TV You Have Watched

[QualityChimp]

Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?

Pepsi runs a points catalogue thingy - collect Pepsi labels to redeem knickknacks like T-shirts, sunglasses, leather jackets and… a harrier jet???

A young man figures out a way to get the 7,000,000 points needed to buy the jet and teams up with an investor to make his dream a reality. Cash in the bag, right? WRONG! Unfortunately for them, Pepsi was neither serious nor willing to cash anyone’s bank without a fight.

2/4 episodes in and I’m enjoying it.

4 episodes?! Yikes!
I put Netflix on and saw that was being promoted and got the premise that Pepsi did a giveaway, with a joke about a jet as a top prize, but this kid took it seriously.

I think most people at the time would have told him to stop being a twat, but here we are, decades later and he's stretching a Netflix series out of it.

[Neon Ignition]

Ted Lasso: Season 02
We dove on in on the second season and it delves deeper into the characters. It's still very good but personally the first run strikes the balance better.

[Atticus]

Every year I enjoy a cosy, festive treat from the past. Usually it's The Box of Delights but this week I watched The Children of Green Knowe. It's about a boy going to stay with his great grandmother over Christmas at an ancient house in the country. As his stay goes on it seems characters from his ancestry still live there. It's a nostalgic, spooky treat and it's covered on one of my favourite podcasts too:

https://www.hypnogoria.com/hypnogoriapodcast.html

https://hypnogoria.libsyn.com/hypnogoria-163-the-children-of-green-knowe

Back to the present day we all managed to gather in the living room for the first two eps of Tulsa King. The very thought of a Stallone-starring mob show sounds like a massive cheese-fest but when you look at the team behind it, proper tv royalty, you have to take a look. And actually, it's good fun. Stallone's casting works ... he's fun to watch and the humour hits mostly. Yeah, it's a bit trashy, but it's quality, knowing trash. Enjoying it.

[Neon Ignition]

Halo: Season 01
Won't be sticking with this one. There's some elements that are adapted well and I don't mind the changes because they're needed to support long term story telling but the series can't escape the gravity well issue the games leave it with - that Halo's storyline is **** and not worth making a series out of. It's a series that exists because Halo is a big franchise, not because there's enough there to mine to make a good series.

[fuse]

We watched Wednesday. If you were sad over Netflix's recent Sabrina show being dropped, chances are you'll find yourself at home with this as the two run very close in terms of themes and plot direction. It's a decent watch, though I was more into the intrigue of the earlier episodes than the more action-packed resolution it all leads to. Have grown up with various iterations of these characters so appreciate it's a challenge for a new cast to make them their own, and yet, Jenna Ortega totally succeeds and is fabulous leading the show as Wednesday. In contrast, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia just comes across totally one-dimensional and has no idea what to do with the character.

Now onto the fifth season of The Good Wife. While it is not bad, and often quite good even, we have watched far too much of this far too quickly for my liking. We're also at the point when pretty much every character has revealed a 'nasty dickhead' streak, leaving me feeling a bit apathetic with it all.

And as predicted, we're watching the latest season of The Handmaid's Tale despite finding the last season one a drag. I still don't like the direction they're taking with almost every character, and I still get angry every time it goes for a lengthy slow-mo bit with a clever/ironic pop number over the top of it. Don't mind dystopian stuff, but this one is just a bit directionless.

[Lebowski]

We watched Wednesday. If you were sad over Netflix's recent Sabrina show being dropped, chances are you'll find yourself at home with this as the two run very close in terms of themes and plot direction. It's a decent watch, though I was more into the intrigue of the earlier episodes than the more action-packed resolution it all leads to. Have grown up with various iterations of these characters so appreciate it's a challenge for a new cast to make them their own, and yet, Jenna Ortega totally succeeds and is fabulous leading the show as Wednesday. In contrast, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia just comes across totally one-dimensional and has no idea what to do with the character.

