What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Goddamnit.

My wife also does nothing but watch this football-soccer nonsense, and I never hear the end of it. I'm trying to play some Android:Netrunner online and just behind me she's hollering at the TV. I can't possibly be overstating the case when I say that all of you are fascists who are ruining all that is good about discussing preferred televised dramatic narrative right here in my cultural refuge of people with correct thoughts about boardgames and such. When will this atrocity cease? You hooligans have no place here in my bubble. Go back to the shadows, the lot of you.

Thank you.

C

Sportball, sportball, RAH RAH RAH!

Trying to catch up on the DVR after taking the day off to go outside with the kids...

Dan Lamb wrote:

Grudunza wrote: From the recent plugs of F:ATties, I watched two episodes of The Detectorists today on Netflix. Low-key British comedy. Not uproarious, but quite amusing and charming. Will definitely polish off the rest of that soon.

It's basically Thomas the Train Engine for adult men.

Ha! Maybe, but my wife and I loved it. What a perfect ending as well.

We may be living in the Golden Age of Television, but with all these Walking Deads, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bads, Sons of Anarchy, etc I feel like the dramas are all really about shitty people doing shitty things to each other. I have no interest in any of that.

The sitcoms, by and large, seem quick to go for base, lowest denominator humor.

For me, this show was a welcome breath of fresh air. Not cynical but affirming. Great television!

Here, I'll let Detectorists' star/writer/director describe the series:

“Not that I’m against cringe comedy, but this was an experiment to see if I could come up with something that doesn’t rely on cruelty or being snide or spiteful,” Mr. Crook says. He describes “Detectorists” as a “celebration of ordinary people and their pastimes.”

www.wsj.com/articles/mackenzie-crooks-de...happiness-1460557959

Yeah, that is a good description. I wouldn't say it's totally about ordinary people. Like any TV show, it feels a little exaggerated. Ultimately, I think I'd have liked it a little better if it was just a bit more into the Christopher Guest realm (where it still feels authentic in an exaggerated way, but has some more comedy to it). But it was sweet and amusing and definitely worth the three hours (six half-hour episodes). And I also loved that ending.

Grudnza, did you check out season 2? I guess I wasn't clear, but that's the ending I was referring to. It's on Acorn Tv with amazon. I signed up for the free 7 day trial just to watch s2. It's another 6, 30min episodes.

Supposedly, BBC wants Crook to do up a third season, but he seems reluctant to do so, and the way season 2 ends...I don't think he should. This is an open and closed series and perfect for what it was.

Edit: thinking about it, season 2 may be even more to your liking. Having established the characters in the first season, season two allows more oddball members of the dmdc to get time.

Ha, I thought the six Netflix shows were all of it. And I thought that actually made a great series ending, implying that-



But yes, now I'll need to go watch the rest of it.

charlest wrote: Peaky Blinders season 3 is great. Forgot how much I love this show.

I just started watching this, and noticed that the ratings start out absurdly high for the first season, and then shoot skyward.

Game of Thrones aired its 9th episode of the season last night, and that's usually an episode that's filled with a big set piece, lots of spectacle, death, destruction, and so forth.

Yeah, lots of stuff going on. My favourite scene, funnily enough, was Yara, Theon, Dany and imp. Loved it.

But yeah, that was some battle. I wonder if they made the extras watch Braveheart to make sure no dudes in the background were ever phoning it in.

And why hasn't more Westerosi adopted that phalanx tactics ? Pretty effective stuff.

Was sir davos holding the wooden horse at the end there ? Is he going to close things off with melissandre about that ?

I'm about halfway through season 4 of Sons of Anarchy. The show has gotten both better and worse since the strong first two seasons. The dialogue is good, and there are several good actors carrying this show. But some of the weaker actors seem to be getting worse, and some of the plot points are weak or even bad. And yet the good actors make it work anyway. The new law enforcement threats are a mixed bag. The county sheriff is an okay actor with a somewhat nuanced role to play, but the DoJ is a really bad actor who can't seem to figure out how to play his eccentric character. And this makes like the third crazy fed in four seasons. At least Ally Walker was fun in the first three seasons. Speaking of fun, this show has always tended towards grim and dark with occasional bits of levity, but the lighter elements are drying up. Tyg is no longer cracking jokes, and Juice is bogged down in a heavy angst storyline. And the comic relief guy who was down to two fingers last season now has two fake hands and no longer brings the funny.

There was a moment in the latest episode that really got to me. It's a good thing that I'm already a big fan of Ron Perlman, or I might hate him now for what his character did. He really sold the performance in a rough scene. For a moment, the show was too dark, and I thought about dropping it. But this far in, I'm going to see it through.

Black Barney wrote: Yeah, lots of stuff going on. My favourite scene, funnily enough, was Yara, Theon, Dany and imp. Loved it.

That was a great scene. One of the best parts of this season has been the convergence of characters and storylines, like Sansa and Jon. We're finally starting to see this sprawling mess of a story cohere back together. As a long-time book reader, I think I'm prepared to say that I no longer care if Martin finishes his books. I sincerely doubt that he will, and that's fine. The TV show is a very entertaining alternative.

I loved the way this episode started with some stunning visuals of dragons attacking ships. I've never seen anything like that on TV or in a movie. But then to shift gears from that high-fantasy spectacle into ground-level, muddy, up-close hand-to-hand combat was jarring and very effective. The battle itself followed very predictable beats (the "all is lost" moment, followed by the timely arrival of Littlefinger), but execution counts for a lot in my opinion. They nailed it.

Watched the latest GOT episode last night. Damn, that might be the best battle sequence I've ever seen on screen. It was all so visceral. The mud, the chaos, the viscera, the terror of being caught and crushed in the press. I think it really caught the reality of a medieval battle, a portion of surviving is due to martial skill, but so much of it is luck.



I'm so glad Dany appears to be finally leaving Mereen.

Yeah ghost was mysteriously absent.

as for the Starks...

That might be the first battle scene I saw where they had (the appearance of) horses crashing into each other, being cut down by arrows, etc. Stuff nobody could do with real horses before and I guess the CGI/effects are good enough now.

anyone else having bets that Davos will deal with melissandre next week? Man, i can't wait for that.

I hope Bran runs into that direwolf that is wandering north of the wall too.

Braveheart did a really good job at showing how horses get a bad deal on the battlefield.