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  • Showing only topics in ~tv with the tag "recommendation". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. The Traitors - What a fun game show

      I'm in the UK so I'm watching the version on the BBC, on iPlayer. Please, no spoilers as I'm only a couple of episodes into series 2. The concept is great. It's a really good crossover mix between...

      I'm in the UK so I'm watching the version on the BBC, on iPlayer. Please, no spoilers as I'm only a couple of episodes into series 2.

      The concept is great. It's a really good crossover mix between reality TV style of Big Brother (chatting about each other, making alliances), The Crystal Maze (group puzzle solving) and on top of that, it's playing detective.

      If you haven't seen it, I can highly recommend it. To anyone that has seen other international versions, are they better than the BBC version and worth a watch? I usually find US versions of things way too OTT. I refer to the styles of things like Kitchen Nightmares.

      14 votes
    2. The BBC's Welsh crime drama Hidden is back for its third-and-final series this week

      I thought I'd take the time to post about a series I've been looking forward to for over a year now. Hidden is a fantastic crime drama set in Wales, and a third series was announced early last...

      I thought I'd take the time to post about a series I've been looking forward to for over a year now.

      Hidden is a fantastic crime drama set in Wales, and a third series was announced early last year. The Welsh version, Craith, aired late last year. This week, the bi-lingual version airs on BBC One Wales and BBC Four. In my opinion it's the perfect crime drama: set in the mountains of North Wales, with a great soundtrack and unconventional storyline. Some shows focus only on the investigation and the victim, who probably just admits to the crime at the end. Not so here.

      Sian Reese-Willams, who plays DCI Cadi John, explained what the series is about back in 2018:

      It’s not a classic detective drama in that it deals with the whodunit and the police catching the bad man. It’s much more of a personal drama. It takes time to delve into the lives of everybody that gets caught up in the crime - the detectives, the victims, the family of the victims and even the bad guy. You’re trying to understand him.

      It really plays with the idea of nature versus nature and almost tries to twist you into sympathising against your better judgement; it’s exciting and thought provoking. The characters are really interesting and it covers a lot of human emotion.

      Here's another interview ahead of the second series.

      Series two picks up around nine months after series one ends. We find Cadi trying to deal with the grief of losing her father, while trying to keep her head in her work.

      It’s a difficult time for her - just as one begins to come through the initial shock of losing someone and start to try and deal with it, that’s the time that everyone around you starts to forget and move on. She’s also faced with dealing with the estranged daughter of the victim of the case, and the parallels she sees between the two of them are difficult for her to navigate professionally.

      The first two series are on iPlayer now, and if you speak Welsh (or like subtitles) the third series is already on S4C Clic under the title Craith. Hidden is on BBC One Wales this Wednesday at 9pm, and BBC Four this Saturday at the same time.

      2 votes
    3. Recommendation: Person of Interest (2011-2016)

      I want to talk about Person of Interest. A CBS series created by Jonathan Nolan, more famously known for his work on Westworld (and brother of "that" Christopher Nolan, talent runs in the family)....

      I want to talk about Person of Interest. A CBS series created by Jonathan Nolan, more famously known for his work on Westworld (and brother of "that" Christopher Nolan, talent runs in the family). This is a spoiler-free post.

      Premise: An ex-military badass is hired by a rich ex-usgov genius who built an AI that is plugged into the NSA's spying supernetwork, and can predict crime based on all the datapoints.

      Strong similarities with: Westworld, Mr. Robot.

      Person of Interest is a series that really took me by surprise. I didn't really care for Season 1, which I left running in the background after it was apparent to me that this was a very run-of-the-mill CBS police procedural. I gave it a chance based on a friend's recommendation, and because IT/sec references were accurate and didn't make me cringe. It also had an interesting premise which was written pre-snowden and raised some interesting philosophical questions on privacy and crime prevention.

      Then towards the Season 1 finale, the music got pretty good, the scenes were very action-packed and the series started feeling like it was getting very entertaining. So I kept watching.

      Without spoiling: throughout Season 2, the series actually completely shifts genre almost unnoticeably, from "generic police procedural" to "long-arc Westworld-style tech scifi".

