I preferred the Pablo story by far the best. And now I’m watching El Chapo. Nowhere near as good as Narcos.
I was wondering about that. I’m 3 episodes from the end of Narcos: Mexico and Netflix is recommending the hell out of El Chapo.
Yeah, I’m on Season Two now and will likely finish it. Narcos was way better, but I’m still enjoying El Chapo in a nostalgia sort of way. Back when Colombia/Mexico were flooding the US with weed and cocaine I was enjoying their products. It’s kind of cool seeing what was going on at the time.
The other cool thing is I know a waiter at a Mexican restaurant we go to who looks an awful lot like El Chapo (Alejandro Edda). When I mentioned it to him he cracked up and brought a few others over to laugh. Apparently everyone is pointing this out to him.
Well, no one can seem to grow a decent Burt Reynold’s stache anymore.
On it’s surface, Outlaws is a comedy, as you would expect from Merchant, but it’s turned darker at about three or four eps in. The humor is still there, but now a healthy dose of drama. It’s quite good, actually, even if some of the characters are over the top.
I’m three episodes into season 2 of “Winning Time” (it’s really too bad they couldn’t call it “Showtime”) on HBO. I’m liking it even better than season 1. I was a huge basketball fan in the 80s so I’m familiar with the players. I find the behind the scenes stuff fascinating (and yes, I know, it’s “based on” real events). The casting is phenomenal and the acting is first-rate. I’m not a John C. Reilly fan but he’s doing a good job as Jerry Buss. And the actor playing Magic is really selling it. I’m eager to see the rest of the season.
Started back up on Taskmaster again (free on YouTube.) Series 10. For those unaware, it’s a goofy British gameshow in which comedian Greg Davies orders other comedians to perform various timed tasks in competition with the others. Because there are multiple routes to achieving the tasks, many of which you’d never think of, the results are usually hilarious. It’s one the purest forms of entertainment I see these days, just silly people being silly for the amusement of others. It feels good.
I would be terrible at this game, though.
(Quote of the week: “It’s a shame my hands aren’t my feet.”)
I love Taskmaster. I started to watch it during the pandemic, when I found that the official channel released all of the series on YouTube, through, I think, the twelfth or thirteenth series. (I think they had some sort of syndication deal in the US for the most recent couple of series, which is why they stopped making them available.)
At its best, it’s both hilarious and fun to watch the creative solutions to the challenges. Like in the second series, the contestants were challenged to place three exercise balls on the mat at the top of the hill. Most struggled with moving the balls to the top of the hill, but they tended to roll down. But Richard Osman just moved the mat to the bottom of the hill, where the balls were already located.
I initially misread that as “I love Ticketmaster”, and assumed you had lost your mind.
On the “Movies You’ve Recently Watched” thread there was some discussion about Ricky Gervais’ David Brent movie which led to his Extras series. That got me to thinking about one of my favorite Gervais series, Derek. It took me a few episodes to decide I liked it, but then I was all in. I missed the characters after it ended. I’ve been seeing a lot of bloopers from Derek on TikTok - HILARIOUS!
I was really impressed with Derek, even though Gervais as a person rubs me the wrong way. Derek was something special.
I liked After Life.
Very good movie. Gervais did his usual bit of being the sad, abusive guy who really has a heart of gold and has some redemption at the end, but it’s well done for all that, and very funny.
The After Life I was referring to was a series, on Netflix in the US, not a movie.
Oops, you’re right.
That’s a perfect description!
I loved After Life too.
I wonder if he’s working on anything new?
Season 2 of Invasion has started. I barely tolerated season 1, I made it halfway through the first episode of the new season before accepting that I no longer have any trace of interest in continuing to watch it.
I thought it was hilarious, especially where they had to do a half-assed recreation of the dance number for the hijacker. 
Was there a satisfactory ending to Orphan Black? I quit the series about the time Sarah went to some island all by herself for some reason and got cut up. I lost track of all the subplots, but those first few seasons are a lot of fun.
I was sitting here trying to remember it and for the life of me I couldn’t. Then I read the wikipedia summary and it only just barely rang a bell. Which I suspect means it was neither awful enough nor good enough to stick. But I believe the major plot points for the most part were tied up. Whether they were tied up satisfactorily is best left to those that remember what they were 
. I never got tired of Tatiana Maslany though (especially as Alison) and now I’m thinking I might need to revisit it, so I can probably be engaged then mildly underwhelmed all over again.