Televisual Entertainments

It's only out today, isn't it? We definitely will be watching it; I was interested anyway, but the reviews have all been really good.

Oh I thought it was released on the first, maybe not.

The trailers certainly look expensive, I'll give them that much.

Having both this and House of the Dragon on at the same time is a bit too much fantasy beardiness all in one go for me. I'm going to wait until they're both finished and then watch them in turn, rather than trying to juggle them both each week.

We've watched the first two House of the Dragons. The first episode sets it up reasonably well, but goes all-out for the GoT Gore factor, it's pretty grim in places. The second was less gorey and less interesting, but enough to keep us watching for now I think.

It's basically exactly what you would expect - GoT minus the top-notch script/characters of the earlier seasons plus more dragons on screen. Competent, good-looking fantasy, if a little po-faced and pointless. Paddy Considine, who I love in pretty much anything, is doing his best but just doesn't have the lines to add any gravity. Matt Smith is having fun from the sidelines, and Milly Alcock who plays the main princess character is a brilliant find (certainly miles better than Maisie Williams from GoT, who I've never rated much). Without them in the cast, I think it would be pretty uninteresting.

We'll be watching LotR this weekend at some point though, looking forward to giving that a go.

I don't know if I'll ever bother with House of the Dragon; Game of Thrones lost me in a big way even before it ran out of books; I've avoided most spoilers (so far), as I wait for GRRM to (hopefully) publish something eventually..?

I don't know if I'll ever bother with House of the Dragon; Game of Thrones lost me in a big way even before it ran out of books; I've avoided most spoilers (so far), as I wait for GRRM to (hopefully) publish something eventually..?

I recommend watching the ending we have and being done with it. GRRM has had two more books to write since 1996.

The Rings of Power starts very, very strong. Songs thoughts:

• It's weird, watching something Lord of the Rings-related where I don't really know where the story is going; obviously I know Galadriel is going to survive, as is Elrond, and that Spoiler - click to showGil-Galad makes it to the Last Alliance, though no further;but beyond that, I don't really know who anyone is or where their story is going to end up.
• They've gone a great job with the writing, for the most part; I've been listening to the Serkis versions of the Lord of the Rings audiobooks recently, and the dialogue is mostly a very good Tolkien impression, especially the elves.
• I'm super-glad that they're holding back as much as they are; there's a big, brief glimpse of an enormous battle right at the start, but aside from a couple of action scenes, they're restraining themselves a lot, especially as far as Spoiler - click to showthe Sauron stuff goes. Only one orc has appeared onscreen so far, and they go a great job of making it an actual scary thing and a real threat. It's easy to forget that most of the fighting in LotR is done by characters who are basically superhuman, and orcs are usually just minions to be carved through by Captain America Gondor.
• If I have one criticism, it's with casting; most of the elves just look like… some guys. Not a lot of ethereally-beautiful creatures of immense grace to be found among the cast. Morfydd Clark is bang on for Galadriel, and the guy playing Arondir is appropriately elvish-looking, but Gil-galad looks like a newsreader, and for a split second I thought Celebrimbor was being played by Hugh Dennis.

Overall, though, they're smashing it. Really looking forward to seeing where it goes.

EDIT: and another thing!

• It seems fairly obvious that they're setting up Spoiler - click to show"the Stranger" as Gandalf, so I'm mostly hoping it's a fakeout and it's actually Saruman.

I have absolutely no idea whether this will appeal to anyone here or not, but we've been watching Extraordinary Attorney Woo on Netflix and it's surprisingly great. It's a case-of-the-week Korean drama about an autistic defence attorney but it's utterly charming and some of the plots are really creative. It's about as close as we're ever likely to get to a Phoenix Wright TV show and I love it on that basis alone.

