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Television What Are You Watching?

I just saw that Italian period piece/legal drama Lidia Poët (Netflix in the US) has a new season. I really enjoyed the first season, so I will definitely be setting aside some time for this in the near future.

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Huntn said:
The Diplomat (2023- Netflix)
Just started Season 2, an explosive final for Season 1. This is about a career diplomat (Keri Russell) who is sent to the UK as US Ambassador, a UK warship appears to have been attacked by Russia. This is excellent, tense but on the short side, 8 episodes season 1, only 6 episodes season 2. It’s been renewed for a third season. Rufus Sewell plays her connected former ambassador husband.


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Plan to watch the Season 1 finale, then watch Season 2 right away. Probably starting this coming Friday.
 
ronntaylor said:
Plan to watch the Season 1 finale, then watch Season 2 right away. Probably starting this coming Friday.
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I wasn’t a huge fan of the husband’s character, but overall the show is well done. I will probably get over that and watch the new season too
 
To distract from the temptation to watch meaningless early chatter on TV about election returns, I'm watching some of the episodes of the 1984 PBS mini-series "Jewel in the Crown," set in India during and after WWII as India's movement towards independence gained momentum. Interesting exploration of the Raj era's tensions of race, class, religion -- and the inevitable collapse of colonial myths about "the natural order of things." The great thing about streaming it on demand via PBS Passport is they serve up the series with remastered audio. I remember how awful it was on the original DVD issue!

 
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Go ahead and laugh. I'm watching episodes of All in the Family on Amazon, since I haven't killed my Prime sub yet.

I did not remember this: back in the day a show like that could have a scene where in context of demonstrating casual racial bias, an actor could actually get away with saying "coon" on television. Now it's not even a legit word in NYT's Spelling Bee game - regardless if one had in mind a raccoon.
 
lizkat said:
Go ahead and laugh. I'm watching episodes of All in the Family on Amazon, since I haven't killed my Prime sub yet.

I did not remember this: back in the day a show like that could have a scene where in context of demonstrating casual racial bias, an actor could actually get away with saying "coon" on television. Now it's not even a legit word in NYT's Spelling Bee game - regardless if one had in mind a raccoon.
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I do remember that. Archie used to call minorities wops, spics, dagos, Yids and other offensive names.

But as you say, it was all about the context.

Though I think my all time favorite scene was Lionel doing a sly Stepin Fetchit to make fun of Archie, confirming for Arch that all black folks can dance well and like fried chicken and watermelon. 🤭

Omigod, it was hilarious. Everybody in the room was in on the joke, except for Archie.
 
Thomas Veil said:
I do remember that. Archie used to call minorities wops, spics, dagos, Yids and other offensive names.

But as you say, it was all about the context.

Though I think my all time favorite scene was Lionel doing a sly Stepin Fetchit to make fun of Archie, confirming for Arch that all black folks can dance well and like fried chicken and watermelon. 🤭

Omigod, it was hilarious. Everybody in the room was in on the joke, except for Archie.
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In December of 2023, Esquire republished Geoffrey Wolff's 1981 interview of the late Norman Lear. It's way more than a long read, but it makes you realize what a force of nature the guy was with respect to television of his era. He created a raft of TV shows that half the country ended up watching, even as Lear discouraged his own daughters from TV-viewing and was sometimes quoted as wondering why his own shows were so popular.

The republication included this photo of the start of the original spread on Lear

original 1981 Esquire take on Norman Lear.jpg​

Link to the republication:

www.esquire.com

The World According to Norman Lear

Lear has done good. And because that’s as much as anyone can do with a life, he doesn’t owe me or anyone anything, not even a single laugh more.
www.esquire.com www.esquire.com

