What TV series are you currently watching?

[SimonNZ]

I'm glad I read a Guardian review recommending this, otherwise I would have assumed the worst and never have taken a chance on this, which has turned out to be a really interesting and much more informed and considered take on the gospels than anyone could have hoped for in this current climate.

[hopefullytrusting]

Been rewatching The Cosby Show:



Amazing, groundbreaking show.

[drogulus]

    I'm alternating between Cologne and Munster and to take a break from subtitles I watch a Brit series Above Suspicion.

    Alberich and the Professor in Munsterland

[Mister Sharpe]

Indulging our happy obsession with Homicide Hills (Mord Mit Aussicht) a small town German comedy/crime drama. Third time my wife and I have watched all the episodes.  We love the characters, stories are clever and challenging and we like vicariously being in the southern German landscape. In short, much fun. Acting is occasionally over the top but no worse for that!  Its theme music bears a remarkable resemblance to Curb Your Enthusiasm.  Streamed on MHz.

[George]

Glad I gave this show a chance. Watched season one so far and really enjoying it.

[Florestan]

On AXN in the last couple of weeks:







It's quite interesting to compare these US series, especially the first two, what with their super-high-tech and armed-to-the-teeth approach, with the British ones such as Lewis or Death in Paradise, in which a completely unarmed and very low-tech approach results in exposing and arresting the culprit all the same. Assuming all series accurately depict actual criminality level and police/FBI procedures and methods, I must say that I'd rather live in the UK than in the USA: a massive power cut would render FBI all but impotent, all the while DI Lewis and DI Hathaway would go business as usual. Plus, UK murderers are much less of a public danger freaks than their US colleagues. 

Be it as it may, the leading/supporting ladies in all three series are gorgeous --- makes me wonder whether that's really how an actual female FBI agent or female private eye look like. 

[Florestan]

On second thought, though, I'd rather have a dangerous and unrepentant criminal shot dead by FBI on the spot rather than being helped by smart ass lawyers to serve just a few years and then be released on parole and reverse to what they know best: killing innocent people. Yet then again, only in the US..

[JBS]

On AXN in the last couple of weeks:







It's quite interesting to compare these US series, especially the first two, what with their super-high-tech and armed-to-the-teeth approach, with the British ones such as Lewis or Death in Paradise, in which a completely unarmed and very low-tech approach results in exposing and arresting the culprit all the same. Assuming all series accurately depict actual criminality level and police/FBI procedures and methods, I must say that I'd rather live in the UK than in the USA: a massive power cut would render FBI all but impotent, all the while DI Lewis and DI Hathaway would go business as usual. Plus, UK murderers are much less of a public danger freaks than their US colleagues. 

Be it as it may, the leading/supporting ladies in all three series are gorgeous --- makes me wonder whether that's really how an actual female FBI agent or female private eye look like. 

I confess I never watch those shows. But there seems to be a general view these shows play fast and loose with the reality of police work, and the more technological the plot device was, the less realistic it was.

After all, if you took American TV seriously, homicide was a regular feature of life in coastal Maine

[Florestan]

if you took American TV seriously, homicide was a regular feature of life in coastal Maine US

That's what my wife says: Come on, honey, it's all fiction, and bad one at that! 

[Daverz]

On second thought, though, I'd rather have a dangerous and unrepentant criminal shot dead by FBI on the spot rather than being helped by smart ass lawyers to serve just a few years and then be released on parole and reverse to what they know best: killing innocent people. Yet then again, only in the US..

The Dirty Harry and Deathwish movies are not documentaries.

For every case like that there are 99 innocent schlubs who were forced to take a plea deal because they couldn't afford a competent defense.

[drogulus]

    Cop shows I like:

    George Gently

    Prime Suspect

    The Wire

    Tatort Cologne

    Forbrydelsen

    Engrenages
   

[Florestan]

George Gently

That's a good one.

