I like to think of AP Bio as showing us what Dennis (It’s Always Sunny) would be like if it wasn’t for the bar. Still his same narcissistic self, but without years of dealing with Dee and Frank (and everyone else) getting under his skin.
And with that, and my recommendation to you is, The Mick. Similar to AP Bio, The Mick feels to me like Dee, but without everyone else egging her on.
Nevermind
Yes, very much so!
Thanks! I watched most of it quite awhile ago. I liked it until one episode where they were shooting each other with a gun for laughs, and it took me out of it and I stopped.
The way I remember the scene, Betty is on the phone and the kids are being noisy and bothering her. She hands the dry cleaning bag to the kids and says something like “put this over your head and play astronaut”. Still shocking, but sounds like something I’d do when I was that young.
That’s the first scene I will always remember from that show. As a child of the 1960s, I watched that and first thought, “Ha, ha…funny exaggeration.” But as I probed my memory of parks and roadsides back then, that became, “Oh my God! We really were like that back then!”
Sally comes in having put the dry cleaning bag over her head herself. I think the joke or shocking part of the scene isn’t just that she’s done that, but that Betty’s reaction is to be concerned only with the potential that Sally has now rumpled the fresh dry cleaning.
Also in that same scene is a smoking-while-pregant Francine. So that scene is a twofer.
Yeah, the twist is that Betty is not concerned with Sally’s health.
I finished watching season 2 of Return to Paradise last night, the spin-off to Death In Paradise that’s set in Australia. It found its formula very quickly, but maybe adheres to it rather too closely. It needs a spark of originality to keep me interested, and so far it’s painfully by-the-numbers.
I have to make another comment about The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, the hour-long follow-on to the 30-minute Alfred Hitchcock Presents. As I mentioned, I’m a big fan of the original series and didn’t even know the hour-long version existed. But it ran for 3 seasons in the early 60s and produced 39 episodes of around 50 minutes each.
My goodness, have I ever got caught up in this, much more than I expected. It’s been bedtime viewing night after night after night! There’s over 32 hours of fine Hitchcockian drama and, aside from a few duds, most of it is really engrossing, and some feature famous actors and directors. Almost every episode is based on a short story or novel, and in typical Hitchcock fashion, most (not all) episodes feature some very fine surprising twists at the end. If you appreciate Hitchcock at all, and especially if you enjoyed Alfred Hitchcock Presents, this is a gold mine of entertainment!
Oops, I inverted two digits and then did the math on the wrong number!
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour produced 93 episodes over three seasons, and at around 50 minutes each, that’s over 77 hours of fine Hitchcockian drama!
One of those hour-long episodes scared the pants off me when I was a kid - “An Unlocked Window”, S3E17. Don’t read anything about it ahead of time.
I loved Ripper Street. My only complaint is it came to a very satisfactory end and then came back for two more seasons. I can’t complain too much about seeing more of characters I like but it was really much better than the final ending.
Watched around 1.25 episodes of the Doctor Who spinoff The War Between the Land and Sea. Overblown, bloated, dull, heavy-handed, preachy melodrama. I’m out.
coming to the end of “silent witness” binge. i’m in series 27.
i find the differences in asl and bsl interesting. asl sign for football is very close to the bsl sign for together. things like that.
should i go for the hallmark holiday binge or ken burns revolution doc.? decisions, decisions.
The Ken Burns revolution series put me to sleep. YMMV
We found it pretty interesting up the last episode, which put both of us in the land ‘o nod. Most of it was about the Southern Campaign and a long segment on what might be called “who got screwed after the American Revolution.” (Blacks, Indians and Loyalists.) It needed to be said but it got kind of boring.
Other than that, however, it was a darn good series. Most people think the revolution consisted of the Declaration of Independence and a couple of years of shooting and that was the end of it. It lasted eight years and cost thousands of lives on both sides!
Dark Winds (Netflix). Eh, it was pretty good (S1) but both Inna and I felt it just fell off the rails in the final episode. We may go back, we may not.
I Know This Much Is True (HBO MAX). Mark Ruffalo stars in this light-hearted romp… oh, wait, no. This was one of the more depressing viewing experiences of the past decade, if not more. Well worth it, however - I gave it 4.5 stars, Inna gave it 5 stars, but she grew up in the Soviet Union where depressing stories about depressing lives are the norm. My big issue with this one was merely in the fact that it heavily-featured 80s music, the title is a lyric from a famous 80s song… and yet they never played the song! What the hell???
Spoilers, please! I’m only half way through the episodes. Don’t give away the ending… 
Yeah, the side stories interrupt the fighting, which was much more gruesome than what I remembered. Of course I also saw his Civil War series, and I belong to a local Civil War roundtable discussion group. At least the Civil War had trains and better maps and telegraphs, removing lots of blind marching through unknown countrysides
They went on too many side issues. It became a snorefest.
Have started Sean Combs: The Reckoning, basically a biography of the life events leading up to his conviction. Produced by Curtis “Fifty Cent” Jackson. I’m only one episode in but it’s clear that Fiddy really does not like Diddy. And neither will the audience of this show.
What’s amazing is that during the legal battles Combs hired a videographer to follow him around, thinking it would make him look good. And the documentary bought the footage. It’s eye-opening.