What was the last TV show you watched?

[Doctor Strange]

I finished off season 2 of Jessica Jones. I think it's still the best of the Marvel Netflix shows by a wide margin, but this season's not quite as outstanding as season 1.

 

[Touchofevil]

The Alienist, Sneaky Pete season two, Versailles, The Red Road and Call the Midwife.

 

[KY Gentleman]

I’ve been watching History Channel’s “The Men Who Built America: The Frontiersmen.”
It’s on Wednesday nights and covers the Westward Expansion of the United States.
I finished episode 2 tonight covering Lewis and Clark and it has been exceptional.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

A delayed viewing of the last episode of Victoria. Along with SHIELD. Does anybody know if the producers of the show, or maybe the ABC network, required the writers to set everything inside? The majority of the action was on the space ship, and now underground, with occasional forays to the outside.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I read somewhere that SHIELD's budget was reduced. But from the start - and mind you, I enjoy the series a lot - one of my gripes has been that so much of the show takes place in warehouses and factories. Ugly utilitarian sets with little design effort. Sure, there have been impressive alien/exotic locales at times... But all too often it's obvious backlot or dull commercial buildings.
OTOH, the more exotic looking The Inhumans was embarrassingly awful!

 

[Fading Fast]

A delayed viewing of the last episode of Victoria. Along with SHIELD. Does anybody know if the producers of the show, or maybe the ABC network, required the writers to set everything inside? The majority of the action was on the space ship, and now underground, with occasional forays to the outside.

"Victoria" was never the best show, but we've been having trouble even staying engaged this season. We are half way though and have the second half of the season on the DVR, but always seem to choose something else to watch.

Somehow, they've managed to take all the grandeur, geopolitics and history of the palace at that point in history and reduce it to a boring husband-and-wife-squabbling show.

 

[scottyrocks]

Last night my daughter and I watched a couple of episodes of This Is Us.

 

[Fading Fast]

We watched the first two episodes of "X Company," a show set in WWII about spies trained (and, seemingly and oddly, based - they come back after each mission) at a secret facility in Canada and then inserted into France for specific missions to help the Resistance.

So far, it's weak as - other than the period sets and details - it all feels modern. The characters talk and act in a very modern way. Also, the plots, at least the first two, are simplistic / cookie cutter / been done a billion times and the "twists" and "key clues" are easily seen in advance. And while I'm all for strong female characters - strong women then were different than strong women today as very few fully saw past the social norms and accepted roles of the day, but the strong females here all seem like modern heroines (and too perfect ones at that).

We'll give it one or two more shots, but very unimpressed so far. That said, the period architecture - the church in France and the training facility in Canada - are Fedora Lounge eye-candy.

Last thought, there's a "odd ball" brilliant character in the show - has a ridiculous photographic memory and the ability to interpret that information like a super computer, but is social awkward to the max - that echoes a character from "The Good Doctor." It's almost as if some poll was taken or the TV consultants have all told producers that these type of characters will be popular - despite very different settings, the two characters, and how they are handled, are freakily similar, almost too similar to be a coincidence.

 

[3fingers]

The characters talk and act in a very modern way.

I recently watched a few minutes of a completely forgettable WW2 bucket of dreck on YouTube where the response to another character's thank you was "hey, no problem man."
That was enough for me.

 

[AmateisGal]

The Wire. I'd heard good things about this show but never thought it was something I'd be interested in. Watched three episodes last night. I'm interested enough to keep watching.

 

[belfastboy]

I’ve been watching History Channel’s “The Men Who Built America: The Frontiersmen.”
It’s on Wednesday nights and covers the Westward Expansion of the United States.
I finished episode 2 tonight covering Lewis and Clark and it has been exceptional.

I have watched two episodes and loved it. The aspect I found so interesting is how much of history is chance, luck and circumstance. Daniel Boone and Boonesborough being saved from certain capture and annihilation by Black Fish by the rain. If it had not been for that rain we may never had heard the name Daniel Boone. He would have been an obscure reference in some out of print history book. Or if Black Fish had thought of the whole fire tactic thingy if would have been over on day two.