[Todd]

Being a bit leery of Androderm, yet in search of a TRT jolt, I decided to work my way through several manly man type shows.  Some have more complex plots, some less complex, but all of them give off something of a truck nuts vibe.  The majority involve Taylor Sheridan.  In qualitative order, from worst to most acceptable, with a quick word on the lead actor's or actress's work:




Season two of Hot Chicks With Guns Lioness.  The same CIA good guys turn from the Middle East to the southern border.  The plot includes Mexican drug cartels, human smuggling, a kidnapped Congresswoman, and the Chinese.  Stuff happens.  People get shot.  Things go boom.  And if there's not a hot lesbian sex scene this season, there's at least a sensual lesbian kiss scene.  Sheridan is evolving.  Zoe Saldaña is just awful, all screamy and unstable.

Show rating: D
Lead Actor Rating: F





Season one of Bronson on Parole MobLand.  Rough lad Tom Hardy plays a fixer for a British mob family headed by Remington Steele, who since his pretty boy days has developed a drinking problem and stopped going to anger management.  Part of his problem is his batshit wife, Queenie.  Stuff happens.  People get shot.  Things go boom.  An eerily powerful character with an American accent appears, though there's no chance the person is CIA, no way, no how.  Too, Mexican cartels go international.  Hardy offers an extended masterclass in small screen badassery, menacing and intimidating and, um, persuading people to do the right thing, in a situational ethics kind of way.  This is only the second Guy Ritchie entertainment I have seen, and it seems that the guy just isn't very good. 

Show rating: C-
Lead Actor Rating: A+





Season two of Rocky Goes West Tulsa King.  The mob transplant keeps on doing mobster shit.  This time pasty white villain Neal McDonough does stuff to.  So do the Chinese.  (You hear that, Putin?  The Chinese are starting to eat your bad guy lunch.)  Stuff happens.  People get shot.  Things go boom.  Sylvester Stallone delivers jaded old mob guy stuff well enough, though his daughter could take some acting tips. 

Show Rating: C
Lead Actor Rating: B-





Season one of Ren Screws Up Big Time The Bondsman.  Kevin Bacon plays a bounty hunter who does something real bad, dies, goes to hell, and then is sent back to earth by no less than Lucifer hisself to take out demons doing very bad things.  I mean, they are demons.  Stuff happens.  People get shot.  Things go boom.  With bursts of Troma levels of violence and gore, innumerable quips, and some downhome wisdom, the show entertains reasonably well.  One may detect a few plot holes, though.  Mr Bacon must surely rank as one of the fittest elderly (!) actors ever on screen, and he fits into his role very well, and obviously (and credibly) plays a few years younger than his actual years.  The rest of the cast includes no names and character actors, including "that lady" Beth Grant who ably plays Mr Bacon's mother, even though she is only nine years older than him.  It is set in the South, so it's not that big of a stretch.

Show Rating: C
Lead Actor Rating: B





Season one of Karl Childers Gets a Job Landman.  Billy Bob plays a jaded, blunt talking "landman" (ie, general manager with gumption) who works for a Don Draper type billionaire.  There's financial chicanery and lawless tomfoolery in that there oil business.  There are also Mexican drug cartels.  (One senses patterns.)  Stuff happens.  People get shot.  Things go boom.  There's also some wildcatting.  The wildest cat of all is the magnificent Ali Larter, who is the most amazingly beautiful woman in a show where all the lead women are hot.  They say stuff, too.  Sheridan makes sure of that.  This is really the Billy Bob show, with the actor sort of just owning everything.  Well, until Andy Garcia shows up in the last episode and matches him line for line. 

Show rating: B
Lead Actor Rating: A





Addendum:

Season one of David 8 Undercover Central Intelligence: The Agency.  While at first blush this show might seem to fall into the same category as the previous entries, it is much more ambitious, much more thinky.  Ripped off from a French show that was purportedly influenced by real events (I have doubts), this marks the first popular (?) entertainment I have watched that involves the Ukraine war/debacle.  But it is much more than that, what, with not only Russian baddies and Chinese baddies and Iranian baddies, but also some Sudanese in the mix.  (One wonders if executive producer George Clooney did this to keep squeeze Amal happy.)  Spycraft is on full display, with duplicity and vile sneakiness informing every scene, even when characters just fuck.  (The showrunners made sure to toss in a hot lesbian molly make out sesh to emphasize the point.)  Sure, complex stuff happens, loads of folks get shot, and things most definitely go boom, but the stakes are so much higher, and the message is so much more profound.  Fading A-list stars like Michael Fassbender and Richard Gere and Jeffrey Wright bring their C-games, while a bevy of supporting actors, some more famous and some less, do the same.  High concept and high budget, it kind of conforms to the old critique of Wagner, with thrilling moments surrounded by deadly dull quarters of an hour.  On the topic of Wagner, there's a Russian merc general who heads up a merc army called, yes, Valhalla!  Sharp, very sharp.  Nothing beats intellectual screenwriters, amiright?

