TV You Have Watched

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, the Uncharted movie is incredibly close to being atypical of normal videogame adaptations, it just about holds together but in reality is a pale shadow of its source material

[Neon Ignition]

Tried the pilot of Yellowstone last night and was bored to tears. Great TV if you like hearing the word Land a lot and also enjoy lots of mumbling but it left the suspicion that this wasn't the premier TV show it's billed at but instead another comfort watch like CSI etc were back in the day. Very dull, mundane products that are safe watches for the audience rather than actually any good. It was a suspicion that felt confirmed when I skimmed through a random ep from the fifth season and it was literally the same plot. The same characters did the exact same things in it in the same order, one fist fight was the only difference. Sack that.

[Finsbury Girl]

Mando Episode 3 - starts out like an atomic bomb. Absolutely sick. Middle section sucks balls - feel free to fast forward 40 mins. Final couple of mins rock.

[Colin]

As much as I adore the Last Of Us games, I’m slightly baffled by the huge praise the TV show is getting. It’s not that it was bad, but it just didn’t convey huge parts of the game which almost made it feel to me that it wasn’t given a big enough budget. It was good, just not amazing.

[Super Monkey Balls]

Mando Episode 3 - starts out like an atomic bomb. Absolutely sick. Middle section sucks balls - feel free to fast forward 40 mins. Final couple of mins rock.

Pretty much sums up all the Star Wars shows. I think people are so in awe of a TV show looking like a movie that they forgive the fact that the episodes are 10% epic Star Wars pew pew action, 80% snooze fest and 10% credits.

Unpopular opinion but I wish he'd left the stupid frog with deepfake Luke.

[Finsbury Girl]

I've also started watching Shooter - with Ryan Phillipe playing the sniper dude instead of Marky Mark. Surprisingly I am enjoying it a lot. I have no idea how they 3 seasons of this though....we shall see!

[fuse]

Watched a couple of episodes of Exponential so you don't have to. Star-studded Apple TV series set in the future about the impacts of climate change, that is preachy, pretentious, predictable bollocks. Hard pass.

[Finsbury Girl]

Stumbled upon Agent Elvis - absolutely magnificent.

[Neon Ignition]

Extraordinary: Season 01
Shout to QC on this one, it wasn't what I expected when I read what it was about and I'm absolutely glad that that's the case. Really, really enjoyed this one.

[Lebowski]

Extraordinary: Season 01
Shout to QC on this one, it wasn't what I expected when I read what it was about and I'm absolutely glad that that's the case. Really, really enjoyed this one.

It's so bizarre that this is on Disney, my friend said he sat down to watch it with his teenage daughter without even clocking the 18 rating making for a very awkward viewing experience. I love the way they have given everyone super powers but some peoples powers are clearly rubbish or not suited to them at all, its a really fresh take on a super hero show and I'm really looking forward to season 2.

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, you could question all sorts about the world such as what makes someone famous? How do they deal with knowing that there is an afterlife? etc but that it makes a point of ensuring everyone considers powers to be a normal, mundane everyday thing is what makes the comedy work so well

[fuse]

Slightly cheesed off to find out that Yellowjackets S2 is going to be on Paramount rather than NowTV, meaning I need to sign up for a new service if I want to watch that. Have a couple of weeks before my NowTV sub next re-bills though, so we're giving House of the Dragon a chance before the plug is pulled.

I'd burned out any enthusiasm for Game of Thrones long before the more widespread dismay at the last season, and based on 5 eps so far this is doing nothing to change that apathy. It is very much a do-over of the exact same thing though; it's 200 years prior but for all intents and purposes is still the same setting, with the same central focus on who is on who sits on the iron bleeding throne, who should be sat on the iron bleeding throne, and who will sit on the iron bleeding throne in the future. There's sassy warrior princesses, bitter overlooked siblings, and more CG dragons than you point a ballista at. There's plotting and scheming going on all over the shop, and inappropriate sexy times, naturally taking time in the first episode to make the trademark stop off at a brothel.

So far it feels like I've not seen a single new idea; rather just a fresh cast doing the same story with some tweaks here and there and with some nods and winks to future goings on to make fans feel special. They might come to more convincing conclusions this time around, but I think unless you were really into GoT you can probably pass on this.

[fallenangle]

Tried the first episode of the BBC's latest Great Expectations adaptation, worryingly described as being "...based on..." Dicken's novel.

Started well, with realistically gritty. cold frosty landscapes featuring prison ships, escaped convicts and north Kent marshes in winter. But I was waiting for the twist to make this new retelling justified and, surprise, surprise, it came with Pip's first meeting with Estella. Yes, to follow Bridgerton and Sanditon, they decided to make her mixed race.

Colour blind casting in period dramas is fast becoming a cliche and has even been sent up in the wonderfully funny The Great where in the first series all the Swedes were played by black actors. Here though with this story there is a big problem doing that because Estella's parentage is a key part of the original plot. If they stick to that it won't take much TV viewer sleuthing, for those who do not know the story, to work out who her mother and father are if a seemingly peripheral character is black.

So how they're going to handle that I can only imagine. Will they populate Victorian London with an exaggerated numbers of ethnic minorities in an effort to hide the plotting problem they've created? I'm quite expecting Jaggers and maybe Herbert Pocket too to be played by black actors to help misdirect unaware viewers.

The other problem is that some of the acting is not the best and Matt Berry in Toast Of London mode as a pantomime Pumblechook just did not work. The script also makes Pip an arrogant and obnoxious teenager rather than the innocent, naive youngster ripe for Miss Havisham's misandry that he's supposed to be.

It'll be interesting to see the second episode just to discover how this is all going to play out but at this point I can't recommend it.

[Brad]

Star Trek Discovery, season 3
3 episodes in and it’s absolutely awful!

Show should be called Star Trek : Feelings Explored In An Extremely Cack Handed And Cringy Manner

[Neon Ignition]

Fans really wanted Discovery to avoid the canon straining setting but tbh I think flinging it further into the future worked against it