Where up to the last episode of Wednesday it's a really enjoyable scooby doo style Teen mystery with a fantastic cast and some really good humor and special effects, it feels like already its been a lot better received than Sabrina and is a lot more of an innocent show, for one its dark humor is played in the regular Adams family over the top style, it also feels a lot less edgy than Sabrina. I think what helps with this show is that their trying something different by just focusing on one character too and bringing in the rest of the family as bit parts gives the show a really different feel to a regular adams family property witch normally just focuses on how weird they all are.

[Finsbury Girl]

First episode of Under the Banner of Heaven. Extremely intriguing. It definitely has me hooked to watch more. Like the interplay between Gil Birmingham and Andrew Garfield. I have high hopes.

[fallenangle]

Catching up on the old ITV series Foyle's War currently being repeated on ITV3. They're now into The Cold War set series.

Didn't watch it at the time but it is quality GB TV drama with Michael Kitchen and the other regulars doing some great acting work against what looks and feels like very well recreated early post WW2 settings.

[Atticus]

I watched the first ep on Tokyo Vice (it was directed by Michael Mann and it has Vice in the title, I'm in!) on BBC iPlayer. It stars Ansel Elgort as an American journalist in Tokyo who starts sniffing around the Yakuza types. Pretty good so far. Not blown away but promising.

I also watched the most recent ep of The Grand Tour and for all its silliness and scripted moments (although one moment is definitely NOT scripted) and set-ups it's still supremely entertaining. A Scandi Flick takes the team across the Arctic Circle in their chosen rally cars. The scenery is amazing ... proper winter wonderland. It's the best thing they've done in ages IMO. Very good. Hope they keep making them. This one was more fun than a whole season of Top Gear.

[Neon Ignition]

Wednesday: Season 01
I can see the Sabrina comparisons but for me that show rode too hard into the YA crowd and never became that engaging, this is much more quickly interesting and does a really good job of spinning its focus on Wednesday. Absolute hats off to Ortega, she couldn't nail the character more.

[QualityChimp]

We're watching Taskmaster, but tired of waiting for a new episode to drop, we've restarted the show from S1 and we're already onto S2!

Watched Never Mind The Buzzcocks too. We just need short, funny programs to watch together!

[QualityChimp]

Watched a couple of eps of Gangs of London S2.
I think I have 2 left.

They're all bloody snakes and basically, if anyone forms a partnership, someone is going to get screwed over and hurt. Preeetty bad.

Last night, a character was held at gunpoint by three guys, but managed to disarm the nearest hoodlum and shoot him through the mouth at the second guy, then re-aim and shoot the third guy, all in slow-motion whilst the first guy's face is just melting and his eyes are bleeding. Blimey, Charlie!

[Colin]

My wife and I both really enjoyed Wednesday, and I'm not going to lie, I went into it expecting it to be ****.

[randombs]

The Haunting of Bly Manor

It’s different to Hill House despite having a bunch of the same actors, the same theme songs and almost the same house.

The actors mostly have different accents, with Elliot from ET in particular adeptly pulling awf a posh English gentleman.

I’m enjoying it. Not as frightening as Hill House (as Neon pointed out) but different enough to mean I don’t spend time comparing the two. Fewer jump scares and no continuous dread, with a tragic love story at the centre.

I’ve watched seven episodes and there are two left.

[fallenangle]

Finished the Aussie Thelma and Louise type crime drama Wanted Series 3 last night (actually early morning).

Really enjoyed it.

Like the previous two series I've mentioned earlier in this thread the plotting was mediocre at best but where it scored was the quality of the acting, especially the main protagonists and the pacing. The use of the Australian (and in the previous series New Zealand) landscapes of all sorts, not just the travelogue, tourist friendly kind but anonymous scrubby bush towns, farmland, ramshackle rural properties, industrial etc has been also worthy of note.

Its Just a competently made if predictable crime series that makes for easy viewing with the USP that it it is Aussie rather than US.