Televisual Entertainments

Agreed on all counts. Lower Decks in particular is a really under-rated show that's both a love letter to all things Star Trek and hugely enjoyable in its own right.

I'm very much enjoying Shōgun on Disney+, though be warned that it's updating weekly and they've only dropped two episodes so far. I was not aware of this and am rather frustrated that I've caught up already.

Yeah the first couple of episodes were great. It's getting Game of Thrones comparisons, which are a little lazy, but accurate in one regard. It understands just how rivetting two people in a room talking can be. All that money spent (on both shows) and the best bits are always quiet conversations.

It's also done well, so far, to take a very silly, camp book and make it feel quite grounded.

it's updating weekly and they've only dropped two episodes so far. I was not aware of this and am rather frustrated that I've caught up already.

I'm getting very annoyed with the streaming services for reverting to this model, I think only Netflix is still dropping things all at once and even they have started splitting seasons into two drops for the bigger stuff.

There's always loads of hype when a series starts, then I realise there's only one or two episodes out and plan to get back to it. Then by the time it's all out, no-one is talking about it and all the hype is for something else that's only got one or two episodes out.

Shogun is on my list but so is a bunch of other stuff and I'll just to hope I'll remember to watch them in due course.

I think the theory – which has been borne out by a couple of shows – is that by releasing weekly, it gives the conversation a longer tail. A lot of shows that drop all at once get a ton of buzz for a week, and then drop off the face of the earth until the next season starts (or people start complaining when it gets cancelled).

It also means that, for instance, if I want to recommend it to someone I'm not saying "here's 10 hours of your life I want you to spend," but rather "let's watch this thing together and discuss it while we're both on the same page" (at least until it ends).

Honestly, it has the opposite effect for me. It means I have to avoid all mention of a show completely for weeks in order to avoid spoilers, and more than once I’ve had something spoiled for me and not watched the show at all as a result.

I never want to watch a show for one hour a week and no more.

Shōgun stuck the landing pretty well!

Spoiler - click to showThe framing device of Old Man In Bed seemed largely pointless, and only really served to undermine the peril of Blackthorne's would-be sacrifice. It's not the worst thing in the world, I just think it detracted more than it added.

I want to watch the whole thing again immediately.

I've also been watching Renegade Nell in bits and pieces, and enjoying it tremendously. It's anachronistic supernatural YA cheese through and through - and unfortunately doesn't have quite the budget it needs in places - but it doesn't take itself at all seriously, and Louisa Harland (Orla from Derry Girls) is fantastic.

We've been watching The X-Files. It's fun, holds up better than I expected. It free (and somehow ad-free) on 4 on demand.

Something which has surprised me about X-Files is that episodes don't usually wrap up tidily. Monsters get away, puzzles aren't resolved, victims are left no better off than they were to start. I am certainly enjoying that aspect to it.

That's a good point, I watched some of it a while back and it really has the air of something entirely non-focus grouped. From the leads, through to the plots it doesn't really give two fucks compared to a more modern, hyper-slick, 4 quadrant pleasing release. It's hard to say when that began to change, it's probably a Netflix-era thing where you can get detailed metrics on what people are watching and for how long in granular detail.

Shōgun stuck the landing pretty well!

Spoiler - click to showThe framing device of Old Man In Bed seemed largely pointless, and only really served to undermine the peril of Blackthorne's would-be sacrifice. It's not the worst thing in the world, I just think it detracted more than it added.

Yeah I loved the whole thing. What a great mini-series. Although to your point:

Spoiler - click to showI'm not sure that was a flash forward. I think that was Blackthorne imagining his future in England. Surrounded by people who don't understand what he came to love about Japan ("did a savage give you that?") and trinkets that mean nothing to anyone except himself. In fact I'm almost certain that's not what actually happened in his future, because he's clutching Mariko's cross as an old man. And at the end of the episode, when he resolves to stay in Japan, he throws the cross in the water. So that future never happened. I reckon he stayed in Japan and became an important part of the new Shogunate.

Spoiler - click to showThat would match the historical William Adams, so maybe! I do like that better.
EDIT:
Spoiler - click to showIt's also borne out by the offical podcast - the showrunner says that's what it is!

