What was the last TV show you watched?

[Edward]

Gaslit, the miniseries about the Watergate scandal and its fallout. Comes at it not so much from the right / wrong / ethical / political angles as the human impact on those directly and indirectly involved. Very nice sense of period in the look - or, at least, very evocative of the look and feel of America on-screen in that period, a very different 70s than experienced on this side of the Atlantic.

Just about to catch the final episode of Station 11, something of a meditation on what human existence, and survival versus living, means in the context of a global pandemic having wiped out most of humanity. Pleasantly diverting.

 

[Ernest P Shackleton]

The Old Man. FX. The season finale was absurd. To avoid spoilers, I won't get into it. No season 2 for me.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Flashing back to my youth, MST3K: Radar Men From the Moon, a chapter by chapter Msting. Just started The Crawling Eye...
The Missus started The Waltons; good clean fun.

 

[Formeruser012523]

The Old Man. FX. The season finale was absurd. To avoid spoilers, I won't get into it. No season 2 for me.

Agreed. Felt the entire season was all questions, no answers. Felt it had potential but ultimately went nowhere.

 

[belfastboy]

"Grantchester" Season 1. Typical Brit production, great writing, great acting......and with 7 Seasons we have our viewing sorted for a while.

 

[ChazfromCali]

Geez.... I liked The Old Man.

Yes, there were several "willing suspension of disbelief" moments but it's entertainment, not a class in logic.

 

[Edward]

On Prime: Lore, a cod-documentary that grew out of a podcast. Based on urban mythologies and supernatural phenomenon. Quite good fun.

 

[Ernest P Shackleton]

Hotel Portofino. PBS. I believe this is the standout new series of the year for me. I don't see anyone talking about it, so I'm either an island or it's a bona fide sleeper. Upstairs. Downstairs. A slimey underbelly. A cast of interesting characters. Beautifully shot. The hotel premise allows it great potential for other and diverse characters. I would say that I don't need every season pivoting on a mystery, but I won't hold my breath. I know how the Brits love their mysteries.

Let's give it a week, and I'll be glad to talk about The Old Man. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone.

 

[Worf]

"Grantchester" Season 1. Typical Brit production, great writing, great acting......and with 7 Seasons we have our viewing sorted for a while.

Where are you watching this. I only saw season one and have been unable to find it since.

 

[AmateisGal]

Daughter and I are rewatching Supernatural. This show was so damn good for the first five seasons - started to go a little wonky after that until season 10 - and then seasons 11-15 were mostly junk (except for the Scooby Doo episode they did!). I refuse to watch the series finale which was one of the very worst season finales of all time.

 

[belfastboy]

Where are you watching this. I only saw season one and have been unable to find it since.

All 7 seasons are on Prime. It shows a new season...#7 but if you scroll back it will take you to the beginning.

 

[Turnip]

„Who Is Ghislaine Maxwell“ on ARD.

 

[belfastboy]

Hotel Portofino. PBS. I believe this is the standout new series of the year for me. I don't see anyone talking about it, so I'm either an island or it's a bona fide sleeper. Upstairs. Downstairs. A slimey underbelly. A cast of interesting characters. Beautifully shot. The hotel premise allows it great potential for other and diverse characters. I would say that I don't need every season pivoting on a mystery, but I won't hold my breath. I know how the Brits love their mysteries.

Let's give it a week, and I'll be glad to talk about The Old Man. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone.

Hotel Portofino is on my Watch List just have not gotten around to it yet.

 

[Touchofevil]

On PBS, another episode of Hotel Portofino and Grantchester. Still enjoying both shows. Not great, but entertaining.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I finished up the Irma Vep miniseries on HBO.

I had not seen the earlier nineties film by the creator/director, nor the original 1915 French serial it's based on. But I liked this series, which is essentially a longer-form remake of the nineties film: it's about the 1915 serial being remade today as a miniseries. Yeah, it's meta on top of meta.

It revolves around the Paris set of the remake and the famous American actress starring in it (Alicia Vikander with an excellent American accent). There's a crazy visionary French director, an out-of-control German actor, and a pile of assorted crew members, personal assistants, production execs, and exes. Vikander's role recreating the black catsuit-garbed "very first important female villain in movies", while central, is only one aspect of the story, which roams around the entire production. It reminded me of other films about filmmaking like Truffaut's Day For Night.

In fact, if I have a complaint, it's that the series was too all over the place, following characters who don't have interesting stories, it includes a bunch of red herring plots that seem important but are ultimately forgotten, and it sometimes goes off on tangents that don't pay off. Maybe it should have been a couple of less episodes. (Like every series I've ever watched on Netflix... Hmm, more meta commentary?!?)