We watched the first episode of that new Lord of the Rings thing. I don't know if I can appraise it based on that one episode. It was a mixed bag. It looks expensive. Morfydd Clark is the best thing in it by a mile. The Elves talk far too slowly - you don't get the feeling that they are these wonderful, ethereal creatures, they actually come across as a bit inbred, especially their king. Lenny Henry is too obviously Lenny Henry, but he seems to be a minor character, so hopefully that won't be a problem. The hobbits were a touch annoying. I was fascinated by the blackberries (the fruit, not the phone) they picked though - they're supposed to be normal-sized blackberries in small hobbit hands, so they had to get these really huge blackberries to look the right relative size. There were bits where I was less than gripped and started browsing imdb to see where I knew various actors from, which is never a good sign. This usually occurred when elves were standing around talking slowly about portentious stuff. There were a couple of moments where I'm pretty certain they CGI'd Morfydd Clark to look more like Cate Blanchett, which was odd.

I liked it overall, but it's not as good as Red Dwarf series 1-6.

There were a couple of moments where I'm pretty certain they CGI'd Morfydd Clark to look more like Cate Blanchett, which was odd.

The bit where she’s being honoured by the king, and it does a close-up of her eyes?

My wife and I said the same. It was either CGI Blanchett, or she has identical eyes.

I really enjoyed it. It’s all very epic and expensive looking, perhaps the first ever TV show that genuinely looks as good as a blockbuster film. It manages to make Game of Thrones look a bit cheap, but it doesn’t have that show’s incredibly well-acted, politicky conversations, which I’d take over a thousand snow trolls.

Quietly optimistic so far.

I liked it overall, but it's not as good as Red Dwarf series 1-6.

Well duh.

Amazon have put a trailer out for their upcoming adaptation of William Gibson's The Peripheral.

It doesn't quite look how I imagined it, but I'm a big fan of the book (the premise is a fascinating and highly original take on time travel) so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I don't imagine that Bezos' team will have gone too far down the path of condemning the corporate kleptocracy, and I'm not sure there's anything in the trailer to indicate the environmental collapse that features heavily in the book, but I assume they'll be trying to get multiple seasons out of it so they might get there eventually.

After one episode, The Old Man – a Jeff Bridges-does-John Wick kind of a thing on Disney+ – is a much slower burn than I was expecting, though it picks up the pace by the time it hits the credits. Which is honestly a bit of a shame! The performances are much less interesting once it starts to go Bourne Lebowski, and the stakes are less clear at the end.

I've never read Sandman, but I've heard a lot of good things. Do you think the show would work for a complete newcomer?

We both watched it without any knowledge of the comics and it was mostly fine.

It's an anthology, really, so the continuity is sometimes a little strange (characters get introduced then disappear for ages because it's suddenly switched a different story) and the quality is a little variable. It starts strong, peaks in the middle with a pair of excellent episodes then goes a bit flat at the end; but maybe that's just my preference for the stories it was trying to tell. There's a bonus episode too which is excellent.

Bit worrying they haven't renewed it for a second season yet - I can imagine it's very expensive to make, but with House of the Dragon, Andor and Rings of Power all going great guns for their respective streaming services, you'd think Netflix would want a big fantasy series to compete. I guess they've got the Witcher for that…

Yesterday's House of the Dragon was excellent, up there with the best Game of Thrones episodes. And it proved that they've managed something I was worried they wouldn't – made us care about these characters despite the time jumps.

Paddy Considine's brilliant, isn't he.

Is it finished now then? Or are there still more to go? I'm waiting for it all to be out before I jump in.

Two left I think.

We finally got to the finale of Rings of Power, and I really enjoyed it. It felt maybe a little rushed, and went for what I felt was the safer option in a couple of narrative choices
Spoiler - click to showit was Gandalf, boo
but overall I think it stuck the landing. Up until the godawful song over the end credits.

It seems to have been weirdly divisive, as a show; opinions seen to range from "best thing ever" to, well, the opposite of that, with a particularly scathing piece in the Guardian. But while I think it did veer towards the twee with the Harfoots (and the melodramatic with the elves), it walked the line pretty damn well. Looking forward to season 2, whenever that eventually turns up, and may well revisit this in the meantime.

I still have little interest in The Dragon Show, though I understand that lots of people are enjoying it.

We are three episodes into The Dragon Show (having figured that it was safe to start it, with the finale only being a week away) and it's superb so far. I don't need epic battles or huge amounts of lore in my fantasy shows, I'm perfectly happy with people scheming and plotting in dimly-lit rooms for hours on end.

