FINALLY finished off the last two eps of Handmaid’s Tale. The last one was really a slog, but overall the series was very well done.
We were lucky. We started the show for the first time a few months ago and went straight into the final season. We have about 4 episodes left.
It has slightly overstayed its welcome, to be honest. Good show, though.
I agree. They pretty much had to do it, though, as the penultimate season left everything hanging.
A new series of Taskmaster is now on Youtube with Jason Mantzoukas as one of the contestants. He’s very funny in it and acting like he’s just so happy to be there.
I’m enjoying Your Friends and Neighbors more than I expected I would. I’m pretty sure I know whodunnit, but maybe that’s just what they want me to think. It’s definitely holding my interest.
Silo (Apploe TV, 2023, 2 se.) 7 episodes into this and I am almost ready to give up. The formula isn’t new and that’s ok, it’s a tested brand. Use a closed system to reflect the modern values of a larger society into a microcosm. You can do this with a long train going fast on a snow covered world like Snowpiercer, or in an oasis on a stone pedestal surrounded by desert like Fury Road. Even underground Fallout’s Vault 33 or The Island was different than anything you’ve ever seen.
It’s a fictional world, make it cool!
Why are we only looking at this dull gray subway system? Why does it have no significant differences in language or culture despite being separate so long people have forgotten about stars?
In short, why is this a story?
The detective is alright, but she is carrying the entire show on her shoulders and I am not sure how long that will work for me. Common’s acting chops live up to his name. Tim Robbins looks confused and misdirected so I am not sure what is wrong, but it’s all lame.
I see it’s now available on BritBox.
I’m finally catching up with Season 4 of Slow Horses. Still fantastic.
Despite the near-universal seeming dislike of the show in this thread (a ‘in this topic’ search for ‘Elsbeth’ shows 18 comments mentioning it, and few favorably), I started watching Elsbeth based on this review. I like it too. The Columbo-esque ‘howdunit’ thing really scratches an itch for me. I’ve enjoyed the ‘cat and mouse’ nature of it since I read Crime and Punishment in my teens. I’m surprised the format has not been copied more often. There’s Pokerface, which I also enjoyed, but I found the main character’s near-supernatural lie-detector ability a bit over the top.
Sure, there’s suspension of disbelief needed for stuff like Elsbeth and High Potential as well, but it’s at a level my cognitive dissonance dampeners can handle. I don’t find the Elsbeth character nearly as unbearably quirky as, say, Monk, and I liked Monk too.
I haven’t gone back and read all the posts but in general I think that what people don’t like about the show is Elsbeth the character. She just seems to annoy some people. I find her endearing, and I guess I’m in the minority.
I liked Monk and I thought Tony Shalhoub did an amazing job of creating the character. (Also Stanley Tucci was hilarious in one episode where he was an actor who tried to become Monk for a role.) But he was neurodivergent in some vague way (they never really addressed it head-on) whereas Elsbeth is just so-goofy-nobody-would-believe-she’s-smart.
Fauda, Netflix, 4 seasons (a fifth is on the way).
Despite a good bit of the plot being driven by the main character’s bad choices, Inna and I really enjoyed this Israeli show about the Israel-Palestine conflict. I thought it was very well cast, especially the main character (Doron, who I sometimes named “Moron”). There are some “bad acting” moments, which is notable because I don’t usually catch those things (there was this one interaction between two really minor characters that was so bad that we both broke out into peals of laughter), but then, I’m not too sure if the West Bank is bursting with acting talent.
Politically-wise, I’m sure the Palestinian side hates this one. I think the show tried to be as “fair and balanced” as an Israeli-production could… and it definitely did not put Israel into any great lights… but the simple fact is we followed the same Israeli agents season after season, while the Palestinians were a rotating cast (both good and bad) whom a viewer could not get attached to, and that alone has the viewer rooting for the Israeli’s.
The fifth season is currently in production and is based on the events of October 7th, 2023 and after.
Comedian Mike Birbiglia has a YouTube show/podcast called Working On It where he interviews other comedians and I am loving it. They usually take raw material they are working with and hash it out together, along with all the profound insights the best comedians usually have.
So far I have watched Chris Fleming (PLEASE check this guy out, he is so funny) and Hasan Minhaj. Both excellent interviews in completely different ways.
I just sort of see her as a ‘fish out of water in the big city’ character whose ‘aw shucks’ Midwestern provincialism / naïveté is, to a certain extent, real, but is played up to the suspects to get them to let their guard down. Like Columbo did with his bumbling, absent-minded act.
I just watched the episode where she accepted a tennis lesson from a tennis coach / suspected murderer she was shadowing-- she showed up wearing an outfit that screamed ‘stereotypical tennis outfit from a Doris Day movie’ complete with the word ‘TENNIS’ emblazoned across the front of her sweater vest. I had to chuckle. Funniest murder mystery show on TV right now, I reckon.
I unsubscribed from BritBox, but I’m sure I’ll cycle back to it at some point, and check this show out.
I really liked Ellsbeth, my husband was meh, I’m trying to convince him to give it another shot, but I like crime stories more than he does.
Just going to throw in a mention of Seinfeld once again, to say that I was never a big fan of the limited first two seasons, just a few episodes in S1, and 12 in S2, as NBC cautiously assessed whether to green-light a full season. In fact there may be a few in there that I never even saw. So I’ve started from the very first episode, and it’s interesting to see quite a different tone in the first two seasons than in later ones. The plot lines tend to more cautious, more cerebral, than in later seasons that get wild and crazy, and the different characters are still in the process of fully establishing the eccentricities that will fully define them later on. Interesting bit of TV history.
I actually watched Seinfeld in its first mini-season. I wonder how many others caught it on TV during its original brief run.
I didn’t see it again from season 2-4 or so, then caught up and saw re-runs of it all.
When I first watched it, it was called The Seinfeld Chronicles, but that was on New Zealand late night TV. I think they were airing it at 11.30pm.
I’m pretty sure the show was called The Seinfeld Chronicles in the US as well. I watched it from the beginning.
Yes, it was.