What's on TV now?

Brightdreamer

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And I just saw all 10 episodes of "Over the Garden Wall" via Hoopla. Angst-ridden teen Wirt and his weird little half-brother Greg are lost in The Unknown, a dark and magical land of trackless forests, strange magic, and talking animals. Strange little cartoon series, like a vintage children's book, with some hilarious dialog. A whole bunch of very strange parts somehow come together for a decently satisfying, occasionally spooky tale.

Before that, I cleared Season 2 of Netflix's Lost in Space. The characters grow even more this year, and it remains solid family entertainment, with fun and action and emotion. Yes, there's the occasional plot contrivance, but it's very enjoyable, and I'm looking forward to the third and final season.
 

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Better Call Saul has just been amazing this season. Getting excited for the season finale.
 

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Watched Bosch Season 6 on Amazon Prime. Excellent cast. Big fan of the LA noir-ish thing. Actually, I do what I alway do, which was to watch late into the early hours, doze off and then have not the foggiest of what is going on, so not sure I can give a valid assessment of quality. I am going to swing by in a few weeks for a rewatch.
 

Kjbartolotta

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Better Call Saul has just been amazing this season. Getting excited for the season finale.


Been in a state of extreme anxiety about what's going to happen to Kim in coming episodes, then I realized there will be one more season. Generally over Breaking Bad spinoffs after this, but I'm hoping for one more where she becomes a private investigator in Honolulu and has a big, shaggy dog as a sidekick.

Watched Bosch Season 6 on Amazon Prime. Excellent cast. Big fan of the LA noir-ish thing. Actually, I do what I alway do, which was to watch late into the early hours, doze off and then have not the foggiest of what is going on, so not sure I can give a valid assessment of quality. I am going to swing by in a few weeks for a rewatch.

Speaking of which...

Harry always seemed like the kinda guy who would get a cattle dog.
 

MaeZe

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I'm watching HBO's Chernobyl. WOW! It's incredible.

I don't know if they've gotten any details wrong but if they have it would seem they are minor.

The realism is well done. Warning, people dying as their skin dissolves over several days is very graphic.
 

benbenberi

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2nd season of Balthazar showed up on Acorn yesterday. A French procedural: he's a hot ME who has conversations with dead people, she's a police captain with troubles of her own, together they solve crime! In French! 1st season was very good, 2nd is off to a great start.
 

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I've been burned before (that HBO mini-series had so much potential but was a let-down), but I'm kinda getting hyped for the new The Great series coming on Hulu soon, about my all time favorite person in history Sophia 'CtG' Anhalt-Zerbst. Seriously, if you write a book or make a show about Catherine the Great, I will watch or read it.

This one is a comedy, and pretty clear it's going to be inaccurate as heck. It's got Elle Fanning as young Sophia/Catherine, the idea being that she's kind of a Pollyanna and then once she figures out the game it's 100% scheming and backstabbing. And Nicholas Hoult playing a creepy wiener-kid version of Peter III. So nothing too inaccurate so far...
 

Brightdreamer

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If Netflix series tie-ins count as TV, I watched the Altered Carbon animated movie, Altered Carbon: Resleeved. Set one year after the fall of the Envoys and the end of Quellcrist's rebellion (long before the first season of the show), a fugitive and friendless Kovacs struggles to get by, reluctantly taking a job to infiltrate a yakuza clan on Planet Latimer. Someone is interfering with an upcoming succession ceremony, targeting the young girl tattoo artist who will play a key role... but the prime suspect is the son who stands to inherit the crown. Why would he interfere in his own rise to power? And why is the Protectorate also sending an agent to investigate?

My reaction to this was somewhat disappointed. The animation could be beautiful, somewhere between rotoscoping and CGI, but the story felt flat compared to the Netflix series, and the characters were exaggerated, more in line with anime than the established Altered Carbon universe. (The screaming, often-useless and -tearful blonde tattoo girl Holly is a particularly out of place example, here.) There's plenty of gore, more than the series even, though a lot of it feels like deliberate nods to/borderline knockoffs of what we've already seen on Netflix. (The Latimer yakuza HQ is a luxury hotel with a resident AI... voiced by Chris "Poe" Conner.) It's not terrible, with lots of action and some nice visuals, and at 1:15 runtime it doesn't overstay its welcome too much. Mostly, it feels like a pilot for a possible prequel series. I'd rather have a third and final season for the live-action one...
 

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Penny Dreadful: City of Angels! I feel weird about it because much of what made the original so much fun (all the literary tie-ins) is gone, but I do enjoy the route they've taken with focusing on POC, specifically Latinx people.
 

