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

[6pairsofshoes]

I'd watch it if I could get it here.  We pay for amazon prime and most tv shows "are not available in your area," so other than various Mexican productions, etc. we get next to nothing.

I finished watching "A Place to Call Home," an Aussie telenovela that was so LGBTQ friendly that it was positively anachronistic against the backdrop of the 1950's.  It's like the struggles that plagued that community were in some faraway dream, thereby trivializing the utter hell that oppressed the everyday reality of LGBTQ persons.  Those incidents are noted in passing but were minimized to an unrealistic degree by the end of the series. In one season, a guy undergoes conversion therapy until his wife intervenes; in another a guy gets beaten, but he is reclaimed by the small town where he originated and then integrated into Sydney's gay scene; and there are threats of exposure and blackmail, but by the final season, everyone is embraced and protected by members of the main family.  Love conquers all.

It was a real heigh ho happy ending feel good kind of show.  And that's fine, except that it degenerated into a trite predictable format with poor writing.  Some of the actors were quite good, so it was sad to see them struggling with such bad material.

We tuned into an episode of Ruth Jones' "Stella" last night.  We really enjoyed "Gavin and Stacey," so had high hopes for this, but so far, it's a pale ghost of the latter.  Maybe it gets better, so we'll try another episode.

[8ullfrog]

I've been watching True Blood. I had bought the DVD set of the first season a long while back, and aside from the opening scene didn't much care for it, everyone seemed stupid and self absorbed.

I'm now up to season 3, episode 9, and that seems to be true. Wouldn't want to be in the same room with any of the cast, but their stupidity can be great fun. I particularly like/hate Eric. He's a sleazy golly always pushing the angles, but it's fun to watch.

The weird stilted nature of Bill Compton can be a lot of fun, when he's trying to be a civil war era gentlemen while dealing with absolute batshit insane plots, but sometimes he can be annoying as golly.

Sookie is a black bless'ed hole, almost an Anti-sue. Everyone around her gets hurt, while everyone asks "Where's Sookie"?

Some of the vampire behavior is truly disturbing, and they revel in it. The character Franklin, for example, is horrible in nearly every scene he is in.

I still don't know if I "like" true blood. It's compelling stuff, but feels like time wasted. Maybe that's more on me.

[6pairsofshoes]

The first episode of True Blood was plenty for us.  Your assessment of "stupid and self-absorbed" is about right.  I read Twilight.  Then saw the movie.  Lame does not begin to describe it.  A new wrinkle on the girl who falls in love with the bad boy in town, only to find he's deeply sensitive and misunderstood.  The Anne Rice books were better.  What we do in the shadows is pretty funny and as we haven't seen the movie, I'll probably pull that up in the near future.

We are relegated to rewatching series available on youtube, the library, or daily motion.  I did bring a hard drive so we have a few more options.  I never heard of Midnight, TX, but at this point, I'm game for anything.  It will most likely beat a second repeat viewing of other shows like Sons of Anarchy or The Expanse.

[smokester]

I couldn't stand True Blood (amusing premise, dreadful characters), but I enjoyed the first season of Midnight, Texas.

This is my experience exactly. However, it was the polar opposite for Mrs smokester.

[8ullfrog]

It's not procedurally stupid, like the CW shows, it's just that a lot of the cast are myopic to the extreme and only focus on their self interest. Even Sookie repeatedly leaves work to go chase down the latest cowpoo.

I do think the writers were EXCEEDINGLY clever, they'll move characters off the board if they'd derail the plot. For example, Jason Stackhouse, who is a very dumb sexaholic, gets sent off to "leadership college" when the plot involves a sex cult. They got him out of the way without writing him off or killing him, and I found that extremely clever.

I do wish I had given it more of a chance during the first run, but I can still see why people would not enjoy it. Even Sookie mocks her dumb name.

[6pairsofshoes]

The next season of The Man in the High Castle is back on amazon and it looks like I can actually get it here.  I'm amazed that they've gotten so much mileage out of the novel, and it's been of a generally high quality.  I hope they maintain that through the final season.

