Televisual Entertainments

Spoiler - click to show That the AOC character couldn't be good - like the Nazis she also is just as bad, and enjoys exploding heads

Felt a bit like…. Nazis bad m'kay, but hol' up the left

Still, girls do get it done.

Still, girls do get it done.

See? It has very strong 'we're making this up as we go' energy. No clear plan, no clear idea for how to get from one end of a story to the other, just a few cool moments that they want to show and not a huge amount else. Some cool fakeouts for the trailers too but otherwise there's not a vast amount there.

Also, shit-lib centrist politics? From the same assholes that said "The big question of what the series is about is where the lines are blurred between authoritarianism and celebrity, and how late-stage capitalism is driving most of it. It’s about how powerful people are fucking over the regular guy, and how corporations are encouraging it because it lets them make more money.” while working for fucking Amazon?

"Wow it's wild how the banks are bad and keep getting away with all this terrible shit, anyway, this production brought to you by HSBC's War Crimes Division, Wells Fargo's human trafficking division and Deutsche Bank's fucking everything about Deutsche Bank's division."

Yeah, it is clearly Lost levels of making it up. It also is very confused about what message it's actually trying to convey, so simply tries to convey all of them simultaneously.

Ultimately I'd prefer it if they just admitted they think ripping faces off and exploding heads are cool and left it there.

Ahhhh yeah, sorry cav I remember that. I still need to see where they go with that plotline (assuming they do another series, but besides that everything seemed to be resolved to me?) because I don't really get it. I remember looking up theories about it and everyone seems to agree we just don't know why or even how (I think episode 7? Just how did they do it).

Spoiler - click to show most people seem to agree ages probably a Vought double agent? Seems a bit ott to me? Either way I'm just reserving judgement but I don't think that's what that were going for personally

Lets not forget thats The Boys is the show that is trying to make the rapist character now the comic relief.

Still working my way through the last couple of seasons of Buffy, but it looks like Channel 4 have added the whole of spin-off series Angel to their streaming service All4.

Given up on S2 of The Boys at the halfway mark. Really loved the first series but this one is a confused mess, it barely has a plot and it’s just a bunch of different scenes strung together with its characters all over the place. It hits its quota of exploding heads but I’m bored.

It sags terribly in the middle, but the end stretch isn't too bad.

The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix is an absolute masterpiece. You might not think you want to watch a 7-part period drama about a chess prodigy, but trust me, you absolutely do.

Halfway through Season 2 of The Expanse, and I think it's bloody brilliant. Best genre TV I've watched since early Game of Thrones.

You're almost at the "best" season where I gave up on it for being turgid, overblown, badly acted shite.

Can't wait. I do like a bit of turgidity.

The acting did for me in the end. The story was fine, but I reached a snapping point after one particularly "GCSE drama students at 3pm on a Friday afternoon" performance during one high tension moment, which wasn't so much phoned in as written on parchment, thrown in a bottle into the sea in Norway and retrieved 150 years later by a spotty teenager on a Kent beach.

Cavalcade in "not liking thing" shocker

I am more than happy to put up with poor production values of it means that I get to watch something I haven't seen before.

I mean it's scifi so people will swallow any old shit won't they. I just thought post BSG we might have a baseline expectation that pew pew laysers could also have actual actors in it. The leads in this are Huel in human form.

I'll tell you what I have been enjoying. Castlevania on Netflix. That's pretty good. Fairly witty, quite creative, stylish animation in bits, doesn't outstay its welcome.

Oh and in fact I'll tell you something that is genuinely wonderful. Better Things. The Louis CK connection is obviously a bit of a sticking point but I haven't seen a bit of TV so consistently good for years. Pamela Adlon is great, but Celia Imrie really makes it. Some of the individual episodes are masterpieces. I'd especially recommend it if you're a parent or step parent to teenage girls. Fucking brilliant.

Two for two on the 'enjoying things created/produced/written by sex offenders' there, cav.

Star Trek Discovery Season 3 is actually not terrible? It's not good, but it's not terrible. Better than Picard turned out.

The best TV just is Kipo.

Star Trek Discovery Season 3 is actually not terrible? It's not good, but it's not terrible. Better than Picard turned out.

No, it's still terrible. Just not as terrible as S2. I thought Picard was much better, until it crashed and burned in the final episode.

Two for two on the 'enjoying things created/produced/written by sex offenders' there, cav.

Star Trek Discovery Season 3 is actually not terrible? It's not good, but it's not terrible. Better than Picard turned out.

Yep. Which is why I mentioned it. But then we're into a "can you enjoy art shorn from the morally dubious creator" question. I'd have to say I'd rather watch good art from quantifiably bad people than suffer turgid shit like Discovery or The Expanse from people who are probably just as bad but haven't been caught yet.

JFC why is everything always shit.

Castlevania is awesome, especially Dracula.

