Topic: The TV Show Thread

@RogerRoger I’d forgotten about Gotham. Good to know that it’s worth a gander. Looks like it’s available on Netflix too, so that helps. Is it “finished”? Or are more seasons forthcoming?

@Th3solution Gotham is done now, no new seasons incomng

@Th3solution Yeah, as @FullbringIchigo helpfully noted, it's a complete show. Four full-length seasons, and then a fifth shorter season to wrap everything up, so it's not the biggest undertaking and certainly won't lead you down any interconnected rabbit warrens.

Just know that, if you aren't a fan of its early tone, it's practically an entirely different show by its end (but since it isn't part of a shared universe, you can equally abandon it any time and not miss anything).

@Th3solution I can wholeheartedly recommend Watchmen, Doom Patrol and the animated Harley Quinn series for DC TV shows. Each of them has only one season so far, so they're easy watches. Watchmen is basically TV perfection, and one of the best single seasons of TV from last year. Doom Patrol is campy, silly fun that is incredibly consistent throughout all of its 15 episodes. Harley Quinn is fantastic if you enjoy her character, and there's lots of cameos from other DC characters throughout the show. Really, if you want quality DC shows, you shouldn't be looking at the CW ones. Sad but true.

As far as Marvel on TV goes, they have a bit of a lesser presence there for now. I really enjoy Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., more so than I've probably enjoyed any of the movies. A really fun cast of characters, although season 1 can be rocky at the start. It's definitely a bit more of a generic procedural show at the start. If you really want to watch something that's totally out there, watch Legion. Legion is incredible. It's easily the best thing to have come out of Marvel, whether it's TV or film. It can be an acquired taste however, but if you enjoy some style over substance here and there, you're guaranteed to have a good time. As mentioned before, Jessica Jones S1 is also fantastic, but you can ignore the following seasons. Luckily the first season isn't open-ended, so it'll be satisfactory on its own.

@Th3solution I got all the way the final seasons of the Marvel TV stuff.... and just lost interest.

I agree with @Tjuz, Legion however is the best thing they've done by far, however it is totally bonkers and you have to pay quite close attention otherwise most of it will go over your head.

I thought Titans was really good and can't wait till get to the 2nd season.

Currently watching The Umbrella Academy (which is neither DC or Marvel). I'm a bit undecieded as seems to be meandering a bit.

And if you have not seen The Boys, you absoulety have to. Best superhero tv series by a long margin.

@Th3solution I'd say the arrowverse would be hard to binge because it's not as serialised as the marvel netflix. There are overarching stories but they are normally in the background of meta of the week episodes which largely retread the same ground as the previous episodes. That being said I do love the arrowverse and I invested early on in it so it has been easier to watch over 8 years. I did manage to binge the heavily episodic smallville a few years back despite my perceived decline in its quality after season 5.

I'd largely agree with @kalofkrypton on his points (though I would be kinder to the arrowverse).

The best seasons of marvel netflix have been Jessica Jones season 1, daredevil 1 2 and 3, Luke cage 2 and punisher 1 and 2. I do love both seasons of iron fist despite all the hate for it. It has a strong supporting cast in my opinion. I think the worse season Ive watched was Jessica Jones season 2 but I still loved watching it because I love the character as played by Kristen Ritter.

I'd reccomend marvels runaways too, that is a really fun sci fi show with a great theme tune.

Also fox's legion was wicked and the gifted was pretty good, a bit like an updated early 2000s YA show like dark angel or something. Not sure what it was about it, but I enjoyed it nonetheless

@ralphdibny I second Runaways as hilarious schlocky fun. I've been way into the comics since I was a kid and seeing the characters on TV was great because they're really niche. The show got cut down right in its prime though, the last season started getting seriously good and then Disney+ meant everything else was cancelled. At least the comics were revived as a result of the show getting big and they can keep going!

@nessisonett I'm really looking forward to runaways season 3, just got to make it through cloak and dagger season 2 first as I'm sure the crossover takes place after that

@RogerRoger I only watched the first 5 or so episodes of Gotham but I didn't really rate it that much. Not sure if it was just too cheesy but played too straight for a modern show. Jada pinket Smith hammed it up loads in the episodes I saw.

Many times I've really wanted to watch it because of the cast and characters introduced like Alexander siddig (DS9) as ras Al gul and Michael cerveres (fringe) as professor pyg but every time I've seen a random episode on TV, the style and script etc has been fairly similar to the early episodes I've watched and it's put me off.

I'll probably and hopefully give it a fair shake some day when I have some more time though and there is a lull in my media consumption!

