Televisual Entertainments

Little Miss Bloodaxe binged it on the iPad over a couple days. She loved it. What I saw looked good.

How old is Little Miss Bloodaxe? I'm wondering if my youngest two (almost 4 and 5) would like it. I think it's probably too Western to keep my eldests (14) interested.

She's just turned 7. I expect 4 and 5 would like it, but they'll get more out of it in a year or two.

Hilda though… They'll love Hilda.

Might be a silly question but how girly is it? We don’t really do gender stereotypes in this house so I was wondering if my boy would enjoy it, but if it’s all princesses and unicorns then it might put him off a bit.

What I've seen seemed more adventurous than 'magical Princess'.

Perfect, thanks.

Ah fuck I really wanna' rewatch Avatar now.

So Black Mirror bandasnatch hits today. The choose your own adventure experience.
So far, it works, controls are smooth and the film plays seamlessly (remember how bad these things were on DVD). Choices popping up fairly regularly.
I shall post again later.

Wow. Choices matter. I've game over a few times already.

Oh my god! Can't explain. Mind just blown.

That was incredible.

New season of Discovery has started, and the first episode is by far my favourite episode of Star Trek I've ever seen, purely because it's got Tig Notaro in it and she's just the fucking best. I hope she sticks around for the whole season.

Otherwise it's a bit of a tonal reboot from season one - much lighter, less afraid to be fun (and funny), and much more enjoyable for it. Though I have a feeling there's still going to be a lot of the internet complaining that it's not "real" Trek.

I liked the first season of Discovery despite all its massive flaws because its flaws were generally hilarious and it at least tried to do something different. Plus it had Jason Isaacs in it and I’ve not yet seen him in anything where he hasn’t been superb.

This was a bit more conventional, like they’d deliberately rowed back from some of S1’s excesses, and I liked it just fine. Looks like they’re going to give some of the minor cast members more screen time, and about time too.

The Orville is Star Trek now.

The Punisher season 2. We're only four episodes in, and Frank's already killed, like, 30 people. So far, so Punisher.

No real idea where the plot is going, as none of the characters are telling anyone the truth about anything that's happening, but there's clearly something going on under the hood. I'm enjoying it, at least. The villain (or, one of them?) is very different to the macho bullshit that I imagine would be the easy way to go on this kind of thing.

The Nine-Nine are back! If you don't mind using dodgy streams of the US broadcast as Netflix still haven't shown season 5. First two episodes of S6 are excellent.

There's a series up on iPlayer called Better Things starring Pamela Adlon of Califorication/Louie/Voice of Bobby Hill fame. It's excellent. The 3rd series is due soon after an uncoupling from Louis C.K who co-wrote the first two series. If you can get over that it's a great vehicle for Pamela Adlon.

Watched a Storyville doco on the Wako siege on iPlayer today. One of the best "true crime" docs I have watched.
Footage of Kuresh which had previously been unseen, and interviews with nine survivors.
One of the most horrifying things , is that although a dozen people ran out of the fire, none of them brought any of the 21 kids with them. One of them did bring a dog though.
And the survivor I hate the most is one woman who decided to leave when Kuresh annuled all marriages. This was her breaking point. Not the point when he started screwing 14 year olds.

I've just finished watching The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, and I have to say that the internet have been so, so wrong about this show. They have been right that it's really good, but the focus has been on it being scary. Now I'll admit I'm not easily scared by TV shows or movies anyway, but actually, whilst this is a Ghost Story and does try a few jump scares, it's much much more than that. To me, it's a story about grief, mental health and families and how it's so easy to bury our secrets and not share them with others for fear of being judged or hurting somebody else. The whole cast was, for me, excellent and I hope Netflix don't commission a second season as I think the whole thing works brilliantly as is.

I'd been working my way through The Good Place, finally.

It's a bit good, innit?

I've just started season 2, so no spoilers, please.

Can't remember if we've been putting the Netflix Marvel chat in here or the other thread, but anyway: Netflix have canned The Punisher and Jessica Jones.

It's kind of surprising they didn't wait for the just-wrapped third season of Jessica Jones to be released before dropping the axe on it; I mean everybody paying attention already knew this was coming, but isn't this going to harm JJ3? I guess Netflix probably don't care, at this point.

There was general consensus that most of these shows were going to get resurrected on the Disney+ streaming service that's coming soon (which also has a Loki TV series planned, apparently), but that BMD article suggests that there's a chance they'll show up on Hulu instead.

Anybody bothered? I'm kind of disappointed there'll be no more Jessica Jones, and from what I saw of Daredevil's third season it finally found its feet away from the magic ninja mysticism bullshit. The Punisher seemed to get good reviews as well, though I wasn't a fan of its frequent "violence is also harmful to those who perpetrate it but it's fckin' cool to watch" presentation.

Russian Doll on Netflix is worth your time.

Anyone watched The Man In The High Castle? It's been on my list for ages and a friend's been raving about it so we watched the first episode last night and I'm not sure about it yet. So far it's mostly been world-building so hopefully the characters will come into their own as we continue.

It's an incredibly distracting thing to watch though. They've really overdone the colour grading - there are three main areas the show seems to be set it and they've given them all really distinct treatments. So New York is shot in a very dark film noir sort of style, San Francisco is overwhelmingly orange and the "neutral zone" between the two is a kind of oversaturated 1960s style. What that means is the show is constantly flicking between scenes that look entirely different and it's really quite fatiguing. Also the HDR is painfully overdone - dark scenes are really dark, sunlight is really fucking bright - to the extent that I'm almost tempted to seek out the non-4K version just to give my eyes a bit of a break. Hopefully this is just pilot episode stuff and it'll tone it down a bit as it proceeds but it's a very odd thing to watch.

