What was the last TV show you watched?

[Fading Fast]

⇧ wonderful graphic

 

[Fading Fast]

The first episode of Babylon Berlin. Hard to say. I'll watch another one or two and decide whether to continue.

We want to try this one as well - read a good review somewhere - but haven't started it yet. I look forward to your comments after you've seen a few more episodes.

 

[Ernest P Shackleton]

My impressions of The Alienist aren't quite as harsh as Doctor Strange. I enjoyed The Knick a lot, so I was sorry to see it go. The Alienist is a decent fill for that look, vibe, and type of chaos and trouble. Have not read the book. I like the casting, the sets, the technical side of filming, and some of the characters. They spent some big money on this production, considering it is TNT and not HBO. I feel it is worth giving a chance.

1967Cougar390, the character in your poster very much looks like Anastasia Arteyeva, a Ukrainian model and photographer.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Hey, I thought the second episode of The Alienist was considerably better than the pilot. I plan to keep watching.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Coming Home" a 1998 TV mini-series set in England from the mid-'30s through WWII

• Not at all bad as a home-front view of a wealthy English family and their friends enduring the war - starts with the carefree pre-war days and ends with those who survived trying to re-start their lives

• A dressed-up soap opera, engaging if a bit cheesy - you know the story, but you do get drawn in

• Period details are very good, especially for the '90s production

• Fun to see a very young ("introducing") Keira Knightley and Emily Mortimer as well as an older Peter O'Toole

• Worth the watch, but no need to go out of your way to see it

"The Crown" Season 2, Episode 6 "Vergangenheit"

• Another visually stunning episode - period details amazing / camera work impressive

• I'm just guessing, but I bet "vergangenheit" translates to "the Duke of Windsor was a nazi collaborator (and pompous *ss)"

• Was Phillip really the incessant jerk he is portrayed as in this series?

 

[Benzadmiral]

The two-parter that kicked off The Rifleman's final season, "Waste," written by Robert Culp. I've mentioned this one before as being probably the best episode of the entire well-done series, and how this script pre-figured Culp's equally atmospheric and noir-ish "Home to Judgment" on I Spy some years later. But I want to applaud character actor Vito Scotti.

You all know him, though you may not know his name: the creator of a raft of small, usually comic character roles in TV dramas and comedies of the 1960s. In "Waste," however, he turns in one of his best performances, this time as Alfonso, the leader of the Mexican bandits who capture Lucas McCain, his son Mark, and their marshal friend Micah. Aided by a set of protruding, decayed teeth and a dirty sombrero, Scotti inhabits Alfonso, who ranges up and down the scale, nastily comic, cunning, and snake-vicious by turns. Despite Lucas's evaluation of the bandits as "stupid. They don't have the brains of a coyote between them," Alfonso is not a bandit to take lightly. At the end of part I, director Joseph Lewis closes in on Alfonso's ratlike face as he whispers to his men, "Buscamos los gringos" ("Let us find the gringos"), and I get the shivers every time.

 

[HanauMan]

I was a big fan of the X-Files back in the 1990s so I sat down to watch episode 1 of season 11 last evening.

I can't really say that I enjoyed it much. It has been more than a decade since the last season so I was expecting the characters to have changed. However, I didn't expect such major changes in their physical appearances. Gillian Anderson looked like she was still in character as Miss Havisham, David Duchovny appeared puffy and ill (he is supposed to be dying in the episode but he looks genuinely unwell). The Smoking Man and Skinner are still there, older and maybe not much wiser. Same dialogue, saying much without saying anything.

The plot and fast paced scene cutting needs a bit of getting used to. A feast for conspiracy fans, maybe. A bit far fetched for me. Don't get me wrong, I used to love the alien episodes far more than the man-critter episodes and the like. The X-Files used to be weird, but also fun (remember the early episodes). Now it comes across as too bleak for me.

I will, however, persevere and continue to see how the show fans out. As to Dana and Fox, I do like their new, older, selves. In fact, David Duchovny looks uncannily like I do when I look into the mirror; puffy eyes and jowls and all.

 

[HanauMan]

Watched another episode of Frasier. Somewhat poignant knowing that John Mahoney (Marty Crane) has just died. Still think that Frasier is one of TV's great shows.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Watched another episode of Frasier. Somewhat poignant knowing that John Mahoney (Marty Crane) has just died. Still think that Frasier is one of TV's great shows.