All the talk of Viserys and Paddy Considine's performance is drawing me in. :/

So that's both LOTR and GoT:HotD done! Thoughts? For me, they were both very enjoyable for the most part, both had a mid-season dip but ended strongly, and both left me wanting more - which I guess is a good thing.

LOTR had the Tolkein feel right and looked stunning at at times, although for me the best bits were often the smaller, closer, less epic scenes - the first fight with an Orc, the relationship between Durin(s) and Elrond, Durin's wife. Galadriel was well cast and did what she needed to do, but a lot of the other elves were a bit dull and The Numenoreans were (Elendil apart) pretty awful in terms of script and performances. I didn't hate the hobbits as much as the internet, but I could definitely take or leave them. Episode 6 had both the high and low points for me:
Spoiler - click to show the inevitable battle was uninteresting and the appearance of the Numenoreans like a school play version of Helm's Deep, but the creation of Mordor was genuinely brilliant and had me so excited for what came next I liked the ending, looking forward to the next one.

GoT:HotD was a very different beast. For me the young Rhaenyra held it together for the first few episodes, she was genuinely excellent while the rest of it struggled a little bit to establish itself. The Spoiler - click to show move into the future halfway through was initially disappointing (I was just starting to settle into it) but actually served to really set it alight. Episodes 8, 9, 10 were pretty close to GoT series 1-4 quality, if a little more predictable in terms of grand narrative, with a lot of threads coming together, the world opening up and some great scenes/performances - I even began to care about some of the characters! After blowing a bit hot and cold about it during the run, I am now really looking forward to seeing where it goes next as well. Hopefully it's not into more genuinely unpleasant childbirth scenes.

Still got the last episode of HOTD to go (tonight hopefully) but it's been brilliant, up there with Game of Thrones at its best. Tense as fuck and stuffed full of horrible bastards.

I do find it takes a bit of concentration to follow as the show's fairly realistic depiction of medieval aristocracy extends to lots of characters having same/similar names, and people who are related actually looking similar to each other (great casting throughout, though).

I'm very much enjoying Matt Smith's performance as he has essentially taken all the training he received to play Prince Philip on The Crown and transplanted him straight to Westeros.

Also is it just me or is Aemond Targaryen basically just Goro Majima from the Yakuza series? Absolute psychopath, I love him.

I mean, thank god they didn't cast the Velaryons white. I can barely tell who all the pale blonde ones are now, unless they have a handy eye-patch.

The last episode is a belter, and I agree it's been up there with the best of Game of Thrones. I so wanted to love Rings of Power after all the irrelevant internet hatred, but this is just in another league.

I mean, thank god they didn't cast the Velaryons white. I can barely tell who all the pale blonde ones are now, unless they have a handy eye-patch.

The last episode is a belter, and I agree it's been up there with the best of Game of Thrones. I so wanted to love Rings of Power after all the irrelevant internet hatred, but this is just in another league.

Ha yeah, doesn't help that they all have variants on the same names too. I started giving the younger generation my own names - Eyepatch McMoonface, Emo MCRboy, Tufty Whiner, Whiner's brother… - but even then the two Velaryon girls had absolutely nothing to distinguish them at all.

My only complaints other than a fairly unengaging early stage are that it lacked a Tyrion/Varys type meta-character who could lift the grimness a bit, and that the world felt very small sometimes, which it never did even in the early stages of GoT. I think the latter will be fixed in the future, I presume they'll have to extend the central cast too. Anyway, fairly minor things after that late season run, which was just great television all round.

I really missed the world map flyover from the opening credits of Game of Thrones. Feels like they could have done that for this, but with family trees.

That's a brilliant idea! Still could have had the blood flowing through it, and they could have extended it as they went through too. Ah, real missed opportunity.

Some good news this morning: The Sandman has been renewed for a second season. I think people were starting to get concerned that it wasn't going to happen.

The Bear (on Disney Plus) is probably the best thing I've watched this year. Michelin-starred chef moves back to his hometown to run the family sandwich shop. It's eight brief episodes of family drama, food porn and insane levels of stress. All culminating in a twenty minute long, one-shot masterpiece of an episode.

Oh, it’s brilliant. We burned through it in a couple of evenings. Really surprisingly stressful to watch and that one-shot episode is a masterpiece.

