fine, I wonder what could be affecting yours?!

 

[MisterCairo]

Mid-season opener of The Walking Dead - Possibly the best overall episode this season, looking forward to more!

 

[Edward]

I'm about to watch "World's End," my favorite episode of Cold Case.

I've not seen that show in some time, but it was always well done. I particularly appreciated the episode where Barry Bostwick plays the present day version of a killer who was involved in the Rocky Horror scene in the late seventies. The whole thing was just beautiful, clearly put together with a lot of love for and real understanding of that scene - not least in the detail that fan shows them were not run the same way as they are now.

Subtitles and a sound bar have helped us get through the audio problems of Taboo.

Audio problems? We're watching it on a laptop , but no problem.... Is it a dialogue familiarity thing, I wonder?

I'd be satisfied if they'd simply kill her husband. Also, "toying with kinkiness" is kind - what she has going on with her half brother is full-on, squirm-in-your-seat kinkiness.

In the same vein, they have to clarify, expand, explain or do something with Delaney's voodoo or magic or what have you. I'm okay with that stuff if it is reasonably explained, delineated and treated with consistent rules and boundaries. When it becomes a flexible dues ex machina for every plot hole the writers buried themselves in - I lose interest quickly.

I'm five or six episodes in, and enjoying that they're keeping it fairly vague - I like the idea that we don't quite know whether he has some form of occult power, or is just mad. Or both.

 

[Ernest P Shackleton]

Also, "toying with kinkiness" is kind - what she has going on with her half brother is full-on, squirm-in-your-seat kinkiness.

The parental thing seems to be unclear, at least to me. Didn't they call him her half-brother at one point? Maybe that is merely semantics even in that period. I think I'm also jaded by watching all these old period pieces and them marrying cousins etc. I've come to assume, wrongly or not, that line breeding is commonplace.

Mercy Street. This season might be more pop culture accessible, but I'm not sold on that being better. More humor. Less historic or issue oriented. More love interests. I can't believe six episodes is considered a season.

 

[MisterCairo]

Is it a dialogue familiarity thing, I wonder?

Over the season so far, my wife and I have had two occasions to re-wind to properly hear something Delaney had said, but this "mumbling" is something quite common.

To this day, and I am the son of a Scotswoman, I can't understand 60% of what "Chibs" is saying on Sons of Anarchy. Tom Flannagan's from Glasgow, my mum was from Paisley.

it's not the accent, it's the mumbling. And we have a 100 watt sound system, so it's not a volume thing.