The TV Thread

fretmeister

Finished "You" to date - I enjoyed that. What started as Dexter-Lite developed quite nicely and upped the sarcasm by 300%.

And now I've started watching Dexter: New Blood and it's good so far. There's no twee throwbacks, it's just carrying on.

Mattharrier

goldtop said:

Just resigned to Amazon Prime (freebie with a new O2 contract). Have been off Prime for a year or so. Ms GT is hoping that the next season of Handmaid's Tale comes along soonish.

Anything new that's worth binging?

(Will also trawl back through this thread for suggestions.)

I'll just drop in my standard recommendation of Justified, save you looking.

goldtop

^ Will check it out...

Moominpapa

The Disappearance of Pato  on BBC iPlayer. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p09d78j9/the-disappearance-of-pato ) 

This is a production from 2010. If you know any of the Inspector Montalbano shows, this is an adaptation of a novel by the creator of Montalbano (Andrea Camilleri) and is set in the same place - the small Siciilian town of Vigata. The story is set in 1890 and concerns the disappearance of a bank employee.

I adored this. The humour is sometimes quite broad, but is always warm-hearted and often laugh-out-loud funny. The two main leads play off each other wonderfully. A really delightful piece of television, strongly recommended.

duotone

@Danny1969 ;I really enjoyed On becoming a god in central Florida. Would definitely recommend it to others.

duotone

@boogieman Fair enough, I won’t start on Fargo next then. Tbh I’m waiting for the 6th season (final?) of Better Call Saul to arrive on Netflix

duotone

goldtop said:

Just resigned to Amazon Prime (freebie with a new O2 contract). Have been off Prime for a year or so. Ms GT is hoping that the next season of Handmaid's Tale comes along soonish.

Anything new that's worth binging?

(Will also trawl back through this thread for suggestions.)

@goldtop Not sure of your preferences & what you have already seen. I’m mostly watching older, easy to watch stuff & would recommend: Roadies (2016) & Red Oaks (2014) 

goldtop

^ Thanks - will give them a go. 

Moominpapa

Borrowed Pasture (1960) - on BBC iPlayer:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00gxvjj/borrowed-pasture

Another extraordinary find from the BBC archives. Written, filmed, & directed by John Ormond with Richard Burton doing the narration. This is the programme description:

Eugenius Okolowicz and Vlodek Bulaj, soldiers exiled after serving in the Second World War, sought shelter in Wales. They came upon a desolate hillside farm which had lain unoccupied and decaying for 20 years. Neither of the Poles had farmed before, but the land was cheap because it was unwanted. This film tells the story of the men's 12th year living at Penygaer. But it is more the tragic story of the price they have paid for poor independence and of their unending struggle, in loneliness and hardship, to be themselves.

And that's pretty much it. Nothing happens really - you just see the men doing their daily round. The big "occasion" is the visit of the Polish priest in Wales who comes one or twice a year to say Mass for them and hear their confession. But behind this half hour film of two aging immigrants scraping a living in a ramshackle Welsh farm is the weight of history: the Second World War, Russia and Poland, displacement and exile; human beings' desire to be free from oppressive regimes; loss & loneliness, and a stubborn determination to keep on surviving even when it all seems a bit hopeless. Tolstoy would have understood and appreciated these guys.

Haych

Last night we finished watching Designated Survivor.

Series 1 was excellent, if a little long.  Series 2 wasn't as good but was still worth watching.

Series 3, however, was pretty dire.  It lost its way and as a result was much shorter and less engaging.  S3 was also noticeably sweary when S1 and S2 just weren't - it was like the writers had to add in a load of F's and C's to make it seem intense because the plot was so weak.  Disappointing ending too.

Moominpapa

The Miracle of Bali - a 1969 3-part documentary produced and narrated by David Attenborough. On BBC iPlayer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00y1hcp/the-miracle-of-bali-1-the-midday-sun 

http://https//www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00y1hd6/the-miracle-of-bali-2-night 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00yrjp9/the-miracle-of-bali-3-recital-of-music

There's a lot more I would like to say about this than I am willing to type (or you would be willing to read, I'm sure). Suffice to say it is a truly fascinating look at some aspects of Balinese culture that I would be willing to bet no longer survive in the same form. I lived in Indonesia for a while in the early 1980s but only got to visit Bali once. By that period Indonesia generally - and Bali in particular - was well-established as a de-rigeur destination for anyone who fancied themselves an off-the-beaten-track traveller, with the obvious consequence that Bali became a crowded slum of would-be hippies, people who didn't want to do the Mediterranean resort scene, and Australians. A perfect example of the traveller's curse of the place you visit because it is not like other places becoming just like other places. (I don't exempt myself from being part of the problem: I wanted to escape mundane Britain and see 'exotic' places when I was young.)

There's a particular interest for Fretboarders in there being a lot about gamelan orchestra music - and there are some serious chops on display.

