What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Just finished watching the conclusion of season 1 of Babylon Berlin and it was awesome. Not too often that a movie can blindside me so completely and yet in retrospect everything leading up to the finale makes perfect sense.

Heed my words, watch this show. It's super.

I actually enjoyed that one Gary. Maybe not as much as the others, but I particularly enjoyed the ending.

charlest wrote: I actually enjoyed that one Gary. Maybe not as much as the others, but I particularly enjoyed the ending.

It does eventually get to one of the central mysteries of the series.

I just finished Netflix's The Punisher. It wasn't the awesomest series ever, but I liked it fine. It touched on a lot of topics seriously enough that you have to look kind of hard to see the whole (semi)costumed crimefighter thing. Not that there's anything wrong with costumed crimefighters - hell, if I was killing mooks by the busload I might give myself a cool logo too.

So my grandson came over and spent the day with me earlier this week. He's 2 1/2. After we played firetruck, and wave to people on the street, and blocks we sat back to watch some TV. Now this can be a problem because I don't like to watch the same movie a million times in a row and so much TV aimed at kids is so freaking dreadful that I refuse to put it on (Daniel the Tiger). However, we stumbled on something delightful.

Sarah & Duck is an animated show done by the BBC where Sarah and her best friend a duck named Duck go exploring and learning things. It's told from Sarah's point of view and she often breaks the fourth wall and interacts with the story's narrator. Very cute without being saccharine. Entirely watchable and the grandson loved it.

I enjoyed the last several episodes of Star Wars Rebels.

repoman wrote: So my grandson came over and spent the day with me earlier this week. He's 2 1/2. After we played firetruck, and wave to people on the street, and blocks we sat back to watch some TV. Now this can be a problem because I don't like to watch the same movie a million times in a row and so much TV aimed at kids is so freaking dreadful that I refuse to put it on (Daniel the Tiger). However, we stumbled on something delightful.

Sarah & Duck is an animated show done by the BBC where Sarah and her best friend a duck named Duck go exploring and learning things. It's told from Sarah's point of view and she often breaks the fourth wall and interacts with the story's narrator. Very cute without being saccharine. Entirely watchable and the grandson loved it.

I've mentioned Sarah & Duck a couple times in this thread a year or so ago. Welcome to the club. I think it's one of the best children's shows ever made.

I watch it often without kids. It's relaxing, positive, sweet, and pretty funny.

Its the television equivalent of a warm blanket.

Been watching Victoria with Jenna Coleman as the young queen. I'm not British so any historical inaccuracies are lost on me as are things like everyone being surprised she'd go to Windsor on a Wednesday. I will say that if Lord Melbourne's arc is accurate to history then he was a much better man than I am. I'm also not going to lie here, I could easily watch Jenna read the phone book for an hour so I'm willing to forgive the shows flaws. The main flaw being the bad decision to do an upstairs/downstairs style show like Downton Abbey. Unlike that earlier show where the servants lives intertwined well with the multi-generational Crawley family, the main character on this show is the Queen and the servants might as well be on a different planet in relation to her. Would have been better, imo, to focus more on the members of Parliament and her extended family and such. There's nothing particularly bad with the servants scenes. They just feel disconnected from the rest of the show. The Queen thus far has been an interesting character with a good amount of depth. I was worried about the romance with Albert but its been well done. He starts out a bit of a tool but quickly turns into an even more interesting character than she is in some ways. Still have a couple episodes in the 1st season and I expect I'll be watching the 2nd right after.

I've been watching The Heroic Legend of Arslan, an Anima with my Spawn. I think Game of Thrones totally ripped off Arslan. In the last 2 episodes I watched we had a battle where the main character abandoned a castle to join up in battle against an enemy and in the next episode we had a 1 on 1 fight in which both princes picked a champion. The one side picked a great fighter knight the other side picked the Mountain /Monster guy. I'd never watch Arslan by myself but if you have middle school age kids and want to watch a Game of Throne with them or A Game of Thrones without tits and ass, Arslan is it.

KingPut wrote: I've been watching The Heroic Legend of Arslan, an Anima with my Spawn. I think Game of Thrones totally ripped off Arslan. In the last 2 episodes I watched we had a battle where the main character abandoned a castle to join up in battle against an enemy and in the next episode we had a 1 on 1 fight in which both princes picked a champion. The one side picked a great fighter knight the other side picked the Mountain /Monster guy. I'd never watch Arslan by myself but if you have middle school age kids and want to watch a Game of Throne with them or A Game of Thrones without tits and ass, Arslan is it.

