Topic: The TV Show Thread

Not seen season 3 yet @nessisonett as it is on NOW TV.

I thought Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson's performances were outstanding in season 1.

I quite like Frasier, Come Dine With Me, Catfish and Four In A Bed on TV. Anyone else like any of those shows? With regard to Frasier, who could forget, amidst all ye Frasier fans: "Three little maids from school are weeeee" ? Lol

I got 6 months of Disney + free with my phone contract, so finished off The Mandalorian. Overall I really enjoyed it. It took a few episodes to get going but I liked the old school Star Wars vibe and an almost Western feel about it. The supporting cast and cameos were fantastic too, I had great fun trying to guess who was underneath all the make up or was was doing the voices.

Also started watching Community on Amazon Prime from the start. I think its hilarious, one scene yesterday had me in tears with laughter. Full of out there characters, Mr Chang is such a wonderful creation.

Finished the 3rd season of Babylon Berlin, I binged all three seasons over the last few weeks and it was brilliant. I haven’t watched too much German TV, just this and Das Boot but I have a massive appreciation for German expressionist cinema from the 20s and 30s, even basing my entire Design portfolio on the work of the Bauhaus and influence on movies like Metropolis. BB being set in the Weimar era means that it draws from those cinema movements to create an authentic noir setting. It’s honestly one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time, and I’ve binged quite a lot during lockdown! It’s just a proper good detective show, with the volcanic political situation making it a whole lot more interesting. Plus Bryan Ferry from Roxy Music was randomly in an episode singing at a cabaret. It was wild.

@LN78 Oh yeah, the new one not the repeats on the dodgy standard definition channels! I’ve been really enjoying it, I love how stylised it is and Matthew Rhys is brilliant as always. It essentially serves as an origin story and does its job well, setting up the main characters while still having a compelling case with lots of twists and turns. There’s the typical HBO ‘grittiness’ added with both pointless nudity and some very dead looking bodies but I didn’t find it as distracting as in some other programs. The critics haven’t been that fussed about it but to be honest, I don’t trust TV critics one bit.

@LN78 Ohh, I knew his wife was investigating that before she died but didn’t know they made a show about it. I’ll definitely give that a watch, true crime is strangely good popcorn TV which sounds massively morbid.

Started watching the making of The Mandalorian on Disney+. It's good so far, they talk quite a bit about the older films and show behind the scenes footage of those films (and the recent Jungle Book and Lion King films). As with most making of features it does get a bit ott with the gushing at times, and when there were talking about trying to capture the feel of the original trilogy my internal monologue was shouting about what on earth happened with the sequel trilogy.

@JohnnyShoulder I've steered clear of that series. My patience for self-congratulatory special features has grown thin over the years (much prefer the fly-on-the-wall stuff, like Episode I: The Beginning) and I think I'd rather spend my time just re-watching The Mandalorian itself, but I'm glad you're enjoying it.

Over the weekend, my partner and I rediscovered The West Wing. How could I forget listing that show (at least its first four seasons) as one of my all-time favourites? Magical stuff.

@RogerRoger It's not too bad on the back slapping, only a couple of occasions I've had to reach for the vomit bucket.

I was saying recently elsewhere on these pages how I'd given up on making of feature, as they all seem to be the same these days.

I just reached the physical effects episode, which I'm really interested in finding out how they did some things.

I was fascinated to find out how they filmed it, in something called The Voulme which looks to be a game changer on how the industry uses film sets and cgi in tandem.

@JohnnyShoulder @RogerRoger I recently watched the making of docs on Mandalorian and thought the group loving was mostly restricted to the cast and director episodes. I would recommend some of them to fans of the show though, specifically the Volume/Legacy/Practical Effects and Music episodes. The episode about the volume was certainly the most interesting to me how they developed this new system of filming using Unreal Engine to create real time cgi set.
I think I'm going to cancel my Disney+ now and renew when the second series of Mando starts. Although I may give Clone Wars one more try but the first two episodes didn't grab me.

