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    #16
    NBC has announced a March 11th premiere date for the second season of “Timeless,” its family-friendly time travel drama which was cancelled and then resurrected in the wake of fan outcry. Eric Kripke (“Supernatural”) and Shawn Ryan (“The Shield”) created the series with our three heroes – the scientist Rufus (Malcolm Barrett), the soldier Wyatt […]


    Timeless, the show that dramatically clawed its way back from cancellation last year, returns for its second season on 11 March. The show has proven quite popular for its accuracy in historical details but I enjoyed how it wasn't afraid to abandon timelines by killing historical figures.

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      #17
      Originally posted by Zen Monkey View Post
      The Story of Maths: The Language of the Universe

      It's a 2 part show presented by mathematician Marcus du Sautoy who explores the mathematics of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Greece and China. He examines the work of geniuses like Plato, Euclid, Archimedes and Pythagoras, and travels to India to discover how the number zero was invented and how Indian mathematicians created the concepts of infinity and negative numbers.
      In contrast to Zen, I watched Wedding Day Winners and it's some of the worst television I've ever witnessed.

      It was Saturday night, which is pizza night with our son. The competition on primetime telly was:
      Snooker
      Great Canal journeys
      Take Me out
      Greatest Celebrity Wind-Ups, Ever!

      WDW seemed suitable for my son upon flicking over (people trying to dress on a treadmill but falling over, It's A Knockout-style), but it was such a painful watch. I kept looking at my wife to check it was really happening and not just a fever-dream induced by the four cheese pizza.

      The first game had friends and families of the two competing puzzles trying to pop the cork on giant champagne bottles. To do this, they had to bounce on their chairs. There were no sensors or monitors, just two minutes of people you don't know bouncing on their bums whilst digital recreations of the bottles showed who was winning.

      It then was a parade of alternating silly games and interview sections with the couples and their families talking about how much they love each other.

      It finished with the thinner, sportier couple beating the other ones and winning their dream honeymoon and getting married on the show.

      I felt like a waiter at a wedding, who is supposed to be excited about the happy couple, but doesn't know them, care that they're getting married and seen dozens of weddings before.

      I'm unsure which show is worse: Wedding Day Winners or Len Goodman's Rhyme Crime.

      I'm most disappointed that I didn't win a prize for sitting through it. Even just the time back would be great.
      Worst of all, afterwards the 6yo panned it too, so it was a waste of time watching it for him anyway!

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        #18
        The Amazing World of Gumball: Season 3
        Another season down, still highly enjoyable. This season was probably the most consistent but lacked the peak episodes of the previous two.

        Tin Star: Season 1
        Still early with it but at the moment there doesn't feel like there's enough of a compelling hook to the story. It's lacking the punch to keep interest for a multi-year story so we'll give it a bit longer but it's shakey so far.

        The Orville: Season 1
        Early again with this. I'd read recently that season 2 will scale back the humour which is a fascinating decision as the humour is barely existent as it is in this first run bar a couple of flat gags peppered through the 45m run time. It's a fine line between parody and plagiarism and if the humour attempts dial back any further Paramount should sue. It's Next-Gen and not a very good version of that at that, not helped by McFarlane's insistence on leading himself. A bit longer but this already feels like seasons need to be half the length with episodes similarly half in runtime also.

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          #19
          Guest Stars, that's the impressive thing about Orville. Ep3 had a cameo from Liam Neeson whilst Ep5 has Charlize Theron in it.
          Humour wise... man, this is the absolute worst. Each attempt is like hearing a pin drop so it's very much a Next Gen rip off. Yet, it's oddly compelling like watching a slow motion car crash. It's interesting to read up that the reviews seem to have savaged it yet it's doing well. Given Discovery is on, is old Trek still that appealing or is that the bar for comedy is that low?

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            #20
            I haven't watched any of it but I read (maybe here...?) that they were going to tone down the humour for the next season. Does that mean people are watching it in spite of the humour rather than because of it?

