What TV SHOWS are you watching?

I wasn’t expecting much with Dune, especially since it’s somewhat based on Brian Herbert’s stiff. It was ok.
I love Dune and I will continue to watch it before I decide, but it’s just ok to start.

I'm rewatching Sherlock. I don't know why. I'm struck by how it is kind of absurd and a little surreal at times, almost in the tone of the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or some other comic. I still remember the series finale, which was bizarre. Lots of backlash against the fourth seaon.

The show's somewhat contempt for fans mirrors the attitude of Gatiss' character Mycroft, who sounds a lot like Gatiss does in interviews, "These goldfish can't appreciate my genius."

Some Googling revealed that Gatiss created a show called "The League of Gentlemen" which had nothing to do with the Alan Moore comic.

I hated Sherlock. But I do enjoy listening to the BBC audio drama episodes of the original stories sometimes.

My prediction for Dune Prophecy is that it'll be cancelled after 1-2 seasons and then become a beloved cult classic for fans. Because its biggest flaw is its greatest draw - it's Dune. It'll have a hard time keeping larger audiences, I think. But I also thought that about Game of Thrones when it started.

I loved the BBC Sherlock. The last season was not great as I recall. But that first season was a banger.

Last night I watched the first episode of Dune: Prophecy. Ended up getting 6 months of Max for $3 a month on their Black Friday deal.

Anyway... it didn't blow me away. I'll watch the second episode because I want to see if it picks up steam but it just didn't grab me much. It does look nice.

My wife told me to watch AP Bio, because her students are really annoying her right now and I think she enjoys the main character trashing on his students. So I started watching it, and although it felt kind of stilted and dumb at first, it is, to my shame, really growing on me, and I am now into the second season, which is not so much a testament to the show but perhaps a reflection of how much grading I have at the end of the semester.

“Okay, so there's four basic categories of happiness that I'm going to want to focus on all right? One, work a job where you can see the physical results of your labor at the end of each day. Two, make up mundane celebrations to distract you from your inevitable death. Number three, ingest sugary, fatty, and salty things that release endorphins in your brain. And four, partner with a convenient person within a 20-mile radius to procreate and therefore feel as though a memory of you will live on.”
— Jack Griffin, A.P. Bio, Season 2: Happiness

I have not watched AP Bio, but Glenn Howerton is hilarious and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is one of the best television shows ever made.

I tried the first two seasons of Sherlock (BBC) and gave up. It was a triumph of style over substance, favoring cool gotcha moments over actual storytelling. I had a similar reaction to Luther (BBC) and gave up after two seasons. Idris Elba was really cool as Luther, but the stories were sloppy rubbish from incompetent writers. Is this a widespread problem with BBC dramas?

I also finally gave up on The Vampire Diaries. For five seasons, I was pleasantly surprised by the writing. I expected a CW teen soap plus supernatural shenanigans, but the actual show was light on the soap and heavy on the supernatural action, with a surprisingly high body count. Even season six was still good, though the soap factor got dialed up. Season seven had a lot of potential with the heretics, delving deep into their backstory and personalities, but the writing got sloppy. Several episodes before the end of the season, the heretics written out and the writing got really fast and sloppy. I finished the season with the hope that they would nail the ending of the season, but it was still bad. I don't feel any urge to watch the eighth and final season, let alone either of the spin-off shows. I don't know if it is a coincidence, but the decline in quality of the writing seemed to coincide with a significant increase in various characters drinking or at least mentioning bourbon.

I've now seen the first 2 episodes of Dune: Prophecy, and the first episode of The Penguin.

The first 10 minutes of The Penguin was better than all of Dune Prophecy so far.

The first 2 eps of Disney+' Star Wars Skeleton Crew are.....FUN! It's a pretty silly show and it is LOADED with easter eggs including stuff from but it's well done, even if it plays out like an AI generated Steven Spielberg Star Wars script.

Turns out I LIKE a steven Spielberg Star Wars show

The first 2 eps are just setting up the quest for One Eyed Jacks Treas.....er the journey home so can't wait till ep 3. Very curious where it is gonna go.

I've been wondering about that one. It seemed to get good buzz but its hard to tell with Star Wars stuff.

I still haven't watched episode 2 of Dune Prophecy. I'm telling myself that I'm waiting to binge later, which is likely to happen. But it may be a while later.

Still enjoying Silo the best of the current airing stuff. Apple has a lot of good shit and yet I still don't see their streaming service as viable for some reason.

Finished all three seasons of Clarkson's Farm. It was a fun show. I'm sure they play up for the cameras and editing is everything, but it was still good because he does get into all sorts of farming stuff and how easily different ventures can go belly-up.

ChristopherMD wrote: Still enjoying Silo the best of the current airing stuff. Apple has a lot of good shit and yet I still don't see their streaming service as viable for some reason.

Viable for you, or viable as a business? I can’t comment on the business model, but I think the decision to focus on fewer original programs over years of library at least gives Apple TV an identity. You literally can’t watch every new release on Netflix or Hulu any given week, but you can at least keep up with trailers for new Apple shows. It feels, too, like there’s a lot less ‘content’ on Apple. People actually wanted to make those shows, not algorithms.

But it does feel like a worse value with the smaller library and transparently releasing shows in order to hit maximum monthly fees doesn’t feel great either.

Maybe that's it. What you're seeing as a strength - its curated selection - I just assumed was not enough overall content to compete with more prolific services.

Unless you’re Disney or HBO and people know your back catalog has The Lion King or The Sopranos, I feel like the value promise of an infinite library is outweighed by the time wasted finding anything worthwhile amongst the hundreds of hours of sub-Redbox-exclusive dreck on Paramount Plus or Peacock. Even just a rotating human-picked list of ten top Westerns or romantic comedies every week could do wonders for Netflix. Let the degenerates find Ouija Exorcist on their own. Give the rest of us some guidance.

DarthJoJo wrote: Let the degenerates find Ouija Exorcist on their own.

www.imdb.com/title/tt4859032/

I don't know why I'm even surprised at this point.

I watched the third and final season of Derry Girls. Such a delightful and hilarious look at Northern Ireland in the 80s, and also sadly poignant at times. Two thumbs up. It's kind of crazy and fascinating how the weave the Troubles through the show, how it was just part of their lives.

“You can’t ring Childline every time your mother threatens to kill you.” – Michelle

“My auntie went to England years ago to get the abortion, never came back. Never got the abortion either. Look at you James!” – Michelle

Footnote: When I was growing up we used to pore over the Guinness book of World Records. I found out as a youth (probably 9 or 10) that one of the editors had been killed by the IRA.

Assassination

On 27 November 1975 at 6:45 p.m., McWhirter was shot and killed by Provisional IRA Volunteers Harry Duggan and Hugh Doherty, members of the Active Service Unit (ASU), later dubbed the Balcombe Street Gang,[13] for whose capture McWhirter had offered a reward. McWhirter was shot at close range in the head and chest with a .357 Magnum revolver outside his home in Village Road, Bush Hill Park.[14] He was taken to Chase Farm Hospital but died soon after being admitted. Duggan and Doherty were apprehended following the Balcombe Street siege and charged with murdering McWhirter in addition to nine other victims.[13] They were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1977 but released in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.[15]