Stand out moments - from part 1, the amazing musicianship of the gamelan orchestra leader as he rehearses a gangsa player. Sitting facing the player, he doesn't have an instrument of his own, but demonstrates corrections by playing on the rehearser's gangsa backwards. Not only that, but he also accompanies the other musician by playing the counterpoint melody - again backwards on the same instrument. Just fucking insane skills. Another great part is watching how a couple of older and experienced female dancers rehearse some young girls in a dance. Instead of demonstrating and saying 'now you do that' they literally manipulate the girls bodies through the movements as if they were dolls. Really interesting to see; it looks crude, b ut the final results show it's effectiveness.

Part 2 focuses on the rituals of Balinese Hinduism and their pre-Hindu animistic religion, as practiced in the more remote villages. Fascinating stuff especially if you are interested in trances. WARNING: there's a moment with a cute fluffy chick that doesn't end well for the chick.

Part 3 is basically a film of a music/dance performance at a temple. Featuring the gamelan orchestra from part 1, and a couple of dances, this is truly an Earth-saver, meaning that if there came one of those times when giant alien spaceships arrive to destroy our planet because the rest of the universe is fed up with how humans behave, our best defence would be acknowledge our faults but then  point to this programme and say "in our defence, we can also do this". The musicianship of the gamelan players is humbling, and dancers are just phenomenal. (They dance as much with their eyes as with their feet - watch the programme and you'll see what I mean.)

Philly_Q

I've been struggling to find any interesting series to watch, but I started on Mike Flanagan's Midnight Mass last night and I'm liking it so far.

goldtop

I'm slowly deciding whether I like The Expanse (Amazon) enough to commit to the whole 5 seasons. I like the idea of this near-space future with the politics and billionnaire-tech combining (like Bladerunner, I suppose). And I've just about learned to live with the weirdest made-up accent I've heard on TV (that belter leader's in particular).

A propos, I went looking for refs so that I could understand the space - distances, orbits, etc - and found this wonderful NASA online orrery:

https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/orrery/#/home

So I can do the sort of 3D drag and click that they do in the holographic displays on the show. 

Moominpapa

We Live By the River (1955)  This is another old BBC documentary from the BBC iPlayer Collection curated by Simon Jenkins. (I've posted about other films from this Collection previously in this thread.) Basically it is a fairly predictable travelogue staged with a clumsy and completely unnecessary device of two young boys from the East End playing truant for the day and taking a journey from morning to late evening through all the expected London sights and scenes. In terms of film making it's dull & hackneyed stuff. The main interest is in seeing lots of shots of what London looked like in 1955, especially for me as this would be the London my parents knew as a young married couple living in West Horndon and going into town for shopping or a night out. The street traffic is relatively light. The food looks appalling. There's a nod to bomb damage from the blitz, but the camera doesn't dwell on it.  One of the most interesting shots is early on, taken from (I would guess) somewhere in Rotherhithe. You can't help but be struck by the huge number of cranes that line the banks east of Tower Bridge. Nowadays it's hard to see much evidence that London itself was a major port with vast dock areas handling cargo from all over the world. All that had disappeared 30 years after this film was shot - moved down river to the big container handling areas like Tilbury. Men wearing hats, even in the pub at lunchtime - and a couple of genuine toppers in the morning rush hour scenes around Bank station. Seeing a man lighting gas lamps surprised me; turns out there are still actually some working gas lamps in London - but now they light automatically: a lamplighter going round with a brass pole ended in the mid-1970s. Films showing in the West End - Modern Times, The Belles of St. Trinians. 

Definitely worth watching if you are interested in the London of bygone times, otherwise give it a miss.

BluesLover

The Expanse season 6 has now started on Netflix. One episode a week, on Fridays.

goldtop

^ Hmmm.... do I have that much stamina?

I've just finished Season 2 of The Expanse, and it's getting rather annoying. They keep switching from life/death moment in place 1 to melodramatic moment in place 2 and then plot development in place 3 and back again. Terrible writing/editing. Plus they don't have enough actors for the amount of action that they write in, so the same ones keep getting shot/asphyxiated/crushed/etc and then magically fixed up time and time again.

I really like the story universe, and the general idea, but it's actually turning into a soap opera. Might give S3E1 a go today and see if it grabs me.

LastMantra

I've started watching "peep show" as I never really got in to it originally. It's pretty weird! I don't really get the characters, the geeky, awkward guy OK but the other one with the strange teeth and the yellow tongue not so much. 

goldtop

Peep Show is great. Like Men Behaving Badly with added idiocy.

bertie

really enjoying Bebop Cowboy on Prime    -  a nice bit of ironic nod to late 60s detective shows 

LastMantra

goldtop said:

Peep Show is great. Like Men Behaving Badly with added idiocy.

Ah, I wasn't a big fan of MBB.