Be Excellent To Each Other

Started watching before we moved house...

will finish now we're settled in.

Ah good stuff. Everyone needs some VM Varga in their life.

Not the same kind of thing at all, but I discovered this morning that the Mr Bean TV series has been added to Amazon Prime, which means a few hours of excellent TV time with mini-Fop awaits.

Watched the first two episodes this evening. It's very well done and I've learnt loads about the conflict already. It's also very uncompromising in its use of footage and photographs. Highly recommended.

The TL;DW is:

PSA: The Good Place and Brooklyn 99 have started again.

Also, if you like fun and / or annoying Gaywood: Scorpion started its forth season earlier in the week.

Ditto for "This is us" and "Unexploded Polititcian"

I'll be honest, I couldn't remember what happened at the end of Unexploded Politician, so I had a quick look online. Yep, I think i was happy for it to finish there.

I will no doubt slurp up this new series with emptily greedy gusto, nonetheless.

The new season of Episodes started a few weeks back and I rattled a few episodes in a row after remembering just how fucking hilarious it is. I don't think it's particularly well known but even the characters that appear briefly are brilliant and I'd highly recommend it if you're looking for something pretty fucked up to laugh at. Sample plot-line: Matt LeBlanc gets fired from his presenter job on a ridiculous Big Brother-esque gameshow after forgetting there's a 24 hour feed that transmits to the entire world his wanking for one of the female contestants.

You win. I’ll watch it.

Yes. Is this on netflix?

I enjoyed the show, but I really massively hated the last episode of the first series, so I might not watch the second series as I have so many other things on my list.

Also, I watched that Big Bang Theory spin-off “Young Sheldon”.

It’s a strange beast: no studio audience, no laughter track, a muted performance from the actors, a very good performance by the mother, it’s not even a straight comedy and it already has some underlying tensions bubbling away even if you know just a brief backstory of the character.

I’m strangely drawn to it but it’s only episode 1 so it might get shitter. Here’s hoping it plays it straight throughout however manny episodes they’re doing (I can’t imagine many) and avoids the laughs because I think that’d be rather interesting.

Unfortunately I have a very limited supply of half-decent stuff that my wife's not interested in watching, which is suitable commuter fodder. Anything she wants to watch, we have to watch at home. Unexploded Politician is one such program.

Fortunately for me, two others are Orphan Black* and the Expanse. So i'm currently on the final series of the former and looking forward to the second series of the latter.

*Speaking of which, the first couple of episodes of series 5 are a fucking mess.

Seasons one to four are on there, but not the fifth yet.

Ooh excellent I didn't realise it was back on. Cheers.

I absolutely love it - the fight scene in season 1 made me cry with laughter so hard I couldn't breathe.

For anyone who find themselves regularly not knowing when new seasons start I can highly recommend Episode Calendar. Tell it what shows you're interested in and it'll create a personal calendar for you showing whenever something you like airs. For US stuff it's the US air dates it gives mind so if it's not simulcast or you're not pirating your TV it might not work so well admittedly but for me it's excellent and means I don't miss anything I'm into. I've attached a screenshot of my current calendar view just as an example of what you see.

If you are pirating stuff
a) You should be ashamed. You wouldn't download a car*
b) Sonarr has a calendar built in

* In a fucking heartbeat

You could download plans to 3d print a car.

I've just transferred from sickbeard to sonarr recently and it's sooooo much better

Yup. Radarr > Couchpotato too.

showrss.info is good.

This is also excellent.
https://www.pogdesign.co.uk/cat/mobile/

I *totally* know about that

But yes, it is.

Now.

Started watching 'The Expanse'.

I like it. Enjoy that is taking its time and setting up the different strands of the story, though four episodes in the one with the exploding spaceships and Martian cruisers and all that is by far the best part.