Darn. I always wanted to see Mahoney play Inspector Richard Queen in a period-piece Ellery Queen adaptation.

 

[AmateisGal]

Still working my way through the Father Brown series, and now I'm going to read some of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown short stories. It's such a great TV show.

 

[Worf]

"Lucifer" - Still funny, still interesting, still silly but I'm still watching.

Worf

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

The Nightmare Neighbour Next Door

 

[Ernest P Shackleton]

The Alienist. I think this is now my favorite show on TV right now...at least until The Americans returns next month. I really enjoy these characters, the odd dialogue patterns, the sets, the camera work, and all that tech whatnot. Fun show.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace. I didn't go into this with much enthusiasm, and after the first two episodes, I was feeling it was weak and over the top. The acting and the editing are off. But the serial killer, Andrew Cunanan, is done well enough. I hope it is accurate, because as portrayed, this guy was genuinely scary and creepy. That is engaging.

 

[Zombie_61]

Waco (2018). A six-part miniseries based on the FBI and ATF raid on David Koresh's Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in February of 1993 and the subsequent "siege" that lasted 51 days. I remember news reports from the time, but didn't pay much attention to them beyond Koresh and his "cult" being painted with a broad brush by the media as religious extremists. Then, as now, I knew "the truth" was not much more than the perspective of the person telling the story and that the actual truth would never be known.

That being said, I can't say that what I've seen of this miniseries so far has changed my thoughts and/or opinions. In fact, I wouldn't be watching it if my wife hadn't asked me to record it because she wanted to watch it. The cast, that includes Taylor Kitsch as David Koresh and Micheal Shannon as Agent Gary Noesner, is as good as you would expect in a production like this. But the producers chose to tell the story in a non-linear fashion, bouncing back and forth in the timeline of events between Koresh building his "cult" and the siege already in progress. Between that and my level of disinterest I'm finding it a little difficult to keep up, but so far the story they're trying to tell seems relatively even-handed and unbiased. There are both scenes of Koresh and his followers discussing how and when they should cooperate with the agencies' demands (i.e., surrender) after the initial raid even though Koresh and others have been wounded or killed, and agents within the FBI and ATF expressing concerns about the ways the events are unfolding, how the agencies' actions will be perceived by the general public, and how much "damage control" and "backside covering" they'll have to do with the news media. Based on what I've seen so far (they've only broadcast the first three episodes) I'm guessing they'll show mistakes were made on both sides, but will ultimately show Koresh and his followers as not-completely-innocent victims of the overly-aggressive agencies. We'll see.

 

[Edward]

Watched the full run of Derry Girls, a sitcom set in Derry City / Londonderry (deleted according to tribal affiliation), N Ireland, towards the end of the troubles. The main characters are four Catholic Schoolgirls (plus a cousin of one of them, who has to go to the girls' school because his English accent would be a problem in the boy's school, and his being Catholic would be a problem in a state school). The wider families also appear. It's a very well done coming of age tale, which really captures the feel of what it was like in NI back at that time. The first series is set in 1994; I believe the second will begin in September 1994, when the IRA ceasefire rocked the news. So many things about NI in that period are only about the troubles; this captures real life where it rumbled on in the background, but you just got on with things much better. If you've seen the writer's previous sitcom London Irish, don't be put off: this is as sublime as that was awful.

I was a big fan of the X-Files back in the 1990s so I sat down to watch episode 1 of season 11 last evening.

I can't really say that I enjoyed it much. It has been more than a decade since the last season so I was expecting the characters to have changed. However, I didn't expect such major changes in their physical appearances. Gillian Anderson looked like she was still in character as Miss Havisham, David Duchovny appeared puffy and ill (he is supposed to be dying in the episode but he looks genuinely unwell). The Smoking Man and Skinner are still there, older and maybe not much wiser. Same dialogue, saying much without saying anything.

The plot and fast paced scene cutting needs a bit of getting used to. A feast for conspiracy fans, maybe. A bit far fetched for me. Don't get me wrong, I used to love the alien episodes far more than the man-critter episodes and the like. The X-Files used to be weird, but also fun (remember the early episodes). Now it comes across as too bleak for me.