      I was stunned by how smooth the genre transition was. Of all the series I watched, it's something truly unique to that one, which is one of the reasons I rate it as one of the best TV series in my catalogue. It's also, from what I heard, Nolan's strategy from the get-go in order to get a very unique show greenlit on a "safe" network like CBS.

      By the end of the series, Person of Interest had inspired me. Made me extremely interested in AI and data. It affected my work and the way I think about the world. POI really toes the scifi line by taking concepts which are possible, but not there yet and explores the possibilities (again, Westworld); unlike most other Sci-Fi shows which take abstract ideas of what we may want to see in the future, regardless of how possible/reasonable they are.

      POI does require some suspension of disbelief. You have to accept the trope of a "supergenius" who can build an AI like this all on his own, for example. I think that's fine, and I found that the show was very rigorous at taking only practical shortcuts with very little fridge logic.

      I keep mentioning Westworld and that's no accident. POI predates WW and it feels that WW was a continuation of Nolan's ideas about the implications of AI, in a much higher budget setting. (And as an aside, if you haven't watched Westworld, you should)

      Tag spoilers in comments :)

      21 votes
    4. 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
    5. 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
    6. 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
    7. You should watch Years and Years

      Years and Years is a British political near-future soft SF programme. Being British it's one short series - 6 episodes, 1 hour per episode. Mainstream broadcast SF isn't going to push all the...

      Years and Years is a British political near-future soft SF programme. Being British it's one short series - 6 episodes, 1 hour per episode. Mainstream broadcast SF isn't going to push all the boundaries, but this has some neat ideas. The political stuff feels realistic enough to work.

      Emma Thompson is always impressive and she does excellent work here as a populist, fascist, politician. Jessica Hynes plays Edith with suitable intensity.

      Here are a bunch of links:

      https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8694364/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

      [spoilers] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/years-and-years-1220415

      [spoilers] https://variety.com/2019/tv/reviews/years-and-years-review-emma-thompson-hbo-1203243714/

      [spoilers] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/may/14/years-and-years-review-a-glorious-near-future-drama-from-russell-t-davies

      17 votes
    8. Gravity Falls is awesome

      I don't have a lot to say yet; I'm on episode 9 so far. That series has been on my watchlist forever, so the moment I saw it pop up on Netflix I jumped on it. It's as awesome as described. Moreso....

      I don't have a lot to say yet; I'm on episode 9 so far. That series has been on my watchlist forever, so the moment I saw it pop up on Netflix I jumped on it.

      It's as awesome as described. Moreso. It's funny and quirky. Despite watching two 12-year-olds hang out, it doesn't feel like a kids' series at all (the humour is quite adult, similar level as Futurama). It knows when to make fun of itself. It's pushing all my buttons and I'm having a lot of fun watching it.

      My biggest laugh so far has been Mabel's "Scout's Honor" shirt. In my head I was waiting for the punchline and loved seeing the delivery.

      Solid recommendation so far. And the theme song is so fucking catchy.

      20 votes
    9. Supernatural: The Four Horsemen introductions

      Supernatural is one of those TV shows that had some fantastic early seasons. I really miss them. As a show I feel it kinda turned way too much into fan service in its later seasons. It stayed...

      Supernatural is one of those TV shows that had some fantastic early seasons. I really miss them.
      As a show I feel it kinda turned way too much into fan service in its later seasons. It stayed decent (good, even), but lost a lot of its quality.
      Every season there's a bigger, badder fish and things get more and more absurd. One of the things that kind of annoyed me the most about it is that characters dying has zero impact, as they come back into the show whenever convenient using whatever silly way the writers deem worthy. (That series is the polar opposite of Game of Thrones in that regard…)

      Season 5 introduced the Four Horsemen. I remember Death's intro as being possibly the most memorable moment of the entire show. Re-watching them now, the introductions of all four were seriously chilling. Thought I'd share them here.

      I'll recommend Supernatural if you like a good mix of horror-comedy without too much comedy. You may like it if you liked: Psych, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel.

      5 votes
    10. So, I've just finished Netflix's Maniac

      Holy shit. Now that is what I call cinema. Somebody give Jonah Hill an Oscar already. The amount of times I felt a deep connection to his character is reaching uncomfortable. The only thing that...