Brightdreamer

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Just cleared S4 of Kim's Convenience on Netflix. Still a fun sitcom, with a good heart, well-matched dysfunctional characters, and nobody you unrepentantly hate. A few sidethreads felt like they petered out, but for the most part things move well, and the finale sets up some changes for the characters going ahead. The show has already been renewed for two more years, so hopefully those come to Netflix eventually. (We get Canadian TV with our cable package, but as Americans we're blocked from streaming reruns, so I have to wait for Netflix because they air at an inconvenient time.)
 

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I've been burned before (that HBO mini-series had so much potential but was a let-down), but I'm kinda getting hyped for the new The Great series coming on Hulu soon, about my all time favorite person in history Sophia 'CtG' Anhalt-Zerbst. Seriously, if you write a book or make a show about Catherine the Great, I will watch or read it.

This one is a comedy, and pretty clear it's going to be inaccurate as heck. It's got Elle Fanning as young Sophia/Catherine, the idea being that she's kind of a Pollyanna and then once she figures out the game it's 100% scheming and backstabbing. And Nicholas Hoult playing a creepy wiener-kid version of Peter III. So nothing too inaccurate so far...

Saw an ad for it just after I finished watching my last show and got all excited. Ran to Hulu...not on until May 15th? *pouts*

Yeah, even the ads are like, "sorta kinda based on true events"
 

Kjbartolotta

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Saw an ad for it just after I finished watching my last show and got all excited. Ran to Hulu...not on until May 15th? *pouts*

Yeah, even the ads are like, "sorta kinda based on true events"

Nick Hoult going the 'hot manbaby psychopath' route is going to be a pleasure for everyone.
 

Kjbartolotta

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Unpopular opinion time: Whatever was going on with that train episode of Rick & Morty, it was pretty much the last straw for me. Shark-jumping, weird meta creator breakdown, odd edgelord humor with that weaksauce Betchel Test sequence, more idolization of Rick's sociopathy, and just general cringe and lack of anything funny or interesting. Noped out.
 

Brightdreamer

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Even more unpopular opinion: I didn't even make it five minutes into one episode of Rick and Morty. There was just such a repelling vibe and nothing remotely funny about it. Couldn't stick it out. (I have that reaction to pretty much everything in their Adult Swim lineup, though: strikes me as less "adult" and more "unfunny, twisted pre-adolescent with exceptionally warped views on what it means to be an adult"... JMHO, of course.)

Currently, I'm halfway through Amazon Prime's Upload: In the near future, death has gone digital, as people regularly "upload" into virtual afterlives. The wealthy get vast simulated resorts with every available luxury, while the poor get stuck in bare-bones avatars in empty rooms with data caps. Twentysomething programmer Nathan and his friend were going to change that with their planned freeware app - but an accident in his self-driving car leaves him clinging to life, where his pushy rich girlfriend pressures him into signing the upload papers to her family's afterlife plan in Lakeview. As Nathan learns that digital afterlife isn't the heaven the ads make it out to be, his caseworker Nora begins to suspect that there's more to his death than a simple car malfunction...

So far, it's a somewhat uneven comedy, but there are some fun moments and it has solid potential. The near-future it envisions is amusing and almost plausible, as corporations bend and merge to exploit new technology: Oscar Meyer Intel creates the first human clone in the first (disastrous) attempt at a human "download" back into an organic body. The characters can be interesting, and there's some nice chemistry with Nathan and Nora (Nora being about the most rounded and relatable character.) I just wish it would dial back the obsession with sex... and not regular, healthy, adult sex, but adolescent smirk-and-snigger sex that lingers on erections and boobies and a sort of ever-present horniness that apparently defines all human beings according to the writers. There's also a bit of a creepy vibe in how women are treated - the girlfriend is way over the top of the "stuck-up manipulative rich girlfriend" scale, and there's a co-worker who keeps hitting on/borderline stalking Nora even though she's made it very clear that she has no interest, though I think some of it is deliberate. Will stick it out to the end, but I don't foresee myself eagerly awaiting another season.
 

Sage

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Thanks for that review, Brightdreamer. I was considering that show because I’m big on afterlife shows, but that gave me the information I needed to avoid (obsession with sex made me hate the first 3 eps of Hollywood, which I otherwise would have adored, & I’m feeling wary of such things at the moment).

So many shows newly available today. The Great starts, 5th season of She-ra begins, & I’ve heard that Avatar: The Last Airbender came back to Netflix (I’ve never seen it).

Then, to make my watching options more diverse, I buckled down & started my free year of Disney+ last night, when my dad was struggling to sign up on his tv & I was like, “you know...I get a free year through Verizon, & have been meaning to sign up.” I’ll prolly remember that my year ends on my birthday.

So I went from a week of having *nothing* to watch to having too many things! Woo!
 