@ralphdibny It's quite jarring to return to earlier episodes of Gotham, having gotten used to the madcap tone of its later seasons. I respect the showrunners for realising that making it a semi-serious police procedural wasn't working, and gradually tweaking the show so that its descent into insanity wasn't too jarring. The campy elements didn't sit right to begin with, but they end up ruling supreme and everything's all the better for it. Hope I'm not overselling it, and that you enjoy it when you give it another shot!

I watched Gotham pretty religiously with my brother-in-law until it ended. The show was an extremely entertaining trainwreck.

@RogerRoger fair enough, don't worry I don't think it can be over sold because I've seen bits of it already. It'll get watched one day as I do plan to watch all the DC live action shows that have been made. I think the only ones I haven't seen from beginning to end are Batman 66, wonder woman 77 (I watched an episode but I struggled with it) and the 90s flash. Oh also birds of prey, lucifer, human target and the JL TV movie.

I'd also like to watch clone wars one day because the the stuff with maul and his brother sounds really cool but likewise with Gotham, I watched that first 3 episodes as a movie thing in the cinema and thought it was rubbish at the time so I never ended up getting round to it.

Probably easy to draw the comparison of Gotham to smallville based on the title and premise of the shows but I really enjoyed early smallville. I think it was because it was basically X files but set in a school. It had the monster of the week episodes with an overarching mystery. It only became ridiculous after season 5 when it ditched that format and introduced the quasi justice League which was just a bunch of kids in hoodies and Tom welling became so big and muscly that he couldn't make any facial expressions. I know it sounds silly but he just reminded me of a big cow toward the end because he was so big and just stood there a lot. I need to go back and watch it again sometime, I have alot of nostalgia for the channel 4 double bill of enterprise and smallville in the early 2000s!

I mostly enjoyed the first two seasons of Gotham, though the first half of season 2 dragged on a bit. But as season 3 was never shown on TV in the UK (seasons 1 and 2 were shown on Channel 5 then E4 showed season 4), I never did watch anything after season 2.

Maybe one day I might get back into it.

@ralphdibny I got Batman '66 on Blu-Ray several years back, in a fancy box which plays its iconic theme tune whenever you open it. Kinda sets you in the right irreverent mood, I guess, as I enjoyed it far more than I expected to, based on hazy childhood memories of 90s re-runs. That being said, similar to the original Star Trek, it started to become a slog towards the end of its third and (probably for the best) final season. I think you're right to be cautious of older shows, given what we've become accustomed to.

Having said that, I genuinely think that Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman is one of the best superhero television shows of all time. Top drawer 90s family entertainment.

Best of luck with The Clone Wars. It improves leaps and bounds with each passing season (contrary to Gotham, which got increasingly wacky as time passed, it repeats the trick of the prequel movies and matures with its audience, hooking young fans with knockabout adventure before introducing more complex material as they grow up). You'll still occasionally have to grin and bear a cheesy episode or two, but they're only twenty minutes each, so it's less of an effort. Might've won you over with its charms by then anyway. It'll be easy to binge on Disney+ soon enough.

Never did watch more than a handful of Smallville, although it must've been earlier episodes because I don't recall ever seeing anything akin to a teenage Justice League. I quite liked it but I just couldn't make the effort to tune in every week, especially when T4's presenters would mock it and Enterprise.

@RogerRoger oh yeah, I haven't watched Lois and Clark and powerless too. I think the latter might be a bit of a nightmare to watch because I don't think it was aired in its entirety.

I never picked up on T4 mocking those two shows (the scumbags), I was probably too young and just wanted to get to the shows. I loved enterprise so much and it was pretty much my intro in to star trek. I eventually watched it all again and the rest of star trek shows and movies during and after uni and loved the whole thing.

I hate when people mock the product they are selling because it's just like, why are you showing the thing if you don't care about it and just going to make fun of it.

I didn't pick up on season 3 of TOS becoming a slog but maybe it was because to me it is just season 7 of star trek as a whole (well season 9 now that discovery has been inserted in there) and I was keen to get on to TAS at the time. I know people say it's not canon but it is canon to me lol.

It's funny you say that about the prequels, looking back, phantom menace is actually my favourite of the 3, I think it's just more of a classic movie. Like I think Harry potter 1 and 2 are the best of the movie series now weirdly.

