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What is the last Television series you watched?


Jay

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After Life

 

Haven’t watched any Gervais since Extras, so time to catch up. Nicely paced at 6 episodes, 25 minutes each. Incredibly depressing and dark, though, with some solid yet old comedy bits interspersed. His usual routine on religion and the value of life, etc. 

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Just got around to watching 2 series, and what a contrast in quality..

 

The Boys - Superheroes I guess is an important subject with people for some reason. The show has a slightly interesting twist on a concept that is unfortunately loaded with shallow direction, predictable story with not much connective world-building, and some utterly bad character-development. It feels like the plot's driving the characters, not the other way around. I have seen much better writing and direction in films that the public would dub "mediocre." I think one critic spoke succinctly when he said the title The Boys is in reference to its target audience. If people weren't so captivated by superheroes I think they would find the show to be hot air.

 

Mr. Robot - This show, by comparison, has brilliant direction and enticing character-development, much more intelligible world-building, and its most notable quality is only showing and saying what needs to inspire its story. The kind of show I feel invested in the interwoven fabric of its psychology which paints its narrative conflicts in a fluid suspense, the way each reflects on their circumstance in order to drive the plot, instead of the plot driving them, illustrating the ideal transformation into its new self, and I don't quite want to let them go when the show ends. It's a well-made show.

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On 8/11/2019 at 11:14 PM, woj said:

OITNB Season 7

 

That's a nice way to wrap up the show and resolve nearly all the hanging storylines. 

 

I knew Piper was driving to Ohio and not Northampton

 

 

On 8/12/2019 at 12:17 AM, Borodin said:

Mr. Robot - This show, by comparison, has brilliant direction and enticing character-development, much more intelligible world-building, and its most notable quality is only showing and saying what needs to inspire its story. The kind of show I feel invested in the interwoven fabric of its psychology which paints its narrative conflicts in a fluid suspense, the way each reflects on their circumstance in order to drive the plot, instead of the plot driving them, illustrating the ideal transformation into its new self, and I don't quite want to let them go when the show ends. It's a well-made show.

 

It's fantastic! I love Grace Gummers fbi character, and White rose, and Angela too. 

 

Final season starts soon. If you like Mr. Robot you'll probably like Legion, which is currently airing its final season too 

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City on a Hill: 'The Wire' set in Boston in the early 90's. Feels like a time capsule, or better, a comfortable chair to sink into. Kevin Bacon and Aldis Hodge are its main draws.

 

Billions Season 4: Entertaining trash.

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On 8/12/2019 at 3:55 PM, Jay said:

 

I knew Piper was driving to Ohio and not Northanpton

 

I would have been happy had she chosen Zelda, because I've got a big crush on Alicia Witt, but the decision to go to Ohio was in character.

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Fair enough. But to me, it was just a basic procedural dressed up in Fincher gloss. The TerrorAtlanta, The End of the F**king WorldMy Brilliant FriendHomecoming were all much better shows from the same year.

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12 hours ago, KK said:

Fair enough. But to me, it was just a basic procedural dressed up in Fincher gloss. 

 

What do you mean? I thought the writing was intelligent, experienced and mature. Combine that with beautiful cinematic Fincher images and you have a pretty good show, I would say. Perhaps you never tuned to its groove. But yes, of course, My Brilliant Friend was better. The Terror was very good too, but ultimately, I don't think the monster scenes were necessary. The men on the ships, the circumstances in which they found themselves, ... that was the real and more interesting terror. 

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It's harder to get into than Game of Thrones. I watched and quite enjoyed the first season, but it takes a while to get going. People absolutely rave about the following ones though, and I've been meaning to get around to it...

 

Remembering all of the different factions can be a bit of a nightmare in these big war serials.

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49 minutes ago, Quintus said:

It's harder to get into than Game of Thrones. I watched and quite enjoyed the first season, but it takes a while to get going. People absolutely rave about the following ones though, and I've been meaning to get around to it...

