Topic: The TV Show Thread

Finished off the second season of Perry Mason. Seriously good, HBO at their best.

@nessisonett
Hope it gets a third season, not enough people talking about it. It's up there with Battlestar Galactica in terms of TV series reboots that actually surpass the original.

@PegasusActual93 Yeah, I’d say it was the best revival of an old property I’ve seen. I can’t begin to imagine how much of an effort it takes to make the setting ooze so much style as well, it doesn’t just look like a recreation of the 1930s, it looks like they took a time machine and filmed in the 1930s.

I didn’t watch Willow but Disney deserve to be dragged for outright deleting that and about 30 other programs. This was always going to happen once WB started it but it’s just dreadful.

@nessisonett Same. I hate that this has become a thing, but I guess it was inevitable. A subscription model is not sustainable if your production + maintenance costs keep rising and I guess it's a tempting write-off for these companies. The first wave of the Disney purge won't affect me all that much (though I did plan on checking out Willow at one point), but some of the HBO Max removals hurt a bit.

Seeing all the reality dreck that's continually added to Discovery+ also adds insult to the injury of the HBO Max purge. We really live in a proper dystopia when good scripted series are removed to make room for Sister Wives, Dr. Pimple Popper and its ilk

@nessisonett @FuriousMachine I didn’t even know about the Disney+ removals until I saw your post. It is concerning, mainly the removal of D+ originals like Willow. It’s similar to when Sony pulled Spider-Man from PS+ Extra. But even that made some sense because one can still buy the game. The removal of Willow means the show literally just vanishes from existence, like it never happened.

The article I read said Disney is going to save like over a $1 billion of operating costs by pulling these shows. I guess I don’t understand the industry very well because if the show is already made, what operating costs are there besides just having the data files online to stream? Maybe there’s ongoing costs to the content creators and actors they have to pay as long as the show is available? or maybe there’s a per-viewing royalty to the cast and staff or something? I’m not sure.

With HBO Max at least they have a section there “Leaving Soon” or “Last Chance”, or something like that, where you know ahead of time just in case you want to quickly binge something. That said, I’ve still been burned by a show dropping off that I had on my watchlist and when I went back to watch it I discovered it had vanished, unbeknownst to me.

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Back on Disney (sorry about the rambling) I am worried about the message being sent also. Not to get too political, but the far right has Disney in their crosshairs and is attacking them both overtly and strategically, including through all the mess that’s going on in the Florida legislature and courts. Disney+ cutting back, Disney World shutting down new initiatives and projects, and the general amplified public criticism of Disney is sending a message of support for the extreme viewpoints that champion Disney’s demise due to their hate of all things progressive. I mean, no matter how many people are boycotting Disney and how much hate and abuse people dole out to The Little Mermaid and others, Disney isn’t going to go bankrupt anytime soon. But moves like these where they are taking content away from Disney+ and shutting down projects due to cost containment are showing some vulnerability that Disney hasn’t had in decades.

Out of all the stuff being deleted, I can understand the expensive shows that flopped. What I don’t get is them wiping a documentary about Howard Ashman, the guy that saved them during the Disney Renaissance, right before they gut The Little Mermaid of all its charm. The guy died of AIDS in 1991 while leaving his mark on several of the best Disney movies of that period and they’re just deleting a documentary about him. I guess it’s particularly egregious that it’s just before Pride Month as well and this is somebody that they can’t whitewash away.

Just saw the guy that wrote Willow saying that it can’t be a tax writeoff because all these shows released, it’s to avoid paying residuals to staff…. during a strike.

@nessisonett @Th3solution

Aaahhh. And this is exactly why I can't pick a horse in this cluster* of a race that is Florida politics. On the one hand, I loathe DeSantis, on the other Disney plays woke but they are just as amoral as any other giant corporation. And just way too powerful honestly. They're like our Vatican.

@zupertramp Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing. Though, in that particular tussle I will cheer on the cynical money-grubbing megacorporation against DeSantis and his ilk any day of the week, even if it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

@nessisonett They said they would take an "impairment charge" of approx. 1.5 - 1.8 billion. I thought that was the same as a tax write-off, but a quick google search makes it seem less like that and more like an asset devaluation. How that helps them, I have no idea. Maybe that translates into taxes somehow, later down the line? No clue, I can barely keep up with my own finances Either way, it's a bad precedent. Like @Th3solution said, they're effectively wiping content from existence... well, unless they license it out to a FAST service, like HBO Max did with some of their purged content. Though I guess that would limit the devaluation of the asset as it then would still have some value?

