Yeah she was the weakest part of the episode but not by a lot and I think partly it's she looks too nice to be this foul mouthed little shit so she sounds abit unatural, I'm sure she'll be ultimately fine though. Fucking Pedro Pascal though 
Also apparently Marlene is played by her actual voice actor from the game, that's awesome.
The Last of Us, episode 2:
Spoiler - click to showSolid 3 stars. Not as good as episode 1, though I'm finding it hard to articulate why; I guess it just felt more straightforward/functional. I still really like Bella Ramsay. Highlights were the 2003 intro and the museum clicker encounter, but I didn't particularly like the change to the Courthouse (infected instead of DEFRA ambush), and the "kiss" was super fuckin' weird.
Just watched Severance on Apple TV+. There are so many free trials floating around for this service that I don't believe anyone's actually paying for it, so grab yourself a trial (there's one as a "perk" on Game Pass Ultimate if you need one) and watch this. It's the best thing I've seen in years. A great concept (people who have "severed" their memories, splitting their personalities between work and home lives), superb execution, an amazing soundtrack and first-rate performances from the entire cast. You all need to watch this.
Yeah we loved Severance. Just the right amount of answers vs what the fucks.
Not sure if this is your first time on Apple TV, but a few more recommendations…
Slow Horses, a Gary Oldman spy thriller. As the Guardian pointed out, if this had aired on the BBC it'd be everyone's show of the year but no bugger watched it.
Pachinko. Not as good as the book (what could be), but still a lavish, well-done drama.
Ted Lasso, obvs.
Schmigadoon. Keegan Michael Key and his (actor) wife play 'real' people who stumble into a 1940s musical. Lols and surprisingly great musical numbers follow.
Apple TV doesn't have the breadth of stuff on other services but the hit-rate is excellent. And because it doesn't have Netflix's weird image-quality rules, all the shows look unique and premium.
Also on there - the Essex serpent is a decent adaptation of a very good book, Trying is much better than the standard romantic sitcoms and surprisingly moving in places, and Bad Sisters is great fun.
That's great, thanks both. We've got a three-month trial and very little idea what to watch so that's really helpful. Slow Horses and Ted Lasso were on our list, and I've read The Essex Serpent so was interested in checking out the adaptation, but all the others are new to me so will be checking a few out.
I've also had For All Mankind recommended to me by someone else, that's by Ronald D Moore of Deep Space 9/Battlestar Galactica fame so I'm going to give that a couple of episodes too and see how I get on.
In general it's nice to have a new streaming service and see that almost everything on it is a few seasons in. So different from the Netflix approach of just canning stuff arbitrarily after a year or two.
Ted Lasso Season 1, and stop. Season 2 is awful. Season 1 is charming.
We're currently watching Bad Sisters which is fine, very Sharon Horgan who appears to be in nearly every film or TV program out over the last 5 years.
Lockwood & Co on Netflix is worth your time. Based on a series of YA books (but I'm enjoying it as much as my son), it's a spooky thriller about a group of teenagers fighting ghosts in a world that's become overrun with them. Great world-building that doesn't feel the need to over-explain itself, you pick things up from context, and the whole thing for once doesn't take any cues from Harry Potter, it feels like it's tapping into something older and more authentically British than that. We're halfway through and loving it - watch it now before Netflix cancels it in favour of seven more trashy reality shows.
The trailer looked awful and now it's got a strong Garwoofoo recommendation, so I think I'll just cancel my Netflix sub tonight before the account changes come in to be on the safe side.
The Last of Us episode 5 was the most videogamey yet, and it was still brilliant.
It's also making me realise there are huge chunks of the game I don't remember. Had no recollection of the Henry story whatsoever.
I haven't seen the episode, but from the glimpses I've caught, it looks like they've changed it quite a bit.
Bad Sisters was good, if a little predictable. Really enjoyable self contained series.
So far Severance is excellent. I thought the stairwell door sequence in the first episode was fucking brilliant. It's almost a classic 70s pulp sci-fi premise but the more you pick at it the more the subtleties of what is actually happening begin to hit home.
And props to Ben Stiller, it's beautifully shot.
Apple TV really is a great quality over quantity proposition. And the actual streaming quality in 4k is top tier as well.
Apple TV really is a great quality over quantity proposition.
It's a good service but it is very much Serious Shows for Serious People. Browsing through gives you lots of things marked as "drama" or "thriller" with thumbnails showing middle-aged white people staring earnestly into the middle distance. If you don't already know which ones are good then there's nothing there to distinguish them or really inspire you to start anything.
Plus there's no sort of discovery as far as I can see. Netflix, while undeniably full of drivel, is actually really good at showing you stuff you'll find interesting and somehow making the thumbnails attention-grabbing.