 

Remembering all of the different factions can be a bit of a nightmare in these big war serials.

 

It has far poorer casting than GoT. A curious mix of some really lame actors, a lot of mediocre ones, and a few real standouts (Jared Harris! David Strathairn!) I found it *very* hard to get into - the first time I started it, I watched two episodes, didn't understand a thing, didn't remember any characters or names, and was utterly bored. Some time later I started again because of all the online raving, and it really is fascinating once you get into it.

 

Sadly, Netflix only had the first two seasons (and now they have been removed, too, I think), so I didn't see the third one until recently when I had a free one month Amazon UK Prime membership. After such a long break, I could barely remember anything of the confusing story, and it doesn't get simpler in S3. What's worse, the dialogue has always been difficult to understand, what with the whacky Belter dialect (and a motley cast which includes thick New Zealand and Iranian accents, among others) and some lousy actors who can barely deliver their lines, and about half of the Amazon Prime episodes had messed up sub titles that appeared several seconds too early, making it even more of a mess.

 

I used the same Amazon Prime month to catch up with Outlander (Netflix only gets each new season after a year or more). Between all the soapy and softporn stuff (you think GoT is heavy on gratuitous sex scenes? Outlander is in another league altogether), it's still worthwhile, and excels in conveying the discrepancy of being caught between two different codes of ethics.

 

I wouldn't dream of actually paying for Amazon Prime streaming though. The quality sucks (the compression is obvious enough on Netflix, but here it's even worse, with extreme banding and block artifacts in any half dark scene), the content is lousy, the software sucks (and doesn't even allow you to limit your search to the content you've paid for), multi language support is ridiculous (and often unavailable), and some content isn't just only available in low resolution but apparently sourced from old VHS tapes. I seriously hope streaming grows up before physical discs go the way of the dodo. Until then, I'll stick to Blu-ray for films.

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I agree with everything said about The Expance, except maybe that it’s GOT in space.

 

It definitely takes time getting into, though, and even so, it’s still not that I’m on the edge of my seat at the start of S3.

 

But I’ve seen worse. As I said, it’s ok.

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The only issue I've ever had with the quality of Prime Video was related to the Streaming Settings when using mobile data.

 

I watched the whole Doctor Who series on Prime on a 1998 Sony Trinitron and it looked great.

 

What exactly are you watching that appears to be sourced from VHS?

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Watched the first two episodes of Mindhunter S02.  This show is a waste of Fincher's time and talent.  He needs to make a movie.  Then again maybe this mediocrity means he's lost his mojo.

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2 hours ago, Dieter Stark said:

The only issue I've ever had with the quality of Prime Video was related to the Streaming Settings when using mobile data.

 

I watched the whole Doctor Who series on Prime on a 1998 Sony Trinitron and it looked great.

 

The app on my Sony Blu-ray player, which is the only way I'm able to watch Prime other than on the computer (where I don't want to), doesn't have any settings. But the compression artifacts and banding are very obvious on this and (slightly less so) on Netflix. Especially when the source material has grain, which just gets smeared out and breaks down the compression even more.

 

The whole Doctor Who doesn't look great. Assuming you're talking about the 2005+ series, all the Eccleston and Tennant stuff was only shot in SD.

 

2 hours ago, Dieter Stark said:

What exactly are you watching that appears to be sourced from VHS?

 

I don't remember. I just browsed through their catalogue to sample some stuff, and older films (from the 80s and earlier) were often in abysmal shape.

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Looks good to me.

 

I used to use my Sony BD player to watch Netflix with a huge ethernet cable running across the house from the modem. I found the interface clunky and the video less than satisfactory.

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27 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

Not the series 4 specials!

 

I either didn't know that or I'd forgotten it. Still waiting for a reasonably priced Blu-ray box or bundle of the full series, or at least one per incarnation.

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5 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

Watched the first two episodes of Mindhunter S02.  This show is a waste of Fincher's time and talent.  He needs to make a movie.  Then again maybe this mediocrity means he's lost his mojo.