Two episodes into Fallout, and it's… okay? I'm not a fan of the games, and the 50s music & retro-futurist aesthetic don't really do it for me, so it was always kind of going to be a harder sell.

I don't think it quite balances the grim and the goofy tonally, and some of the VFX/SFX could be better - like, the power armor looks weirdly cheap and weightless, like very good amateur cosplay.

I'm interested to see where it goes once everyone kind of comes together a bit more (an assumption on my part, but I guess we'll see), and the cast are mostly very good.

I think "okay" is about where I landed on Fallout too. It's a very good adaptation of the games - the aesthetic is just right, and some of the little in-jokes are very subtle - but I'm not quite sure it quite works as a TV show in its own right. Like you say, the tonal whiplash doesn't quite work, and it all suffers a bit from "videogame logic" where no-one is truly dead or ever really in danger and so many bizarre things happen all on top of each other that they all lose their impact a bit. I thought it really tailed off toward the end too and the final episode was more interested in setting up stuff for a second season than it was in trying to resolve the various plot strands from the first.

It's entertaining enough and I would watch more of it, but The Last Of Us remains the best videogame-to-TV adaptation and it's not even close.

We're only halfway, but I think Sarah has noped out of any more thanks to all the ghoul stuff in episode 4 - zombies really aren't her thing. I might finish it on my own, but I honestly don't know that I really care enough about anyone, or what's happening, to see it through to the end.

I think where I landed on Fallout is it entertained me in the way a fairly solid Marvel film would.
I'm really stuggling to understand why people are raving about it. Yes, I've played the games, yes I like it, but no, its not top tier.

That sort of nuance will get you nowhere in today's world.

My biggest stumbling block with Fallout - and the main reason I haven't gone back after episode 4 - is that I don't really understand what's driving any of the characters (except Lucy, and that's just because she's borrowed the plot of Fallout 3).

Possible spoilers up to Episode 4:

Maximus Spoiler - click to showis a fascinating character, but he's in desperate need of an actual goal. He has objectives - but say he gets the head and brings it back… then what? The Brotherhood are just going to overlook that he stole power armor, faked his own death, and impersonated a Knight? What is he doing this for? From what I can tell, he's just an eternal underdog looking for a bite of power, but he already has that. What does he think his ending is, here?

The Ghoul Spoiler - click to showon the other hand, is an absolute nothingburger; an empty shell, narratively designed thus far to deliver unending cruelty to no purpose. He's dug up by three would-be allies, kills them so he doesn't have to share, then pursues the target with relentless and indiscriminate violence because… money? Is that it? Surely there are easier paydays.

Contrast this with The Last of Us, where every character in the show has a clear driving force - clear in large part because it's the same driving force for everyone, and the core concept of the story:

What lengths would love drive you to?

The Ghoul is by far my favourite character, and due to the frequent flash backs almost feels like the main character IMO. I can't spoil anything, but he does have a pretty solid goal revealed later on. And then there's that stark contrast between how cruel he is in the present day and how he is practically the nicest guy in his flashbacks, I doubt they'll show it explicitly but given how long he's lived as a Ghoul and what he's been through you can only imagine what he's been through to make him like that beyond just having to survive in such a world for that long in general.

Lucy and especially Max are definitely weaker, but I do like how the Wasteland is constantly trying to break her and she's refusing to budge, it's an interesting question but I dunno if they'll answer it yet or if anything will come from her struggle. Max suffered at first from being in the suit but gets a bit better when he leaves it, most of the show is him trying to do the right thing and making things almost worse in the process, hopefully he gets more in Season 2.

I liked this show a lot, but mostly as a Fallout adaptation. I think it was all it needed to be as that, including the dark humour, the OTT violence, the vision of a post apocalypse…I think of Fallout I think of that stuff in my wasteland exploration.

Isn't Lucy also something of a meta commentary on being a film embodiment of a player character in any violent videogame and all the disconnects that result from having to game as a mass murderer but politely move through dialogue trees (ala Nathan Drake).

It's not Drake's fault, he was raised as an Assassin and doesn't know any other way.

most of the show is [Max] trying to do the right thing

I haven't seen him try to do the right thing once yet, and I'm halfway through. He's a brutal, selfish victim, who dreams of nothing grander than getting to be the bully for a change.

I think that's a bit harsh, he's definitely tried to save Lucy a few times even if that was him trying to be a bit of a hero at first.