      Holy shit. Now that is what I call cinema. Somebody give Jonah Hill an Oscar already. The amount of times I felt a deep connection to his character is reaching uncomfortable. The only thing that felt like “too much” was Snorri, but luckily that didn't last long. Emma Stone was so human in this. Rome Kanda and Justin Theroux have amazing comedic moments.

      Fucking 10/10. Absolute recommendation.

      17 votes
    11. Recommendation: Psych (2006-2014 + Movie)

      Previous recommendation on Tildes: Person of Interest Light spoilers: Psych - S01E01 - Pilot It's hard to convey how much I love Psych. It's one of those series that, like The Office, P&R,...

      Previous recommendation on Tildes: Person of Interest

      Light spoilers: Psych - S01E01 - Pilot

      It's hard to convey how much I love Psych. It's one of those series that, like The Office, P&R, Community, Arrested Development etc develops its own community, through a very vivid style of comedy.

      Psych goes back and forth across the series between light-hearted fun and serious episodes. The series follows Shawn, son of a retired police officer, who was taught by his father to be hyper-perceptive, and his best friend Gus. Shawn finds himself having to fake "Psychic powers" to justify his perceptiveness and ends up working for the police.

      What makes the series so good is the top-notch chemistry between Shawn and Gus. Psych is one of my top "comfort" series because of this. It got me through my hardest times and it's my second-favourite full-rewatch series (first being The IT Crowd).

      It's also littered with references poking fun at The Mentalist, another great TV series with a much more serious tone and a similar plot line (Fake psychic helps police force).

      Psych's main flaw I would say is that it suffers from Flanderization. Over time, both Shawn and Gus become exaggerations of themselves. But as much as I wish they'd be more subtle about it sometimes, it doesn't detract from the overall quality of the series.

      All in all, Psych is, in my opinion, USA Network's best work and the embodiment of their slogan "Characters welcome", with strong similarities to Monk, Suits and White Collar.

      The Psych Movie, which follows the end of the series, is excellent as well. I recommend watching the series before, however. I also generally recommend watching the series starting from the beginning. My first encounter with Psych was with a Season 2 episode and turned me off for a while. There's a second movie currently being filmed. Hopefully it's good!

      9 votes
    12. What to watch: Recommendations from the US Labor Day holiday weekend binges

      Needing a down weekend, the spouse and I settled in to watch TV, and discovered that Starz' series, Counterpart - spoiler warning, is one of the better series we've seen in quite a while, let...

      Needing a down weekend, the spouse and I settled in to watch TV, and discovered that Starz' series, Counterpart - spoiler warning, is one of the better series we've seen in quite a while, let alone among science fiction stories. Though The Expanse wins for sheer SFX pyrotechnics and breadth of technical scope, it's wonderful to sit in for a deep, thoughtful drama like Counterpart. The series focuses on character, story, world-building, plausible plotting, and avoidance of the usual alternate universe cliches. Counterpart is a genuine Cold War Noir spy thriller which happens to occur in a science-fictional setting, and the writers have managed to avoid or refresh the tropes of both genres in ways that ask interesting philosophical questions. It's quiet, slow, and meticulous in a way that most current television writing seems to have abandoned. There's tense action, but no primary colored-supersuits, no scary aliens, no gaudy laser beams, just... a split of history that leaves two distorted mirrors, reflecting each other.

      J.K. Simmons' performances in the roles of Howard (Prime) and Howard (Alpha) are mesmerizing in a way that outmatches Tatiana Mazlany's Orphan Black characters. There's a slow unveiling of the respective parallel worlds' history, with continuing evolution and interplay of characters and relationships, which brings to mind the best of series like The Wire or The Americans.

      To the extent that Counterpart borrows from literary canon, the most significant underlying influences are John LeCarre's find-the-mole games in the Smiley series, China Mieville's The City and the City, and Philip K. Dick (particularly, The Adjustment Team).

      The really guilty pleasure, and the lightweight pressure relief from the grimdark of Peaky Blinders or Counterpart, was a spit-and-giggles Canadian production called Letterkenny. I didn't have high hopes, but the 22-minute episodes are exactly what my brain needed to get over the daily doses of blah.

      The opening credits of each episode refer to the fictional rural Ontario town of Letterkenny as follows:

      There are 5,000 people in Letterkenny. These are their problems.

