Topic: TV WTF

[6pairsofshoes]

But is it a terrible show?  I found it not so bad. 

[6pairsofshoes]

I had lost track of that show, but enjoyed what I'd seen so far.  Given I'm currently casting about for something to watch, I'm happy to hear that there are two more seasons after the ones I've seen.

[smokester]

I unintentionally just watched the last episode of Race Across The World and I am completely shocked that to grand prize is only 20 effing grand - between 2!.

Really? WTF is up with that? One of the cameramen probably earned that for filming it.

I expect the winners will spend their winnings paying their overdue mortgage that's backed up because they weren't at work for 3 months.

[6pairsofshoes]

I had to look that up.  It does sound like a ridiculous premise for a show.  The fact that it won BAFTA awards is puzzling, too.  I'm not much of a reality tv show fan, so it's not really my cup of tea, so to speak.  The Wikipedia entry is probably a better use of time than actually the hours spent watching it.

[smokester]

I had to look that up.  It does sound like a ridiculous premise for a show.  The fact that it won BAFTA awards is puzzling, too.  I'm not much of a reality tv show fan, so it's not really my cup of tea, so to speak.  The Wikipedia entry is probably a better use of time than actually the hours spent watching it.

It the only episode I have ever watched and it was quite entertaining. It's wasn't really the contestants that intrigued me, but rather the generosity of the public.

Still. A worthy prize-pot would have ensured it didn't make it to this thread.

[smokester]

Had the misfortune to have started to watch The Swarm as it was overly advertised on TV.

By episode 2, when I found myself screaming at the actors to "hurry up and get to the point", I realised it was doomed.

After episode 3, I decided to bring some paint home to watch dry to improve my evening's entertainment.

[6pairsofshoes]

I assume this is the German sci-fi series and not the amazon prime comedy?

[smokester]

I assume this is the German sci-fi series and not the amazon prime comedy?

Definitely the former, although I consider it somewhat of a joke.

It's out of our lives now - never to be revisited!

[6pairsofshoes]

Sounds like it would have been better as a 1.5 hour movie entitled, "The Day the Fish Got Weird."

[goldshirt*9]

  Aimed at the whole Huw "thing" (strong language is spoken)

[6pairsofshoes]

"The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart" on amazon prime.
They obviously threw a bunch of money at this series about abused women.  But the writing is just over the top and an interesting child of an abusive father and an enabling mother turns into an annoying version of her mother as she ages.  You just want to send her to the "Don't Date Him, Girl" website and change the channel.  Sigourney Weaver does the best she can with this trite script but she was more fun in "Alien." A nod to the abuse of Aboriginal tribes by the British government lurks in the background. This is like a Lifetime tv series with more money spent on production values. Bonus:  Frankie Adams, of The Expanse, does a creditable job as Weaver's adopted daughter.

The landscape is amazing.  And there's great photography.  Life's too short.  Watch something else, instead.

[6pairsofshoes]

I'm not sure this is bad enough to qualify for this thread but it sure doesn't belong in My Favorite TV Show of the Moment, so it's here.
On amazon prime:
I watched another episode of The Wheel of Time.  I'm still marveling at the clean clothes.  This is another one of those shows where attractive people are good and ugly people are bad.  It's about as subtle as a train wreck.  Most of the characters are annoying and you don't really care what happens to them.  I doubt the book is like this (or should I say books?).  Can't say the tv series motivates me to read the books.

[6pairsofshoes]

I think it is. The characters are never quite as annoying as the White Gold Wielder in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but some (most) of them are really annoying. They all act like spoiled teenagers, and wilfully do stupid things, but this idiocy is often (nearly always) the only thing that allows the story to move forward. I have only watched episode 1 (and won't watch any more until I am sure that they complete the story, which I truly don't believe that they will. GRRM has harmed me for life) but it was obvious from the start that they have modified a lot of the events to avoid upsetting modern sensitivities. I don't recall a single ugly female in the books, good or bad, and surprisingly few ugly males: very few of the baddies were ugly (qv the Children of the Light) but monsters, however, were universally baddies.

