TV Tuesday

Just finished binge watching Race Across the World on iPlayer, very entertaining and actually learned a lot of world geography.

If you enjoyed this, try Jet Lag on YouTube. It's by the team who create Half as Interesting. Naturally it is on a more YouTube friendly budget, but they do a lot with it! Series 4 where they travel across New Zealand is likely the closest to Race Across the World in terms of seeing a lot of a place.
- Oh fab, thank you! Husband and I were looking for our next thing to watch together. Will give it a look.
We watched the Canada one, it was really good. My wife and I both had a massive crush on Zainab too.
- Oh 100% she was fantastic. Ladi grew on me as well.

I know I've been banging on about slogging my way through the Star Treks before cancelling my Paramount+ subscription, but the most recent episode of Strange New Worlds where La'an and Kirk travel back to 21st century Toronto was great.

It really was! Rough ending.
That episode was brilliant, I can't believe they can write time travel stories that well but made us endure Picard S2 which was shocking.
I've just started this yesterday so still on season 1. It's really good so far! I'm pleasantly surprised as I wasn't sure what to expect. You should check out the startrek.website instance, they've got some good star trek communities
- Thanks. Yes the startrek.website instance is a good shout. Lots of good stuff on there and "official" communities migrated from the bad place.
  
  Not all of S1 is great, I thought. A few wonky episodes, and some wonky parts to good episodes. But then, that's just classic Trek for you. Like the good old days of Those Old Scientists and TNG.

Just finished watching Barry. Not many people seem to have seen it, but they should. It's absolutely brilliant

Since ditching Netflix due to their household change, I've been working my way through the other streaming services. One thing I used Netflix for a lot was for their Korean content. Imagine my surprise to discover that Disney+ actually has a small but decent catalogue. Currently watching 'The Zone' and it is a pretty decent K-Variety show.

Closer to home, I'm continuing my rewatch of Dr. Who leading up to New New Who starting in November. I'm following a guide online to remind me of which episodes that are worth skipping. I've seen them all before, so no big miss to skip some that I didn't enjoy that much.

D+ is actually pretty good value in the UK as we get all the Fox stuff that goes to Hulu in the US.
Haha. Dr. Who is a very patchy show to watch. You never know if it's going to be a camp sci-fi romp for the family or someone shovelling hot diarrhea down your throat for 27 minutes.

I'm sad Silo has ended but every episode was excellent. I didn't realise it was based on a book series so will probably read those while I wait for season 2.

Futurama is coming in a few weeks so I've been watching from the beginning. It's been a long while but so far so good.

Just finished Succession; took a little while to get going in the first series then just banger after banger.

The kind of show that makes it hard to watch stuff made with less care.

I've just started dipping into Poker Face, I've been watching it on Now. Natasha Lyonne (imo) is always watchable, even if she's basically always playing a version of herself. I'm really enjoying it, quite Columbo-esque, with a different murder to solve in each episode, there's some really entertainment characters and set ups as she works her way through small town America like a foul mouthed Littlest Hobo.

I was thinking "Eh? Wot you on abaht? I thought it was hilarious" then realised I was thinking of Gameface

The Bear series one. Can only do a bit at a time though. The editing hurts my heart.

Haha same! It's just a bunch of assholes shouting at each other constantly, and jarringly edited. Somehow enjoying it in a 'cant stop staring' kind of way.

Finally got around to watching Reservation Dogs. Was avoiding it because I felt like I needed a break from Taika Waititi, but I think he's only involved as a producer.
It has lots of fun with ideas about Indians in America, and has this broad scatter-shot humour that it gets away with due to having massive amounts of charm.

Also been watching The Other Two - that's good fun too.

I just finished Silo a few days ago on Apple. I’m a huge fan of the books, getting so engrossed in them that I read the entire series in a week. And the TV show was a very good adaption. It had big Fallout vault vibes. I thought the ending in particular was fantastic. I highly recommend it!

Bit of a TV lull, I guess there's usually a dip in TV over the summer.

We've started watching Annika on iPlayer and it's ok. A bit more tongue in cheek than other police procedurals, which is nice. Not sure that I like the "talking to the camera" parts.

Still working though Agents of Shield too. About a third of the way through series 4, I'm quite enjoying the

spoiler

Ghost Rider storyline

I felt the same at first but I think it works because Nicola Walker is brilliant, and it got to the point where those parts were some of my favourite parts of the show.

If you don't mind a yank popping their nose in, I wanna recommend hit monkey.

Watched it on a lark, expecting it to be just silly and over the top. Which it was! But it wasn't only silly. There's some cool storytelling, and art to it as well. It stands out as one of the rare successes from marvel animation.

Started watching Dead Loch on Amazon Prime. It's a fun comedy small town big murder mystery cop show. It's really funny. Read a few people complain about one of the characters being frustratingly annoying, which is accurate but that's part of her personal story arc, so does change a few episodes in.

If you like comedy, and small town murder mystery shows, definitely give it a watch.

And just re subbed to Netflix after about a year away. Got Beef and Diplomat on my watch list. Any other recommendations for year old good Netflix shows?

Making our way through the bear season 2 on Hulu/FX

We finished 24 season 2 last week and needed a bit of a palate cleanser, so stuck on Black Mirror season 6!

Joan is Awful was pretty good, but absolutely loved Loch Henry. Will probably crack on with that tonight.

We're switching from Virgin to Sky later this month (hopefully) so we'll actually have a wealth of TV shows to watch, including:

Barry
The Last of Us
Succession
Chernobyl

Open to suggestions!

Loch Henry felt like such a return to more traditional black mirror for me. Without spoiling too much:

spoiler

The bleakness at the end and the very on point message about how technology is used in today's world

was fantastic
24 was a pretty good series overall. I remember somewhere around season 4/5 maybe, the writers were told off for starting story threads that just got lost in the events of a season and never resolved.
- It's a banger up until Season 5.
  
  Season 6 is basically all the plots from 1-5 recycled. Redemption (the TV movie) was a great little diversion. Season 7 was pretty good, as was 8. Never finished Live Another Day. Didn't bother with Legacy.

Season 3 of The Righteous Gemstones is probably one of the highlights at the moment. The characters continue to be as awful as ever with Edi Patterson's Judy having a particularly good arc at the moment.

Otherwise the first episode of Jayde Adams' Ruby Speaking was enjoyable, despite some poor reviews. I will be giving it another look.

I have just finished Silo, which was the best dark SF for a while, and I am very happy to have Strange New Worlds back: lighter SF and my other highlight at the mo. The season opener was a bit wobbly, but the two eps since have definitely been winners.

I've been watching a series on Disney + called "Lawless Island".

Its actually very good. Its a National Geographic documentary that follows the lives of people living in a small, isolated village on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska. Their struggles include getting enough firewood for winter, stocking up on fish, trapping mink in order to make their shoes waterproof again, felling trees that become a danger to their homesteads and building a shed so that they can have access to duck eggs all year round.

I don't know why its so compelling, but I love the people who live there.