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              #21
              I think so, it's not just that it isn't funny it's also that there are very few jokes in there as well so they seem really at odds with the rest of the show especially at 45m per episode. MacFarlane seems to have really wanted to make a Star Trek Next Gen homage and it's good at evoking that tone until the humour breaks it. Though without the jokes it would literally be a gift wrapped lawsuit so it's really hard to know what the intention or point of the show is. It's not serious enough to get invested in and not funny enough to simply enjoy. I feel like I'm waiting for the moment new overlords Disney shut it down to avoid issues with Paramount. I think it's appeal lies with it being staggering that such a blatant show of plagiarism exists uncontested.

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                #22
                Star Trek Discovery ep15, last episode of the season... perhaps the worst, most bullcrap ending to the story they could have come up with,

                and all the smug, back slapping at the end about keeping their virtues when what they actually did was hand a religious despot nutter a super nuke to control the klingons and hope a united pile of klingons won't attack for some reason, when that is her religious goal??? let alone the other klingons going out to find this superweapon(secretly), destroy it and then kill her... just total rubbish, it doesn't make sense, neither did Security bloke saying he belonged to neither side and then went off with the religious nutter.

                It started going down hill once Lorica was gone and effectively replaced by Philippa to do what he could have done as he had the same knowledge, the only highlight of the episode was tilly's reaction to Terran Phil and some of the planet side stuff, followed of course by the Enterprise and Pike. Can't say im hyped if season 2 comes along, the story was a right let down, i barely care if the remaining cast live or die and the cliffhanger of that size was all they could do make sure people come back.

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                  #23
                  Yeah, after a string of great episodes, the last couple just died.

                  Comment


                    #24
                    Has anyone been watching Hunted on Channel 4?
                    We watched the series finale last night and will probably skip the next series.

                    Firstly a positive note about the winners:

                    I was really chuffed that Bob and Alex both made it to the extraction boat.

                    Alex has struggled with Asperger Syndrome and the social repercussions (bullying, only had one girlfriend and she dumped him when he told her, struggles to interact with people) that come with it, but managed to really come out of his shell and speak to people, who always really warmed to him and wanted to help him.

                    His father, Bob, is a real old school bloke and struggled to comprehend what Asperger Syndrome really is, but knows that his lad, whom he really loves, has been bullied and there's nothing he can do about it, which must have been quite crushing for him.

                    However, as they leapt onto the boat, they sobbed tears of joy at their accomplishment, then Bob turned Alex's face to the camera and said "For all those b******* that bullied him throughout all of his school-hood - there you go. Look at the winner". It was proper sky-punching telly and quite emotional.





                    The problem with the show, however, is the blurring between reality and fiction.
                    Where do the producers step in to make exciting telly?

                    There seems to be some unwritten rules that we viewers don't know about. I'm assuming that the contestants are told they have to keep moving as at no point do they hole up in a B&B or a tent in vast forest.
                    Also, they never move at night, it's always in the day.
                    Several times, the hunters seemed to change the rules by bringing in some extra agents. It takes away the cat and mouse thrills when the voice over guy says "The team have nobody in Newcastle, so they're deploying a secret agent to pick up the hitchhiking escapees."
                    Plus they're using drones (I'm pretty sure they broke the law when they used it) and helicopters.
                    At one point, the hunters vaulted the fence of an escapee and broke into the house where his heavily pregnant wife was!
                    None of the associates ever say "no comment".
                    The worse was when they interviewed a woman associate of an escapee and she was tight-lipped until the husband stuck his head out of the kitchen and asked "Have you told them about the SIM card you set up for him, yet?". Ridiculous.

                    Shame, as when it's realistic, it's good telly and there's usually an underdog to root for, but its constant shark-jumping had me wanting to quit several times.

                    Comment


                      #25
                      Originally posted by QualityChimp View Post
                      Has anyone been watching Hunted on Channel 4?
                      We watched the series finale last night and will probably skip the next series.

                      Firstly a positive note about the winners:

                      I was really chuffed that Bob and Alex both made it to the extraction boat.