@RogerRoger @ralphdibny i remember when it was just called The New Adventures of Superman, why they added the Lois and Clark to the title i still don't understand

also The Animated Series IS canon i know Gene was unhappy with it but he would De-canonize stuff he wasn't happy with all the time, such as Star Trek V and Star Trek VI (and i believe he once said most of TOS wasn't either) but after his death it was all re-canonized, hence why an alien species from it was mentioned in a episode of DS9 and it is now actually considered to be the last 2 years of Kirks 5 year mission

also i agree Harry Potter 1 and 2 are the best of the bunch, not that the others are bad but they just feel more "magical" for want of a better word

@ralphdibny @RogerRoger
Lois & Clark was as much my childhood as Red Dwarf! Had the lot all recorded on VHS with long play on 😂

@FullbringIchigo It was just The New Adventures of Superman in the UK. The 'Lois & Clark' removal was localisation - as was removal of quite a lot of pre-episode shorts of Clark using his powers.

@FullbringIchigo yeah I echo @KALofKRYPTON 's comments on it, weirdly I think the DVD releases have Lois and Clark intact on the title though.

I think star trek is almost a clear example of no one auteur being responsible for the whole. From the way leonard nimoy almost created Spock to the roddenberry vision only being enriched by the economics of DS9

@FullbringIchigo further thoughts on Harry potter.... Order of the phoenix is my favourite book because it has all the adult characters and the kid characters and it's sort of the moment you realise that your parents and role models actually went through similar stuff to what you are going through now.

I like the film but it cuts a lot out. It still has all the great actors that brought those characters to life though like Natalia tena, David thewlis, Brendan gleeson, Gary Oldman etc.

Good to see nick moran in the deathly hallows too even if it's a bit of a throwaway part.

I think growing up, I always thought that prisoner of azkaban was the best just because of how unique it is (and Gary Oldmans black and white stripey prison outfit lol). I love children of men too so I thought Alfonso cuaron had that auteury thing going for him.

However...watching them again a few years back, my preferred order puts the first two at the top. They just make me "feel" the most. Probably because they use the old timey film conventions that elicit thos feelings.

I basically feel like the first two were classics. The third was unique in its auteurism (not that the first two werent because they were obviously Chris Columbus films). The fourth was ok. The fifth was again good because of the subject matter but tried to fit as much in from the book that it was almost a direct translation (barring the story omissions). The fifth was just twilightesque and suffered for it. It's probably my least favourite book and the film is about a million times worse just because it's 2 and a half hours and I felt like I spent most of it watching Harry and Ginny look at eachother like one of them was going to start glistening in the sun or something. And again 6 and 7, just ok really. Mostly just translations of the book but I can think of more worthy books that would warrant the split film treatment (namely order of the phoenix)

@ralphdibny Yeah, whatever happened to Powerless...?!

Those shows, and others like it, just didn't suit the tone Channel 4 wanted to set for its younger audiences. Why they even included them as part of T4 Sundays remains one of history's greatest unanswerable mysteries (probably some contractual obligation or some other joyless nonsense).

I grew up on Berman-Era Trek and so returning to the original series (albeit on Blu-Ray, with all the gorgeous remastered effects helping me a lot) was always gonna be a big ask. There was a lackadaisical approach to many elements I'd seen carved in rock-solid canon which just made me confused and feel "not at home" despite its legacy, and despite me adoring the six original series movies. Whenever they went Warp 14, or randomly hopped across to the Andromeda Galaxy every other week, or came up with a fifth different name for the Federation in as many episodes, I lost any possible immersion (which was already as flimsy as the cardboard sets beforehand).

There are a handful of absolute and well-deserved classics, though. I properly adored "The Doomsday Machine" and really enjoyed "The Conscience of the King", "Balance of Terror", "The Squire of Gothos", "The Trouble with Tribbles" and "A Piece of the Action". They encapsulated everything I respect about the origins of my favourite franchise. All the other episodes? If I'm honest, I'd be okay if I never saw them again.

Huge respect if you consumed it all and never faltered, and absolutely carry The Animated Series as canon if you want to. Nobody (not even Gene himself) should be able to tell you otherwise!

***

@KALofKRYPTON Yeah, same (if you swap Red Dwarf for Star Trek: The Next Generation). Lois & Clark informed a great deal of who I'd grow up to be, and what kind of entertainment I'd enjoy. Despite becoming a bigger Batman fan in later years, and those Batman '66 re-runs being around at the same time, it was also probably my gateway drug to the superhero genre.

It still holds up today, having genuine comedy and chemistry alongside some pretty solid scripts. Tempus remains one of television's all-time greats, and I still have to remind myself that Perry White's catchphrase isn't usually "Great shades of Elvis!" because Lane Smith was my favourite.

Remember when Riker showed up, because he'd stolen the Burtonmobile and wanted Superman to go alongside it in his personal collection? Man, the 90s were awesome!