By the mid-Seventies more than half the population of this country, inclusive of newborn babes—120 million people—watched one or another of Norman Lear’s weekly comedies. He has been said to have earned “a power and influence perhaps never attained by anyone in the history of entertainment.” Well before Archie received a vote at the 1972 Democratic Convention, pundits were writing about a “Bunker vote” reflecting the lower-middle-class anger at a tight economy and loose permissiveness. Richard Nixon watched All in the Family and thought it was rotten that Lear let Archie Bunker’s football-playing school friend be revealed as homosexual: “That was awful,” said the President of the United States. “It made a fool out of a good man.”
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Responding to complaints about the sex and violence to which children were exposed on early-evening television, the networks elected to monitor themselves lest they be monitored by monitors with sharper teeth. From seven to nine P.M. in the East the big three agreed to air no show that was “inappropriate for general family viewing.” CBS hoped to persuade Norman Lear to censor All in the Family or to agree to move it from its eight o’clock slot. The show was ousted from that time slot. Lear sued the network—and won.
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Lear has this nice safety valve, bleeding off the pressure of solemnity into a joke. But it is a curiosity of his career and temperament that he really does feel contempt for television. His daughters, while they were growing up, were discouraged from watching it and got out of the habit of seeing the things their father made for money and love, unless he asked them to watch this episode of All in the Family, that episode of Maude. It doesn’t in the least bother Lear that his daughters dislike the medium in which he works. He agrees with them, thinks as they think that television is “dangerous” because of the passivity it encourages.
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I read that Chuck Woolery has passed away. The article in which he is mentioned said that he was an early host of Wheel of Fortune and also included the name of Susan Stafford, whom I haven’t thought about in forever. I do remember her vaguely. I’m guessing she was the early version of Vanna White.

I do remember reading more recently that Chuck Woolery was also a right wing conspiracy theorist. I wonder if he could’ve made a game show out of that.
 
Spoilers ahead! Click with caution.

images

The Penguin (Max) is every bit as good as everybody says it is. The plot never forgets its Batman origin while standing on its own as a traditional mob drama that rivals the best of that genre.

Starting one week after the end of "The Batman", almost immediately the show feels like a cross between that movie and the first, more down-to-earth season of Gotham. There's even a Gothamesque scene in which Oswald declares himself the king of Gotham's underworld. It's also nice to see familiarly seedy New York locations standing in for Gotham City; a reiteration of Oswald's unusual devotion to his mother; a focus on the Falcone-Maroni rivalry; and of course Oswald's incessant scheming.

On the other end, attaching this series to “The Batman”, you will see a set or two from the movie and hear music that is very reminiscent of the film…because the composer is Mick Giacchino, Michael’s son. And of course, due to the events at the end of “The Batman”, Gotham‘s underworld is up for grabs, which is where our story starts.

The main characters are wonderfully three dimensional and the entire cast is outstanding. Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti turn in Emmy-level performances as Oz Cobb and Sofia Falcone. Milioti in particular nails every scene she's in, and it's a wide range. At times, just using her eyes, she conveys this freaking scary "psycho bitch you don't want to mess with" vibe; at other times she makes you feel sorry for her. It's a wonderful acting job!

Farrell's performance particularly impressed my grandson, who is my TV-watching buddy for all things Batman. My grandson was just starting to really like Oz when the final act came up and Oz does something terribly, terribly cruel. My grandson said he felt shocked and betrayed––that's how good Farrell's acting and the ending are.

Even the end credits are wonderfully artistic. There’s just so much going on there. Whoever did that also deserves an Emmy for title design.

To me this is easily the best show of the year.
 
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Thomas Veil said:
Spoilers ahead! Click with caution.

images

The Penguin (Max) is every bit as good as everybody says it is. The plot never forgets its Batman origin while standing on its own as a traditional mob drama that rivals the best of that genre.

Starting one week after the end of "The Batman", almost immediately the show feels like a cross between that movie and the first, more down-to-earth season of Gotham. There's even a Gothamesque scene in which Oswald declares himself the king of Gotham's underworld. It's also nice to see familiarly seedy New York locations standing in for Gotham City; a reiteration of Oswald's unusual devotion to his mother; a focus on the Falcone-Maroni rivalry; and of course Oswald's incessant scheming.

On the other end, attaching this series to “The Batman”, you will see a set or two from the movie and hear music that is very reminiscent of the film…because the composer is Mick Giacchino, Michael’s son. And of course, due to the events at the end of “The Batman”, Gotham‘s underworld is up for grabs, which is where our story starts.

The main characters are wonderfully three dimensional and the entire cast is outstanding. Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti turn in Emmy-level performances as Oz Cobb and Sofia Falcone. Milioti in particular nails every scene she's in, and it's a wide range. At times, just using her eyes, she conveys this freaking scary "psycho bitch you don't want to mess with" vibe; at other times she makes you feel sorry for her. It's a wonderful acting job!