But what about the Torture Porn, Peter? Can't be GoT without torture porn!

If you like Dynasty Warriors type hack/slash games there's a good one for Arslan on PS4.

I started watching the second season of Jessica Jones. I'm only two episodes in (out of 13), and still waiting patiently for the plot to start. These Netflix Marvel shows all tend to be "angsty character drama" with not enough "superhero action" for my tastes.

Meanwhile, I'm thoroughly enjoying the second season of The Expanse, which has improved a lot over the first season. The first season suffered from a bunch of disparate plot threads that eventually cohered into something interesting. Now, things are humming along. Best sci-fi show since early Battlestar Galactica, in my opinion.

I love seeing Shohreh Aghdashloo pop up in all kinds of genre stuff. That woman has an amazing voice. It's impossible to describe. In the last episode I watched, she was debriefing a Martian marine who threatened to go off-script from what she'd been ordered to say. The marine's handler attempted to intervene, resulting in my favorite line delivery ever on this show:

Shohreh: "Whoever the fuck you are! Stand down and let her speak."

Joebot wrote: I started watching the second season of Jessica Jones. I'm only two episodes in (out of 13), and still waiting patiently for the plot to start. These Netflix Marvel shows all tend to be "angsty character drama" with not enough "superhero action" for my tastes.

That was my reaction to the first season. I couldn't even finish it. JFC, she may be able to survive getting hit by a car but if there was any justice in the world she would have choked to death on her own angst by now. I got to episode 4 and just turned it off, then I had a half dozen friends pleading with me: "No! It gets SO good!" So I gritted my teeth and watched to episode 8 and I got to the point where I could feel my life slipping away, hour by wasted hour. I have no idea what the rest of these people were seeing unless they're somehow thrilled by the equivalent of a 15-year-old's guilt over something she said to a friend yesterday in school, combined with the belief that no one likes her, anyway. (I have one. That's how I know.) It basically alienated me to the rest of Marvel's Netflix output. I loved the first season of Daredevil. I thought the second season was decent. But Jones and Iron First (the two episodes I could sit through) were brutal. I haven't even watched Luke Cage or The Defenders as a consequence.

David Tennant made Jessica Jones watchable for me.

Also on Netflix, you might want to check out Ultimate Beastmaster. It's dumb fun; several athletes from around the world compete in a ridiculously grueling obstacle course. It's exciting, and they do a pretty good job of amping up the drama. The competitors are often awe-inspiring in their sheer strength and will.

I will eventually give Jessica Jones a try, mainly because I have a crush on Krysten Ritter.

My girlfriend is a big anime fan. I took a chance on Valentine's Day, and so one of the presents I gave her was the first season of a non-anime cartoon that I thought she might like: Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir. Turns out that she had already seen it on Netflix, but she thought that I might like it because it has superheroes. She did warn me that the target audience seemed to be girls in their tweens or younger.

I'm actually enjoying Miraculous a lot. My girlfriend is right about the target audience, but I feel that there is also some all-ages family appeal present. There is plenty of action, and each episode features at least one or two twists that I didn't see coming, despite decades of familiarity with comic book tropes. The style of the animation is the same style as The Incredibles, though this is a French production with Americans doing fine voiceovers on my American edition.

The star character is a teenage girl who is a great kid. Charming, kind, responsible, etc, but she gets very awkward and tongue-tied around a male classmate who she has a crush on. She also tends to take on too many responsibilities because she doesn't like to say no to people. But when she puts on her costume, Ladybug is brave and confident. She also fights crime with a hero named Cat Noir, who is developing a crush on her. The twist is that Cat Noir is the same teenage boy that she has a crush on. So they are falling for each other but don't even know it.

Meanwhile, there is an evil mastermind who wants to steal their powers, and is able to temporarily create super-villains out of ordinary people who are frustrated, sad, or angry about something that went wrong in their lives. Though each episode ends with the temporary villain being restored to normal, the show otherwise has nicely avoided falling into any sort of formula. The tone is often upbeat and cute without becoming cloying or annoying. Aside from the mastermind, the villains are generally treated as normal people who got too much power on a bad day, which is an interesting perspective.

Season two begins on Netflix on March 30th.