What TV are you watching and how would you rate it? [Revive from FRDB]

[Jimmy Higgins]

Chernobyl the HBO mini-series. 2 episodes in and its the scariest thing I've seen in years. 10/10, so far.

It's a shame it bears absolutely no resemblance to the events it claims to depict.

That sounds a bit harsh, but it definitely seems to embellish. It isn't as bad as Braveheart. Also, looks like something I'm not going to watch, because I hate watching historical fiction posed as more documentary than fiction.

 

[bilby]

Chernobyl the HBO mini-series. 2 episodes in and its the scariest thing I've seen in years. 10/10, so far.

It's a shame it bears absolutely no resemblance to the events it claims to depict.

That sounds a bit harsh, but it definitely seems to embellish. It isn't as bad as Braveheart. Also, looks like something I'm not going to watch, because I hate watching historical fiction posed as more documentary than fiction.

It's a lot more than mere 'embellishment'; As former anti-nuclear activist and now pro-nuclear power lobbyist Michael Shellenberger points out.

The most egregious of “Chernobyl” sensationalism is the depiction of radiation as contagious, like a virus. The scientist-hero played by Emily Watson physically drags away the pregnant wife of a Chernobyl firefighter dying from Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS).

“Get out! Get out of here!” Watson screams, as though every second the woman is with her husband she is poisoning her baby.

But radiation is not contagious. Once someone has removed their clothes and been washed, as the firefighters were in real life, and in “Chernobyl,” the radioactivity is internalized and not contagious.

Why, then, do hospitals isolate radiation victims behind plastic screens? Because their immune systems have been weakened and they are at risk of being exposed to something they can’t handle. In other words, the contamination threat is the opposite of that depicted in “Chernobyl.”

The baby dies. Watson says, “The radiation would have killed the mother, but the baby absorbed it instead.” Mazin and HBO apparently believe such an event actually occurred.

 

[Tars Tarkus]

That bit about the baby 'absorbing the radiation' was over the top. Knowing that, couldn't they have a bunch of pregnant woman with unwanted babies shovel graphite off of the roof instead of bio-robots?

 

[Thomas II]

Just watched the 60 Minutes Australia's investigation of Shelley Miscavige and Scientology. Very well done. Everyone should watch it.

Of course, there's tons of books, TV, and movies people should watch about Scientology, but Leah Remini's show with Mike Rinder exposing the cult has really upped the game of late. I'm guardedly hopeful. I've learned from twenty years of being out of the cult and following news and critics that every time it seems like curtains for the cult, nothing significant happens to stop their fraud and other crimes including imprisoning and enslaving people. Who knows how long an utterly conscienceless cult run by utterly conscienceless people will last, given that they have no real boundaries on what they are willing to do to critics.

There's also a lot of parallels to the Trump administration. When the only principle guiding your decisions is loyalty to the authority and any pain and suffering caused in the pursuit of protecting and feeding that authority is just not important compared to that grand goal, a whole universe of options open up to you in regard to the evil you can commit. Scientology, like Christianity, is a machine that produces right wing authoritarian followers. Questioning is a mortal sin.

I saw it. How is it even possible that people believe the garbage they sell?! Also, what happened to his wife?

 

[Goodchild]

Lucifer season 4 was great on Netflix! I really enjoyed the freedom they had to be just that bit more cheeky and naughty than normal. I was glad to hear that season 5 has been announced but also sad that it will be the final season. At least they'll get to complete their story.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I thought Marvel was dead on Netflix, but looks like Jessica Jones comes in with Season 3 for maybe the last gasp of Marvel on Netflix.

 

[James Brown]

I thought Marvel was dead on Netflix, but looks like Jessica Jones comes in with Season 3 for maybe the last gasp of Marvel on Netflix.

I think it was already in the can when Disney took over. It will definitely be the last Marvel series we see on Netflix.

 

[Patooka]

I thought Marvel was dead on Netflix, but looks like Jessica Jones comes in with Season 3 for maybe the last gasp of Marvel on Netflix.

The announcement was made whilst they were filming season 3, and unfortunately it shows. The last 3 episodes suffer the same pacing problems as the last season of Game of Thrones.

 

[blastula]

I thought Marvel was dead on Netflix, but looks like Jessica Jones comes in with Season 3 for maybe the last gasp of Marvel on Netflix.

The announcement was made whilst they were filming season 3, and unfortunately it shows. The last 3 episodes suffer the same pacing problems as the last season of Game of Thrones.