 

[belfastboy]

"Collateral", a Brit Netflix offering with Carrie Mulligan in the lead. I am a sucker for Brit TV and this one holds up well. It is a 4 episode series, detective/crime story line.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In honor of Fred Rogers' 90th birthday, the "Twitch" website is running a continuous marathon of all 800+ episodes of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." It's still in the early black-and-white era, and it's fascinating to see programs I haven't seen since I was five years old, and yet still vividly remember.

"Twitch" seems to be a site having to do with video-game enthusiasts, and why and how this marathon is happening on this particular venue is beyond explanation, but I'm very pleasantly surprised to find it.

https://www.twitch.tv/misterrogers

 

[Worf]

The Wire. I'd heard good things about this show but never thought it was something I'd be interested in. Watched three episodes last night. I'm interested enough to keep watching.

Hang in there... it gets deeper and, unfortunately, truer to life with every episode. I grew up in the Projects of NY City long before the era depicted, however the corruption and misery represented there... is true... all true.

Worf

 

[AmateisGal]

Hang in there... it gets deeper and, unfortunately, truer to life with every episode. I grew up in the Projects of NY City long before the era depicted, however the corruption and misery represented there... is true... all true.

Worf

That just breaks my heart. It looks so horrible. I can't even begin to understand growing up like that.

 

[belfastboy]

In honor of Fred Rogers' 90th birthday, the "Twitch" website is running a continuous marathon of all 800+ episodes of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." It's still in the early black-and-white era, and it's fascinating to see programs I haven't seen since I was five years old, and yet still vividly remember.

"Twitch" seems to be a site having to do with video-game enthusiasts, and why and how this marathon is happening on this particular venue is beyond explanation, but I'm very pleasantly surprised to find it.

https://www.twitch.tv/misterrogers

did gamers grow up watching Mr Rogers? Do we have him to blame for gamers or is it just the stoners?

 

[belfastboy]

The Wire. I'd heard good things about this show but never thought it was something I'd be interested in. Watched three episodes last night. I'm interested enough to keep watching.

I can't remember a TV show that got me more invested in the characters than this one. Even the annoying McNulty!

 

[LizzieMaine]

did gamers grow up watching Mr Rogers? Do we have him to blame for gamers or is it just the stoners?

I suspect today's gamers might have been just a bit too young to appreciate what the Neighborhood had to offer. But be that as it may, these early shows they're streaming just get more and more astonishing. Right now I'm watching a performance by Paul Draper -- one of the three greatest tap artists of the Era (Astaire and Robinson were his only rivals, and he might just have been better than both) -- in what is possibly his first appearance on US television since being blacklisted in 1951. He's just finished an absolutely breathtaking routine to a Bach piece done in a jazz arrangement by Johnny Costa and his combo, and is now having a philosophical discussion about the art of dance with King Friday XIII.

And this was a program done for an audience of five year olds. I feel sorry for kids who didn't have a program of this level of quality in their lives. The more I watch these episodes, the more I can recognize specific influences it had on things I still enjoy as an adult.

Another thing I;m finding fascinating is the "chat window" that's running alongside the media player on the Twitch side -- you see a lot of would-be smartasses showing up to snark, and then becoming transfixed by the shows. Mister Rogers is beyond the reach of all snark. He might just have been the single coolest American of the 20th Century.

 

[Worf]

I can't remember a TV show that got me more invested in the characters than this one. Even the annoying McNulty!

The character that got to me most was Bodee. He starts out as just a street slinger/soldier but in many ways becomes almost the moral compass of the show from the "back side" of the mirror if you catch what I mean. I knew cats like him in my formative years. Some ran "numbers", some sold weed, some sold Horse... but hey had lines they wouldn't cross. Back then if you were a scholar or an athlete, they left you alone. If you weren't cut out for the game they would tell you so in words or with fists... but killing civilians was not part of their game. They were hustlers just trying to make a living. That has sadly changed.

Worf

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

First episode of Krypton, courtesy of youngest Shellhammer. Will give it a go, based on its clever premise of Krypton leading up to Kal-el's trip to Earth.