I rewatched The Diplomat and enjoyed it as much the second time.
Watching that, it recommended Dark Winds. I’m trying to get into DW but partly into s1e3 and it won’t bother me if I don’t finish it. I want to like it but it’s not pulling me into it and I’m not sure why.
Thanks for the discussion!
I’ve finished the first three seasons of Slow Horses and am ready to move on to season 4.
I’m nearly completely happy with the show. The casting has been superb (and I’ve gotten over my minor misgivings with the Roddy actor – he’s really working it). It’s funny, but now I want to read the books again. I didn’t recognize the second season story until they got into it a bit, because the book had so much more detail about the Dickie Bough character. It made him both more sympathetic and more pathetic. I do miss that detail, but the series is excellent, even if somewhat truncated.
I decided to rewatch After Life, the Ricky Gervais series. The first season was lovely: a lot of pathos mixed with some humor and the usual collection of unknown oddballs that Gervais likes to employ. He does a superb job of portraying a broken man trying to cope with tragedy.
Then we come to season two. For some reason, he decided to get as crude as humanly possible, and it just doesn’t work. It’s like he got bored with his story and went straight for shock value. I can’t remember if it gets back on track in season three, but at this point I’m not sure I want to revisit it to find out.
Just finished watching the season premiere of The Old Man. Wow, that guy is one tough cookie. (I’m talking about both the character and Jeff himself).
Evil - I am in the middle of Season 3 and this has gone from a fun show to watch on a weekend to a full on addiction. I want to keep going late into the night and would if my wife didn’t have to get up early.
It’s horror but in a light campy fun format. The closest I’ve seen to it is Season 3 of American Horror Story: Coven or Evil Dead series. Never takes itself seriously so the gore and drama is digestible like popcorn.
Or not.
Kind of sucks, but the show was really good, but not top tier. Shame to see a family friendly show get cancelled, though.
Earlier in this thread there was a bit of discussion of classic British sitcoms, with various lists provided. I’m a big fan of many of them, though apparently not everyone agrees with my preferences.
I mentioned that I liked Father Ted way back in the day, and in searching for something similar, found The Vicar of Dibley. I don’t enjoy Father Ted as much as I used to, as I find it rather over the top, but I’m re-watching The Vicar of Dibley and I must say I’m finding it delightful.
The series begins with the death of the elderly village vicar, and the bishop dispatches a young one to take his place. The head of the village council, David Horton, who is rather abrasive and reactionary, is horrified to discover that the new vicar is a woman, and tries to have her recalled. He eventually comes to grudgingly accept her, but the constant tension between the two is one of the ongoing story lines in the series.
I just finished the last episode of Season 1, which was gently humourous but also downright charming. The vicar decides to celebrate the fact that the villagers own so many different animals by holding a special service just for the animals. The ultraconservative Horton is appalled, and once again moves to have the vicar dismissed.
There’s a beautifully filmed scene where virtually the entire village shows up at church, bringing with them dogs, horses, goats, parrots, and virtually any kind of domestic animal. The service is a big hit. As everyone begins to leave, laughing and smiling and cuddling their animals, Horton shows up with a camera hoping to capture what he imagines will be utter chaos, thus cementing his planned dismissal of the vicar. He is stunned to discover how wrong he was.
In my top 7 of BritComs, but I’ve seen every episode so many times I have stopped watching for a while.
It’s nice to hear from another fan! 
I’m that way with Fawlty Towers. I can’t stop watching, even though every line of every script is permanently etched into my brain! In fact I even have a book of all the Fawlty Towers scripts – as if I needed it!
Our next series will likely be Dev on Britbox. I looked at the opening scenes of ep1 and was instantly grabbed. David Tennant stars.
Just finished watching the final Grand Tour episode. It’s been quite a ride over the years, and not without a disaster or two (or three…). Towards the end an emotional James May fights off a tear or two as he says “Anyway, I hope we’ve brought you a little bit of happiness.” Yes, you have.
Yep. Good show. Except Jeff has this one look like he is gonna spit out his chaw.
It is pretty good.
OMG, they are getting even crazier with this “brilliant non-police helps police solve their crimes”. High Potential. Look, if you are not a police officer or maybe a lawyer or something- if you start pointing out clues to the cops- they now assume you are the suspect. Police hate that, and trust me, it will not go well.
I enjoyed Dark Winds so much, that after watching the two seasons on Amazon Prime, I began reading the novels.
The series recently became available on Netflix, so I watched again.
The best part was the end credits where they finally reveal the literal army of people that accompany the three idiots on their adventures. I mean, we all knew it was more than a couple cameramen and a producer but the shows are edited in such a way that the audience can convince themselves the three are pretty much on their own. With the final episode that willful delusion could finally be blown up.
We started to watch the new CNN show Have I Got New For You with Roy Wood Jr, Amber Ruffin, Michael Ian Black and guests. First thing I noticed in the listings is that it’s an hour long. Not good for a comedy show. Then we found it’s a quiz show of sorts. (There’s a lot of Brit quiz shows set up like this.) This makes the hour long even worse.
We made it about 7 minutes in before giving up. It is bad.
Won’t somebody please give Roy a decent show before he gets Larry Wilmore-d?
nevermind
Although I’ve never been a fan of pro wrestling—and have often poked fun at its absurdity—I’m about halfway through the series Heels , which centers on small-circuit pro wrestling in rural Georgia, and I absolutely love it!
The show features great writing, a compelling story, top-notch acting, and rich cinematography. It perfectly captures the ambiance of the rural Deep South.
While I’m still not a fan of pro wrestling itself, I now appreciate the showmanship; it reminds me of a Greek tragedy.
The UK version is great. It’s also half an hour. An hour would be too much (although the BBC do air a slightly longer version the following Monday which includes some of the funny bits that didn’t make the tighter cut).
Also, the BBC version includes actual politicians on it, who are willing to be made fun of in public. I doubt there are many US politicians willing to face that.
And the genre is really “comedy panel show”. The scores are fairly irrelevant; the purpose is the comedy.
Slogged through the penultimate episode of The Moonstone. I want to kill all of the characters. Slowly and with imagination.