Farrell's performance particularly impressed my grandson, who is my TV-watching buddy for all things Batman. My grandson was just starting to really like Oz when the final act came up and Oz does something terribly, terribly cruel. My grandson said he felt shocked and betrayed––that's how good Farrell's acting and the ending are.

Even the end credits are wonderfully artistic. There’s just so much going on there. Whoever did that also deserves an Emmy for title design.

To me this is easily the best show of the year.
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Watched the 1st couple of episodes. Will get back to it sometime next week when we get back to New York for the end of the year.
 
And now for a change of pace: two of the best holiday commercials out there, in their original full length versions.




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I should mention that I hate Capital One—but it’s a good commercial.
 
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Beyond the Shining: Real Ghost Stories of the Stanley Hotel (Fawesome)

This isn’t really much different in spirit (heh heh) from any of those other cheesy ghost and flying saucers “documentaries”…except this one is about the Stanley Hotel, which dedicated Stephen King fans will recognize as being the inspiration for “The Shining”.

It’s all quiet narration, unsettling music, blurry “ghost images” and still photos of the hotel—but they’re great photos! The ghost stories are pretty routine stuff, but the pictures definitely make me want to visit the Stanley. If anything, that place looks considerably more impressive than the Overlook from the movie.

Plus, it’s only 35 minutes long, so it doesn’t require a great investment of your time.
 
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Way back here I mentioned that From (MGM+) was a horror show that reminded me of Lost, though I expressed the hope that From wouldn’t jerk us around nearly as much and would build toward some actual honest-to-god answers.

I’m now up to date, having seen all of seasons two and three, and I can report that From is putting the puzzle pieces together nicely.

Admittedly, seasons two and three mostly heaped on new weirdness, though season two did end with a hopeful cliffhanger, and the season three finale at last gave us an explanation as to what the hell is going on in that ****ing creepy town.

We still don’t know how or even if the characters are going to escape, but there are two more seasons to come. The bad news is the first of them won’t even get here until 2026.
 
Huntn said:
Note, I tried to get into Dark Matter Recently, dark visually, but I failed.
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It's really really really bad. It's in a setting I know well, covers some topics I know well, and some topics I have some vague understanding of. It fails at every single one of these. The funniest thing is the baaad terminology they use. "I built a drug". No, we develop, or design, or make a drug, but we don't build it. Dude goes to the ER, doc tells him "we've found a weird psychoactive drug in your system". LOL, absolutely not how it works. Also, WTF does Dark Matter and Constellation have essentially the same story?!😀
 
SouprMatt said:
I just saw that Italian period piece/legal drama Lidia Poët (Netflix in the US) has a new season. I really enjoyed the first season, so I will definitely be setting aside some time for this in the near future.

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Gonna check that out this weekend. I had picked up a month of Netflix to watch a couple of movies so while I still have access I'll try to make the best of it. Great distraction from the coldest January I can remember in a decade or more.
 
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I've finished the fourth and final season of Evil, and it's both a hoot and a mess.

A hoot, because while this is truly a suspenseful show, at times it ventures into the outright silly, as the above still shows. Like The X Files, it combines terror and giggles, though that show tended to keep those two elements separated by individual episodes. Evil likes to put them in a blender and mix them together.

A mess, because even though it reaches somewhat of a conclusion, this show never was good at finishing storylines. Left hanging are things like whether "the 60" (the big bad in the last few episodes) suffered any kind of setback, and what happened to Lexi, the daughter with the tail. (Yes, you read that right.)

Somehow this kind of works because it's like one of those horror movies in which you think the monster has been defeated, only to find out in the last thirty seconds that the whatever-it-is is still alive.

Even so, there's enough to keep you interested, including sexual tension between David the priest and Kristen the agnostic; a grandmother who doesn't mind being in league with Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson), the show's primary villain; four daughters who stupidly keep using VR goggles that open doors to the underworld; a devout but hilarious nun (Andrea Martin); and various church officials and psychiatrists of dubious intent.

The real life story goes that the Kings (the producers) were told to finish up the storyline quickly because the show was being prematurely canceled. So much like Babylon 5, they tried to cram a lot in a little space of time.
 
The mini-series All the Light We Cannot See, based on the book of same name by Anthony Doerr. The acting is generally very good and partly distracts me from unhappiness over some of the differences between book and screenplay, not an unusual reaction on my part. I don't regret the time spent to watch it.
 
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