@nessisonett Read that fan backlash caused them to walk back the decision to remove "Howard", so it's good to see that fan outrage can used as a force for good

It does highlight what we already know, though: There are zero considerations for cultural impact when it comes to content curation, it is purely profit driven. I wouldn't be surprised if the decisionmakers here had absolutely no idea what kind of content they're purging, going simply by numbers on a spreadsheet. I mean, one doesn't have to be particularly astute to realize that particular removal was both tone-deaf and spectacularly poorly timed.

@FuriousMachine
What most people don't take into account with content purging is that this has more or less always been a thing. Just look at when cable tv was in it's prime. Think of how many networks would never show certain shows ever again and never even give it a home media release. Quite a few of those examples are even now lost media. Let's not even get into how many movies are now lost from before 1930 because of a similar story. Many companies simply can't sustain holding onto every piece of content ever made especially old media conglomerates when the interest is just not there. Not trying to say it's right as a media archivist myself but people are acting like this is completely pointless or some kind of new phenomenon when this has always existed.

@FuriousMachine That’s something I guess. It’s absolutely that they realised that purging the world of a documentary celebrating the work of an AIDS victim a week before Pride Month was potentially going to make them look like the bad guys. They’ve always been a soulless megacorp but this whole situation really puts it into focus. You’re probably right that they just looked at a spreadsheet and not at the actual content they were purging.

@PegasusActual93 This is very different from shows not being repeated though, the whole point of the rise of streaming services originally was that they served as a massive archive of content that we could access at any time. You had to make a conscious decision and clear room in the schedule to repeat a show on TV. With streaming it’s always there unless you made the decision to remove it. Disney are one of the richest companies in the world and the cost of storage with these shows and movies isn’t even a factor. If it’s really to avoid paying residuals during the strike then it’s an ideological decision to attempt to starve the strikers and force them to the table.

@RogerRoger Handy to know, thanks Rog. Thankfully haven’t got around to re-subbing yet.
Any recommendations for things to watch on there when I do? I saw a trailer for that ’ghosted’ and will give that watch. There wasn’t anything that interested me last time I subbed for the second series of Lasso.

As a huge fan of the novels, I can say that the first four episodes of Silo definitely lived up to my expectations, so if you've read and enjoyed them I think you'll find this to be a strong adaptation.

@LN78 Never caught those when they aired back when, but I actually think they sound quite interesting. I can't remember if they were well received when they aired or not, either. Looking forward to hearing your take.

@LN78 Huh, that's interesting indeed, especially considering the DVD gold-rush era when they dug up any old property, dumped it on a disc, slapped a sticker price on it and put it on shelves. The people behind this must have felt it worth putting some effort into refurbishing it. Now I'm really curious to hear whether it paid off or not

@LN78 Nice, looking forward to it
Just got word that the Indiana Jones 4K box set arrived today, so I'll be revisiting the movies too. Even Crystal Skull, which I haven't seen since release... I wonder if I'll still hate it with a passion or if I've mellowed on it in the intervening years.

@LN78 It took me way too long to realise that Temple of Doom was a prequel. It’s literally the 20s and there aren’t Nazis, I dunno why I didn’t twig.

@RogerRoger Much appreciate those mentions, at the least I will look into them. I'm thinking of subbing early June so doing one month should cover me for Silo then if it's something I get into.

Just finished watching Mrs. Davis on HBO Max (think it's on Peacock in the US), the new show by Damon Lindelof and the levels of absurdity on display here is simply staggering. I loved it! If you haven't heard of it, it's about Sister Simone, a nun that gets sent on a quest for the holy grail by the titular Mrs. Davis; who Sister Simone hates with a passion and wants dead. And, oh yeah, Mrs. Davis is an all-powerful Artificial Intelligence.
Sound pretty weird, but there really is no preparing for how weird it gets at times. This show refuses to move in a straight line, to put it mildly. It is also very funny and has a lot of heart.