Still working my way through Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Love those classic old shows. Season 3 now takes us into 1957. It’s often amazing how many actors that subsequently became big stars appear on those old shows. The first episode of Season 3 features none other than a young Captain Kirk!
He also starred in “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, a Twilight Zone ep aired in 1963. Three years later he was starring in Star Trek.
The Law According to Lidia Poët on Netflix. Based on the life of Italy’s first female lawyer but I’m sure several liberties are taken. The story in the first episode is Encyclopedia Brown level mystery solving but, boy, did they spend a ton of money on production! 19th Century Turin is gorgeous and so is the cast. The performances are quite good and very Italian. I’ve only watched the first episode but I’ll continue watching.
Just started Love on the Spectrum in which autistic people learn to date with the assistance of a specialist. What a bright, fun show. No crazy drama, just people learning to connect with other people. Very charming characters. All the awkwardness of a typical first date, times a billion. But it’s not a downer because they learn to work through their issues. It’s a learning experience.
Personally, I stan for Kelvin, the anime fan, artist, and writer that is taught to greet his date upon first meeting her. I’m not sure how his date’s going to go! He seems a bit confused by the instructions. What’s interesting to me is the specialist uses different approaches with different people based on their needs. Kelvin needed drawings and role play. Good luck, Kelvin!
(I’m a sucker for romantic stuff.)
Finished Lockwood & Co on Netflix about ghostbusters in an alternate time line where the ghosts showed up around the 1960s and changed the world. People touched by ghosts are comatose and warehoused in hospitals. Nighttime curfews are strictly enforced and there’s a whole government bureaucracy just to deal with ghosts. Only some children and young adults have the ability to sense, hunt, and neutralize the ghosts so they are sold into service by their parents. The premise and lead characters put it squarely into the TPR (Teenage Paranormal Romance) genre but it’s more T and P than R. Two 60 year-olds were surprizingly entertained by the 8 episodes and we’ll watch season 2 if there is one.
Better Call Saul is so good.
I think I like it better than Breaking Bad, although I couldn’t tell you whether that would be true if I hadn’t seen BB first.
I suspect that BCS can hold its own just fine, but I’m biased because a lot of my enjoyment was due to it delivering rich origin stories for characters that I wanted to know more about.
This 60-year old found it frustrating - almost all the tension was manufactured rather than organic. On the one hand, the premise is that the teens are exceptionally talented ghost hunters with years of experience. What you get is a bunch of bunglers who show up without their equipment, lose/drop the equipment, or damage the equipment. And how the heck do you have multiple conversations with a skull in a jar, drag it all over London, and not once ask what his name is?
If it had a name, they might have to acknowledge that it was a person and not an investigative tool. But you’re right about them unnecessarily getting themselves into trouble.
Tonight I started Hello, Tomorrow (which I created a thread for) and Animal Control, which is a new comedy starring Joel McHale. Fairly conventional first episode, but I have hope that McHale will Winger it.
I noticed that the opening scene from Animal Control seemed to be based on the “Squirrel Cop” story from This American Life (transcript of the original story here)
Currently making my way through Season 3 of the venerable Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and I’m amazed at the number of famous names in the cast, perhaps more in this season than in the earlier ones. Some were relatively unknown at the time and went on to become big names, but many were already well established. Some of those names (just from Season 3):
Jessica Tandy
William Shatner (got very minor billing despite being central to the story because he was virtually unknown at the time)
E.G. Marshall
Jack Klugman
James Gregory
Vincent Price
Nehemiah Persoff
Carol Lynley
Peter Lorre
George Peppard
Joseph Cotten
Martin Balsam
Fay Wray (yes, THAT Fay Wray, and in 1957 she was only 50; she died in 2004 at the age of 96)
Hume Cronyn
Another name of note is Pat Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock’s beloved daughter and only child. She appeared in quite a few episodes and also in several of his movies. The first time she appeared (I think sometime in Season 1) after Hitchcock gave his famous wrapup at the end of the show and walked off, just as the credits started to roll, he stuck his head back in front of the camera and said something like “I thought the young lady in tonight’s play was pretty good, didn’t you?” 
She was never as successful an actress as she might have hoped, but she lived a good life and left this world in 2021 at the age of 93.
I think it was better than I would have imagined a fairly-low-budget adaptation of a YA paranormal detective show would be… but not a LOT better. I really liked that many of the characters who you would expect to be one-dimensional caricatures weren’t… and the world felt lived in. Lots of little moments about people’s attitudes and so forth.
The whole “only teens can see the undead” thing is a great excuse for “wait, why are teenagers always saving the world, where are all the adults?”, but it still really ran into that a few times.
Still, overall fun, will definitely watch season 2.
Tried to watch Saving Grace, based on a recommendation above. Then a guy sprouted wings and that was the end of that.
LOL I thought the 1st season of Saving Grace was extremely good. Holly Hunter portrayed such a self-destructive and tormented soul. I found her scenes riveting.
Some odd plot twists in season 2 ended my viewing. But I want to rewatch season 1.
The Angel was certainly different. He was more mystic therapist than religious.
I love this series and have watched both the British and US versions. I hoping and waiting for new seasons.
Hello, Tomorrow (Apple TV+) Set in a “retro-futuristic” version of our 1950’s-ish reality, where Billy Crudup is selling real estate on the moon.
I’ve only seen the first episode, but I’ll watch at least a few more. This may be an example of “no one comes out of a theater whistling the set design” but I want to give a shout out to the designers. If you can picture that 1950’s Disneyland/Tomorrowland mid-century modern look – they nailed it.
We finished season 2 of Reservation Dogs. Totally up for another season. Pretty much everything in this show clicks. I do think Bear is totally underused as a character. He even has a spirit guide that (almost) no one else can see but nothing major comes of it. Mostly, he seems to be there for background. Cheese and Willy Jack totally steal the show. I will admit that I have seen enough naked Uncle Brownie to last me a lifetime.
Started watching The Chelsea Detective on Acorn. Not sure about sticking with this one. It’s another light mystery about a quirky detective. In this case, he’s dyslexic so instead of reading things he takes pictures with his phone of everything and everyone connected to a crime. He then prints them all out and hangs them up all over his wall at home. His printer ink bill must be humungous.
That sounded good, so I looked it up and think I watched it when it first ran. Unless I’m confusing it with Reaper, which he was in that is a supernatural show too.
The motels and car fins reminds me of James Lileks reviews of retro design. Here’s some postcards of his favorite motels
http://www.lileks.com/motels/index.html
He even has a review of Hello Tomorrow in the link below. Here’s what he says about the show
Two episodes into Hello Tomorrow and my wife is out. Says it brings back bad memories of her days working in sales. I’ll probably continue, but the only thing keeping me going right now is the magnificent set design. The story itself isn’t very unique.
anyone watch this one? sounds intresting but weird