What TV series are you currently watching?

Started by Wakefield, April 26, 2015, 06:16:35 PM

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Papy Oli

Quote from: André on September 11, 2020, 05:36:02 AM
Broadchurch is epoch-making stuff IMO. It kickstarted series like Shetland, Hinterland, Trapped.

Season 2 of the finnish series Deadwind:

Not as good as Trapped (an icelandic crime series in 2 seasons), but good nonetheless. I'd rate them in this order: Broadchurch, Shetland, Trapped, Hinterland and Deadwind.

Hi André,

Broadchurch feels indeed quite a few notches above anything else. Tennant and Coleman's acting just draw you in. I can't remember feeling knots in the stomach like that right from the off in a first episode.

I absolutely loved the Hinterland series in its own way, the darkness, the stillness, the bleak atmospheres. That you rate Shetland above that is a good sign. I have Shetland in my Britbox list as well. Never seen that one. I'll have to remedy to that.
Olivier

André

I loved the characters in Shetland. And the accents  8). Make sure to put subtitles on, this is not your regular british-accented English. I wish there was another season.

Irons

Quote from: Papy Oli on September 11, 2020, 05:45:26 AM
Hi André,

Broadchurch feels indeed quite a few notches above anything else. Tennant and Coleman's acting just draw you in. I can't remember feeling knots in the stomach like that right from the off in a first episode.

I absolutely loved the Hinterland series in its own way, the darkness, the stillness, the bleak atmospheres. That you rate Shetland above that is a good sign. I have Shetland in my Britbox list as well. Never seen that one. I'll have to remedy to that.

You mention Tennant, Olivier. I'm looking forward to "Des" which begins Monday on ITV. The likeness of Tennant to Britain's most successful serial killer Dennis Nilsen is uncanny.
You must have a very good opinion of yourself to write a symphony - John Ireland.

I opened the door people rushed through and I was left holding the knob - Bo Diddley.

Papy Oli

Quote from: Irons on September 11, 2020, 01:08:15 PM
You mention Tennant, Olivier. I'm looking forward to "Des" which begins Monday on ITV. The likeness of Tennant to Britain's most successful serial killer Dennis Nilsen is uncanny.

Saw the trailer for that one, Lol, it looks like a must-watch too.

I had never heard of Des/Dennis Nilsen, obviously way before my arrival in the UK but not a name i had come across since either.

Will be interesting to see Tennant in such a nasty role.

This household is very fond of Daniel Mays' acting, who also appears in it. That's an added bonus.
Olivier

Irons

Quote from: Papy Oli on September 11, 2020, 01:19:31 PM
Saw the trailer for that one, Lol, it looks like a must-watch too.

I had never heard of Des/Dennis Nilsen, obviously way before my arrival in the UK but not a name i had come across since either.

Will be interesting to see Tennant in such a nasty role.

This household is very fond of Daniel Mays' acting, who also appears in it. That's an added bonus.

I do recall the Nilsen saga. A truly evil man. I have read that the most gruesome parts (unintentional pun) will only be referred to. I do not know of Daniel May but according to the reviews I have read he steals it as the copper on Nilsen's trail. 
You must have a very good opinion of yourself to write a symphony - John Ireland.

I opened the door people rushed through and I was left holding the knob - Bo Diddley.

SimonNZ

#1945


Excellent 5-hour documentary on all aspects of the second Gulf War, particularly on the decision-making and in-fighting in the White House, starting on the night of 9/11 when the first memo was written asking to find a way of connecting this to Iran up to early 2008 when the doco was aired and it was still unclear which candidate this would be handed over to.


Also rewatching The Night Manager, which holds up really well on a second viewing


drogulus

Quote from: Irons on September 11, 2020, 01:08:15 PM
You mention Tennant, Olivier. I'm looking forward to "Des" which begins Monday on ITV. The likeness of Tennant to Britain's most successful serial killer Dennis Nilsen is uncanny.

     I have the first episode and will wait until I have all of them to start watching.
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Brian

Quote from: Irons on September 11, 2020, 01:08:15 PM
You mention Tennant, Olivier. I'm looking forward to "Des" which begins Monday on ITV. The likeness of Tennant to Britain's most successful serial killer Dennis Nilsen is uncanny.
One of them parts their hair the wrong way!

Irons

Quote from: drogulus on September 14, 2020, 04:08:34 PM
     I have the first episode and will wait until I have all of them to start watching.

That is my plan. Set for weekend and wiz through adverts.
You must have a very good opinion of yourself to write a symphony - John Ireland.

I opened the door people rushed through and I was left holding the knob - Bo Diddley.

Roy Bland


Papy Oli

Quote from: Irons on September 15, 2020, 12:19:39 AM
That is my plan. Set for weekend and wiz through adverts.

