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    1. 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...

      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.

      9 votes
    2. 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...

      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.

      14 votes
    3. Should we have topics for shows or episodes?

      So I've been putting in topics for each episode of The Good Place for a couple weeks, and it's been a little slow but reasonable amounts of activity. But for week to week shows in the future,...

      So I've been putting in topics for each episode of The Good Place for a couple weeks, and it's been a little slow but reasonable amounts of activity. But for week to week shows in the future, would it be more appropriate to have one big thread made for the season premiere and bump that on a weekly basis and enforce marking posts when a particular episode happened, so we can better track discussion and continue threads of discussion across weeks, or would that just kinda be a mess?

      8 votes
    4. The Good Place S04E01 - "A Girl From Arizona: Part 1" discussion thread

      Now that the show is available on the NBC, Hulu and your store of choice, what did you all think about this season premiere of the Good Place? Did we want to do a thread for each episode or just...

      Now that the show is available on the NBC, Hulu and your store of choice, what did you all think about this season premiere of the Good Place? Did we want to do a thread for each episode or just one at the beginning and one at the end?

      13 votes
    5. Crime and Punishment is an interesting, hard to watch, docu about the UK prison system

      Channel 4 describe the programme "Series that captures the work of police, probation, prison, prosecution and parole". Here's a link to the first episode:...

      Channel 4 describe the programme "Series that captures the work of police, probation, prison, prosecution and parole".

      Here's a link to the first episode: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/crime-and-punishment/on-demand/64655-001

      Crime and punishment is a documentary series that looks inside prison to tell the stories of the criminal justice system from the viewpoint of those involved.

      The first episode spends some time talking about the unjust "Imprisonment for Public Protection"[1] sentences (these are no longer given by the courts but there are thousands of prisoners still imprisoned on them), how they went wrong, and the awful effect they have upon prisoners. It's a difficult watch. It shows how severely the mental health of prisoners is when they're on this type of sentence, including their serious self harm.

      Episode two talks about pressure inside prisons and how that results in "riots", about how prisoners use the only power they have available to them.

      I like the programme because it avoids judgmentalism. The prisoners are not reduced to the bad guys; the officers are not simplified to the good guys. You hear a little bit about some of the offences committed by the prisoners

      Here's a Twitter thread from someone working in the English NHS. She works in forensic services as a psychologist. https://twitter.com/SarahE_Davidson/status/1173707912981700608

      I guess Channel 4 On Demand have geo-blocking. I don't know if it's available on other services, or on torrent.

      [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprisonment_for_public_protection

      7 votes
    6. The Chefs' Brigade

      This is a British cookery show. They take a bunch of people who cook for a living but who have basic skills. These people are paired with a chef who has four Michelin stars and eighteen...

      This is a British cookery show. They take a bunch of people who cook for a living but who have basic skills. These people are paired with a chef who has four Michelin stars and eighteen restaurants. They visit different restaurants around Europe to have competitions to cook that restaurant's own food.

      Things I enjoy about it: it does a good job of showing that people who have somewhat fucked up lives will always find a place in cheffing. They could have stayed in the UK but they decided to go around Europe.[1] There's a couple of incidents of poor behaviour being corrected (some of the women chefs are ignored and spoken over by some men, the women stand up for themselves and get an apology).

      Things I don't like: there's some cheffy bollocks around the pressure and discipline of a brigade; it's still a reality-show competition and that introduces some artificiallity; they send people home each week and I always hate that aspect of programmes.

      It's available on Pirate Bay.

      Here are some reviews which I think are fair.

      https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jul/30/the-chefs-brigade-review-a-cookery-challenge-worthy-of-willy-wonka

      https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/the-chefs-brigade-bbc2-episode-1-review-jason-atherton/

      [1] I can't describe how pathologically awful Brexit has been for the UK. :-(

      7 votes
    7. Mythbuster Jr is pretty entertaining

      Mythbusters is back, but in a tweaked format. Adam Savage fronts with a team of six young people. Jamie, Kari, Tory, and Grant are absent, only appearing in video flashbacks to the previous show....

      Mythbusters is back, but in a tweaked format.

      Adam Savage fronts with a team of six young people. Jamie, Kari, Tory, and Grant are absent, only appearing in video flashbacks to the previous show.

      Mythbusters with kids could have been horrific, but they've managed to make this entertaining and informative. They've increased the amount of STEM stuff. We see people doing a bit of math while planning something out. The kids are smart, and the show allows them to be smart while also being children. Adam is a great fit, being a big kid himself but also filling the role of a pseudo parent and giving friendly advice (often around safety, such as the tag strap used to manoeuvre huge steel plates).

      The old show had a some problems. They'd have too many pre-break "what's coming next" and post-break "here's what happened before", and they'd chop up the myths being tested into tiny little bits. They still do that, but not nearly as much.

      It's a fun, entertaining watch, and it's safe for families to watch together.

      13 votes
    8. Black Mirror S04E02 “Arkangel” discussion thread

      Previous episode | Index thread | Next episode Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 2 - Arkangel Worried about her daughter’s safety, single mom Marie signs up for a cutting-edge device that monitors the...

      Previous episode | Index thread | Next episode

      Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 2 - Arkangel

      Worried about her daughter’s safety, single mom Marie signs up for a cutting-edge device that monitors the girl’s whereabouts -- and much more.

      Black Mirror Netflix link


      Warning: this thread contains spoilers about this episode! If you haven't seen it yet, please watch it and come back to this thread later.

      You can talk about past episodes, but please don't discuss future episodes in this thread!


      If you don't know what to say, here are some questions to get the discussion started:

      • How does the title relate to the episode itself?
      • Are there any similarities between real life events and the episode?
      • Are there any references or easter eggs in the episode, such as references to past episodes?

      Please rate the episode here!

      11 votes