We just finished Unbelievable on Netflix. It’s been available for a few years now, but the theme (rape) is one I try to avoid in tv shows and film. I only watched it because my wife had the remote the other night.
It was absolutely engrossing. If you can get through the first episode (which is brutal), it’s well worth the watch. The first episode is indispensable to the story, but it sets a depressing tone that needs to be relieved by the more hopeful storyline that doesn’t begin until the second episode. Toni Collette, Merritt Wever, and Kaitlyn Dever (from Dopesick) are excellent as is the rest of the cast.
We finally started the series. As I suspected, it’s mostly shot in Canada, with scenery and setting shots done in Anchorage. That said, the storyline is real enough. Assaults, rapes and murders of indigenous women in Alaska far exceeds the national average, is underreported and under-investigated. Nice to see my hometown, though.
Three episodes in on Inside Man on Netflix, starring Stanley Tucci as the world’s smartest man on death row and David Tennant as the world’s dumbest vicar.
Welcome to Wrexham - Wow. I mean, if you think this is just “Two American actors buy a British football club and hijinks ensue”, it’s a lot more than that. The show spends an enormous amount of time on how intrinsic football culture is to the local community in so many ways from the kids to the local pub owner to fans groups to football hooligans to Wales and Britain. It talks about the lives and careers of footballers down at the dregs of the National League (way below the exalted Premier League celebrities). It talks about sport as a conduit for emotional communication between men and particularly fathers and sons. And it talks a lot about Rob and Ryan, usually in a deliberately self-deprecatory way.
I am aware that there is a lot of very deliberate storytelling going on here and thus a few grains of salt should be taken when viewing, particularly with regard to the new owners’ excessively altruistic motives - they are undoubtedly doing good here but I’m pretty sure this is an exercise in enlightened self-interest and that there are a lot more revenue streams coming in to them than are alluded to in the show (including the show itself, I would imagine), plus the wholesale marketing of Aviation Gin and other related businesses.
And the football is pretty gripping too.
Psych. Sigh. For years Psych has been my go-to show for when I’m not quite ready for bed and want to watch something where it won’t matter at all if I doze off for sections in the middle of the episode. And finally I have come to the end of all eight seasons. It’s had some fun moments and interesting plots (including a disturbing episode where the victim had the same name as me), but mostly I’ve just been hanging on because of Timothy Omundson. The Shaun and Gus characters became increasingly insufferable long ago.
I suppose I’ll have to find some other show to snooze to now.
Star Trek: Lower Decks S3 - There’s a whole thread about this somewhere. Suffice it to say that it continues to be one of the best shows in the franchise.
In progress:
Undone, S2 - Fun rotoscoped show about a fuck-up daughter trying to fix her entire family’s problems via time travel and entering their memories and all kinds of weird shit, or else just having a psychotic break. What makes it work is the possibility that despite her best efforts there is always a strong chance she’s making things worse rather than better.
Bee and Puppycat - Oh god, how do I describe what’s going on in this show? I don’t know what’s going on in this show. There’s a girl who adopts a weird cat thing that speaks in gibberish that she somehow understands and they do odd temp jobs off in space and there are these weird hands that sometimes come after them and also her landlord is about 12 and has an odd dog and a comatose mother and there’s a women who keeps punching through walls and a cat cafe with awful food and… I dunno. It’s sort of vaguely in the Adventure Time mode but only in a broadly sense. Basically, weird shit happens and everyone in the show seems fine with it.
I’m on episode 10 of 22 in The Firm on Amazon Prime. In each episode they litigate one or two cases, while the “main theme” progresses a bit. It’s ok, I’ll definitely finish the season.
If you ever played any of the “Football Manager” games, Welcome to Wrexham is kind of like a real-life window into that game, with some comedy and commentary by Rob and Ryan. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and so did my wife, who is NOT a soccer fan.
Wow, thanks for the heads up! I saw the original series 5-6 years ago back on the Cartoon Hangover channel on VRV. I didn’t know there was a Netflix reboot until reading your post. I’ll have to check it out.
Currently watching Reboot, show about producing a reboot of a fictional 2002 sitcom. With Keegan Micheal Key, Judy Greer, Rachel Bloom, who are all great. I have fun watching it, which is all I need from a workplace comedy. Writing is sufficiently snappy even if part of the jokes and development are fairly predictable from the premise, and the execution is excellent.
Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities
Anthology series about strange occurences. The first two episodes (Lot 36, Graveyard Rats) were splendid, like Night Gallery with overall better scripts and production values. The final episode (The Murmuring) was actually the best, and least typical. Of the others, #3 (The Autopsy) was depraved and unpleasant, and there should be a law against Abuse of F. Murray Abraham. #4 (The Outside) takes a sypathetic mousey housewife and makes her into a monster for no good reason. #5 (Pickman’s Model), where an artist’s paintings cause destruction - stop me if you’ve heard this one - is only watchable if you’re dying to see what Crispin Glover’s up to these days. #6 (Dreams in the Witch House) is a lot of supernatural hokum, and #7 (The Viewing) seems promising, but just ends up confusing.
Del Toro himself makes a pretty dapper Rod Serling, he wrote the story for the last episode and you wish he’d had more to do with it besides the introductions.
So I recently watched Enola Holmes 2 (pleasant enough), but the main reason I’m post8ing here is I could have sworn Enola Holmes “1” was a series, but no it was a ~2 hour movie…
I’d watch Stanley Tucci read the phone book so based on the above recommendation my wife and I watched episode 1 last night. It was marvelous, a new twist on an old genre with Fargo and Prodigal Son sensibilities. When it was over we immediately wanted to watch another but were too tired.
We’re both looking forward to binging the rest tonight, and have recommended this to friends and family.
Thanks for bringing value to the Dope!
I mentioned this last year when the first season came out, but now it’s season two of The Mysterious Benedict Society on Disney+, and it is outstanding. Not only is it equally as beautiful and full of twists and turns as the first, but the kids have gone up a notch in their acting abilities and made it more fun.
e.g.
Constance: “Everyone looks all gangly and weird!”
Sticky: “Well, we’ve grown.”
Constance: “No, that’s not it.”
Tennant’s character is SO dumb, I mean implausibly dumb, that I’m honestly having a hard time finishing the series. I’m about where you were when you posted and I’m not sure I’ll finish despite what is a perfectly decent little premise (generally, ignoring the massive dumbness) and good actors doing a decent job. It takes “contrivance” to a whole new level.
Agreed- he’s just monumentally stupid. I thought this could have been great but to be honest, I only watched for Janice, she was the best character in the show.
Speaking of Stanley Tucci, I’ve been watching Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy on CNN. He travels throughout the regions of Italy to try the different foods. My paternal grandparents came from Italy which is the reason I first started watching it. I’m loving it!