Watchable telly

[ramit]

On 12/05/2024 at 23:46, Wolfie said:

After finishing Fall of the House of Usher (very good), we decided to jump straight into another Mike Flanagan creation: Midnight Mass (Netflix).

Promising first episode but must admit it threw me a bit having most of the actors playing billionaires in Usher, now turning up on an impoverished remote island.

I have seen neither.  Would doing Midnight Mass first be advisable, a rags to riches kind of angle, or are the characters so deplorable that one really won't prefer anything working out for them and therefor watching them wither into nothingness would be the more satisfying route to go, or if they are truly horrible people perhaps being filthy rich has avenues of even greater degradation and humiliation, or should I just simplify things and do one and leave the other?

Edited May 18 by ramit
Wording

[Eddie]

The OA (Netflix)

Series 1 is pretty good, but Series 2 is blooming excellent. Top mind-bending SF (although that might be a squid-like creature forcing me to say that)

 

[ramit]

Just finished Mindhunter.  That was a mixed bag.  I hope the FBI are still as inept as they were in the early 70's, there was some really shoddy police work going on, leads not followed until too late, making minds up before facts were in while ignoring other evidence.  The idea came to me that Sherlock Holmes should be required reading for all FBI men, just before I went nah.  The stars of this show are the serial killers, the fella playing Ed Kemper really earned his pay, I have seen all the interviews with Kemper and it was like he was there.

The private life of the three main characters was to say the least boring and had nothing to do with anything, did not add dept to the characters, most were already clearly defined, needing no broader picture.  The character of Bill was perhaps the only one that could use a bit of background, even as he was a regular crew cut bulldog cop kind of character not surprisingly clumsy in marital, fatherly and household affairs

Not getting anything over a 7 from me, too many subplots and irritating side characters for my liking.

Edited May 18 by ramit
typo

[Bob The Badger]

Sooo disappointed with the ending of The Responder.

I thought episode 4 really teed things up brilliantly, and then it was like the scriptwriters were told they weren't getting paid but they still had to finish it anyway.

Freeman is really great though and so was Bernard Hughes, just a poor writing performance that lacked any sense of consistency.

Spoiler alert.

Not a massive spoiler, but don't read on if you haven't seen it.

---------

Is it possible to get hit that hard with a ducking lump hammer and barely bleed? I cannot believe he'd not have had a fractured skull.

What happened to Franny?

Why did he go from menacing loon to big softie?

I thought his character was great until the last 15 minutes.
 

 

[Bob The Badger]

On 18/05/2024 at 02:01, ramit said:

Just finished Mindhunter.  That was a mixed bag.  I hope the FBI are still as inept as they were in the early 70's, there was some really shoddy police work going on, leads not followed until too late, making minds up before facts were in while ignoring other evidence.  The idea came to me that Sherlock Holmes should be required reading for all FBI men, just before I went nah.  The stars of this show are the serial killers, the fella playing Ed Kemper really earned his pay, I have seen all the interviews with Kemper and it was like he was there.

The private life of the three main characters was to say the least boring and had nothing to do with anything, did not add dept to the characters, most were already clearly defined, needing no broader picture.  The character of Bill was perhaps the only one that could use a bit of background, even as he was a regular crew cut bulldog cop kind of character not surprisingly clumsy in marital, fatherly and household affairs

Not getting anything over a 7 from me, too many subplots and irritating side characters for my liking.

There was some really shoddy police work everywhere in the 1970s'!

I thought Mindhunter did a brilliant job of showing how the FBI started, it wasn't meant to make them look competent. Forensics and modern policing were in their infancy.

I think I read that the episodes that David Fincher directed involved shooting more footage than any other Netflix production in history, and because he couldn't do another series, it wasn't continued.

I'd give it a solid 9/10, maybe even 9.5.

[ramit]

9 hours ago, Bob The Badger said:

There was some really shoddy police work everywhere in the 1970s'!

I thought Mindhunter did a brilliant job of showing how the FBI started, it wasn't meant to make them look competent. Forensics and modern policing were in their infancy.

I think I read that the episodes that David Fincher directed involved shooting more footage than any other Netflix production in history, and because he couldn't do another series, it wasn't continued.

I'd give it a solid 9/10, maybe even 9.5.

The FBI was founded in 1908.

I get that many find this series intriguing, it is a matter of taste and perhaps I have become a bit jaded

[Bob The Badger]

40 minutes ago, ramit said:

The FBI was founded in 1908.

I get that many find this series intriguing, it is a matter of taste and perhaps I have become a bit jaded

Sorry, I meant how they started with criminal profiling.

 I liked this because it didn't flatter the FBI. US-produced stuff does have a tendency to make itself look great.

But at the end of the day, it's all personal tastes, and Mrs Badger wasn't a massive fan.

[Tamworthram]

On 16/05/2024 at 11:21, Anag Ram said:

I’m okay with it. There’s enough aspects of serious farming to make it educational. 

I laugh at the silly bits, as he intends us to. All reality TV is anything but, given there will be an entourage following everyone around and interactions will be scripted.

