What TV series are you currently watching?

[Cato]

We are working our way through...


[asin]B01FNG2KDA[/asin]


Great paranoid fantasy, although too much of it is becoming ever closer to reality!

[Cato]

We are working our way through...


[asin]B01FNG2KDA[/asin]


Great paranoid fantasy, although too much of it is becoming ever closer to reality!

Speaking of closer to reality...from the Wall Street Journal this weekend:

...Consider a more disturbing scenario. A Washington state couple grew concerned a few years ago when their 3-year-old son developed anxiety about going to bed. They didn't know whether to believe the child when he told them that someone was talking to him at night. "Wake up, little boy," he claimed he'd heard a voice in the darkness say. "Daddy's looking for you." The couple thought he was having nightmares, until they went to check on him one night and heard the voice too. "Look, someone's coming," it said as they entered their son's room. A hacker had taken control of their baby monitor, the kind you can check through an app on your smartphone.

The popularity of internet-connected security cameras, locks and home alarms has skyrocketed despite regular reports that the systems are easily hijacked. A family in Houston was horrified to learn that a live feed from the webcam in their 8-year-old daughters' room had been streaming online. The girl's mother found out only when a woman in Oregon happened across the livestream and decided to contact the family. A security company determined that hackers were able to gain access to the webcam while the young victim was playing the online videogame Minecraft.

Government spying is a further privacy concern raised by the Internet of Things. In early 2017, WikiLeaks released a trove of documents purportedly revealing the Central Intelligence Agency's ability to hack your internet-enabled television and turn it into a listening device. The same document dump indicated that the CIA has targeted Apple, designing malware that can infect "factory fresh" iPhones and snoop on users' texts, phone and FaceTime calls, and internet searches. "Siri, why do I feel like I'm being watched?"...

(My emphasis above)  See:  https://www.wsj.com/articles/siri-why-do-i-feel-like-im-being-watched-1533935861

The premise of the show is that a massive, self-aware government computer is used to compile - on an automatic basis - as much information on everyone from every device possible in a search for terrorists: most of the data is ignored, (or is it?      ), including data on non-terrorist crimes being plotted.

[drogulus]

     I have a PC and a flip phone. I have no social media presence. Anyone who enables voice functions or advertising on a Samsung TV should be spied on. Why are you buying a Samsung TV? They suck, ask the CIA what they use.

[SimonNZ]

What point are you up to in the series, Cato?

[Cato]

What point are you up to in the series, Cato?

Toward the end of Season Three, when things are looking very bad for our heroes!    Two episodes to go, then two more seasons.

Root and Shaw rock! 

[SimonNZ]

Ah...theres something I'd like to say now, but I better wait until you've seen to the end of this season.

[Cato]

Ah...theres something I'd like to say now, but I better wait until you've seen to the end of this season.

Season Three is finished!  You may write now!   

[MN Dave]

Bosch
Lodge 49
Better Call Saul

[Karl Henning]

My brother was watching Bosch.

[George]

Loved this the first time through and gonna watch it again.

[drogulus]

     I rererewatched The Jewel In The Crown from 1984. It's better each time. And, considering it's on DVD and is so old, it looks damn good.

[NikF]

Yeah, Jewel in the Crown looks good on the remastered DVD. I know it was shot on 16mm film, but I suspect it was the 'long pitch' version of 16mm. Of course, you need the right equipment (and a good eye) to benefit and appreciate it.
Also, what a fine cast.

[ritter]

     I rererewatched The Jewel In The Crown from 1984. It's better each time...

...
Also, what a fine cast.

+1 One of the great series of all time IMHO.

[drogulus]

     

Yeah, Jewel in the Crown looks good on the remastered DVD. I know it was shot on 16mm film, but I suspect it was the 'long pitch' version of 16mm. Of course, you need the right equipment (and a good eye) to benefit and appreciate it.
Also, what a fine cast.

      The series Spooks, which is much more recent, was shot on Super 16 and for that reason it's not going to be on Blu Ray.

      This came off a Blu Ray forum:

Spooks was shot on Super16.

Whilst it's not impossible to source a BD from Super16 film (The Wrestler for example) the BBC are reluctant to go down that route. I think they did it with Pride & Prejudice, but decided that there wouldn't be any more after that. That's why there are no BDs of the earlier seasons of Merlin, until they changed the film stock from Super16 to 35mm series 4 onwards.

It's not just the BBC, Fox declined the opportunity to put The Shield out on BD because it had used Super16 film, which it deemed to be insufficient quality from which to source BDs.

Life on Mars was shot on Super16, and was later transferred to a HD master, which didn't look brilliant.

    I got the Blu Ray of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) just yesterday. Somebody thought it was worth doing, and somebody was mostly wrong.

[SimonNZ]

Season Three is finished!  You may write now!   

Heh. Just wanted to say that imo the series three finale set to Radioheads Exit Music is one of the best series ends of any show. Not just the execution of the reversal of fortune for our heroes  and the total rout but the willing embrace of AI rule it finishes on. I was quite stunned when I first saw it.

[Cato]

Concerning Person of Interest....  Spoiler alert

Heh. Just wanted to say that imo the series three finale set to Radioheads Exit Music is one of the best series ends of any show. Not just the execution of the reversal of fortune for our heroes  and the total rout but the willing embrace of AI rule it finishes on. I was quite stunned when I first saw it.

Yes, most excellent!  The scene that struck us - as far as style goes - is the episode with the assassination of  (Spoiler a main character ) where the camera pulls back, and Reese is cradling the victim, illuminated on the sidewalk by a streetlight, with Finch standing to one side.  It resembled a painting by Edward Hopper.

e.g.

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

We are now on The Sopranos Season Six.

We are looking for a new comedy (tired of Frasier and Fawlty Towers after having seen them so many times). So, we just tried the first episode of The End of the F*cking World and found it to be only slightly amusing, and more than slightly disturbing, with two very unlikeable lead characters. Will not be back for more.

[Ken B]

We are now on The Sopranos Season Six.

We are looking for a new comedy (tired of Frasier and Fawlty Towers after having seen them so many times). So, we just tried the first episode of The End of the F*cking World and found it to be only slightly amusing, and more than slightly disturbing, with two very unlikeable lead characters. Will not be back for more.

Marvelous Mrs Maisel, if you have Amazon streaming.

We just finished Collateral, a Brit Netflix mini series. Thumbs down. Not very coherent, most of the characters are unlikable. Plus it feels like most of what happens happens because the script writer wants it to, not because the characters do.

[Draško]

 

[André]

Way too hot around here, so I'm indulging...



Agatha Christie spin-offs, with the Cotswold setting intact, but the avuncular Father Brown replaces Miss Marple.