Anyway, it's odd, but interesting. If you liked Oliver Assayas' earlier films like Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper, give it a try.

 

[ChazfromCali]

Gaslit, the miniseries about the Watergate scandal and its fallout. Comes at it not so much from the right / wrong / ethical / political angles as the human impact on those directly and indirectly involved. Very nice sense of period in the look - or, at least, very evocative of the look and feel of America on-screen in that period, a very different 70s than experienced on this side of the Atlantic.

Just about to catch the final episode of Station 11, something of a meditation on what human existence, and survival versus living, means in the context of a global pandemic having wiped out most of humanity. Pleasantly diverting.

I watched the first three or four episodes and really liked it but, (the ever present, but ;-)....... it seemed to get cartoon-y in it's bashing of Republicans or "the system" or whatever.

Not that I mind bashing on politicians of any stripe, I don't. But it changed somehow. Started strong and rapidly became unwatchable.

I wonder how much of that was Sean Penn's influence. Sometimes an actor, particularly a big name actor can overly influence a Director's vision. Where if the Director is stronger he/she can keep the star from making it "their" movie instead of the Directors.

Witness the latest Top Gun 2022. Somebody kept Tom Cruise in check just long enough to make a really good entertaining movie.

YMMV and all that.

 

[Edward]

I watched the first three or four episodes and really liked it but, (the ever present, but ;-)....... it seemed to get cartoon-y in it's bashing of Republicans or "the system" or whatever.

Not that I mind bashing on politicians of any stripe, I don't. But it changed somehow. Started strong and rapidly became unwatchable.

I wonder how much of that was Sean Penn's influence. Sometimes an actor, particularly a big name actor can overly influence a Director's vision. Where if the Director is stronger he/she can keep the star from making it "their" movie instead of the Directors.

It's plausible it plays a little differently to a UK audience a bit more removed from the party politics of the US. I did enjoy the sense of period in the look of it all. I find so often with period-set TV, a lot of productions focus on a cartoony version, and end up with something that isn't so much how people really lived as, well, the equivalent of that old, hardy perennial of local TV news - "and now meet the couple who have taken their house back to the 1950s!", which really means they've turned their house into a novelty, ersatz version of the set of Al's Diner.

On that note.... over the weekend, watched the first series of Paper Girls on Prime. Cracking little show. Squarely aimed at the Stranger Things audience, although not derivative, in fact being based on a comic book which ran from 2015 to 2019, and which thus was a year into its run before the first series of ST dropped. Time travel / sci fi type stuff, Kids from the eighties who end up forward (and, eventually, also backwards) from their own start point as twelve year olds in 1988. A much more realistic 1988 to my eye, too, than that of ST. Much as I do like ST, I feel it does sometimes veer into pandering to a marketable nostalgia for a 1980s that never really quite was. I like that PG presents it more as a time that some people coincidentally lived through, rather than some sort of lost idyll. What is particularly nice to see is that the all-female main cast are almost coincidentally female. It's a story that could as easily have been about male characters. It's nice to see female characters get that kind of grounding without some sort of world-building setting to 'excuse' it in the way sometimes in the past a character being female rather than male would lead to plot elements that sometimes felt like they had to "justify" a female protagonist. Which is certainly not to say specifically female stories can't or shouldn't be told (Ginger Snaps was a cracker of an example of a very specific female story), but it's nice to have a variation. Looking forward to the next series. I might check out the source material at some point too.

 

[AmateisGal]

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman on Netflix. It is super good.

 

[Edward]

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman on Netflix. It is super good.

I've heard a lot of positive buzz about this from folks who were fans of the source material. I've never gotten around to the latter - I presume it still works for a 'cold audience', though. We canned our Netflix in April/May for a few months to let new stuff build up, as we'd gotten to the point where we'd largely exhausted what we wanted to see. When this has all dropped (or has it already?) we'll have that, Stranger Things, and the last series of Better Call Saul to go, so September or October might well see it being worth our while reviving that account.

 

[AmateisGal]

I've heard a lot of positive buzz about this from folks who were fans of the source material. I've never gotten around to the latter - I presume it still works for a 'cold audience', though. We canned our Netflix in April/May for a few months to let new stuff build up, as we'd gotten to the point where we'd largely exhausted what we wanted to see. When this has all dropped (or has it already?) we'll have that, Stranger Things, and the last series of Better Call Saul to go, so September or October might well see it being worth our while reviving that account.

Yep, the whole season is on there - we spread it out over about five days or so. And I'd never read the source material, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, as did my daughter. It's magnificently done in every aspect.