The Last Ship was indeed one of those shows which just careens from crisis to never-ending crisis, similar to Manifest, The 100 and Banshee, all of which I watched way too much of (couldn’t finish Manifest, though). Sometimes that’s just exhausting.
Last Ship did have Eric Dane, Adam Baldwin and Rhona Mitra (for a while), all of whom have done some good work elsewhere.
I agree. A lot of crescendo music and ominous drums with every scene. I was impressed with Bren Foster’s martial arts chops. The dude is a beast.
Finished the second and last season of World on Fire. I would have continued to watch it and would be interested in how the cliffhangers resolved. But it wasn’t good enough for me to miss it that much. Some of the issues with the second season couldn’t be helped. The first season came out just as the pandemic was hitting. It took multiple years to get the second season on. It apparently played havoc with the schedule of several actors. Their solution was to kill off two characters offscreen and have two disappear without a trace. That certainly hurt the storytelling.
I thought it was excellent.
Something I don’t think was mentioned in any postscript at the end is that Ruddy’s wife Françoise went on to become the majordomo of the cult that took over an Oregon town (the “crazy scary lady” in the documentary, Wild, Wild Country.)
I’m watching the fifth season of For All Mankind on Apple TV. I re-subscribed to Apple TV yesterday because the fourth season of Ted Lasso premieres on Wednesday. I was going to just go month-to-month but one offer was to pre-pay $79.99 for one full calendar year, so I went with that. So I’ll be able to watch all of Ted Lasso and Slow Horses whenever that comes back.
Blimey… even more to read up on!
I’ve been watching this too- I’m not a fan of the serial killer, I don’t find her that interesting, but Emmy Rossum’s character and the other female lead are good enough to keep watching. Solid cast also.
I saw a reference online to a show I hadn’t heard of, so gave it a try. The Miniature Wife on Peacock stars Elizabeth Banks and Matthew McFadyen as a couple of unpleasant narcissists who have a “Honey I Shrunk The Kids” accident when Banks is accidentally miniaturised. I gave it 1.5 episodes before I gave up. They were just so unlikeable it wasn’t worth wasting my time on it.
The Bombing of Pan Am 103 (Netflix)
A six-episode limited series about the Lockerbie crash with excellent acting. It’s one of those rare procedurals that actually put as much effort into the human story as it does the legal one. No melodrama; just a very factual account of how the events affected the investigators, locals, witnesses, and victims’ families.
The 3rd and final season of ‘Colin from Accounts’ has started. 3rd episode dropped this week and for a comedy, it’s making me cry far too often. There’s something about finding your soulmate and then screwing it all up that I can really relate to.
The 3 series seem to be following the same arc as ‘Starstruck’ did. Another series that had me blubbing each episode. Series 1: will they wont they? Series 2: living together and then screwing it up. Series 3: Meeting up again a few years later when they’ve both, in theory, moved on.
I’m glad it’s back for a third season; it really is much more than a comedy. Last season’s episode about being in a strange place without a phone was probably one of the most distressing things I have ever seen on TV.
We have 1 episode to go and it was excellent for the first four, but the fifth had a “Oh, shit, we only have two more episodes!” quality to it - a lot of the stories were minimized to focus in on Dick of the FBI and there was a LOT of exposition between characters who don’t need to explain things to each other but need to explain it to the audience and push the story forward. We will finish it tonight and it’s still highly recommended - we decided to watch this over both Andor and House of the Dragon on Sunday, so it’s got something going for it.
The Diplomat on Netflix. Just finished season one. I was apprehensive with how episode one ended (I was worried the end of episode cliffhanger it was going to consume the entire season and it was going to be “that kind of show”), but ultimately I was pleased to see it resolved in a reasonable fashion and with how the season progressed beyond it.
The series (or at least season one) centers around the fallout from an attack on a British warship in the middle east (CGI was not great, but thankfully it’s all fairly grounded in realistic urban, office, and estate environments after that first scene). It’s a whodunit on an international scale. Not only is the overarching plot genuinely intriguing, but so also are the smaller moments, the individual scenes and the performances. There’s even some light romcon in the complex relationship of the new ambassador to the UK (a fish out of water as a career foreign service officer who was originally bound for Afghanistan before being hastily reassigned) and her husband (also a career foreign service officer, and arguably the more prominent one) as they vacillate between near-imminent divorce on the one hand and rapprochement on the other.
I plan to transition directly into season 2, and I see season 3 was recently nominated for a slew of Emmys. Highly recommended.
The new season of Chelsea Detective is now available on Acorn. We just watched S4E1 and it’s more of the same, in a good way.
I empathize with his personal challenge trying to get over his ex, so I don’t mind the few minutes they spend on that aspect, but I’m glad they don’t build a show around it. The murder mysteries where our hero is broken or manic-depressive or idiot savant or a mathematical genius or whatever ultimately turn me off.
I’ve been watching Spooky In Love (with the same actress) on Netflix: a crusading prosecutor who’s afraid of ghosts meets a haunted hotel heiress and they solve murders. It has its moments, but I wish there was more mystery-solving and fewer generic K-drama cliches.