We watched the pilot years ago but weren't particularly impressed - I keep meaning to see if it's better with the additional followup, but haven't gotten around to it.

I've read most of the novel it's based on (I think Minx finished it?) but I got the impression from even that first episode that they were going in some slightly different directions with the show.

Never read the book, but I've seen all of the show to date, I think.

Season one has a good, interesting first half, then kind of loses all momentum in the back half. The second season is much more consistent (even if one of the arcs does come a bit out of nowhere), and it goes some really interesting places later on, even if three seasons later I'm still waiting for

Spoiler - click to showSmith's "Prince Zuko" moment.

Not seen the show, kept meaning to, but have read the book which is fairly typical Phillip K. Dick in that it goes in alot of different directions and it can be easy to lose track of what's going on but if you can keep on top of who's who it's a pretty good book. Although I think his short stories work better than his more standard length ones.

I read and loved the book many years ago. The pilot of the TV show didn't grab me though and I didn't watch any more.

Just watched the first episode of Jerk on the iPlayer. It's a comedy starring an American comic who I have seen in the circuit a couple of times.
Basic premise, he's got CP and he's an arsehole. It's him getting away with shit he wouldn't if people weren't nervous about his disability.
If you don't like the opening joke, it's not for you. But if you do it's just a very funny program.

The OA Part II

First teaser has also been released for the BBC's upcoming His Dark Materials series.

Yeah, I'll watch that. Not entirely sold on James McAvoy as Asriel (or Lin Manuel Miranda, who's a bit younger than I ever pictures Lee Scoresby), but Ruth Wilson is inspired casting and I'm looking forward to seeing what Dafne Keen can do in a longer (and speaking) role.

The OA Part II

I'm going to need to rewatch the first season, I think.

His Dark Materials

Real question, of course, is who's playing the bear?

I think the casting choices are inspired. Are you sure about Lee Scoresby - not mixing him up with Goram?
Ruth Wilson will knock this out the park.

In the spinoff/side story Once Upon a Time in the North, set in 1961, Scoresby is 24. The Subtle Knife takes place in 1996 (or thereabouts), which would put his age at 59 in that book.

Based purely on google images (I haven't seen the film), the Lee Scoresby in the 2007 film was much closer to my mental image of him from the books.

But I have faith they'll knock this out of the park, too.

Anybody else seen The Dragon Prince on Netflix? It's a fantasy/adventure cartoon from a bunch of the team behind Avatar: The Last Airbender; there are two "seasons" so far, of nine episodes each.

The cel-shaded CGI style might be a bit offputting to some people - I'm not a fan, generally, but this manages to do it really well, and seems to augment the 3D stuff with great painted backgrounds and 2D animated effects on top.

If you liked Avatar (or, I'd say, the recent She-Ra) I'd recommend giving this a shot. Just don't let yourself be put off by the ridiculous names, repeated dramatic deliveries of the word "egg", and the slightly ropey Scottish accent on one of the main characters. It really is worth the journey.

Slightly ropey?

I watched the first season. It's very D&D.

I've heard worse accents.

I like the show a lot.

Speaking of, has anyone else watched Carmen Sandiego? It's a pretty heavily-reworked "adaptation" of the original concept, but I enjoyed it. It's got a solid cast, a great art style, and a fantastic '60s spy movie soundtrack. Even the edutainment bits aren't too jarring, for the most part…

Carmen Sandiego is really good. I think I binged it with Little Miss Bloodaxe one Saturday afternoon.

We will never get anything on the level of Avatar again. T_T

The person playing the Scottish character is literally Scottish.

So, I can't quite see how she's doing a dodgy accent.

I like Dragon Prince a lot - heaps of charm. Not sure the story has enough wiggle room to push on for tens of episodes, but we've all enjoyed the ones done so far.

The person playing the Scottish character is literally Scottish.

So, I can't quite see how she's doing a dodgy accent.

Really? Oh well. It just seemed wrong to me.

Daphne and half of her family in Frasier were British actors, and their accents were bizarre.

Mainly because they all had different regional accents. She was Mancunian, but her brother was a cockney.

Daphne was doing an accent (and making it comprehensible to US audiences).

Scottish elf is literally a Scottish woman speaking in her own voice. I imagine she sounds as understandable as Pat Nevin on a badly tuned radio to most of the audience. I was impressed they stuck with it.

Scottish elf is literally a Scottish woman speaking in her own voice.

She was born in Scotland, but raised in Canada. She doesn't speak with a Scottish accent - you can hear her normal accent in this convention panel.

Awa' wid ye.

I had heard her talking on something and she did a Scottish. There you go then.

We I'm glad we've cleared that up.

Caught up on The Good Place.

It is very, very good. But I think everyone knew that already.

I don't think I can talk about why it's so good without feeling like I'm risking spoilers, though?

Spoiler - click to showI don't think I've ever seen a show that so constantly, and so effortlessly, reinvents itself. Every time I think it's coming to an inescapable end point, it pulls the rug out from under me and does something different, but in keeping with the premise. It's not flawless - I don't really like Jason, either as a character or a comedic presence - but I'm fascinated to see where they go next. Is there a definitively limited run, though? It seems like it's got to head to an end point eventually, or it'll jump the shark completely. But it's managed to avoid that so far, so… what do I know?

The OA Part II

I'm going to need to rewatch the first season, I think.

Why would you do that to yourself?

Hey, I liked it.