Maximus:

Spoiler - click to showMaximus doesn't have - and never has had - a place to belong, and even attempting to find a home witht he Brotherhood has resulted in him remaining, effectively, an outsider despite his fervour for the cause. Over the course of the show he does start to see a path of his own – thanks in part to Lucy's (misplaced) faith in him – but of course that kinda blows up in his face a bit too because underneath all his bluster he's hopelessly naive and inexperienced. He's very much on a "two steps forward, one step back" kinda arc.

He is trying to do the right thing, but his perception of what's "right" is so badly warped by the Brotherhood – not just their propaganda but also the example he got first-hand from Titus. He's still figuring out what the right thing is; sometimes he stumbles into it by accident, but often he's acting on a poorly-shaped instinct.

I suspect that part of the issue with many of the character arcs is a byproduct of the Nolan/Joy template - similarly to Westworld's first season, there are a whole lot of threads that seem only tangentially connected until the final episode(s) draw them together.

Thankfully Fallout is a bit lighter on the mystery box puzzle nonsense, but I do feel like a lot of character motivations are left as sketches until things coalesce at the end.

Watched a couple of bits lately:

Shogun as everyone has said was excellent, really gripping from start to finish and impeccably well acted. Slightly concerned they've apparently renewed it for season 2 and 3 now as they've run out of book material already - I hope it doesn't go down the Handmaid's Tale route where they basically just go round in circles for years with the same characters because they don't want to move on from their original cast.

Marvel's Echo was drivel, a spin-off of a spin-off that never really got off the ground. There's potentially the basis of a decent street-level thriller in here about someone trying to break free of a life of crime but they quickly ruin it by giving their lead character magic Native American powers and it all descends into a pointless mush of glowing hands and magic ancestors. If this is the standard of MCU material these days then the whole thing needs to be put out of its misery very soon.

Just saw the preview for next weeks Who episode.

Someone has been playing the Rusty Lake games.

Trailer for the second season of The Last of Us.

It looks uncanny. If they've got the casting of Abby right then this could be really something.

I got chills when the Seraphite graffiti turned up.

My main concern is that they're going to change the structure, because it's such a key part of how the story is told in the game.

I think they have to. The same split, across two seasons, simply wouldn’t work. They’re going to struggle enough with the Joel problem. I’m fascinated to see what they do.

I don't know enough about the ins and outs of the game storylines to know how accurate/faithful this adaptation is going to be, but I'm definitely intrigued.

We watched (on a word-of-mouth recommendation) the first two episodes of Nightsleeper on the BBC, which is easily the worst and stupidest TV show I've seen in a very, very long time.

Nothing anyone says or does makes any kind of sense. Characters repeatedly overlook incredibly obvious possible solutions until it's narratively dramatic enough. The performances are almost, but not quite, entirely unconvincing. It's a vaguely interesting concept given the worst possible execution.

I will not be watching episode 3.

I don't know enough about the ins and outs of the game storylines to know how accurate/faithful this adaptation is going to be, but I'm definitely intrigued.

I wish I liked Yakuza

We watched (on a word-of-mouth recommendation) the first two episodes of Nightsleeper on the BBC, which is easily the worst and stupidest TV show I've seen in a very, very long time.

I've heard this from multiple people and weirdly it's only made me watch it more. It sounds like the very silly Idris Elba show Hijack which was complete nonsense from start to finish yet weirdly compulsive with it.

Things I've enjoyed very much recently include Interview with the Vampire which doesn't seem to have got much attention, perhaps because it's on iPlayer in the UK or because people assume it's a remake of the Tom Cruise movie. It's actually a much more ambitious adaptation of the original book that isn't afraid to make some quite sweeping changes but everything it does just works. The casting is absolutely perfect and it's one of the best shows I've seen in quite a while.

Also Rings of Power season 2 which is a big step up from the first season and a great example of why shows sometimes need time to bed in (and these days often don't get it).

I don't know enough about the ins and outs of the game storylines to know how accurate/faithful this adaptation is going to be, but I'm definitely intrigued.

The main problem is that the main story is consistently the least interesting part of any Yakuza game. If it doesn't have a lengthy section where Kiryu has a bowling contest against a chicken or buys porn magazines from a vending machine for an eight-year-old, I'm out.