How was "Des", Lol ?


Finished season two of Broadchurch couple of days back. High quality again, even though the final episode and how they tied up the loose ends felt a bit rushed. 2 Episodes into season 3 now. Harrowing 1st episode, lots of very shifty characters again. Interesting linking of some characters from season 2 into season's 3 story. Gripping. Again.
Olivier

George

"I can't live without music, because music is life." - Yvonne Lefébure

Irons

Quote from: Papy Oli on September 25, 2020, 07:56:37 AM
How was "Des", Lol ?



As to be expected, dark Olivier. The acting from the three main parts is outstanding and the period brilliantly caught. Did we all smoke that much then? In every scene everyone either had a fag in their mouth or lighting one up! My only criticism is a lack of tension or surprise. The opening scene is of Nilsen (I typed Nielsen ;D) being nicked and proceeded from that point, which I think may be a mistake. So although Tennant and other cast members will receive many awards and the production faultless, in my opinion Des is very good but not great. I did watch in all one go and never felt bored though.
You must have a very good opinion of yourself to write a symphony - John Ireland.

I opened the door people rushed through and I was left holding the knob - Bo Diddley.

Todd




Brave New World.  That dude who tried to play Han Solo and Demi Moore star with a bunch of people who might be famous in the UK in a sleek show with a famous name.  Influenced by rather than following the book, and also influenced by newer sci-fi and video games, the CGI quality falls somewhere between Netflix's efforts and HBO's efforts, and the plotline includes plenty of drugs, violence, rogue AI that will destroy a chunk of humanity, and lots of orgies.  Meh.
The universe is change; life is opinion. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

People would rather believe than know - E.O. Wilson

Propaganda death ensemble - Tom Araya

Fëanor

#1954
I'm watching Grantchester, a very English murder mystery series set in "village" England in the 1950s and starring the versatile English actor, James Norton.  (See Norton in Happy Valley playing a very different role.)

The series goes back to 2014 but has recently turned up on Prime Video in Canada.  The laid-back rural English ambience reminds one of Midsomer Murders but Grantchester has a lot more personal and social commentary than the former, at least in the 1st season episodes I've seen so far.  That includes assisted suicide and homosexuality to which there was a rather different attitude back in the 1950s.


Brian

Quote from: Fëanor on September 28, 2020, 03:50:07 AM
I'm watching Grantchester, a very English murder mystery series set in small-town England in the 1950s and starring the versatile English actor, James Norton.  (See Norton in Happy Valley playing a very different role.)

The series goes back to 2014 but has recently turned up on Prime Video.  The laid-back rural English ambience reminds one of Midsomer Murders but Grantchester has a lot more personal and social commentary than the former, at least in the 1st season episodes I've seen so far.  That includes assisted suicide and homosexuality to which there was a rather different attitude back in the 1950s.
We really enjoyed Grantchester a lot early on - the second half of series 2 produces far too much personal melodrama between the characters, but the first series and a half are great. We're just starting series 3 and hoping the drama calms down a bit.

Quote from: Todd on September 27, 2020, 06:34:20 AM
That dude who tried to play Han Solo
His small role in Hail, Caesar! suggests he's going to be a star in something...just not sure what.

Jo498

dangerous rogue AI as a central plot element really seems to miss one of the main points of BNW. I found in another forum that many millenials and younger seem to have trouble understanding why the original BNW was considered a *dys*topia. At least for the alphas and betas it's earthly paradise, plain and simple, without a snake.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Jo498

Now Grantchester sounds quite interesting. I liked Endeavour quite a bit which is set about a decade later.
I was once there and did have tea and chocolate cake at the orchard, ca. 1994 when I visited a friend of mine who was studying at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Rupert Brooke: THE OLD VICARAGE, GRANTCHESTER
(Cafe des Westens, Berlin, May 1912)

Just now the lilac is in bloom,
All before my little room;
And in my flower-beds, I think,
Smile the carnation and the pink;
And down the borders, well I know,
The poppy and the pansy blow . . .
Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,
Beside the river make for you
A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
Deeply above; and green and deep
The stream mysterious glides beneath,
Green as a dream and deep as death.
—Oh, damn! I know it! and I know
How the May fields all golden show,
And when the day is young and sweet,
Gild gloriously the bare feet
That run to bathe . . .
⁠Du lieber Gott!

Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot,
And there the shadowed waters fresh
Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.
Temperamentvoll German Jews
Drink beer around;—and there the dews
Are soft beneath a morn of gold.
Here tulips bloom as they are told;
Unkempt about those hedges blows
An English unofficial rose; And there the unregulated sun
Slopes down to rest when day is done,
And wakes a vague unpunctual star,
A slippered Hesper; and there are
Meads towards Haslingfield and Coton
Where das Betreten's not verboten.