                      Alex has struggled with Asperger Syndrome and the social repercussions (bullying, only had one girlfriend and she dumped him when he told her, struggles to interact with people) that come with it, but managed to really come out of his shell and speak to people, who always really warmed to him and wanted to help him.

                      His father, Bob, is a real old school bloke and struggled to comprehend what Asperger Syndrome really is, but knows that his lad, whom he really loves, has been bullied and there's nothing he can do about it, which must have been quite crushing for him.

                      However, as they leapt onto the boat, they sobbed tears of joy at their accomplishment, then Bob turned Alex's face to the camera and said "For all those b******* that bullied him throughout all of his school-hood - there you go. Look at the winner". It was proper sky-punching telly and quite emotional.





                      The problem with the show, however, is the blurring between reality and fiction.
                      Where do the producers step in to make exciting telly?

                      There seems to be some unwritten rules that we viewers don't know about. I'm assuming that the contestants are told they have to keep moving as at no point do they hole up in a B&B or a tent in vast forest.
                      Also, they never move at night, it's always in the day.
                      Several times, the hunters seemed to change the rules by bringing in some extra agents. It takes away the cat and mouse thrills when the voice over guy says "The team have nobody in Newcastle, so they're deploying a secret agent to pick up the hitchhiking escapees."
                      Plus they're using drones (I'm pretty sure they broke the law when they used it) and helicopters.
                      At one point, the hunters vaulted the fence of an escapee and broke into the house where his heavily pregnant wife was!
                      None of the associates ever say "no comment".
                      The worse was when they interviewed a woman associate of an escapee and she was tight-lipped until the husband stuck his head out of the kitchen and asked "Have you told them about the SIM card you set up for him, yet?". Ridiculous.

                      Shame, as when it's realistic, it's good telly and there's usually an underdog to root for, but its constant shark-jumping had me wanting to quit several times.
                      Yeah, the "powers" they are given are often super unrealistic. Showing up on some high street shop's CCTV does not send you straight to the government

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                        #26
                        Every time I watch it, I lament the cancellation of a similar show called "Wanted".

                        "It entailed three teams of two runners travelling throughout Great Britain (travel to other areas of the UK, including British islands, and Northern Ireland, was banned) on the run from a Tracker, with limited funds available for their travel and upkeep. For every day they managed to travel at least one square of the British national grid reference system, take a ten-minute video diary, complete a task of some description, and avoid being spotted by their tracker; the team received £1,000. Every morning, their tracker was told where they had spent the previous night. The public were encouraged to phone in information to the trackers, but natural sympathy with the runners made information somewhat sparse and in the second series a bribe of a £1,000 reward was added to encourage people to phone in. The runners themselves could, and did, arrange for their friends and family to send in false leads.

                        At the end of every week, the runners had to spend 1 hour in a specific phone box of their own choice, connected by video link to a central studio, while their Tracker attempted to find them live on air. The tracker was told which grid square on the map the runners were in. If the door of the phone box was opened by the tracker, the runners were eliminated; if not, even if the Tracker managed to see them but not open the door of the phone box, they won the prize for that week."

                        Sadly, in 1997, it was really expensive to run all the live video feeds and bribes, plus S4C showed Welsh-language shows in the evening, so Wanted was shown either late at night or days later, making the interaction of the viewers void in Wales.

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                          #27
                          Finished Altered Carbon last night. It was just okay, mostly let down by the lead. There was one flashback episode which gave us a glimpse of a character who would have been much more likeable but, whether he was directed this way or it's just him, Kinnaman was just grumbly and dead throughout and yet we were expected to care for his feelings at the end and it just came across as comical.

                          Comment


                            #28
                            Originally posted by Dogg Thang View Post
                            Yeah, after a string of great episodes, the last couple just died.
                            Bang on the money and such a shame because when the season restarted it was really, really good for several episodes

                            Comment


                              #29
                              Just finished S1 and started S2 of Gomorrah. Pretty good show so far. Nice to watch something with a Euro vibe for a change too.

                              Comment


                                #30
                                Binged Altered Carbon in two days.

                                I haven't liked a show this much since Firefly back in the day.

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