Honestly HBO Max can't come to the UK soon enough. When does their deal with Sky expire?
"middle-aged white people staring earnestly into the middle distance"
Which is us, their key target demographic.
I've also enjoyed Shrinking on AppleTV, which is quite formulaic and Bill Lawrencey, but also a lot more consistent than Ted Lasso. Harrison Ford's second ever TV role and he's great in it.
The Last of Us episode 5 was the most videogamey yet, and it was still brilliant.
Just watched this episode last night, and it was superb. It's been a while since I played the game but it feels like they've kept the same basic story beats but (a) fleshed things out by showing things from perspectives other than Joel's and Ellie's; and (b) switched up the order of events a bit so even if you've played the game you never quite know when things are going to kick off. Both changes work very well. I love the way they intersperse the very serious prestige drama with ridiculous game sequences too, I laughed out loud when Joel had to boost Ellie through a small gap so she could open a door from the other side.
Overall the show is far better than something based on a videogame about mushroom zombies has any right to be, and the casting is consistently superb. I will not hear a single word against Bella Ramsey, I think she's amazing.
Spoiler - click to showInitially her rather different take on Ellie was a bit jarring, but it makes perfect sense in retrospect. Game Ellie needed to be a bit more likeable in order to give the player a reason to want to protect her - Show Ellie can be more spikey from the off because Joel's sense of duty to Tess gives him all the motivation he needs, and it makes for a more interesting character dynamic. It feels like the two portrayals are merging now anyway.
Episode 6 is full of little easter eggs and maybe-teases for next season/Part II.
Spoiler - click to showJackson! Shimmer! DINA!?!!?!??!? Also, the idea that Ellie and Diana's sheep ranch is inspired by Joel… 
Some of the character development felt a little rushed, but I get it.
Oh I hadn't even clocked that was
Spoiler - click to showDina
But of course.
Couple of returning shows:
Star Trek: Picard is finally giving everyone what they wanted in the first place, i.e. Old Farts In Space. It's still aggressively mediocre, doesn't really understand its characters and Patrick Stewart is doggedly playing himself rather than Jean-Luc Picard, but Riker and Worf are having a great time and they've ditched almost all the terrible new characters they introduced in the first two seasons (except, annoyingly, the very worst one) so it's irritatingly watchable.
The Mandalorian returns with a disappointingly shit open episode. I don't know why they make these so short, by the time you've had a bit of a recap and an action sequence and the obligatory shots of Grogu looking cute and eating something, it's all over. The Mandalorian creed is one of the dullest things to try and hang a Star Wars series off. But I'm sure it'll pick up.
We've yet to try and return to The Mandalorian, because doing so means sitting through the rest of The Book of Boba Fett, which I'm not sure I can handle.
There are literally two episodes of BOBF that are just Mando episodes, I don’t think Boba is even in them. Just watch those ones.
Because Sarah read something to the effect that The Mandalorian season 3 would suffer for not having finished Book of Boba Fett, we struggled to the finish line of what has to be the worst piece of Star Wars media I have ever seen*. I wish I'd just read the fucking Wikipedia summary, it would have been exactly as entertaining, but taken a thousandth of the time.
Could anyone who watched it muster even a single, solitary fuck about anyone in it, or anything they were doing? Gods below, it's bad.
*Note: I have not seen Rise Of Skywalker.
Ah, it's not THAT bad.
Two episodes out of seven are basically just Mandalorian episodes and they are perfectly fine. The final episode is like live action Clone Wars, complete with Cad Bane. There was a decent train heist episode in there too. That's over half the series.
Sure, Fett himself is a doofus, and the kids on Space Vespas were a very bad mis-step, but I don't think it's as bad as everyone makes out. On a moment-by-moment basis I enjoyed it more than Andor, and I'd probably rate it slightly above Obi-Wan Kenobi too.
The Rise of Skywalker is worse than you could possibly imagine.
Has any behind the scenes info come out yet about the Star Wars sequels? I could never wrap my head around Disney, the studio who own the MCU, writing three entirely separate Star Wars films without any attempt to make a cohesive narrative.
I doubt we'll get the real story until the current leadership at Disney has moved on, but I suspect that aiming for an MCU model was partly what caused the problem. A different film every year, with different directors, alternating between main movies and side-stories like Solo and Rogue One, and somehow it would all magically come together and start printing money. Didn't work like that of course, lack of planning derailed it like you say but maybe also corporate cowardice, where every movie was a reaction to the backlash against the last one. Just a half-baked plan all round really.
Ah, it's not THAT bad.
Yes, it is.
