What TV SHOWS are you watching?

I watched and loved Babylon Berlin a while back. Subsequently I tried to listen to the original book on audio.

I think this is a rare occasion where the show is greater than the source material. Don't know if it was not a great book or the translation was uninspired or the reader not great that makes this so.

I recommended my daughter check out Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and now I'm watching through it again with her. Loved it the first time. Really love it the second. 50's housewife, Midge Maisel, accidentally becomes a stand-up comedian, interacting (fictionally) with some luminaries of the time like Lenny Bruce and Red Skelton. The energy and style of this show is so incredibly charming, and the dynamic between Midge and her manager, Susie, is probably going to be one of the great friendships/partnerships in TV history. Outstanding show. Amazon Prime, y'all.

I've started season 4 of The Larry Sanders Show which I hear is the best season and I think that's true so far. I'm having more lol moments per episode than others. I think replacing Darlene (Hank's assistant) with Scott Thompson was an insanely good move. The scene of him making cappuccinos too hot had me in stitches.

Since the show was of a mock talk show, there were lots of cultural references in the jokes. I am flabbergasted that a show in the early to mid 90's had this many jokes about Hillary Clinton in jail. It's astonishing. I don't even remember jokes about her back then (I thought it was all O.J. all the time)

I second Grudunza's rec of Mrs. Maisel. Really wonderful.

Finished watching The Terror and it was excellent. I remember learning about the expedition in school when I was a kid. Never heard the part about the evil bear though. Second half of the season seemed to rush forward but it didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the story.

I'm watching Sharp Objects (Murder mystery? Amy Adams? HBO? I'm in). And it's a bit slow. I'm three episodes in and the acting is top notch, I also dig the fragmented story telling thing with flashbacks to her youth. It's pretty suffocatingly dark though and I've been a little grossed out at times.

Old news to most of you, but slogging my way through season two of the Handmaid's Tale. At the halfway point.

It's grim work, and sometimes unsatisfying. The revelation that the Handmaids are not the only fertile women in Gilead is problematic for various reasons. It rather calls into the question the entire premise of the show, and makes the already difficult on-screen cruelty harder to bear or to justify. All that suffering now seems rather unnecessary, brutality for the sake of it.

At the same time, the writing is very sharp offering an unrelenting mirror to the everyday suffering women experience in modern society all over the world. I was particularly taken by the way that episode 6 offered a metaphor for the way patriarchy also imprisons men to some extent, in the relationship between Nick and Eden.

I'm surprised to find that although all my sympathies lie with the handmaids, Serena is perhaps the most interesting character. Her acting in the scene, in the same episode, where she rebukes June for asking to see Hannah is quite brilliant. And I'm not sure what the directorial intent was in showing her facing down angry, abusive protesters prior to Gilead, but my entire support was behind the frothing crowds calling her a fascist.

I'm in season five of Larry Sanders Show now, so hopefully I'll be able to finish this and next season in the next 2-3 days. This David Duchovny stuff is great. The whole thing is great.

One thing that sticks out as a real anomaly to me is why are there actual musical acts in some of the episodes? Don't get me wrong, it's fun to watch performances and the Clint Black performance was incredible, but this is a show about a mock TV late talk show, it's not actually an actual talk show, so why are there actual musical acts? What a weird decision to incorporate that into the show. I still like them though.

Disenchantment a Netflix original.

Apparently this is show created by Matt Groening creator of The Simpsons and Josh Weinstein who was a producer and writer on The Simpsons and Futurama.

What can I say about this show other than it is super unfunny. I've made it through 20 minutes of episode 1 and I've had to turn it off. Just garbage, utter complete garbage. You know how the last 10 to 15 years of The Simpsons sucked or how the Netflix produced episodes of Futurama sucked. Yah, this sucks like that.

I've heard the exact same thing from others, repo. Definitely will miss it.

repoman wrote: Disenchantment a Netflix original.

Apparently this is show created by Matt Groening creator of The Simpsons and Josh Weinstein who was a producer and writer on The Simpsons and Futurama.

What can I say about this show other than it is super unfunny. I've made it through 20 minutes of episode 1 and I've had to turn it off. Just garbage, utter complete garbage. You know how the last 10 to 15 years of The Simpsons sucked or how the Netflix produced episodes of Futurama sucked. Yah, this sucks like that.

I tried watching it, but, it just isn't funny. It's dreary and watching it is laborious. It should have never been made and I don't understand how it got a green light.

God it’s awful. Have you noticed how much weird silence is in it?

The writing is abysmal- non stop hackneyed jokes, barely inspiring even a smirk. None of the characters are funny or endearing.

I bet Netflix execs were like “well, shit” when they screened it.

Netflix needs to put constraints on run times to force a little creativity on creators.

Michael Barnes wrote: God it’s awful. Have you noticed how much weird silence is in it?

Totally off topic but I was recently watching the animated reconstruction of Patrick Troughtons Doctor Who Dalek episode which name escapes me. The pacing and dialogue execution is so different from modern shows. It just really stood out in this (horribly) animated version. It is not wrong by any means, it is just so non frenetic.

To get the filthy taste of Disenchantment out of my brain, I watched a first season episode of the original Hawaii 5-0 on CBS All Access.

Ya know what? As far as cop shows go it's pretty damn good. No "zoom and enhance" magic nor "clickity clickity - I'm in" hacking into the nuclear launch computer crap like modern shows. Just good old fashioned "Gimme a list of every main lander with brown eyes that's come to the island in the last six months", stake outs, car chases with big ass Mercury automobiles and the all time classic line "What's the word on the street, Kono?"

Aww yah, that's the good stuff. And the never ending screech of those shitty ass bias tires. You kids don't know nuthin' bout that.