 I think everyone should be educated on how food reaches their table. Other farming programmes are more accurate but don’t have mass appeal.

It needs the daft bits to keep the audience amused in between the more serious messaging.

Clarkson screwing up and being abused by his co-stars makes us feel a bit better about our own shortcomings 😊

 

Just finished series three of Clarkson's farm and really enjoyed it. Although largely a light hearted story of a buffoon trying to turn his hand to something way out of his comfort zone, I agree that there was a serious side to it regarding the plight of farmers.

 

The piglets was a little traumatic but the goats were hilarious. There are no doubt several people that would like to do what one of the goats did to Clarkson. 😀

[Anag Ram]

Episode three of Inside Number Nine is a classic. Filmed through a door cam.

They are such clever writers.

[Bob The Badger]

Finished Hatton Garden on Netflix last night.

This came out on BBC originally, and I'm guessing a bunch of you saw it.

About the Hatton Gardens safe vault break in, I thought it was great.

Timothy Spall is a tremendous actor who does as good a job as a nasty East End villain as he did as a gay literary professor in The Sixth Commandment. 

In fact, the acting throughout was first-rate.

Gangster movie with no guns or explicit threats of death. Amazing, it was entertaining, really.

[Foreveram]

1 hour ago, Bob The Badger said:

Finished Hatton Garden on Netflix last night.

This came out on BBC originally, and I'm guessing a bunch of you saw it.

About the Hatton Gardens safe vault break in, I thought it was great.

Timothy Spall is a tremendous actor who does as good a job as a nasty East End villain as he did as a gay literary professor in The Sixth Commandment. 

In fact, the acting throughout was first-rate.

Gangster movie with no guns or explicit threats of death. Amazing, it was entertaining, really.

He also played Peter Taylor in Damned United.

[Tamworthram]

Three episodes into “3 body problem” on Netflix. It all seems a bit mixed up (and too complex for me to give a synopsis other than it’s sci fi 😀 and British Sci Fi as apposed to US) but I am enjoying it.

If you don’t like subtitles then don’t be put off by the start, nearly all of it is in English. 

[Chester40]

The Imposter 

Finished it..  7/10

On Channel 4 but followed Netflix's tactic of chopping up all the timelines and going back n forth to tell the story so they can keep changing the narrative.

Frustrating  ...as it feels too manipulative, deliberately withholding bits of the story in order to be able to suddenly change direction.

Quite a cheap production of a pretty bizarre story. Thought they could have made more of the story but still worth a watch.

 

Edited May 26 by Chester40

[Bob The Badger]

Two episodes into The Gathering on Channel 4 about a girl attacked at an illegal rave.

Some really excellent acting, and I think it's going to be really good.

Amazingly, the timeline is all over the place.

This is so common now, but Mrs Badger has been doing it for a decade or more. She gets into bed and falls asleep immediately to show me what the end will look like.

Sadly, she forgets to go back to the process that led up to that bit, but at least she's being creative.

[Eddie]

10 hours ago, Tamworthram said:

Three episodes into “3 body problem” on Netflix. It all seems a bit mixed up (and too complex for me to give a synopsis other than it’s sci fi 😀 and British Sci Fi as apposed to US) but I am enjoying it.

If you don’t like subtitles then don’t be put off by the start, nearly all of it is in English. 

They tried to condense a very complex book (and the first couple of chapters of the second book) into a concise single-thread series. The way the books are written (I'm on the third one now) is very much in a 'jumping about all over the place' style. I don't think that they will try to construct a video series from the second and third novels in the series.

[Wolfie20]

Finally got round to watching the last 2 series of Love/Hate. Absolutely brilliant, superb acting by so many and an ending which means there's no Series 6 to potentialy lessen what's gone before.

[ketteringram]

2 hours ago, Wolfie20 said:

Finally got round to watching the last 2 series of Love/Hate. Absolutely brilliant, superb acting by so many and an ending which means there's no Series 6 to potentialy lessen what's gone before.

So many great characters in Love/Hate.

If they made it, I'd watch a spin off based on that Gardai detective 😀

[Bob The Badger]

4 hours ago, Wolfie20 said:

Finally got round to watching the last 2 series of Love/Hate. Absolutely brilliant, superb acting by so many and an ending which means there's no Series 6 to potentialy lessen what's gone before.

They totally nailed the ending with Love/Hate, unlike so many.

I feel a thread coming on.

[Bob The Badger]

Finished The Gathering on Channel 4 last night.

A solid Nigel Callaghan/10.

The sorry does bounce around a lot on the timeline, but almost everything seems to these days.

The plot did get a tad convoluted towards the end, but the acting was high quality, and a couple of minor plot flaws didn't bother an old pedant like me.

If you like solid Brit drama and a plot with a bit of a twist, you will like this.

 

[NottsRam]

17 hours ago, Bob The Badger said:

They totally nailed the ending with Love/Hate, unlike so many.

I feel a thread coming on.

I miss Love/Hate so much i have started to watch Gomorra again from the beginning as it is the only thing that comes close for me.