I've heard this from multiple people and weirdly it's only made me watch it more. It sounds like the very silly Idris Elba show Hijack which was complete nonsense from start to finish yet weirdly compulsive with it.

Idris Elba has more charisma in his little finger than Nightsleeper's entire combined cast. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Just finished the Rings of Power season 2 finale. By Manwë, what a show.

Spoiler - click to showNarsil! That Galadriel vs Sauron fight! Celebrimbor being a tragic boss up to his last, foresighted moments. Oh, and Durin III's final stand (leap?) against the Balrog was one of the greatest things I've ever seen on television.

If there's a negative, it's
Spoiler - click to showthe Stranger/Harfoot storyline. I don't have anything against the characters, but it never really felt like the writers had a clear idea of what to do with them this season. I totally called that he'd get his staff from the Stoor tree, though.

Valar preserve me, I hope it's not another two years for season 3…

I haven't kept up with the hate (and my knowledge of Tolkien lore is basically just wherever I'm currently up to in LotRO). But why is the series so reviled online?

I'll watch season 2 myself soon, and would never pay attention to online nonsense. Just curious.

It’s got black elves and black hobbits in it so of course it’s agitated all the usual internet racists.

Mostly though it seems to have brought out a weird sort of Tolkien purist who thinks that they should have just filmed exactly what Tolkien wrote and nothing more. (Notwithstanding that what he wrote for this period was essentially scattered notes, and Amazon don’t even have the rights to all of it anyway). Every change or addition to the “lore” is derided as fan fiction and fundamentally they have no understanding of the concept of an adaptation. It’s really very aggravating.

Me? I think it’s been superb, and the last two episodes in particular are incredible. It’s already a far better companion piece to the LOTR movies than Jackson’s own Hobbit trilogy, and they’ve got so much more to do.

Spoiler - click to showCharlie Vickers plays Sauron as essentially a domestic abuser and it’s amazing. He’s terrifying and compelling in equal measure. The gaslighting bastard.

Mostly though it seems to have brought out a weird sort of Tolkien purist who thinks that they should have just filmed exactly what Tolkien wrote and nothing more. (Notwithstanding that what he wrote for this period was essentially scattered notes, and Amazon don’t even have the rights to all of it anyway). Every change or addition to the “lore” is derided as fan fiction and fundamentally they have no understanding of the concept of an adaptation. It’s really very aggravating.

Worse, a lot of them seem to think that Jackson's trilogy are the authoritative version, repeatedly complaining that "GaLaDrIeL wAsN't A wArRiOR". Tolkien himself described her as "of Amazon disposition", and "a match for both the loremasters and the athletes of the Eldar in the days of their youth". Christ, Galadriel crossed the Helcaraxë, and these idiots still think she's some ethereal waif only good for lounging in the woods offering cryptic advice. 😤

The cast is pretty much uniformly excellent. Charlie Vickers and Charles Edwards have both been incredible, but Owain Arthur and Peter Mullan are fantastic, too, as the Durins (must also mention Sophia Nomvente, she's awesome; hope she gets loads to do next season). And I 100% buy Lloyd Owen's Elendil as the kind of man people would follow without question.

I have also jumped on the Shogun train as late as usual and it's so good I wanna' binge the entire thing. Fucking died laughing at Blackthorn's attempts to stop those little carry cabins being searched.

And done, I really enjoyed that! My only criticism is that it feels a bit rushed at points, like Anjin and Mariko or Ishido's politics, all feel a bit glossed over or undercooked to me.

Spoiler - click to showBlackthorne spends the entire series trying to reunite with his crew, asking Toranaga constantly and then he sees one guy being drunk and smelly and he's like 'nvm'. but but it's only got 10 episodes to draw from a thick book so I understand concessions have to be made. The performances from everyone are absolutely the highlight, particularly Yabushige and Mariko, even Blackthorne who is great despite his voice sounding like it was dubbed over at first, very entertaining character.

Just finished the Rings of Power season 2 finale. By Manwë, what a show.

Yeah the second season is great so far. I thought the first season was alright, but really enjoying this year's installment.

Incidentally, give the credits a watch if you haven't already. I left them on after one episode because Rufus Wainwright started up, and my god a lot of people worked on this. It's got more plasterers than most shows have cast.