Show rating: C
Lead Actor Rating: C

[SimonNZ]

Finished a second viewing of season one and starting a first watch of season two.

[Fëanor]

So I'm plodding through Tolstoy's 'War & Peace' for a second time, the first being at least 55 years ago.

While doing that I rewatched BBC's 2016 6-part TV series.  I really enjoyed this ...


However spurred by comments in the 'What are you currently reading' forum, I obtained a copy of BBC's 1972 20-part War & Peace series ...


... I'm only at episode 8 or 20.

Well for a start the 1972 series is more than 2X the viewing length of the later series:  15 hours vs. 6 hours. Other than that, how do I feel about the two?

IMHO, the latter series is in terms of production a lot slicker -- no surprise, I suppose, given advances in the art, not to mention 16:9 vs. 4:3 view ratio and resolution.  A minor item to many, but I think the '16 military uniforms are more elegant and likely more accurate.

As for the portrayal of characters both Paul Dano's Pierre Bezukhov and Lily Jame's Natasha Rostova come across better that the '72 counterparts, Anthony Hopkins and Morag Hood.  In the first instance perhaps it's surprising.  In the latter, whether the actor or more likely the direction, Natasha come across as excessively childish ... hopefully that will improve beyond episode 8. Beyond that '16 portrayals seem more congenial to me, with the minor exception of David Swift's 1972 Napoleon.  Again for 2016, Jim Broadbent's Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky and Brian Cox's Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov are up to those actors high standards. 

[George]

Mr. Robot - Season 2

[hopefullytrusting]

Finishing up House.

Overall, meh.

The only consistently good actor/actress on the show is Robert Sean Leonard (but that isn't shocking - he's a character actor).

For me, I've come to loathe this kind of show (see also Breaking Bad, Dexter, Mad Men, etc.) - I don't need to see another show like this, and I think House will be the end of me watching this kind of show. There's a lot of things to watch that aren't this; I'll watch that instead.

[Todd]

Fit for TV.  Surely most people in the US remember when one of the largest corporations on earth exploited fat folks for lulz and lucre earlier this century on The Biggest Loser.  (Exploitation makes for good, wholesome entertainment.)  The good folks at Netflix have put out a three episode "documentary" about it.  It's perhaps even worse.  A few of the contestants, who appear to have missed being on the TV and/or (understandably) have axes to grind, show up to spill the beans about what it was like behind the scenes.  (Starvation diets and dangerous workout regimens may have had pitfalls, it turns out.)  Trainer Bob Harper definitely craved the spotlight again (as well as a paycheck), and a couple producers and the show's "doctor" also pop up to plead their cases.  The self-serving blabbering of the doc and the self-unawareness of Harper and the producers makes for unintentionally cringey yet LOL inducing viewing.  This should have been part of the on-going Trainwreck series, also on Netflix.  Garbage about garbage.

[Karl Henning]

I've started re-watching the Timothy Hutton/Maury Chaykin A Nero Wolfe Mystery series. For fun and comparison, last night I watched The Doorbell Rang from the 70s series. That story led off both series (allowing for the fact that there was a Golden Spiders pilot for the 2000 series. (The older series also adapted Golden Spiders.)
So, what registered last night, and tickled me was, Anne Baxter was a guest star playing Rachel Bruner, the lady harassed by the FBI. I knew I had seen her recently, but struggled to recall wherein. With some research, ah yes! she was the guest villain Zelda the Great in the first season of Batman. Delicious!