They're not keen on getting you massively invested in people though, or learning their names. I mean, I should make an effort but gun to my head I could only recall one actual character name. So instead the cast is:

Fedoracunt
Alexis Sanchez
Raj's parents
SpaceGrantWard
AldiChrisPine
Security woman
Saffer terrorist
Martian eye bloke
Etc.

Which one of those is Space Jon Snow?

The characters bed in a bit over time, also. Keep watching.

Maybe SpaceGrantWard? He's Holden (the only one whose name I can remember).

Enjoyed the the first two episodes of the new Star Trek. Interesting villains. Lots of fun. Some silly moments but on the whole good. Will definitely watch more.

Is it ever. S1 of the expanse is ten episodes of fuck all and two episodes of holy motherfucking shitballs

Yes. He's clearly SpaceJonSnow, he even has the same squint.

I read the book while recovering from my broken wrist. How they managed to fill 10 hours of glossy high production value tv with half the book is beyond me. It’s like the bastard offspring of Peter Jackson and Andy Warhol had been let loose behind the camera. Still haven’t looked at S2 yet as I haven’t forgiven S1 for wasting so much of my time.

S2 gets its groove on. You should watch it.

I don't want to watch 10 hours of boring stuff before it gets good, though. There's so much good stuff on that I could watch in that time.

I didn't think it was boring though. It was a bit slow-paced, yes, but not boring. It was doing decent character work during that period and setting up a load of stuff that is paid off later.

Definitely - it's got far more going on and more interesting characters than a lot of TWD with greater payoffs for the investment of your time.

Yes, this

See also: dating.

I also enjoyed this. Very promising and quite charming. Couldn't quite place the time period though. Seemed quite 70s in style even if Sheldon should be about that age in the late 80s. The mention of Duck Tales threw me for a loop. I guess Texas was just running a bit behind the times

The steam off my piss is more interesting than TWD

To my great surprise, The Orville is turning out to be really good.

The animated Black Dynamite show is very, very funny.

The first two episodes of Star Trek Discovery are ok but it starts to get really interesting in ep 3!

Hello Jason Isaacs!

Halt And Catch Fire has been absolutely brilliant this season, and 4x07 is one of the better hours of TV I've ever seen. It's graceful and moving and has thoroughly earned every single character beat it packs in. I'm going to be sad to see this show go.

I got very bogged down about 8 eps into the first season. Should I try and pick it back up?

It suffers from every character being a wanker, to my mind.

The first season was a horrendous, messy slog. I've just read a couple of articles on it to see what was currently going on with it and it sounds like they massively improved it as it went on but it's far too late for me to care about it now.

I've loved it from day 1, but really did think that they should have ended it last season.
It just felt the right place to stop, both for the characters and the story that had caught up with most people's memories of the early internet - go much further and you're struggling to fit them in around what we know happened.

When it returned the first couple of episodes felt a little flat, and I thought I was probably right, but since then it's just been glorious. I'm an episode behind you, and I think I'm deliberately slowing down to savour it for as long as possible.

Weeewllllll if you disliked it that much perhaps it's not going to redeem itself in your eyes. It's fundamentally a character piece, so you have to want to spend time with the characters. But it does deepen them as time goes on -- they do start as almost caricatures, to be fair. They get more interesting, less clichéd.

I can't decide if thats because the show's writing gels as time goes on or because it's on a long arc and we're seeing the characters grow up -- watching their struggles as they outgrow monomania and become somewhat wiser and more mature. Perhaps it's a little of both. But I think they are supposed to be a bit dislikeable at first.

Doesn't hurt that the entire cast are very watchable actors putting in top notch work, either. Lee Pace is amazing and in less skilled hands the changes in Joe's character through the show would not have worked.

Anyway. It is a show with deep affection for these flawed people it's presenting, and ultimately that affection shines through. It feels like a labour of love for the cast and crew. I like that about it.

Anyway, if you stick with it, look me up when you watch 4x07. You'll know it when you get there.

This! Proper wankers. Especially Joe and emo coder. Still enjoyed it though, should go back to series 2.

Wow!