Two episodes out of seven are basically just Mandalorian episodes and they are perfectly fine. The final episode is like live action Clone Wars, complete with Cad Bane. There was a decent train heist episode in there too. That's over half the series.
Two of the seven are Mandalorian episodes, but they're BAD Mandalorian episodes, with a shocking overuse of Annoying Goofy Mechanic Woman. I never saw Clone Wars, don't care about Cad Bane, and the action was airless, illogical, and utterly devoid of peril.
I don't even remember a train heist.
Sure, Fett himself is a doofus, and the kids on Space Vespas were a very bad mis-step, but I don't think it's as bad as everyone makes out. On a moment-by-moment basis I enjoyed it more than Andor, and I'd probably rate it slightly above Obi-Wan Kenobi too.
Nah, I'd rewatch Obi-Wan before Boba Fett any day off the week. Nobody in this has a tenth of the charm of Baby Leia.
Andor is a high watermark not just for Star Wars, but for genre television.
The Rise of Skywalker is worse than you could possibly imagine.
I dunno, I can imagine quite a bit.
On a moment-by-moment basis I enjoyed it more than Andor
Probably the craziest thing ever written on any forum across the entire history of the Internet.
Probably?
Andor is boring. Twelve ponderous hours of bearded men looking sad in the Barbican. Occasionally someone gives a lengthy speech about how fascism is bad.
Book of Boba Fett is hardly great TV but at least it feels like Star Wars.
Star Wars doesn't deserve Andor.
The only reason Boba Fett feels anything like Star Wars is that it spends 98% of its run time reminding you that it's Star Wars. Every tenth frame of the fucking thing is a winking reference to some other, better part of the franchise.
That is completely fair. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with it, it has no actual reason of its own to exist at all, to the point where it even gets hijacked by another show for a third of its runtime.
The new series of the Mandalorian is very odd. I mean it's still good entertainment but the last episode
Spoiler - click to showbasically had no adult human actors in it for its entire duration. There was a brief appearance from a single Jedi in a flashback sequence, and ten seconds where Bo-Katan showed her face. The rest of it was all puppets and people wearing helmets.
It's never felt more like someone smashing action figures together.
Spoiler - click to showThat Jedi in the flashback was Jar Jar Binks himself, Ahmed Best.
Finished Severance S1. Along with Andor, probably the strongest bit of high concept SciFi on the TV in recent years. Confident, slow burning, beautifully staged, lit and directed and some great (if slightly predictable) twists along the way. I'm not sure S2 really will have anywhere the impact, and I wouldn't do more than 2, but a testament to a show where everyone, from scriptwriters to actors are all pulling in the same direction and know what they're trying to accomplish.
Extraordinary on Disney is a slight, patchy, but amusing show with the core premise that the lead is the only person in the world without superpowers. It's a bit late night BBC3 comedy at times and really sags in the middle section, but when it all works it all works extremely well. In the last episode it does one simple, but incredibly visually clever, sad and emotional twist on one of the heroes misusing their power that I found genuinely quite affecting and tragic, all the more so for the quite slight and playful way it was dealt with it throughout the rest of the show. Worth it for that alone. Likeable TV.
But talking about top tier TV: started Atlanta, which it's taken me a while to get around to, and it's wonderful. It's like the anthesis of Succession, just a load of flawed, bizarre characters that you really want to spend as much time with as you can. Everything about it is confident and magical. The visuals, the script, the music. And it's peak Glover, moving from comedy to serious issues with the agility of a mountain goat. All with him as a slightly detached, wry observer on it all. And when it's funny, it is laugh out loud funny. 2 sequences in the fourth episode had me and my partner having to pause it for a moment so we could stop laughing and concentrate. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
Been caning the Apple TV+ free trial:
Slow Horses is good, has a great cast but suffers a bit from over-convoluted plots (or, perhaps, being a bit rushed and not letting those plots really develop). Maybe it's because we don't really watch spy thrillers generally but both my wife and I were a bit confused by the second season in particular, which has a lot of Russians with very similar names and about a dozen plot twists per episode. The fun here is in watching the characters interact anyway, so it would be nice if they did slow it down a bit for the hard of thinking like us. It's great to see a UK production with an actual budget, though, we're so used to BBC stuff being filmed on the cheap that it's quite a surprise to see London looking as glamorous/grotty as it does here.
For All Mankind is brilliant. Also not at all the sort of show I thought it was going to be. I was expecting some sort of high concept, alt-history sci-fi, given the pitch and the pedigree of the main writer, but actually it's quite a low-key drama with great period detail and some very well-developed characters. Yes it's got some great space scenes but the real heart of it is in the domestic lives of its astronauts.
Ted Lasso - only halfway through the first season but it's every bit as good as everyone says. It should be schmaltzy and unbearable but somehow it isn't, at all.