I will, however, persevere and continue to see how the show fans out. As to Dana and Fox, I do like their new, older, selves. In fact, David Duchovny looks uncannily like I do when I look into the mirror; puffy eyes and jowls and all.

I missed last year's series, I should try and catch up. I loved the show originally, but it got too much when the alien thing took over - specifically, the joy of the show always lay in that things could be supernatural - as we would prefer - I, like Mulder, wanted to believe - but you couldn't dismiss the rational explanation. When it lost that balance, it wasn't
the same. It also didn't really work, for me, without Duchovny - it needed that balance of the two, and much of the last two series just didn't work for me. The second film was good, though. I did read that they brought it back more for Duchovny's sake than anything else - it's not as if Anderson needs the money or the work, she's doing well.

Watched another episode of Frasier. Somewhat poignant knowing that John Mahoney (Marty Crane) has just died. Still think that Frasier is one of TV's great shows.

It really was one of the greats in its prime. I always found Cheers weak, but this spin off was sublime at its peak. Kept going too long, imo - they should never have had to have Daphne and Niles together - but such seems to be the way of a lot of these big US shows.

 

[Fading Fast]

...It really was one of the greats in its prime. I always found Cheers weak, but this spin off was sublime at its peak. Kept going too long, imo - they should never have had to have Daphne and Niles together - but such seems to be the way of a lot of these big US shows.

Re "Fraiser"
Agreed - One of, if not, the best in its day (has age kinda okay)
Agreed - "Cheers" was good, but not as good as its reputation
Agreed - Needed to stop before Niles and Daphne got together / the show was out of ideas at that point / still funny overall, but felt forced

 

[EngProf]

Re "Fraiser"
Agreed - One of, if not, the best in its day (has age kinda okay)
Agreed - "Cheers" was good, but not as good as its reputation
Agreed - Needed to stop before Niles and Daphne got together / the show was out of ideas at that point / still funny overall, but felt forced

There was an exchange in "Frazier" that ranks as one of the shortest/funniest/cleverest bits of dialogue in any sitcom.
To set the scene, Frazier and Lilith had one son while they were still married. After their divorce Lilith moved away from Seattle. In this episode she has come back to visit and tells Frazier that she wants to have another child.

Frazier (hopefully): "Does this mean we'll have sex?
Lilith (sternly): "We'll freeze your sperm."
Frazier: "I'll take that as a "yes"."

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Cheers" has dated terribly -- it reeks of the lamest aspects of the '80s, and it's hard to look past that. Fraiser, aside from a few visual things, hardly seems to have dated at all.

 

[scottyrocks]

I had M*A*S*H (TV show) on the TV earlier and decided to see if I could find S1E1 (the pilot) on youtube, which I did.

I had forgotten how different the pilot is from what became the recognizable iconic show just a few episodes later.

It followed the format of the movie more closely than the the pacing of the later TV show. Hawkeye's lines seemed delivered through molasses compared to Alda's rapid pace later on. Frank Burns was less of a boob and slightly more formidable. Radar was more sure-footed and secure, a la the film.

Quite frankly, it was not nearly as fun to watch as what it developed into, which made it all that much more interesting.

 

[Benzadmiral]

The entire run of the HBO series Big Little Lies. Despite wanting to see it because of Nicole Kidman, who I will watch in almost anything *, I was a bit worried since David E. Kelley of Ally McBeal and L.A. Law infamy has always been one to hit you over the head with political correctness. However, this pocket epic did not do that -- though of course it reflected the real-world PC which has run riot in places like California. BLL, a murder story blended with a soap opera, grips you almost from the start.

I won't give anything away -- but the ending is quite neat, and displays the Ellery Queen-ish "negative clue" in a new way, while doing the usual detective story trick of making you watch the magician's right hand while he is doing something important, all out in the open, with the left. Suffice it to say that I need to skip back through the preceding 6 episodes to see where Kelley, and I presume the author of the novel, planted the signposts and clues. Whether they'll admit it or not, viewers still love the classic puzzle mystery, but it's got to be repackaged in a new way.

ETA, after skimming back through some of your posts on the series: Yes, the acting seems a little "sketchy," but I think they were trying for that spur-of-the-moment, unrehearsed quality that's all the rage today. Sometimes that works. The first episode, I admit, is weakest in that department . . . but it gets better.


* I couldn't finish 2015's Strangerland, though.