Brightdreamer

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Sage - If you haven't watched The Dragon Prince on Netflix, I recommend that. (It takes a few eps to settle in, but it's good once it gets going.) It's by the makers of Avatar: The Last Airbender. (I also keep meaning to watch Avatar; I saw the first two eps on Prime a while back before it rotated out, and liked what I saw.)
 

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I recently rewatched Avatar and had to get savvy on how to watch for free; if only I'd known it would be coming to Netflix! But it's a great show! A lot better than I remembered from watching it as a kid. Maybe I'll check out The Dragon Prince. Another good "adult" animated show is Bojack Horseman on Netflix. It's like Mad Men, but with animal puns. It's super depressing but also really funny!
 

Brightdreamer

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Just updating now that I finished off Prime's Upload. The later episodes improve slightly, but the whole thing remains very uneven; the leads almost seem to be in another series, written to a different level. I also expected some form of payoff or follow-through on (almost universally shallow) side characters and subplots that never quite happened. And it never does shake the crude/crass angle. If there's a second season, I doubt I'll bother watching unless I hear exceptional things; like I said before, there is still potential in the idea and world and lead characters, and some of the humor was decent.
 

Kjbartolotta

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Finally caught The Great, fortunately it was pretty good. They weren't lying when they say it was historically inaccurate, the show cuts out over a decade of Catherine's live and removes some of the more outlandish IRL characters like the Empress Elizabeth, Catherine's mother, and those weird German nannies Catherine had tailing her till she was thirty. So part of me is bummed they removed all that grist for the dark comedy mill, but as long as you're super-ok with it being inaccurate, I feel like there's some thin ligament of truth running through all of it.

Nick Hoult is the best thing about it, playing Peter III as deranged frat boy. Which is accurate enough. Elle Fanning as Catherine doesn't get to chew the scenery nearly as much, she's still a naive, high-minded Disney princess going through the trauma conga, and at this point you're supposed to feel for her but not quite know what to make of her yet. The main takeaway at the start is that she comes of as painfully fluffy and out of her element, though Fanning is good at showing both the intelligence of the character and her ability to evolve and adapt under extreme circumstances. Not perfect, but I think it strikes the right tone and look forward to where it's going.
 
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I just watched the first two episodes of Derry Girls, and nearly fell out of my chair I was laughing so hard. Their Irish accents are so thick I have to watch with English subtitles, but this show is a lot of fun so far.

Recently finished watching a Korean TV show for the second time, called Hotel Del Luna. It has a lot of the exaggerated emotional scenes you might expect from Korean shows, but it also has a compelling story. The woman playing the lead was unexpectedly good, considering that she is known more as a singer. She is also gloriously beautiful, so that helps. :)
 

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I've got Hotel Del Luna in a queue -- good rec bumps it up!

Currently watching: White Lines, on Netflix. 20 years ago a Manchester lad went missing in Spain. Now his body has been found, and his sister goes to Ibiza to investigate his long-ago murder. Complicated hijinks & violence ensue. I've watched a bit over half so far, and I'll probably watch the rest of it tonight.
 

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5th season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is everything I could hope from it, at least 10 (of 13) episodes in!

BrightDreamer, I loved Dragon Prince, so that makes me even more hopeful that I'll enjoy Avatar: The Last Airbender.

I enjoyed The Great better the further I got into it, and loved where it ended. I suspect it's the end of the series, but maybe not.
 
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Sage

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Yeah, the rest of She-Ra did not disappoint. I thought I was going to have to watch the season over again when it was over, but now I think I might have to rewatch the whole thing.
 

Brightdreamer

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Watched the six-episode first season of Into The Night, the first Belgian Netflix Original series. When an unknown event turns sunlight deadly, a hijacked plane out of Brussels must fly ahead of sunrise to survive. Based on the novel "The Old Axolotl" by Jacek Dukaj.

Not nearly as painful or cringeworthy as Netflix's Another Life, this still isn't exactly top-notch streaming TV. The characters are flimsy and generally hard to sympathize with, prone to stupidly-timed bouts of stubbornness and general brainlessness, with a fair bit of testosterone causing issues of dominance. The science... this isn't any more about plausible science than Speed was about a plausible bombing scenario, though there is some lip service to the fact that one has to stay some ways north of the equator to have any hope of outrunning daylight in a commercial airplane. It even messes up its own timeline by the final episode - which is a cliffhanger of sorts, not a conclusion. The dubbing adds another layer of detatchment, dialog often very mismatched from lip movement, and the soundtrack never stops trying to convince the viewer that what they're watching is full of tension, even when it's not. Still, things do happen, and there's something oddly compelling about it as it repeatedly tries to come together. TBH, I think Rifftrax could have a lot of fun with it, given the stock-bin "mismatched strangers caught in a disaster" scenario and characters, not to mention several clunky lines and plot twists and threads that just disappear.

I wouldn't say don't watch it, but I will say not to set your hopes too high if you do.