Topic: What's your favourite TV program of the moment?

[6pairsofshoes]

amazon prime has a series of good lectures on the Black Death until the end of June.  The first two offer an overview of the structure of society and economics in the 14th century as well as a detailed epidemiological discussion of the various forms of the plague, its various presentations and conjecture on where it came from, the agents that were most likely responsible and critical perspectives on the most likely vectors of transmission.

This is part of the Great Lectures series.  A spare production with a professor standing in a well appointed office alternating with occasional screen shots of archival records and images from representational paintings.

[6pairsofshoes]

Barkskins.  this is a series based in the hinterlands of Quebec in the late 18th c.  Indentured servants and lots of local superstition.  The Hudson Bay Co vs the rep s of King Louis XIV in a protracted territorial dispute.  The droning music is distracting from the drama of people trying to make their way in an alien territory.  There are people who end up there not necessarily out of choice.  The wilderness, the strange new beasts and the drive to subdue nature in order to extract profit are in a kind of tension.  The indigenous peoples, in this case, the Iroquois, get the short end of the stick.  We get to see annoyingly pragmatic French man whacking a porcupine.  Poor little guy. He didn't even get a chance to throw some quills.

[Beatrix]

What we do in the shadows has already been renewed for season 3.

Honestly, they don't even really need to come up with in depth plots, just the vampires stumbling through modern life is fantastic.

Nadja's disdain for the SUV was fantastic.

Oh my god, I went looking for a transcript to find out what she actually said about the "electric carriage shitbox" and got derailed by the fact they go to an... essential oils store.

Actually, pretty much everything Nadja says is great, "Professor pig richard" was a good one too.

Yes.  Absolutely yes.  I'm in love with all theee of them and I love the show.  I've yet to watch the movie, I'm saving it, as I do.
"What we do in the shadows"  best show evar!
Also, did you know that's jonah hill's sister?  The one nadja changes.

[6pairsofshoes]

Perry Mason.  Matthew Rhys has been run through the Dashiell Hammett school of hard boiled dicks.  Whatever happened to the clean cut attorney?  I never read the Earl Stanley Gardner books.  So it's hard to tell if this show is a complete aberration, or if it is actually more faithful.  After Raymond Burr's starched white shirt and clean cut look, Rhys is kind of a mess.  Also, for the 1950's people swear a great deal more than would have been acceptable, so that's kind of anachronistic in the dialogue. 
EDIT:  Nope, this show diverges from the books, in which Perry Mason is a lawyer who works to insure justice for those who might have trouble getting it otherwise.  Gardner was just such an attorney before he switched to novel writing.  Apparently, he cranked out 80 Perry Mason books.  There were even more tv shows, so they had to get creative after a while.  Apparently, Robert Downey, Jr. was going to play the title role until he developed a scheduling conflict, which is why Rhys stepped in.

This Perry Mason seems to have skipped law school and just comes back from the War to become divorced, sad, living on an inherited farm with 2 cows and an airport in the middle.  He drinks a good deal, smokes, and seems like a mess except for his forensic skills.  The whole thing is shot in bleak o vision. 

Not sure if I want to keep this up, but the atrocious Billions appears to have been stopped in its tracks by the pandemic, as several shows, that have suspended filming in the interests of keeping their insurance companies happy and their cast among the living.

[6pairsofshoes]

My husband wants to watch Perry Mason, so now I have no tv to watch alone at night.  Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Alfonz]

I'm quite enjoying Animal Kingdom although it's a bit of a challenge trying to accept Ellen Barkin's role, probably because I was never really a fan of hers.

[6pairsofshoes]

The city and the city.  Based on a book by China Miele.

