The Great British Baking Show is on there, and I love it! Zumbo’s Just Desserts is also good fun, and the Zumbo desserts are like Willy Wonka came to life. (There is one inexplicable helper, but she doesn’t talk much.) Don’t waste your time on The Big Family Cooking Showdown unless you really like watching dysfunctional @$$holes disrespect their family members and brag about being in control of everything. Blech!!
I loved the Lost in Space re-make but be warned, it is a LOT creepier than the first one.
But if I was going to tell you what to watch first it’s Peaky Blinders all the way home.
It’s not a competition show, but Animal Airport has a similar up-with-people vibe to what I get from Bake-Off. Looks at the workers at Heathrow who handle the millions of animals that pass through the airport every year – from exotic mammals to fish for the pet trade to some passenger’s dog or cat.
I checked out one episode and couldn’t stop. But I like animals.
I just finished American Vandal. If you watch any true-crime, “murder porn” documentaries, you need to see this brilliantly executed satire, in which two high school students solemnly try to determine who spray-painted dicks on a bunch of teachers’ cars. I was delighted to learn it’s coming back for a sophomore season.
In a not-dissimilar vein, Big Mouth is the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages. It’s a cartoon about high school kids entering puberty, and it’s absolutely no-holds-barred. Not something for kids, but any adult can relate. Also coming back for another season.
I’m down with the MCU Netflix shows and the second season of Luke Cage was pretty great.
The End of the F*ing World, **while not stunning, was funny and interesting and, it must be said, eminently bingeable, given that the episodes are only about 20 minutes apiece.
Bojack Horseman (But it’s coming to Comedy Central, so maybe wait)
The Toys that Made Us
Evil Genius, Wild Wild Country, if you like bizarre true crime
Documentary Now, if you want to see classic documentaries parodied.
Nailed It! has two seasons out now, and surely more to come. I agree, Nicole is hilarious. I love the way she calls for that AD or whoever he is, Wes. She puts an “H” in front of his name, so it comes out, “Hwes? Hwes??”
I can’t believe anyone is as bad at baking as those unicorn cakes came out. That episode, back to front, is my favorite. S2E2, I think it is.
I liked the SF movie Bright with Will Smith so much, I was deeply disappointed that it wasn’t a Netflix series. I really thought they were going to announce one-- without Will Smith. I would have liked to have seen more of the Bright universe.
Agreed. I loved it when I thought it was a pilot. Now that I know it’s a movie I think it’s a pretty rotten movie. Don’t misunderstand, I enjoyed it, but it just sets up the world and the plot, it doesn’t have much of its own.
We are watching Money Heist right now. Its a fun heist series. It is in Spanish ( La Casa de Papel is its original name) and is subtitled, but I think there is a dubbed version, I just prefer subtitles. Basically a mastermind pulls together a team of people who break into the Royal Mint in Spain , take a bunch of hostages and remain holed up there for the season working on their plan whilst negotiating with the police. It is a bit formulaic for each episodes ( something goes wrong, some internal team dram compounded by the hostages, the police catch a break, something dramatic happens and the mastermind has another trick up his sleeve he planned a while ago. Almost a bit prison break season one ish. That said, it’s well acted and the characters are interesting and engaging and a few are unhinged enough to keep your attention, and it doesn’t require too much thought or excessive suspension of disbelief.
3%, a Brazilian series, set in a dystopian future. Subtitled. I watched the first season and liked it. I have not watched the second season yet.
Essentially 3% of the population of a poor impoverished society get to live on an island where they live as elites. Every year a group of people from the society are selected to go through a series of tests to see if one of them will be selected to move to the island.
Episodes is a lot of fun. A British husband and wife writing team move to Hollywood to make an American version of their show. Matt LeBlanc plays himself.
Sugar Rush is the latest baking competition on Netflix and it’s not bad Zumbo’s Just Desserts was the better baking show Nailed It! is fun and lol-worthy on a few occasions
In case you weren’t aware, there’s a decent cooking show similar to Great British Bake-off called Big Family Cooking Showdown (co-hosted by Nadiya from GBBO!)
And another low-drama British import, Great Interior Design Challenge if you’re into that sort of thing
The Informant starring Matt Damon. Based on a true story of a higher up working for ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) who is a whistle blower that turns FBI informant exposing corporate price fixing, but he also has a propensity for making up stories, and many parts will have you guessing till the end of what is true or not.
SpotLight–Another true story, Spotlight is a four member investigative reporting team working for the Boston Globe, wanting to know if there is a systamatic system in place of cover-up that higher ups are using to protecting pedophile priests and others inside the church, and instead of turning them over to law enforcement authorities, simply tolerate and protect them by sending them to other churches every couple of years or so while they continue with their abuse.
Defiance–True story of four brothers that protected over 1,000 Jews while Hitler was in power by living out in a forest. Often running low on food, and weapons, slowly built up their food supply by raiding farms. Also started carrying out raids on the Germans building up their weapontry. Others hiding out in the forest were another resistant group of Soviet partisans, which sometimes protected the Jews in exchange for supplies.
We finished up series 2 , which is the end of the series, and I will have to modify my last statement. It does get a bit ridiculous at the end, with characters doing really dumb stuff to keep the plot twist and turns going , but still entertaining.