      The plots are barely coat-hangers, with most of the comic tension spent on interactions among the Hicks (farm people), Skids (creative-but-disaffected Internet subculture wannabes), hockey players and Christians - a/k/a small-town tribes recognizable anywhere in North America. The portrayals are caricaturized enough to be both humorously offensive and humorously sympathetic simultaneously. [Could be some toxic racial/gender meta, but mostly, the treatment of women and minorities is in keeping with the setting.]

      The banter, and the utter Spock-like deadpan of Wayne (the toughest guy in Letterkenny)'s Hick character are the stars of the show. Some people have complained that the rapid-fire use of heavy dialect in the dialogue is impenetrable; that actually helps with comic timing. When your brain catches up to what was actually said, it's like receiving a two-by-four between the eyes of funny. I've got a bit of home-team advantage in the midwestern North American dialects area, and usually get it on the first run, but it's good enough to re-watch happily if the spouse needs a do-over. Transcripts are available, but watch the show before looking.

      We now have a new battery of in-jokes and gag lines to add to our secret spousal language - "Hard no.", "That's what I appreciates about ya", "...and he was never the same after that."

      There's really nothing quite like Letterkenny, and it's exactly smart/dumb enough to make fantastic comedy. Two seven-episode seasons are currently available on Hulu.

      5 votes
    13. The Genius (2013-2015): The best reality TV show ever made

      The premise is like Survivor: don't get eliminated. The thirteen contestants vie for immunity and each week's loser gets axed. The games are mostly board game-style gambling -- from...

      The premise is like Survivor: don't get eliminated. The thirteen contestants vie for immunity and each week's loser gets axed. The games are mostly board game-style gambling -- from straightforward poker derivatives to deckbuilding.

      The show is completely unscripted and the cast is a mixture of minor celebrities, professional game players, and -- in seasons three and four -- ordinary folks from the general public.

      The show's marketing material describes the show as an investigation of what genius is. There's a case to be made for this -- the games are diverse, well-designed, and the gameplay onscreen is always interesting. You'll be constantly saying to yourself "I didn't think of that," even the second or third time you watch the show. There's often more than one way to win each game.

      What the show does well is presenting mundane reality TV dilemmas psychologically. The show takes place in a kind of liminal space where it isn't clear who's going to become the monster and how. There's lighter stuff and camaderie -- on-camera shtick like hugging and bowing and begging, eating delicious food. Sometimes, there's a little bit of sexism.

      It ends in something continually getting worse, and nobody's ever sure exactly what. It usually takes more than one episode for someone to pinpoint what it is. A lot of the tension comes from how the first time something strange happens, it's OK or you excuse it as a coincidence -- and the second or third time it happens, your fear of confirmation bias makes it so you're still not entirely sure if it's a pattern. The show spends a lot of time on this precipice.

      The people on The Genius are abnormal. Some of them play the games weird and some are weird themselves -- some of them have learned to hide their biggest character flaws and some of them haven't. At the most extreme it's like sitting next to someone on the bus who snores loud, but not loud enough to make you give up your seat, and then he shoves his hand down your throat.

      You can view the first season here, subtitled in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpwIgWPfNvc . Most of the fans consider Episode 2 a very strong episode, so you should watch at least until that, or skip to it if you're impatient.

      If all the psychodrama stuff I mentioned sounds appealing to you, skip to season 2, the darkest season. Unfortunately, the later seasons aren't on YouTube, but you can find them in a lot of places: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheGenius/comments/5s7eh9/the_genius_s2_s3_and_society_game_file_links/

      I've been rabidly evangelizing this show to all my real life friends for years. Please ask any questions that will lead to you watching it! (PS: To those who've seen it, please don't post spoilers in this thread!)

      10 votes
    14. Pose on FX

      I don't watch a ton of TV, but one show I've binged lately has been Pose. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7562112/ The show is set in the ballroom scene of 80s NYC, and deals with a lot of hard...

      I don't watch a ton of TV, but one show I've binged lately has been Pose.

      https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7562112/

      The show is set in the ballroom scene of 80s NYC, and deals with a lot of hard topics like the HIV epidemic, gay and trans POC and their acceptance in the "straight" world, and what makes a family. It can be tough to watch in parts, and the first season's storyline was a bit too cliched in places. But overall it's a well acted, well scripted show that highlights a very unique part of history.

      Has anyone else been watching? What did you think?

      2 votes