I was confused too, thought it was done, so happy now, and I loved GoT so sounds good to me.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

Watching The Miniaturist.

The series itself is good but the great joy of it is that it is lit like the great Dutch masters and would still be a pleasure to watch with the sound turned off.

 

[ronburgundy]

All in the Family -- Live remake 8/10

The original show was fantastic. I was highly skeptical when I heard of the remake, especially Marisa Tomei as Edith (I like her generally, but didn't think it fit). However, she was amazing and the highlight of the show, and they stuck true to the original script which sadly did not require any updating to be reflect current society.
Woody wasn't as believable delivering Archie's lines, but was passable, while the Jefferson family was done very well even if Jamie Foxx flubbed a line and broke the fourth wall.

Maybe may rating is a bit higher due to low expectations, but I'm gonna watch is again just for Tomei's performance alone.

The entire show is a US remake of the UK show 'Til Death Us Do Part, later rebooted as In Sickness and in Health.

It's evidently very well suited to remakes. Though I find it hard to imagine anyone other than Warren Mitchell in the lead role.

I think All in the Family was more "inspired by" than really a "remake" of Till Death. Beyond the very general set-up and descriptions of the main characters (e.g., racist dad, liberal son-in-law), the actual scripts and content was quite different, and the roles of Edith and Archie were played quite differently than Alf and Ellse. And Michael was just a liberal Dem rather than a outright commie like Mike in Till Death. And feminism was a bigger part of All in the Family.

One thing both shows had in common is that the bigots that both shows were mocking were often too stupid to realize it, and thought that Alf and Archie were the heroes. The youtube comments are filled with such folks saying "Alf was right" and longing for him to return and "upset the PC culture".

 

[prideandfall]

legion season 3: 10/10

god damnit this show is *so good*
premiere for season 3 maintains the batshittery, the creativity, the wonder, the magic. i can't necessarily say for sure this the best show ever made but i can't think of a show ever made that is better than this.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Lucifer - 9/10

Really funny and well written show about Satan getting bored of ruling over Hell, so he comes to Earth and runs a bar in LA and then starts helping the police investigate crimes. It is a show which is almost entirely dependent on the one main character knocking the performance out of the park each episode, because it straddles the line between very good and very lame wholly based on his acting ability. The vast majority of the time, he does knock it out of the park.

Very much worth seeing.

 

[Ford]

Black Hole Apocalypse

It was a PBS Nova show from last year that's on Netflix. Hosted by Janna Levin, professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College. If any of my astronomy professors in college looked like her, I might have stuck with it longer. Yowza.

Anyway, the show is typical PBS fare. Pretty basic stuff for anyone who's read up on black holes or is an amateur astronomer, but it's directed at general audiences so it has to be gentle with the concepts. Still, a good show so far.

 

[Thomas II]

Watching The Miniaturist.

The series itself is good but the great joy of it is that it is lit like the great Dutch masters and would still be a pleasure to watch with the sound turned off.

Wow! You're right! It's beautiful!

 

[Thomas II]

Fleabag

On Tuesday, July 16, 2019, the program was nominated for an Emmy Award for outstanding comedy series. (Amazon)

It's great!

 

[Patooka]

The Loudest Voice
Man, if people were upset about the inaccuracies of Chernobyl...
Third episode in and this show panders. Rupert Murdoch is being portrayed as being some kind of weak willed indecisive ivory tower thinker. John Moody is supposedly the dissenting voice in FOX and didn't write the talking points memos. FOX News is apparently independent from NewsCorp and takes no input from them. Oh, and the people who worked at FOX before Murdoch bought the network? Never existed. Just about everyone in this show play either a one dimensional villain or one dimensional victim. To be honest, I don't know who this show is for. It seems to be a preaching to the converted wank fest, and if that is the case just watch Outfoxed again. That is much better and more coherent.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 2
I tried. I really tried. I really wanted to like this show because I never feel comfortable agreeing with alt-right neckbeard soft cocks, but this is a shit show. All (and I mean ALL) the dialogue falls into two categories: sassy unnecessarily sarcastic conversation that look as if they have been written by a 11-year old Joss Whedon, and overly dramatic exchanges between characters you couldn't give a fuck about because they are all interchangeable. Halfway through the season an allegedly main crew member dies, and it's meant to be dramatic because the music and pacing tells you it is, but I honestly couldn't tell you if she was a robot, cyborg or alien. Couldn't even tell you what she did on the ship. And that's the other thing. Just about every other iteration of Star Trek had side plots and interactions between the second tier cast (Quark and Ordo, EMH and Barbie Borg etc). Don't expect any of that here. Every scene must have either Burnham , Pike (for the laziest piece of fan service I have seen in a while) or Saru. And you can look up what they did to Section 31, it's fucking abysmal. Johnathan Frakes needs to run away from this garbage fire and save himself. The one saving grace I can say after forcing myself to watch this is that it reaffirmed my belief that anything involving Alex Kurtzman will be fucking terrible. I'm going to rewatch Prelude to Axanar so I can feel better.

