TV You Have Watched

[Atticus]

Yeah, loved Peacemaker, it was just what I needed. Cena is absolutely class ... he just gets it.

I finished the 5th and final season of Gommorah last night. Decent Italian crime/mob drama set in the slums of Naples. Worth a look for something different.

[QualityChimp]

I'm watching DARK (via Netflix) at the moment and I know it's going to get all weird soon, it's quite slow-paced.

HOWEVER, I need to stress this is not a bad thing and a problem with me wanting Stranger Things-style excitement, but getting a story that wants to breathe and give you bits of the puzzle to start making the picture.

I even had to put my phone in the other room to stop fiddling with it, so the problem is 100% me.

[randombs]

I finished the first series of SotP in five days - 23 episodes - and am starting the second. Three series and a film altogether!

I absolutely love it. It looks like Netflix took some shortcuts to get the series out quickly - there aren't any translations for things like signs or the names of talk show guests on screen but the actual subtitles are spot-on.

[Dogg Thang]

SotP

Give us a clue here at least.

[QualityChimp]

Give us a clue here at least.

Servant of the People

I’d been waiting for this and it popped up on Netflix yesterday and I’ve watched six episodes so far.

I had to scroll up a bit too.

[Dogg Thang]

I had to scroll up a bit too.

Ah okay. Thank you!

[Lebowski]

It's brilliant, isn't it?
He's not a perfect person, but he's not mean spirited and you want him to see him succeed because a lot of his issues aren't his fault and has a misguided belief in peace at any cost, which he starts to question.

Agreed, a great cast and they all play their part in the story, rather than being "Peacemaker and Friends".

the line

I made a vow of peace, no matter how many people I have to kill to get it

Sums him up the character perfectly, hes too stupid to comprehend how crazy this is, It's like the Americans who argue about gun ownership by saying "i need a gun to protect me from all the guns".

[randombs]

Give us a clue here at least.

I had to scroll up a bit too.

I felt awkward using the full title again so soon

I was going to just refer to it as Servant but thought it might be confused with that M Night Shamalayan series on Apple TV!

Here’s some choice cuts:

Svetlana: “I can sew uniforms for the police, the army, whoever”
Vasily: “The only time I’ve ever seen a needle in your hand was when you were in hospital on a drip”

[Brad]

My fave peacemaker line:

->Open Spoiler<-

oh yeah, sorry, I forgot women had fingers

[Neon Ignition]

I know the gut response here will be 'No!' but run with me here:


Do you wish you could re-experience the mysterious journey of Lost. However, this time with Michael not crying out Walt every five minutes. Also without endless flashbacks, cut down to just a concise mapped out 10 episodes per season instead of 25 drawn out wheel spinning ones. With steady mysteries but also a solid breadcumb trail of answers, with a fog horn and polar bear swapped for real visible creatures?

Well, you can with:

From: Season 01
We just finished this which is apparently headed to Netflix later in the year. The set up is that a large group of people live in a nameless town. Each were driving along one day and came across a fallen tree in the road, crows circled overhead and so they turned around and headed back down the road but instead of going back on themselves the road leads them into the town. You can't leave the town either, the road endlessly loops you back every time.

When it turns dark each night everyone locks themselves indoors, if they look out their windows they will see their dead loved ones appear at the glass pleading to be let in. If the door opens, everyone in the building dies.

The show leans into the horror elements of this at night, but there's a large dose of learning the characters and the puzzle box of what is happening to everyone, why are they trapped in the town, what is its history, the psychological toll it takes on them etc. It's actually really nice to experience a show with enough of the pull Lost had but very few of that shows worst excesses. This is tighter, more grounded and feels like it has direction, very much looking forward to season two.

[randombs]

That sounds bananas and I can’t wait for it to show up on Netflix!

For the record, I loved Lost but this sounds great.

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, it works well distilling the concept down and reigning it in around horror themes. Instead of time travel, underground bunkers, ghosts etc you have something much simpler as the mystery - I'm in a town that I can't leave, why is my dead grandmother at the window and why is my kid unlatching the catc... oh god, nooo! gurgle splurt

[QualityChimp]

Do you wish you could re-experience the mysterious journey of Lost. However, this time with Michael not crying out Walt every five minutes. Also without endless flashbacks, cut down to just a concise mapped out 10 episodes per season instead of 25 drawn out wheel spinning ones. With steady mysteries but also a solid breadcumb trail of answers, with a fog horn and polar bear swapped for real visible creatures?

YES! YES I DO!

Will deffo keep a lookout for that!

[fuse]

Excited to hear how you get on with Dark, [MENTION=10111]QualityChimp[/MENTION] ! I really like it a lot.

From the last few weeks...

Derry Girls S3 - bit of a reluctant participant on this one. Only watched a couple of episodes before and thought it was ok, but we watched all of this latest season and it did grate on me a little. It does get the odd laugh out of me, but a lot of it is just a bit too obvious, and there being a constant soundtrack of nostalgia-inducing 90s chart toppers might appeal to some, but it does not to me. The special to round everything all off at the end taking a bit more of a serious tone actually worked quite well though, I felt.

This is Us - originally tried to play it cool and act like I was above this when my partner wanted to (re-)watch the earlier seasons of this and introduce me to it. It spans multiple generations and jumps between time periods of a family to present a highly idealised commentary on all aspects of life and how they're handled - growing pains, finding your purpose, falling in and out of love, parenting, and so on - and despite the initially stony reception it did eventually manage to connect to me through its writing and character development, which is, in fairness, pretty great. It's not the kind of thing where much actually happens, but it's proper "is someone chopping onions" material and this final season wrapped things up about as well as they could have possibly done, in my opinion.

The Morning Show - haven't quite finished this, but honestly finding it a bit tiresome. The first season was insistent on wrangling with #MeToo, focused a bit too much on the wrong stories, and generally handled it all pretty badly. The second season diversifies its bumbling into other topics of social and ethical significance, and again is clattering through them all with the disregard and grace of an angry bull. Will stick it out, but also be glad to see the back of it.

Ozark S4 - aaand breathe, it's finally over.

[QualityChimp]

Excited to hear how you get on with Dark, @QualityChimp ! I really like it a lot.

I'll be honest, I like it, but it's not blowing me away, which it really should with all the kind of things that intrigue me in it!
I got to the end of the first season after focusing on that, but having a break before starting S2.

We finished Kimmy Schmidt S1, which is very silly, but easy to watch.
We got quite angry at the court scenes, which is ridiculous as it's played for laughs!

We watched Have I Got News For You from last week and it's still great telly and amazing how we can manage to find laughs as we party into fascism.

We also smashed The Pentaverate, as it's really short (8 x 20min eps), but packs a lot in during that time.
My favourite scene was possibly the pool scene re-edited by Netflix to cut out all the swearing.