Longing for lost wife, cop gets drawn into corrupt police and political orders in a city, suspiciously looking like a hybrid between Manchester and Berlin.  Two cities in the same space but inhabitants are trained not to notice the other half.  Now that's a kick in the head.  Two separate governments, but it's possible to get a visa to go visit the other place:  two languages, two very different material cultures, both distinctive in many ways.  Murder victims and sleazy new age snake oil sales men promising some odd Ur-City that is undivided and superior.  Several young women are lost looking for this will o the wisp.  This was Season 1 but it looked like a miniseries to me.  Originally a BBC production on amazon prime.

Can't say I found it particularly compelling.  The bad guys were like Snidley Whiplash and the virtuous ones were hopelessly naive.  Good ideas badly executed, but to be fair I have not read the book and suspect this would be challenging for even the most accomplished producer to put onscreen.

[6pairsofshoes]

Mirzapur.  Imagine the Sopranos in India.  That's this.  It's pretty entertaining.  On amazon prime.

[6pairsofshoes]

I'm quite enjoying Animal Kingdom although it's a bit of a challenge trying to accept Ellen Barkin's role, probably because I was never really a fan of hers.

I watched that.  It's pretty good.  Ellen Barkin is a good matriarch and rather sadistically corrupt.

[Beatrix]

Just watching peaky blinders again, hulu is off a couple days, I dont wanna ware myself out on shadows anyway

[6pairsofshoes]

I started watching Spirited with the actor who plays Super Hans on Peep Show as a dead rock star who haunts this woman who is trying to break away from a loveless marriage.  The show is a comedy, but it's mostly annoying.  It could have been good, but it's not.

Super Hans wears mascara and eyeliner.  He looks like a burned out rock musician.  Perfect casting.  The rest of the actors are either flat or cartoonish.  It's kind of hard to warm to such a show.  Every time I find a good one, my husband decides he wants to watch it, too, so that wipes out more late night possibilities for me. as we will watch those shows together.

[8ullfrog]

Can you explain the pressure release valve nature of the late night viewing?

I'm mostly just reading fanfic lately, but it's been TV show based. I like a good mega cross, but I haven't seen one lately. Last one I read was "Give the boys a great big hand"

https://www.tthfanfic.org/Story-23164/MarcusRowland+Give+the+Boys+a+Great+Big+Hand.htm

I know it's not a show, but I enjoyed the read. Especially how pretty much every Miami based show is involved, but the characters intentionally snub CSI: Miami because Horatio Caine is a richard.

[6pairsofshoes]

I'm often too tired to read that late, so I watch tv and will watch junk my spouse won't touch.  Curiously, if I sleep for a couple hours, and then wake, as now, I prefer to read and won't watch tv, except for music videos, occasionally.  Mostly, I read the newspaper.

CSI Miami is a show that I watched occasionally many years ago, but the main characters are all impossibly good looking for cops.  This is not to say that this trope is not a major characteristic of many tv police dramas, but there was something almost comical and melodramatic about CSI Miami.  There were two other CSI shows, if I remember:  NYC and Las Vegas.  It's not basically my cup of tea.

FanFic is not a genre I've really ever read.   There's so many books and so little time.  I sort of got stalled in the middle of a few.  Blasted through Mary Trump's book, presently sort of dwindled in part of the Decameron and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  Also watching second season of Lodge 49, but am sort of bored by that.

It's kind of funny to create a plot involving several tv shows at once.  After finishing Mary Trump's book, I had a weird dream that I was at the Trump's house as a guest, but somehow ended up going to Roseann Barr's (or whatev she's calling herself now) apartment near a shopping mall to take a shower.  This, despite the fact that there were multiple bath facilities at the Trump's residence.  I guess I could develop that, but it's more interesting that, faced with the prospect of spending time with the Trumps, my one focus was on taking a bath.  I find that kind of comical as well as revealing.

[Alfonz]

I watched that.  It's pretty good.  Ellen Barkin is a good matriarch and rather sadistically corrupt.

She does play the role perfectly. Hoping for more seasons, it can't really end like that.

[8ullfrog]

I've already watched all of it, but I want more nadja!