Wentworth
Think an Australian version of Oz, but in a women's prison (or the spiritual successor to Prisoner if anyone remembers that show). Just started the new season and really enjoying it. The only inmate/staff that appears to have plot armour is Boomer Jenkins. Yeah, there's sex and violence, but it's not "there because we can" HBO style - it's used to drive the story forward. I must admit, the most fun I get from this show is trying to remember what other show the actors have been in (Tammy Macintosh and Sigrid Thornton in particular are almost unrecognisable compared to the roles they usually play), so I'll admit your mileage may vary for overseas viewers. But give it a go.

 

[prideandfall]

in the dark: 2/10

good start, decent hook, quality quirk, i was well into it for the first few episodes. then it went so utterly and completely off the rails i'm genuinely astounded at how shit-show this became as it wore on.
it was a solid 7 or 8 out of 10 for being a stylized crime drama for the first 2-3 episodes, and then a 1 or lower for basically the entire rest of the season.

 

[bilby]

The Loudest Voice
Man, if people were upset about the inaccuracies of Chernobyl...
Third episode in and this show panders. Rupert Murdoch is being portrayed as being some kind of weak willed indecisive ivory tower thinker. John Moody is supposedly the dissenting voice in FOX and didn't write the talking points memos. FOX News is apparently independent from NewsCorp and takes no input from them. Oh, and the people who worked at FOX before Murdoch bought the network? Never existed. Just about everyone in this show play either a one dimensional villain or one dimensional victim. To be honest, I don't know who this show is for. It seems to be a preaching to the converted wank fest, and if that is the case just watch Outfoxed again. That is much better and more coherent.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 2
I tried. I really tried. I really wanted to like this show because I never feel comfortable agreeing with alt-right neckbeard soft cocks, but this is a shit show. All (and I mean ALL) the dialogue falls into two categories: sassy unnecessarily sarcastic conversation that look as if they have been written by a 11-year old Joss Whedon, and overly dramatic exchanges between characters you couldn't give a fuck about because they are all interchangeable. Halfway through the season an allegedly main crew member dies, and it's meant to be dramatic because the music and pacing tells you it is, but I honestly couldn't tell you if she was a robot, cyborg or alien. Couldn't even tell you what she did on the ship. And that's the other thing. Just about every other iteration of Star Trek had side plots and interactions between the second tier cast (Quark and Ordo, EMH and Barbie Borg etc). Don't expect any of that here. Every scene must have either Burnham , Pike (for the laziest piece of fan service I have seen in a while) or Saru. And you can look up what they did to Section 31, it's fucking abysmal. Johnathan Frakes needs to run away from this garbage fire and save himself. The one saving grace I can say after forcing myself to watch this is that it reaffirmed my belief that anything involving Alex Kurtzman will be fucking terrible. I'm going to rewatch Prelude to Axanar so I can feel better.

Wentworth
Think an Australian version of Oz, but in a women's prison (or the spiritual successor to Prisoner if anyone remembers that show). Just started the new season and really enjoying it. The only inmate/staff that appears to have plot armour is Boomer Jenkins. Yeah, there's sex and violence, but it's not "there because we can" HBO style - it's used to drive the story forward. I must admit, the most fun I get from this show is trying to remember what other show the actors have been in (Tammy Macintosh and Sigrid Thornton in particular are almost unrecognisable compared to the roles they usually play), so I'll admit your mileage may vary for overseas viewers. But give it a go.

Prisoner was "2am staggered in drunk and watched it because it was on" TV when I was living in the UK.

A bunch of women stuck in jail because they seemed to be incapable of working out that the walls were made of cardboard.

Wentworth seems to be the same show, but not played to entertain drunks. And with the cast of 'All Saints'.

So I am not sure, what's the point?

 

[TV and credit cards]

Escape at Dannemora

The writing, directing, and acting are all outstanding. Excellent miniseries available on Amazon, and not just Prime devotees.