What TV series are you currently watching?

[SimonNZ]

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Just started watching this one -- and yes, it's a hard one to watch.

[Karl Henning]

Just started watching this one -- and yes, it's a hard one to watch.

My sister read it with her Library Book Club, and found it a rough go. If I understand/recall aright from our @Cato, the book is a fictionalization, and I cannot help feeling that the facts of the extermination camps are sufficiently dramatic of themselves. 

[Cato]

My sister read it with her Library Book Club, and found it a rough go. If I understand/recall aright from our @Cato, the book is a fictionalization, and I cannot help feeling that the facts of the extermination camps are sufficiently dramatic of themselves.

True!

Mrs. Cato and I listened to the "audio-book."  Here is an excerpt of my thoughts on the book:

"...Joseph Mengele appears as a cartoonish villain, as do the commandant and another character who helps to run things.

One thing learned from the verbatim transcripts of Nazi meetings and the writings of Albert Speer is the great hum-drum mediocrity of Nazi bureaucrats and officers.  There was no Colin-Clive mania in them, nor any smooth, James-Mason villainy, which is what you find in this novel.  Mengele almost curls his moustache in this book!

Plus, there are several anachronisms and downright mistakes: in one scene, in 1943, a small American reconnaissance airplane buzzes Auschwitz!  No, that did not and could not have happened!  Where would or could it have been based?  And why would Americans want reconnaissance of eastern Poland?!  Worse, when the main character makes it to Vienna in 1945, he describes it as being something from a "John Le Carre' novel."

John le Carre's first book came out in 1961: he was a teenager during World War II !

So it was interesting from the point of view of "how did this get published" !

Anyway, it could make a decent movie, following Alfred Hitchcock's rule that mediocre books can be improved for the big screen.


So, perhaps Hitchcock's rule is being proven correct!

[Pohjolas Daughter]

My sister read it with her Library Book Club, and found it a rough go. If I understand/recall aright from our @Cato, the book is a fictionalization, and I cannot help feeling that the facts of the extermination camps are sufficiently dramatic of themselves.

I watched about half of the first episode last night then decided that I wasn't in the right mood for it.  Will see how long I last.

PD

[SimonNZ]

Watched with a friend yesterday: the PBS two-part documentary, not the recent drama series of the same name. The same high quality as neareverything else in their American Experience series:



also watched over the last few days:



As with the books you just have to stop wondering how if he kills 20 bad guys in every town he visits he hasn't become America's most wanted vigilante. But also like the books its a better made form of Big Silly Fun.

And better cast than the films. (plus I spotted a Hitchcock-esque 1-second cameo by Lee Child in the last episode)

[DavidW]

I never came back to Ripley!

But I have been watching and enjoying After the Flood which is a nice, cozy mystery.  The kind that is serious though like a Christie, not the comedies like McDonald and Dodds or Death in Paradise.

[steve ridgway]

We've started watching the reality series My 600-lb Life about the struggles of people to lose weight. Although not in any trouble ourselves it's inspiring us to eat more healthily, get down to optimal weight and stay there.

[drogulus]

    After 8 episodes Secret Army has taken its place among the greats in my collection.

   

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Finished watching all the episodes of Shogun. The English guy is not obnoxious anymore, but several Japanese guys are. Overall, nice entertainment with some philosophies and culture in feudal Japan. Aesthetic cinematography and costumes. Fight scenes could have been better, but this is not Kurosawa.

[Iota]

It's been a while since I finished this, but I must say I was rather more impressed by this 2nd series than others here. Although perhaps not as narratively taut as Series 1, and with a few bulges and odd wild plot moment, the acting, writing and level of intensity remained compellingly high, and kept me involved throughout.
My sympathy for the supporting characters if anything was even stronger than in Series 1. And Josh Finan, who played the out-of-his-depth local lad with a dodgy moral compass, was brilliant I thought.

Pretty much the same thoughts. After enjoying the first series greatly, dived straight into the second (we are half way too) which may have proved a mistake. Does not seem believable to me that a cop will risk his career and a prison sentence to be placed on a day shift enabling him to visit his daughter living with his estranged wife.

His daughter is the one light in the darkness and the madness that surrounds and poisons him, a symbol of hope whom he loves unreservedly. She gives him a reason to fight the ravages of his imploding mind and situation, and if she goes, pretty much his whole raison d'être goes I think. Under those circumstances, that he'd do anything to maintain his connection with her, seems very plausible to me anyway.

[Valentino]

Maestro in Blue on Netflix. Still on Season 1 and obviously hopelessly in love with Klelia Andriolatou.

[Karl Henning]

Winding up Thriller at last. For the final five episodes of the series, they forwent the gothic horror themes and reverted to the crime dramas with which they had begun.

[SimonNZ]

These two on the go:

[Todd]

Watched the first three of (only) six episodes of Tires.  All are good, but the third is outstanding.  Gillis does his shtick well and is the best thing about the show, but Kilah Fox (aka, Lady Uncle from the Gilly  and Keeves show) is superb, too.  The bit where she has to upsell the white trash couple because she speaks fluent white trash is awesome.  The remaining three shows will be consumed forthwith.

[ando]

Finished watching this 2-season series yesterday. Exceptional writing and performances set in the Edwardian era, London and loosely based on an actual posh hotel proprietor who worked her up from scullery maid to revered chef and held the favor of the late king. Both seasons are on BritBox but watched the first on Prime Video which, curiously, has a much better streaming resolution. Recommended.

[drogulus]

     


    I recently received the Colditz box set from Amazon UK, so now I'm undertaking a massive rippage and taggage operation.

    A funny thing is my UHD drive rips DVDs slowly, and I might get faster results from using the built-in drive on my PC. Maybe tomorrow I'll do a test.

[George]

[DavidW]

I finished S8 of new Who

This is a reverse of the Matt Smith era.  I thought that the writing was sometimes poor, ridiculous, stupid (but with some good individual episodes), but Matt Smith is just a great doctor.  Maybe my favorite.

And here... Pete Capaldi is just too cold, pragmatic, rude etc to be anything like the other doctors.  I mean we've had some grumpy, short tempered, arrogant doctors before... but he takes the cake.  But the writing is on point.  Every episode (well okay there is one or two stupid ones) was just just so much better than it had been for years.



I like Capaldi though, I'm just not sure if this is the right direction for the character.  In fact I plan on watching In the Loop because he is just so funny in the clips I've seen:


Finally, I started and I'm totally hooked into Constellation yet another sci-fi series from Apple+.  They're just killing it here, they've really cornered the market in scifi tv.

[Todd]

I like Capaldi though, I'm just not sure if this is the right direction for the character.  In fact I plan on watching In the Loop because he is just so funny in the clips I've seen:

I suggest watching The Thick of It before watching In the Loop.  Malcolm Tucker is one of the great fictional political characters.