Topic: What TV series are you currently watching?

[SimonNZ]

Watched an episode a week with a friend over 15 or 16 weeks. I had originally started it when it first came out but stopped as it seemed an unusually unfocused project from Burns. Now I'm glad to have seen it and it has much to recommend it, including avoiding standard or familiar footage and searching the archives for unseen film. But the framing device they attempt at showing the experience through four distinct communities never works, imo.  Even by the end I couldn't keep it clear of who came from where or of how it ultimately made any difference. Still very very good, but usually Burns treatment of a subject becomes the first recommendation for a documentary on that subject, but sadly I can't say that's true here.

[Ken B]

Watched an episode a week with a friend over 15 or 16 weeks. I had originally started it when it first came out but stopped as it seemed an unusually unfocused project from Burns. Now I'm glad to have seen it and it has much to recommend it, including avoiding standard or familiar footage and searching the archives for unseen film. But the framing device they attempt at showing the experience through four distinct communities never works, imo.  Even by the end I couldn't keep it clear of who came from where or of how it ultimately made any difference. Still very very good, but usually Burns treatment of a subject becomes the first recommendation for a documentary on that subject, but sadly I can't say that's true here.

Yeah, that pretty much matches the reaction I had.

[André]

15 minute episodes. I watched the first 3. I reserve judgment as to whether it is special, but unusual it certainly is. The character of Ryan’s co-worker played by Punam Patel is a hoot. I like the format, too. The smart, punchy dialogues are  delivered with verve.

[milk]

HBO's Chernobyl


Extremely well-done show but, of course, very dark, very frightening, horrific and sad. Really great though.

[Fëanor]

Watched an episode a week with a friend over 15 or 16 weeks. I had originally started it when it first came out but stopped as it seemed an unusually unfocused project from Burns. Now I'm glad to have seen it and it has much to recommend it, including avoiding standard or familiar footage and searching the archives for unseen film. But the framing device they attempt at showing the experience through four distinct communities never works, imo.  Even by the end I couldn't keep it clear of who came from where or of how it ultimately made any difference. Still very very good, but usually Burns treatment of a subject becomes the first recommendation for a documentary on that subject, but sadly I can't say that's true here.

Started to watch but found it too Americentic.

I did enjoyed Burns' Civil War, Jazz, and Prohibition efforts however.

[George]

[Daverz]

The Deadwood Movie was a worthy close to the series (10 13 years on!).  At first the actors seemed to be chewing on that famous literary dialog, but either they warmed up to it or I did.

[SimonNZ]

Started to watch but found it too Americentic.

I did enjoyed Burns' Civil War, Jazz, and Prohibition efforts however.

My friend mentioned that in a couple of specific places, but I accepted it within the stated framework.

Looking down the Burns filmography now, the ones I've seen in bold:

Brooklyn Bridge (1981)[a]
The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God (1984)[a]
The Statue of Liberty (1985)[a]
Huey Long (1985)[a]
The Congress (1988)[a]
Thomas Hart Benton (1988)[a]
The Civil War (1990; 9 episodes)[a]
Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1991)
Baseball (1994; 9 episodes - updated with The Tenth Inning in 2010, with Lynn Novick)
Thomas Jefferson (1997)
Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery (1997)
Frank Lloyd Wright (1998, with Lynn Novick)
Not For Ourselves Alone: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (1999)
Jazz (2001; 10 episodes)
Mark Twain (2001)
Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip (2003)
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2005)
The War (2007, with Lynn Novick; 7 episodes)
The National Parks: America's Best Idea (2009; 6 episodes)
Prohibition (2011, with Lynn Novick; 3 episodes)[45]
The Dust Bowl (2012; 4 episodes)[46]
The Central Park Five (2012, with Sarah Burns and David McMahon)[47]
Yosemite: A Gathering of Spirit (2013)[48]
The Address (2014)
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (2014; 7 episodes)[47][49]
Jackie Robinson (2016, with Sarah Burns and David McMahon)[50]
Defying the Nazis: The Sharps' War (2016)[51]
The Vietnam War (2017, with Lynn Novick; 10 episodes)[52]
The Mayo Clinic: Faith - Hope - Science (2018, with Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers)

Watched The Congress just the other night, and it was as good as a 90-minute overview could be, but really deserves to be its own 16-part series.