New trailers out for the next three Disney+ MCU TV shows

Loki and WandaVision look at their strongest in the moments where they seem to be leaning into LEGION territory, but by and large these all look like they could all be the same show. It's a pretty common complaint about the MCU that the various entries aren't as visually distinct as they could be (while production design helps a little, the cinematography and lighting is very similar across the board), but I don't think I'd ever really noticed as much as when I watched these three trailers back to back.

Is anyone else watching WandaVision? Its commitment to the bit really is something else, and it barely shows a crack in the facade until the end of episode 3. Even if #4 is the most ordinary(?) to date, Spoiler - click to showit's doing a lot of background legwork to establish the state of the world post-blip, soI'm interested to see where it goes.

Really enjoying the series. Ep 4 could have been 5 minutes at the start/finish of another episode but no biggie.

It has made me want to watch all of Legion, I think I only saw the first season when it broadcast.

I never saw any of Legion, though it does sound really interesting.

Legion is great.

WandaVision's great. I know a couple of people who bounced off it hard after the first couple of episodes though, I do think it's one of those series that would have benefited from being released all at once. It wasn't until ep 3 that I was sure I was onboard; but it's also made me want to go back and rewatch the first couple of episodes with a bit of knowledge about where it's all going. Clever, bold, important-feeling stuff.

Clever, bold, important-feeling stuff.

I find my enthusiasm for the ambition muted somewhat by the knowledge that it's not going to have an ending, so much as just a reveal for whatever the next MCU thing is gonna be.

Maybe, but since it's a limited series, I'm hoping it'll at least resolve the Westview mystery satisfactorily - even if the whole thing is ultimately a lead-in to Doctor Strange 2.

WandaVision episode 5.
Spoiler - click to showWHAT. I guess this is related to the other Spider-Men that are showing up in the next movie…

Uh?

Yeah, I actually did a proper yell of 'what the hell!'

Right well I’ve definitely missed something…

Yeah, I'm with Gar. What did I miss in ep 5 that is so WTF?

Spoiler - click to showOh wait, was it the Quicksilver from Days of Future Past rather than the Quicksilver from Age of Ultron?

Right well I’ve definitely missed something…

Spoiler - click to showSo, the Quicksilver at the end of the episode isn't the Quicksilver from the MCU. That Quicksilver - Wanda's brother - died in Age of Ultron.

Spoiler - click to showThis isn't a piece of stunt casting because it's not like they couldn't face-replace or get Aaron Taylor-Johnson out of his blockbuster acting career to bring the character back from the dead properly likes. Evan Peters - the Quicksilver from the X-Men movies rather than the Avengers movies - being the character seems as much of a surprise to Wanda as it is to us.

Spoiler - click to showThis, in a single scene, opens a whole stack of doors to the universe. Are those x-men films now a thing? Are mutants a thing? The X-Men movie Quicksilver never had a Scarlet Witch sister, but he thinks he's her brother? If it's going a bit multiversal, then why not have Ian McKellen show up as Magneto to talk to both of his kids? If this leads into the Doctor Strange Multiverse of Madness movie then that has a huge amount of potential in and of itself.

wow these spoiler tags are kinda busted sorry

OK. Well I haven’t seen any of those movies but “character is recast with actor who has experience of playing the role” doesn’t seem like a big shocker to me.

Spoiler - click to showIs Pietro even referred to as Quicksilver in Age of Ultron? I don’t recall.

No, but he's distinctly that character. Like, they're even shown earlier in the episode to remind viewers that, hey, remember this guy?

Spoiler - click to showIt's also worth pointing out that the audio description in the accessible version of the show specifically calls them out as the one from the X Men movies.

Well, OK then. But this is a series that recast the goddamn Incredible Hulk and no-one ever commented on it. Spoiler - click to showI’m not reading too much into the recasting of the key role of “Wanda’s brother” just yet.

Spoiler - click to show It's nice that he showed up in the 80s

I added a couple of spoiler tags to your posts Gar. Just in case.

Well, OK then. But this is a series that recast the goddamn Incredible Hulk and no-one ever commented on it.

Yeah, only Spoiler - click to showNorton's version didn't canonically die and then Eric Bana turns up in a pocket dimension.

This isn't just a recast. This is A Big Deal.

A friend of mine recommended a Disney+ cartoon called The Owl House, which – it turns out – is everything Disenchanted wanted to be and more. Actually funny, with a surprisingly strong undercurrent of supernatural horror, and great characters.

It's definitely for kids (rated 6+, probably more suited for a little older), but if you can stomach moderate teen drama with trainee witches in between the grotesque monsters and wacky magical hijinx, it's worth checking out.

Sounds great. We have been reduced to watching Supergirl again.

The second season of Hilda doesn’t disappoint (though I wish we’d rewatched the first one again beforehand - a lot of characters and themes recur). We’ve just watched an episode which was like the entire Back to the Future trilogy crammed into 25 minutes for the under-12s, and it was amazing. Easily the best kids’ TV series on streaming services right now.

Yep. Hilda is fantastic. Kipo is pretty great too.

If you like ridiculous over-complicated time travel plots in less than twenty minutes I recommend DC Superhero Girls season 1 episode 29.