I enjoyed the books, and was pleased that the series got an ending (although it was very much an "and then the good guys won, and lived happily ever after"), but most of the characters not so much.

Aside: The author(s) worked really hard to make "strong women" characters, but they very much seem to be the male idea of what a strong woman is (either magical powers, or contrarily headstrong and often both) rather than really strong. But as a chap myself, I understand that it must be quite difficult to write a strong female without making her unpleasantly masculine or shrewish. It is an interesting trait in some recent novels that the gender (or race) of a majority of the characters is unstated, but that doesn't really work when the gender conflict is an essential part of the story like in WoT. The whole a'dam thing made my stomach turn, so I can't imagine what that would have been like for a lady to read/ watch (assuming it makes it into the TV show).

The main group of young people are dull and predictable because they seem to embody some millenial ideals of diversity and gender neutrality in the talents and advancement.  They are not particularly interesting because it's like someone at Google dreamed them up.  Then there's a couple of super smart people, a woman and her gorgeous samurai support guy, and of course, she's smarter than most of the oddball women who hang in this tower waving their arms around with CGI lines of force emanating from them.  This has caused her to becone somewhat of an outsider.  I haven't even bothered to learn their names.  The show had such a long hiatus that I hardly remember what they're going on about at this point.  There's a force of evil and a couple of the teenagers have special powers that have the potential to save the world but it's by no means a foregone conclusion, but, hey, I've seen enough Disney movies to figure out how this will work out.  There are times that I think a random episode of Doc Martin has more emotional complexity and interesting characters, but I digress.

[goldshirt*9]

Just finished watching We own this city  2022 about Baltimore Police department. 
Gritty

Now watching The Lost Symbol.
I can understand why it warrant a Movie

[6pairsofshoes]

Tricky for TV, I guess.

Like in Dune where the whole series can be summarised as "we have all seen the boy that fights the evil emperor and wins, but what happens then? Does the boy then become the evil emperor and restart the cycle?", the point of the WoT books is not the people, but the cyclic nature of things: the characters are just a means to illustrate the complexities of going round in the circle (and the "magic" schema is an attempt to distance the saga from all the others that do the same). It is difficult to see how this can be made for the screen (like Dune), because on the screen the makers want the audience to care for the characters and, as you note, to identify with the characters; hence we have to have one of each ethnic group, gender and religion in every group.

GRRM's adaptation solved the problem by regularly killing folk - often while they were copulating, so people were invested in the experience without really caring about the characters - the makers' problem in that case was guessing the ending (which was doomed to fail, as there won't be one. GRRM has painted himself into a corner, and is stuck)

In GoT (the tv series), there were characters that I did care about.  Not here.  amazon prime is capable of producing good series.  I'm watching The Legend of El Cid, which is not bad and the main actor, (El Cid) Jaime Lorente has sufficient range that you care if his character survives all the plots against him (he plays a genial doofus in Casa de Papel).  There's kind of heavy handed character development (bad guys about as subtle as Snidley Whiplash) but you care.  I think that perhaps the problem with WoT is that there's too many moving parts, too many characters, so it just doesn't hang together, despite great costumes, really first rate CGI and probably actors who can act but just have bad scripts.  Because it's generally kind of lame, I tend to watch it when I have nothing better to do.  So the continuity is a problem. 

I've only seen the first Dune movie, which was camp and kind of embarrassing.  I'm sure the more recent ones are more beautiful and compelling.  But, if I remember from the book the main guy who figures out how to ride the spice worms ends up saving people and then becoming an oppressor?  Right?  I'm still kind of pissed at the degeneration of GoT in the final season where people just got personality transplants to become new characters and behave in ways that beggared belief, and ended up like some kind of summer camp meeting.  So that's another WTF candidate.