We are watching the Americans again.  (I think of it as The Russians).  It generally holds up.  The actress that plays Paige, the daughter, is great at portraying an annoying teenager.  What's kind of odd to me is that these spies who are so totally loyal and willing to sacrifice to a totalitarian regime due to their overarching idealism somehow manage to raise their American children with such permissive parenting.  So the kids are free to engage in all kinds of behavior that, had they been home in Mother Russia, would have gotten them sent to a gulag.  That's the one aspect that really doesn't ring true here.

[8ullfrog]

Nah, that's literally how America turned Russian spies. Russian visitors went full Arkansas retard on occasion. I've heard Yeltsin ran out in his tighty whities to order a cab to go get some Pizza.  Clinton apparently found that poo hilarious.

On the other side of things, Russia turned FBI agents with blowjobs and blackmail. Very low standards, those FBI agents. They could have had Pizza!

[6pairsofshoes]

As a test of your assertion that pizza is preferable to BJs, I asked a random fellow what he'd prefer given the choice.  BJ won out.  Of course, this was a relatively small sample.

Still, the prospect of Yeltsin running to catch a cab in y-fronts in search of a pizza is pretty funny.  There's some pretty good pizza in Berkeley, mostly because of a Brooklyn based restauranteur who decided to migrate to the West Coast.  I'd probably go for the pizza, myself, depending on my hunger level.  There doesn't seem to be good pizza here, but they're Caribbean French.  Their answer is to put too much cheese on everything on the premise that cheese makes everything better and there's no such thing as excess when it comes to cheese.  And it's hard to get a decent tasting tomato anywhere here.

[6pairsofshoes]

We just finished the Americans.  It's really pretty sad.  The two protagonists have sacrificed so much only to have their country devolve into an oligarchy headed by a despot.  Lenin must be turning in his tomb at a speed that would power a jumbo jet.

[8ullfrog]

I wonder how many spies raised in those "America towns" were more American than the genuine article. One funny thing I noticed is the (actual) spies always faced products in family pictures, like a commercial. Heinz, Coca-Cola, Coors. All label towards camera. All at BBQ, Fellow citizen.

Otherwise, they look like people that could conceivably be neighbors. Granted, they focused on the East Coast.

[6pairsofshoes]

I grew up not far from D.C. and years later, lived in Manhattan with friends in Queens and Brooklyn.  It's really obvious that most of the purported scenes in D.C. and N. Virginia (with the exception of the tract housing in Reston, where the Jennings and their FBI neighbor, Beeman live) are filmed in and around New York City.

They seem to like cereal.  They eat breakfast and run off.  I can't remember the other product placement except for the boxy American cars everyone drives.

[6pairsofshoes]

Casting about for something else to watch, I found a new webseries:  Whatever this is.  Sort of self indulgent millenial soap opera about roomies in marginal part of NYC who struggle to get by.  It's ok.  Most episodes run between 6-7 minutes.  Like "Friends" for the 2020's.

[smokester]

We are near the end of season 2 of NOS4A2 and I am quite surprised. I'd had the first season for a while but never really fancied it (I thought its title was a bit silly) but actually it's a very grown up show. Some of it is truly difficult to watch - especially the episode that deals with Charlie's childhood.

It's not perfect and sometimes fails to have a consistent storyline, and I'm not really sure about the actresss who plays Maggie. Still, I'd give it a 7/10.

[smokester]

Christmas horror stories benefit immensely from "sleigh" and "slay" being homophones.

I'm not sure they benefit immensely, unless it's a Syfy production. But then it'd be called Slaynado.

[smokester]

Spoiler (hover to show)

I was thinking of "Sleigh House" in Christmasland, but mayhap you haven't got there yet.

It's odd but these days I don't care if everyone in a show dies. In fact, I more often prefer the antagonist to survive.

I think "The walking dead" did this to me.