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    1. Detectorists - "unremarkable lives gone slightly awry"

      I'm currently re-watching all episodes of Detectorists and it's one of my favourite tv things ever, so I thought maybe Tildes would be interested. Detectorists is a single camera sitcom about two...

      I'm currently re-watching all episodes of Detectorists and it's one of my favourite tv things ever, so I thought maybe Tildes would be interested. Detectorists is a single camera sitcom about two men and their friendship around their metal detecting hobby.

      Here's the link to the BBC Four webpage for it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06l51nr

      Some review sites -

      Rotten Tomatoes 100% (few reviews), 99% audience score: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/detectorists

      IMDB 8.6 : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4082744/

      Guardian review (because she writes about it far better than I can): https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/dec/09/detectorists-rich-portrait-unremarkable-lives-gone-slightly-awry-mackenzie-crook

      Detectorists is about nothing and everything. Made with palpable love, it’s about people and their passions; camaraderie and community. As a portrait of male friendship, it is closer to documentary than drama, delving beneath the topsoil of mid-life ennui via the sparsest of exchanges. You won’t find a laughter track, or smart-arse punchlines or an oh-so-subtle veil of irony here; instead of begging for your attention, Detectorists is notable for its avoidance of snark. It’s the drama least likely to culminate in alpha plonkers blowing up cars, taking down baddies or ravishing beautiful women.

      Instead, it lingers lovingly over dewdrops on grass, magpies on gateposts, scudding clouds and gently fluttering leaves. Even an alfresco wee takes on a painterly aspect, viewed solely through the steam cloud billowing from behind a sunlit tree. Meanwhile, the camera makes high art out of Lance’s face in closeup, crestfallen as he unearths a scaffolding bracket instead of an Anglo-Saxon nugget, and from Andy’s silent incredulity when a colleague jokes about Richard Attenborough when he means David.

      Radio Times review https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2017-12-13/detectorists-series-3-review/

      If all British programmes took this much care over their tone, look and overall distinctiveness, the golden age of television would never go away.

      Modern comedies are often predicated on cruelty: laughs are hard, clanging or sharp as barbed wire. In its quiet, undemonstrative way, Detectorists has ploughed its own furrow. Buried in its field of fun are evergreen truths about life, and the things we don’t say but should. So if kindness and companionship are unfashionable, I know which side of the hedge I’d rather stand.

      13 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.

      6 votes
    3. 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
    4. Is "The Morning Show" bad?

      Apple has spent a lot of money on The Morning Show for its new tv service. It has a bunch of actors that I love. In particular I'm excited to see Anniston, Duplas, Carell, and Crudup in this....

      Apple has spent a lot of money on The Morning Show for its new tv service. It has a bunch of actors that I love. In particular I'm excited to see Anniston, Duplas, Carell, and Crudup in this.

      Metacritic gives it only 60. https://www.metacritic.com/tv/the-morning-show Sometimes a single terrible review can drag that number down, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. There are a few bad reviews, and lots of mixed reviews.

      I don't know much about critique or how reviewing works, so I'm curious: is The Morning Show bad, or are critics terrible at reviewing, or is something else going on?

      7 votes
    5. The Good Place S04E06 - "A Chip Driver Mystery" discussion thread

      So this is probably one of the meatier episodes of the ones that we've seen so far, with the experiment taking a hit, Bad Janet being a free agent, and Brent being impossible to deal with. What do...

      So this is probably one of the meatier episodes of the ones that we've seen so far, with the experiment taking a hit, Bad Janet being a free agent, and Brent being impossible to deal with. What do you all think?

      11 votes
    6. 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.

      6 votes
    7. 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
    8. 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
    9. 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
    10. 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
    11. 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