Decided to give Wednesday a shot since I heard it was good, it's good (dodgy cgi werewolves aside). Hard to imagine it working nearly as well without Jenna Ortega's central performance though, that girl can hold a scowl (find it hard to believe she is really that smol though???). Slightly darker than I thought it'd be so far, one episode in and we got two dismembered corpses and the series opens with her getting expelled because she dropped Piranhas into the School pool to punish the Swimming team for bullying her brother, there is blood. Did chuckle when Gomez and Morticia beam with pride at Wednesday almost being murdered twice, as well as Morticia looking outside as it starts to piss it down and saying "it's going to be a lovely day".

I might need to rewatch because I'm so tired I kept falling asleep towards the end, but yeah it good tbh.

The Bear (on Disney Plus) is probably the best thing I've watched this year. Michelin-starred chef moves back to his hometown to run the family sandwich shop. It's eight brief episodes of family drama, food porn and insane levels of stress. All culminating in a twenty minute long, one-shot masterpiece of an episode.

Watched this last night and this morning. Really enjoyed it.

Is it like Cocaine Bear

I have no idea, but I think you will like it.

I have no idea, but I think you will like it.

Finished the first season of The Peripheral. It seemed to think it was much clearer about what happened in the finale than I do.

Three episodes into Wednesday and still enjoying it, gotta' say though, I'm no Addams family expert but I saw the films waaaaay back when when Christina Ricci (who is in this series as a teacher, that's cute tbh) and Wednesday was definitely meaner than this, like she repeatedly tried to murder her baby brother and here she's kinda' putting herself in harms way to save people, doesn't seem right. The character is carried hard by Ortega's performance and her comedic timing and whatnot, who is so far anchoring the character to it's moody roots and just generally carrying the show despite ae decent supporting cast.

Anyone else watching Avenue 5? It's essentially In The Thick of It/Veep in space with added Hugh Laurie. I really like it, it's quite Douglas Adams=y with the usual rapid fire Armando scripts. it's nowhere near as tight as ITTOI (which is, of course, the greatest comedy ever made) but it's also miles better than a lot of the shit that gets on TV, so I'd recommend it.

Does it get better after the first episode?

I'd say so. It's hard not to be disappointed at the fact it isn't ITTOI. Once you get over that I found it gets pretty good. I think some of the casting is a bit off apart from Laurie though.

I’ve seen the first season, not the second yet. I’d agree with basically everything else you said, within reason, besides the erroneous addition of ‘In’ to The Thick of It.

I just Mandela effected myself.

First episode of The Last of Us is excellent. It feels weird having a legitimately great videogame show.

It's crazy how close some of the scenes are to the game, and the bits they're adding in-between are just as strong.

Spoiler - click to showThe old neighbour twitching in the background was 👌

It feels weird having a legitimately great videogame show.

I think The Witcher probably counts too, doesn't it? The plot is from the books but the atmosphere, design and Cavill's performance are all 100% based on the games.

The Last of Us is on bloody NOW TV, isn't it, so I won't be watching it any time soon.

I'll be watching it tonight, but probably on my own, late, after Sarah goes to bed (neither of us do horror generally, but zombies and the zombie-adjacent are a hard no for her).

The Last of Us is on bloody NOW TV, isn't it, so I won't be watching it any time soon.

I think you can get a Now TV pass for just the weekend and binge the whole series.

(But don't do that just yet, it's coming out one week at a time.)

Although seeing as we're discussing NowTV, it's really, terribly shit isn't it. It's more expensive than the competition, comes in 720p with no HDR, and it has ads despite being a subscription service.

It's really fucking good.

I have sourced it via alternative methods. I'd happily have paid to watch it if there was any way of doing so legally with an actual decent picture quality but I'm not giving money to Now TV for that quality of service.

You can pay an extra fiver a month, on top of the normal tenner a month, to "upgrade" to 1080p.

So there's that.

TLOU first episode was really good actually! ND making the game obsolete I respect that

OK, yes, TLOU was excellent. The bits that were taken from the game were very close and the extra stuff they added worked really well. Not yet quite convinced by Bella Ramsey's take on Ellie but I guess it's just an alternative portrayal of the character in a show where everything else is very close to the source material.