 

I’m feeling a little more positive on this show tonight, but I still feel like the whole FBI serial killer profiling sub genre has been done to death.  It gets old!

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I thought it was old with the first season itself. Can't quite muster the energy to bother with the second yet.

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I've just started watching Breaking Bad, 5 episodes in. This is rather good, isn't it? After thinking stuff like Chernobyl and GOT were severely overpraised, it's nice to watch a show that might actually live up to its hype

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SyFy cancelled Krypton.

 

I only saw S1 and thought it was ‘meh’, nd have heard both good and bad about S2. Did anyone see it?

 

I’m guessing they didn’t get the chance to close the story properly?

 

https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/krypton-canceled-syfy-lobo-spinoff-1203304877/

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- Loved the first episode of Mindhunter S2! Stylistically, it truly takes place in the same universe as Mad Men, which is one of my all time favourite shows. 

 

mindhunter-201a.w700.h467.jpg

 

 

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Marian the proper solution is not an app built into a blu ray player, nor your computer. Buy a Roku or FireTV and stick that right into the HDMI slot on your telly. Worth every penny. 

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I'm not going to buy extra hardware for a streaming service I don't intend to use anyway. ;) It wouldn't improve the available catalogue, or the risk that they might just take a series offline while you're in the midsts of watching it.

 

But I do wonder if there can really be a significant difference in picture quality between different implementations. The data has already been compressed, and how much leeway can a client have to decode it with better or worse quality? (For audio compression algorithms, we're also talking about quality differences during the encoding, not during playback). Though the built-in Netflix app on my TV at least obviously has stability problems with 2D animated content where it sometimes gets stuck and hangs with a garbled image for a few seconds while the audio continues. Obviously a bug in the decoder. But aside from that, the image quality is still better than Prime content on my Sony Blu-ray player.

 

Anyway, I've cancelled the free test membership, so it's a moo point, at least for the time being.

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21 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

I'm also currently watching the trashy show called Spartacus. It's all about violence and sex so I think that Drax will love it.

 

I only got to see a few moments of that when it first cabled. My parents reckoned it was good for a laugh.

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Mindhunter 2x01 Episode 1

 

Wooo boy I was thankful for that lengthy recap because I had forgotten a lot of what happened 2 years ago in season 1!  The whole business with them getting in trouble and having to suppress a tape of an interview and then that one guy leaking it anyway I had totally fogotten about, but then I did remember all the business with Wendy being a lesbian and having to hide it and the stray cat she feeds but then not a drop of that was shown at all in the recap so I don't get how they decide what goes in these things.

 

Anyway, I thought it was a pretty interesting premiere episode, because it didn't feature many aspects of what the show is known for, largely them on the road interviewing serial killers and occasional scenes of a current killer going about his business.  The opening with the wife who comes home to find her husband in the bathroom was similar to that stuff but not as exciting or creepy as some of those type of scene used to be.


What we did get this episode felt more like a season 1 wrapup then any kind of new direction for the show.  Dealing with Holden's panic attack, dealing with the ugy who leaked the tape, dealing with the boss who was in charge of them when this all happened, etc.  But the introduction of the new boss character that seems to want to lean into their division and all their eccentricities running it seems like the start of a slow boil that will probably have a good climax to end the season.  There was also a lot of talk this episode about OPR finding out this or finding out that and the episode made no place to remind us of what that was so which was distracting.

 

Despite this not being an "exciting" episode in any sense of the word, I'm looking forward to what the season brings

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The season gets better!  Still mostly a slow burn, but I appreciate that this season is digging into the two characters I actually like more (ie, the two that aren’t the insufferable Holden)

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I feel like TV has this new trend of every show having a character you start out liking that they slowly make you hate

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2 minutes ago, Jay said:

I feel like TV has this new trend of every show having a character you start out liking that they slowly make you hate

 

BSG consisted almost exclusively of characters you loved at one point and hated at another.

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