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TV Tuesdays Free Talk
Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.
Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.
A very unappreciated gem that you can find on Netflix that I try to tell everyone about is a show called Midnight Diner and its sequel series, Midnight Diner: Tokyo stories. It's a semi episodic Japanese show that takes place in a tiny diner that is only open from midnight to 7am. The owner is a sort of stoic silent bartender type that exists as a soundboard for listening to the problems and life stories of his clientele. It's a mix of Japanese food porn and a comfy cast of regulars and transients that have stories to tell about the lives of the not as glamorous working class people that would frequent those hours. Cops on night shift, Pachinko parlour employees, a stripper, a drag queen, retirees, low rung medical staff, etc.
It has a slightly more sombre than Cheers vibe to it, but is still full of light hearted feel good moments that make it very comfy watch. I can't recommend it enough.
Finished Chernobyl recently... really damn good, scary, and sad, and also fits nicely next to The Terror in the "Jared Harris as the tragic hero and Adam Nagaitis dies horribly" anthology.
I finally watched that a couple weeks ago and damn I didn't realize how intense everything was.
I rewatched Aunty Donna's Coffee Cafe. It's dumb and silly, but the execution is great.
They have a short clip here.
Finally got around to watching Rabbit Hole. Pretty impressed with that show so far. I'm 3 episodes in and I have no damn clue where this show is going. I'm a huge slut for anything with Keifer Sutherland in in though too so there is that.
Series 14 of Taskmaster is releasing on their YouTube channel, so I have been catching up on that. I love the Series 14 cast; they're near the top of my list of cast favourites. I think I say that about every cast though except Series 5 (my outright favourite cast, no hedging). Series 14 Episode 3 is one of the funniest episodes of all time.
Episode 1: All my friends are gone. Who are these imposters? I will never be happy again.
Episode 10: I would die for Fern Brady.
Every time.
Just finished the Last of Us. I played the first game but not the second. It was very well done and riveting with amazing performances all around. I'm glad I finally got a chance to watch it.
Watched the latest season of Black Mirror and finally caught White House Plumbers this week. Black Mirror was....not Black Mirror. Most of it wasn't terrible but some of it was really bad. My biggest gripe is that it departed from the underlying premise of the show.
White House Plumbers on the other hand was surprisingly great. Justin Theroux is hilarious and Woody Harrelson had his fair share of moments as well.
I've only seen Joan is Awful and it was, well, awful. I Googled viewer reviews of the episode and saw almost universal praise and I was like, am I that out of step with everyone else? But my husband tapped out before the episode ended and he didn't even care to hear how it wrapped up, and another friend was bashing it. I personally think Black Mirror has lost its way. The first two seasons were brilliant. I didn't finish the last season, either.
WHP was so fun -- especially after Theroux being an intense downer on Mosquito Coast.
With Black Mirror, I think White Christmas was where it really went off the rails and never returned. I only saw the first ep of this season and liked it enough, but it felt more like a play on Synecdoche, New York than anything.
I actually just started watching Black Mirror. I'm really enjoying it so far, but I've just finished season 3. Disappointing to hear I'm in for the opposite of a treat the more I watch though, but I'll see it through the end with an open mind.
It was definitely a weird series of Black Mirror.
Joan is Awful was very on-theme for Black Mirror, but it wasn't great. Wonderful cast, but just... not great writing. I'll watch Annie Murphy and Salma Hayek in just about anything, but it was a pretty rough episode.
I thought that Beyond the Sea was pretty good, and in the spirit of Black Mirror. Great cast, great premise. It was pretty well done, and everything felt a bit inevitable. Josh Hartnett was good and Aaron Paul was great, and I thought it was the highlight of the series.
The other three were not really Black Mirror episodes; they would have been a lot more at home in Cabinet of Curiosities. I thought that they would all have been adequate-to-good episodes of that series, but they all missed the mark as episodes of Black Mirror; the technology issues were all shoehorned in. It seems clear that Charlie Brooker wants to branch out a bit.
I personally didn't mind this deviation, but that's mostly because I love a good horror anthology.
We're watching Slow Horses on Apple TV+. God, Gary Oldman is fantastic. I also checked out the first book from the library after starting the show.
Excitedly awaiting the next episode of Silo.
I'm on the final episode of Manifest and it's just amazing how much of that show that's awful. The writing, the (over)acting, the music, the dialog, the make-up and I could on. I just can't look away now and thankfully don't really care how it ends.
If you think that's bad, you should check out The Ark. It makes Manifest look like high art. One of the actors played Puck (alongside Judi Dench, no less) in stage production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, but I think several of the others found their SAG cards in a box of breakfast cereal. Everything about it adds a new definition to "ham-fisted".
I believe you. The funny thing is that a lot of people on the Manifest subreddit (which is hilariously satirical) are saying several actors from Manifest have made decent or even great appearances before in other shows which just underlines how bad everything they had to work with was here.
Started watching Abbott Elementary a couple of weeks back. I'm on S02E02. I think most of the characters are likeable, some are more annoying than the other but tolerable.
ok, Class of 09 wrapped up. I think the series would work better as a binge. Tonight I did two episodes and it was way better. I'm always whining about scale, but Class of 09 also struggles with this.
Decent week for new TV.
Does anybody watch Countdown (not Cats Does... -- the OG)?
One of my favorite movies series has always been Lethal Weapon. I watch it every year, specifically around XMas time because the first one is an XMas movie. When I saw they were making a show based on the series I scoffed at the idea because they usually just turn into generic shells of what they were, so I didn't even give it a chance. Then 2 seasons in one of the stars was fired because of toxic behavior and they brought in Stiffler. It was cancelled the next season, this was 2018-2019. So, while being bored recently and finally catching up on Archer, I see LW on Hulu. I said screw it and gave the first couple episodes a shot.
It's actually somewhat enjoyable. I'm only about 1/4 through S2 but like watching it. Granted, it's barely a vague facsimile of the movies, you could rename the characters and nobody would notice.
Now, checking the IMdb ratings the show quality clearly tanked in S3 where the highest rated episode was around the lowest rated of the first 2 seasons. I'll give it a shot because...what the hell.