- Shrinking
- Sopranos
- Severance
- SAS Rogue Heroes
Season 2 of Shrinking has been a very emotional ride, but has a good mix of comedy & drama, while addressing some difficult topics.
Sopranos is a classic. Depends if you like long character development.
Severance is a great dystopian show about people essentially hating to work. Season 2 should be out shortly.
SAS is an expensive BBC production following the formation of the SAS during WWII. Has a Band of Brothers type feel to it, with a British twist. They’re all madmen. Cinematography is amazing, and the history, while dramatized, is still impressive. It’s based on the book of the same name by Ben McIntyre (non-fiction).
SAS
Cinematography is good, but christ are all the characters flanderised to hell with their nationalities. The trope of “caw blimey guvna!” is disappointingly strong for a BBC production. Also, more WW2 propaganda that Britain is strong and gutsy (such lines were peddled shortly before Brexit…)
What we do in the shadows. The show is based off the Taika Waititi/Jermaine Clement film of the same name. And is also written by Jermaine Clement
It’s a comedy/mocumentary about a group of vampires. The characters are really well written and it straddles the line between the banality of everyday life as a vampire, and obviously the weird supernatural aspects of vampires. It recently aired it’s final episode so you can binge it now and get through the whole thing.
If you like the office/community/parks and rec/I.T. Crowd type of stuff I think you’ll really like it
If you like what you we in the shadows, to might also enjoy “our flag means death”.
Created by and starring Waititi. Based on the true story of the gentleman pirate.
Ooh thank you for reminding me it has finished its run. Watched the first two seasons but kinda dropped off while waiting for S3.
I.T. Crowd type of stuff
Baat! 🦇
You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead
You’re dead, and out of this world.
Severance is the best show of the 2020s IMHO.
Rewatching it now!
The Expanse. I forgot how good the earlier seasons were, and looking forward to seeing the newer stuff for the first time.
Shōgun
The whole show is remarkably well made. Great scenery and costume design.
Man, and it keeps getting better! I don’t want to finish Season 1 and have to wait for Season 2 😭
Easily my favorite show of the last 5 years
- Silo
- Ted Lasso
- A Man on the Inside
Silo is dogshit. The pacing is so unnecessarily dragged out. And season 2 is boring af. No idea why they did what they did. Thr books had perfect pacing.
Huh. I’m only a few episodes in but it seemed promising so far. Oh well.
Yea it’ll slow wayyyyy the fuck down. Keep watching lol. The first few eps were solid. Then it plunges off a cliff.
I loved Silo S1.
You may be ok if you’re not waiting week to week for a new episode. S1 was good…really good. S2 is still good but slow.
Meh, there are always people who think their opinion is the only valid one. FWIW, I’m enjoying the hell out of S2 and liked S1 and the books. If you’re enjoying what you’re seeing so far, keep it going and hopefully you’ll keep liking it and if you don’t, you can always quit.
Is it just me or has the main character really done nothing all season except several failed attempts at a supply run? My brain keeps tuning out
Me fast forwarding through the underwater stuff so I don’t have to hold my breath. Might get the books for the same reason.
You don’t have to hold your breath during the underwater stuff. It’s not a video game.
Silo season 1 was 5% plot, 5% character development, and 90% emoting to dramatic music, so I didn’t bother checking out season 2.
Yeah s02_has been a bit slow but I am optimistic
Season one of Silo was great. Season two is a poorly edited mess.
Yeah S2 is not so good so far…just watched 2 episodes and they were not that good…too slow. S1 was really good through
Schitt’s Creek is currently on Netflix. One of my favorite, wholesome sitcoms!
My wife and I weren’t sure what to expect. We took one run at it, failed, then a few months later took another run. We are now thinking we need to watch it again. Truly wholesome.
It takes a little while to get going but man is it good.
Columbo
What I didn’t realize about Columbo until watching it last year is that every episode is basically a full movie. There’s no connection between each episode, Columbo himself is the only recurring character. Each episode is an hour 10 to an hour 40 long. Also, it’s by FAR the best production and acting on TV in that era. It’s legitimately like almost 70 individual films.
For sure. I’m only just now finishing the first season, and maybe 3 episodes in it should qualify as some of the best films ever made. The acting, the psycological warfare, the poor schlubby wife-guy underdog vs evil rich parasite undertones pervading everything… there’s so much going on, that I’m sure others have scratched the surface of.
I also love how it inverts the mystery drama by showing you exactly what happened, and the suspense is in guessing where they messed up, and gave enough clues to columbo.
Just one more thing….
Halt and catch fire. Expected nothing from it but we are really enjoying it.
This was pretty solid! I started it expecting it to be background noise while I doom scrolled… But I got absolutely hooked
Glad to hear you enjoy it!
Arcane.
I missed the hype for Arcane season 1, mostly because it didn’t really seem up my alley. I figured it’d be boring to me because I wasn’t into that specific game, or too juvenile for me, or something.