εἴθε γενοίμην . . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester!—
Some, it may be, can get in touch
With Nature there, or Earth, or such.
And clever modern men have seen
A Faun a-peeping through the green,
And felt the Classics were not dead,
To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,
Or hear the Goat-foot piping low: . . .
But these are things I do not know.
I only know that you may lie
Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . .
Still in the dawnlit waters cool
His ghostly Lordship swims his pool,
And tries the strokes, essays the tricks,
Long learnt on Hellespont, or Styx.
Dan Chaucer hears his river still
Chatter beneath a phantom mill.
Tennyson notes, with studious eye,
How Cambridge waters hurry by . . .
And in that garden, black and white,
Creep whispers through the grass all night;
And spectral dance, before the dawn,
A hundred Vicars down the lawn;
Curates, long dust, will come and go
On lissom, clerical, printless toe;
And oft between the boughs is seen
The sly shade of a Rural Dean . . .
Till, at a shiver in the skies,
Vanishing with Satanic cries,
The prim ecclesiastic rout
Leaves but a startled sleeper-out,
Grey heavens, the first bird's drowsy calls,
The falling house that never falls.

God! I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
For England's the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go;
And Cambridgeshire, of all England,
The shire for Men who Understand;
And of that district I prefer
The lovely hamlet Grantchester.
For Cambridge people rarely smile,
Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;
And Royston men in the far South
Are black and fierce and strange of mouth;
At Over they fling oaths at one,
And worse than oaths at Trumpington,

And Ditton girls are mean and dirty,
And there's none in Harston under thirty,
And folks in Shelford and those parts
Have twisted lips and twisted hearts,
And Barton men make Cockney rhymes,
And Coton's full of nameless crimes,
And things are done you'd not believe
At Madingley on Christmas Eve.
Strong men have run for miles and miles,
When one from Cherry Hinton smiles;
Strong men have blanched, and shot their wives,
Rather than send them to St. Ives;
Strong men have cried like babes, bydam,
To hear what happened at Babraham.
But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester!
There's peace and holy quiet there,
Great clouds along pacific skies,
And men and women with straight eyes,
Lithe children lovelier than a dream,
A bosky wood, a slumbrous stream,
And little kindly winds that creep
Round twilight corners, half asleep.
In Grantchester their skins are white;
They bathe by day, they bathe by night;
The women there do all they ought;
The men observe the Rules of Thought.
They love the Good; they worship Truth;
They laugh uproariously in youth;
(And when they get to feeling old,
They up and shoot themselves, I'm told) . . .

⁠Ah God! to see the branches stir
Across the moon at Grantchester!
To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
Unforgettable, unforgotten
River-smell, and hear the breeze
Sobbing in the little trees.
Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
Still guardians of that holy land?
The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
The yet unacademic stream?
Is dawn a secret shy and cold
Anadyomene, silver-gold?
And sunset still a golden sea
From Haslingfield to Madingley?
And after, ere the night is born,
Do hares come out about the corn?
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Papy Oli

Quote from: Irons on September 26, 2020, 12:07:17 AM
As to be expected, dark Olivier. The acting from the three main parts is outstanding and the period brilliantly caught. Did we all smoke that much then? In every scene everyone either had a fag in their mouth or lighting one up! My only criticism is a lack of tension or surprise. The opening scene is of Nilsen (I typed Nielsen ;D) being nicked and proceeded from that point, which I think may be a mistake. So although Tennant and other cast members will receive many awards and the production faultless, in my opinion Des is very good but not great. I did watch in all one go and never felt bored though.

Thank you Lol.

Maybe typing Nielsen was your brain considering all that smoking as "inextinguishable"  :P

We've finished "Broadchurch" season 3 this week end. Just brilliant really, although quite a hard watch, even harder than the first 2 series. Not sure if we're in a mood to follow on with "Des" straight away !!  We might finally give "The Crown" a proper go on Netflix after all this time.

In the meantime, we watched an episode of "Our Friends in the North" on Britbox last night. My partner saw it at the time and she recommended it. Ecclestone, Gina McKee, Daniel Craig, Mark Strong and some more decent actors in that. I'll see how we get on although I find it hard to compute with Daniel Craig playing a cocky so and so with a North East accent !!  :laugh:



Olivier

SimonNZ

Quote from: Jo498 on September 28, 2020, 05:47:29 AM
dangerous rogue AI as a central plot element really seems to miss one of the main points of BNW. I found in another forum that many millenials and younger seem to have trouble understanding why the original BNW was considered a *dys*topia. At least for the alphas and betas it's earthly paradise, plain and simple, without a snake.


"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture."

Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves To Death