As for top 5 shows, that's super tricky, I'd probably want to do a seperate list for comedy and one for drama. But can't believe no-one else has mentioned my probable all time favourite Band of Brothers.
So this would be mine

Band of Brothers
West Wing
The Office (US)
Parks and Rec
Community might just beat Game of Thrones as both lost their way near the end but Community less so.

Loads of good stuff deserving a mention include

Flight of the Conchords
Peep Show
The Inbetweeners
I'm Alan Partridge
The Mentalist
24
Plus I really like Forged in Fire on the History channel.

@BearsEatBeets I forgot about Band of Brothers, that’s a brilliant show. My mum bought the big metal box set back when it released and we’ve still got it and watched it multiple times.

@BearsEatBeets Yeah if I didn't have 6 months free of Disney+ I would be cancelling it after i watched the making of The Mandalorian. Not enough content for me too keep an ongoing paid subscription.

Started watching Community on Prime from the start recently. I like it, it is consistently funny and full of likeable characters.

Any fans of Curb Your Enthusiasm?

@JohnnyShoulder It's amazing how they blend CGI nowadays. I remember the first time I watched Jurassic Park III and seeing one of the puppet raptors turn and merge into a CGI model which then sprinted away. It blew my mind, but at least I could spot the effect! When I was watching The Mandalorian, I had a real hard time distinguishing practicals from pixels. How far we've come!

@BearsEatBeets Is that the new season of The Clone Wars you didn't like, or were you starting all the way back at the beginning? Either way, it's always good to save on these subscription services where you can. I'm still paying for Netflix and I haven't watched anything on there for months.

Good to see a fellow fan of The West Wing and 24, by the way! Two superb shows!

@Draco_V_Ecliptic Curb Your Enthusiasm and It’s Always Sunny are the two shows that put a spanner in my “Americans can’t do cringe comedy” attitude. American comedy characters at least tend to at least have redeeming qualities or a heartwarming episode or two but those shows never let you forget that the characters are horrible people, which I appreciate. I still have nightmares about the American Peep Show and Inbetweeners, they’re horrible.

@nessisonett Yeah, they started showing the original season of Curb on Sky Comedy recently, and whilst I prefer the later seasons, where it's pure "gold" , I still think the essential flair and charm of the series is preternaturally there in the early episodes. Do you think Larry will do any more seasons?

@LN78 Was about to say the same thing. I'm always rotating between the services. They hold your watch history for about 12 months (this differs for each service) so there is little danger there. I've got my mum under my Netflix sub, but am always using it. When I've stopped using it before I've just checked with her that she has finished watching everything for now, and only cancel then. She understands she is getting for free from me so causes no aggro between us or anything.

@nessisonett Yeah I had the metal box dvd set for Band of Brothers but swapped it for the also metal Bluray box. It's a quality box but can be tricky fitting on shelves with other blurays. I've never seen the american Peep Show or Inbetweeners but when they try and convert our shows it rarely works. It made how much I enjoyed the US Office all the more surprising.

@RogerRoger I started at the very beginning for Clone Wars as I've never seen it but did see a feature film which I think precedes it years ago. I've heard it gets very good later on but will see if it entices me enough to go through it all. West Wing is such a quality show, I have all the series on dvd and keep hoping they would do a quality transfer and bring out a bluray set. Actually the original 24 didn't grab me when I watched the first couple of episodes when it first aired but later gave it another go and got hooked. I once watched a whole series in one day (it wasn't a busy day). It kind of started retreading ideas in later series but was still enjoyable to watch.

@JohnnyShoulder Have you reached 'Paintball' yet? It's probably a high point in the series. It's a shame it never found a bigger audience while it was on as it struggled to keep getting renewed for each season. It has some great characters, brilliantly acted with some very inventive stories. While the quality fluctuates in later series it has some of my favourite individual episodes of any tv programme. Troy and Abed rule!

@BearsEatBeets No not got to that one yet. Just watched the one when Jeff plays Pool in short shorts. 😂

@Draco_V_Ecliptic I think with everything going on, it’s increasingly difficult to create satire when real life feels like it on a regular basis. That being said, Larry David is a master at creating comedy from pretty much nothing and given how much material there is out there, I think we’ll probably see some more seasons.