I was really wrong. Really, really wrong. It stands on its own and season 1 has the strongest storytelling I’ve seen in anything in a good, long time. You don’t need to care about or play League of Legends to watch the show. And it’s very much NOT a kid’s show even if it starts with kid characters…it touches a lot on crime, poverty, mental illness, etc. It’s very honest and truthful and complex and nuanced on these things.
And every aspect of storytelling was strong. EVERY ONE.
What I mean by that is this…in most TV shows, animated or live, you usually have one form of strong(ish) storytelling carrying the entire thing and compensating for other things that are weaker. So a show will have one or two stand-out aspects, and others that are okish to bad, but able to be overlooked because of the other awesome things going on.
Like, you might have a poor script but really good actors who can elevate the poor script with their spoken intonation or physical acting. Or you might have a good script and really good soundtrack but mediocre acting and bland costume/set design. Basically, script, art/costume design, music, and actor ability all play together to deliver a story, and usually you have one or two of those that are strong, and the rest are being carried by the strong parts and ranging from competent-but-not-awesome to mediocre to bad.
Arcane’s not like that.
Arcane has top-tier storytelling on the writing level, AND on the art and animation level, and in the choice of songs for the soundtrack. Like, the script itself is fantastic, but then you watch the animation and see they decided not to use common animation shorthand. Instead, they went back to actually LOOK at how humans display emotion and move their bodies and translated THAT into their animation. So you have a strong script AND strong “physical acting”. How they frame shots is fantastic too. And if that wasn’t enough, all the music is stellar and pertinent to the scenes it’s used in. And if THAT wasn’t enough, even the design of the characters BEFORE they even move or speak is top-notch. And if THAT isn’t enough the voice actors are phenomenal too.
For Season 1, nothing’s carrying anything else, everything is strong. And that’s EXTREMELY rare in ANY show. So, so, SO rare.
Season 2 is not as good–but that’s really just in comparison to how outrageously and unusually good Season 1 was. I’d say in Season 2, the script is not as tight, but all the other things are still as good as Season 1. So the animation/art design/music/etc. carry the script a little in the second season. The script isn’t HORRIBLE though…it’s mostly the pacing is off and it’s missing some appropriate build-up in some parts. I’ve read they had to cut some scenes, and if that’s true it would completely explain the flaws. The second season also suffers a bit in comparison to Season 1…Season 1 did everything right, so anything that’s not perfect in Season 2 naturally sticks out. It doesn’t make it bad though.
Anyway, yeah. Watch Arcane, if you missed that boat previously.
Apparently, there are many cuts from s2
I would personally say season 2 kinda missed the mark for me. Scale/power creep turned the story from being much more character driven to be this plot with a lot of odd threads IMO. That said season 1 is incredible. Probably the best show I’ve ever watched.
Older than you are and worth looking at. [available on Youtube]
The Prisoner. Imagine if Ian Fleming and Franz Kafka got together to do a TV show. A government official resigns and is immediately kidnapped. He wakes up in The Village; a lovely little place with nice views, great food, plenty of fun things to do, and no possible escape.
I, Claudius. A very young Patrick Stewart is the least reason to watch this reenactment of the first five Roman emperors.
Connections. Non-fiction. Wonderfully entertaining and informative. The creator’s premise is that scientific progress is almost never straight forward. Coffee houses open in London = coffee houses become popular places to do business = coffee house customers join together to invest in ships to the New World = the new ‘companies’ begin looking for ways to make their ships safer = they start to invest in making pine tar to protect the ships = add two hundred years and you have insurance companies and the chemical industry
Welcome fellow gen-xer!
I tried rewatching The Prisoner but I can’t get past Patrick McGoohan’s acting now. He has one setting, a hard squint and rage.
I, Claudius is excellent and seeing John Hurt prancing about as a crazed Caligula is another reason to watch it. Brilliantly done series.
Connections is very interesting, well done, and I remember it fondly from watching it as a teen but I never bought some of his “connections”. Like you said, claiming, say, coffee led to the chemical industry. Well they could’ve just as likely met over ham sandwiches too. lol “These two physicists met while playing tennis, therefore the invention of tennis led to the first atomic bomb…” oy!
I kind of think that lloyd’s of London starting as a coffee shop sort of proves that argument.
I’d say it was a coincidence. It could’ve been a pub and we’d be talking about the creation of beer instead.
Super old show called scrapheap challenge or junkyard wars, which depends on whether it’s the british or american version. I loved this show as a kid.
I’ll take the UK version any day. Robert Llewelyn did a great job as host. Did anyone ever have a successful build using hydraulics?
I had completely forgotten about Junkyard Wars!
Shrinking is excellent
I’ve been enjoying Skeleton Crew as it releases.
I recommend “Severance” on AppleTV. Also recommend “Shining Girls”. AppleTV is free this weekend.