Ted Lasso Season 2 is a car crash. 3, even worse. Watch 1 and stop. Don't even be tempted to go on. I am imploring you to stop.
Barry (HBO/Now TV) is great. About a low-level hitman who has dreams of becoming an actor.
It's billed as a comedy, and it does have some broad characters (including Henry Winkler who's great as always), but more often than not it veers into drama, action and emotional gut punches. It's more Breaking Bad than sitcom.
And the episodes are under 30 minutes each, which is refreshing.
True Detective Season 4 is in the works.
We never finished the second, and I don't even remember who's in the third.
I haven't watched past season 1 yet, but I've heard season 3 is very good.
Someone please point me at a VPN that works with ABC iView in Australia, so I can watch Aunty Donna's Coffee Cafe. Tunnelbear doesn't do the business, sadly.
We never finished the second, and I don't even remember who's in the third.
Mahershala Ali's in the third, isn't he? Then again, we didn't make it to the end of episode 2, never mind season…
Ted Lasso Season 2 is a car crash. 3, even worse. Watch 1 and stop. Don't even be tempted to go on. I am imploring you to stop.
I didn't listen to you, of course, because when do I ever?
You're kind of right about season 2, but it's not a car crash as much as an imperceptible decline. Initially it's all much the same as the first season, something feels a bit off but it's not too bad and you can't quite pinpoint what it is. But then by about halfway through the season there's still no real storyline and all the characters are coming on and just doing their one wacky thing and leaving again and for some reason all the episodes are now twice as long as they used to be. By the time we got to the Coach Beard episode - genuinely one of the worst hours of TV I've ever sat through - we were pretty much just going through the motions with the show.
You're completely wrong about season 3 though, it's been a real return to form- the Amsterdam episode last week was as good as the show's ever been. Someone somewhere actually looked at what didn't work in the second season and fixed it.
True Detective Season 4 is in the works.
Trailer looks good: https://youtu.be/SS5bk7XiNVU
Citadel on Amazon is incredibly stupid, but takes itself exactly the right amount of seriously to get away with it.
Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas are amnesiac spies re-recruited eight years after their secret, unofficial spy agency was wiped out when a second secret, unofficial spy agency - but evil! - finds a monumentally stupid macguffin that the show insists on calling "the X-Case" that may or may not somehow contain every nuclear code for every nation on Earth. It's so dumb.
That's about as much as there is, plot-wise; the script is mostly just wisecracks between set pieces, as Madden teleports from one location to another, pursued by villains who always seem to know exactly where he is, so they can have a Big Fight.
It's so, so dumb, but - and this is key - it's not grim, or gritty, or dark. It knows how to have a laugh, and for now, I'm here for it.
We've very much enjoyed Daisy Jones and the Six on Amazon Prime recently, it's a rock biopic about a fictional 70s band that's clearly based on Fleetwood Mac. Lots of drugs and shagging and other rock cliches. Crucially though they completely nail the band's music (all original songs) and performances, it's really very easy to get swept up in it all. Surprisingly gripping even though you know exactly where it's going.
I'm not the biggest One Piece fan in the world, but I've read enough – 120-odd chapters, or just over 1% of its current length – to cover everything that's likely to be in the Netflix show's first season. Of which I've just finished the first episode, which was actually pretty solid.
Pacing seems a little choppy, getting the core crew together much faster than the manga or anime, and the faithfulness of the sets and costumes is equal parts excellent and embarassing. Some of the editing and shot composition – especially in the fight against Axe-Hand Morgan – feel a little bit sloppy and less cinematic than I'd have hoped, but it's got a much less obviously-fake look than the Cowboy Bebop adaptation.
I'm not entirely convinced by the tone, either; this muted, sadsack version of Kody in particular didn't quite land for me compared to the much more physical, expressive cowardice of the manga character, but the script is earnest in all the right ways and Iñaki Godoy's Luffy is pretty infectious.
I'm fascinated to see how this goes over with anyone new to the setting.
It is a little frustrating that for every character Netflix One Piece adapts perfectly, there's one that looks like the bad guy from Lazy Town.
None of us (me, my wife and son) knew anything about One Piece going into it - we are now halfway through the live action version and absolutely loving it. Funny, pacey, great fight choreography and satisfyingly scary in places too. Everything is slightly exaggerated and hyper-real but it's judged perfectly.
It's the best thing we've seen on Netflix for ages, which means it'll almost certainly get cancelled next week.
I've been catching up with new Star Trek and absolutely loving Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks. After the disaster of Discovery and the pointlessness of Picard it's great to have two shows which are well written and actually understand and like Star Trek.
Neither is quite up to the highs of The Orville ironically but still, well worth your time