[Todd]

What/If.  Pure trash, in a what-the-hell, let's-watch-it-anyway sorta way.  Starting with a gender reversed Indecent Proposal premise, the series is a mishmash of over the top, detached from reality nonsense.  The viewer gets the following:

1.) An emaciated, super-sleek looking Renée Zellweger chewing scenery as the least intimidating billionairess VC investor ever delivering some horrid dialogue in a fashion at times so wooden it threatens to turn into quartz. 

2.) The almost inhumanly adorable Jane Levy trying to occasionally act tough as a biotech startup exec and emote when confronted with earth-shattering facts about people in her life.  There's one scene where she's dolled up that's almost unbearable to watch. 

3.) A dude from a Richard Linklater movie playing Levy's really, really angry lunk of husband.  He does bad stuff, but he means well.  His delivery does turn to quartz.

4.) A troubled married couple whose troubles are compounded by the psychotic surgeon the wife unwisely nails.

5.) A couple of hot, ethnically diverse execs who do stuff.  Spoiler: They screw.

6.) FDA hearings that get scheduled on a whim!

7.) Medical trials that take a month!

8.) Gay men in threesomes and taking shrooms!

9.) Julian Sands!

Yes, if Netflix releases more episodes, I will watch them. 

[drogulus]

HBO's Chernobyl


Extremely well-done show but, of course, very dark, very frightening, horrific and sad. Really great though.

     Qualitatively it's already being compared to the best. IMDb gives it the highest rating it's ever recorded. Quantitatively it will almost certainly reach a smaller audience than any of the other best list shows. It hasn't been released on digital yet (officially, that is).

[Introverted]

Recently:

Only just got around to watching this Show after having heard good things about it for a while.
I am very impressed so far - I found the Series pretty hard to watch sometimes but it's thought-provoking too.
Having finished Series #1 & 2 I am now viewing Series #3 on catch-up TV...

[drogulus]

     Quatermass And The Pit, the original 1958 production.

     

[NikF4]

     Quatermass And The Pit, the original 1958 production.

     

Good stuff.

[SimonNZ]

Season 4. Still loving it more than Breaking Bad.

Is Season 5 to be the last? Not looking forward to them having to explain the BB absence of a couple of my favorite characters.

[George]

Season 4. Still loving it more than Breaking Bad.

Is Season 5 to be the last? Not looking forward to them having to explain the BB absence of a couple of my favorite characters.

I absolutely love it more than Breaking Bad (and I liked Breaking Bad a lot.)

I think I read somewhere that there will be two more seasons.

[Todd]

Chernobyl.  Very well done, with two notable flaws, one minor and one nearly show-killing.  The minor flaw is the irrelevant storyline about the small crew that goes around killing irradiated domesticated animals.  The nearly show-killing flaw is the use of English speaking actors, most with an English accent, in a show set in the Soviet Union.  British accents are fine in Westeros, but not an historically real place.  As The Americans shows, using Russian speakers with subtitles is most effective.  Netflix demonstrates the same thing in its non-dubbed, non-English language shows. A missed opportunity.  I guess it was nice to see Ulysses Grant have such a prominent role.

[Ken B]

Chernobyl.  Very well done, with two notable flaws, one minor and one nearly show-killing.  The minor flaw is the irrelevant storyline about the small crew that goes around killing irradiated domesticated animals.  The nearly show-killing flaw is the use of English speaking actors, most with an English accent, in a show set in the Soviet Union.  British accents are fine in Westeros, but not an historically real place.  As The Americans shows, using Russian speakers with subtitles is most effective.  Netflix demonstrates the same thing in its non-dubbed, non-English language shows. A missed opportunity.  I guess it was nice to see Ulysses Grant have such a prominent role.

That's what killed Shakespeare's Julius Caesar too, dialogue in English.

[Todd]

That's what killed Shakespeare's Julius Caesar too, dialogue in English.

I'm not sure Bill was shooting for a realistic presentation of history, but I could be wrong.

[drogulus]

     I hear Vladdy wants to produce his own Chernobyl series that tells the all important truth that Russians speak Russian.

     The series featured the usual historical inaccuracies, particularly in the use of a composite character, the physicist who stood in for a large team of scientists.

     

[drogulus]

     I finished episode 3 of the Quatermass series. They've discovered the creatures in the vessel.

     The movie of the story was pretty good, too. I do prefer Andre Morell to Andrew Kier as the professor. Morell was Tiberius in The Caesars, and he was absolutely brilliant.