Current Watching

[WOM]

Not a big believer in spoilers, apparently...

[WOM]

3 episodes into Umbrella Academy and I feel like I have already worked it all out. Hope I'm wrong because otherwise the rest of it is just some kind of slow reveal

My wife said the same thing. I never work stuff out, so it's never an issue.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Not a big believer in spoilers, apparently...

It's not really a spoiler (I'm told.)

[WOM]

The scene you're talking about used the exterior of Massey Hall as the Icarus, and the interior of the Elgin Theatre, just around the corner on Yonge Street.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Really? I should have known not to believe a word she said.

[WOM]

Yeah, everything was shot in Toronto and Hamilton. I recognized a lot of locations immediately, but others I had to search out online.

[Lang Spoon]

Started Dirty John. Looks trashy but compelling so far. Just about every character seems either hateable or unbelievably stupid. So it is of course a true story.

[Crusoe]

3 episodes into Umbrella Academy and I feel like I have already worked it all out. Hope I'm wrong because otherwise the rest of it is just some kind of slow reveal

No, it really is that obvious. It's still enjoyable, but utterly telegraphed.

[Patrick Thistle]

I watched "Isn't it Romantic?" on Netflix last night. Rebel Wilson stars as a woman who hates rom-coms, bangs her head and wakes up in one. Despite such an unpromising premise it was funny and made me and Mrs Thistle both laugh out loud on occasion.

[WOM]

I like her in pretty much anything. Rebel, not your missus...

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I hooked up the sky box to the internet, and downloaded the full series of Derry Girls and watched it with my dad. My god it's glorious. The scene where we're introduced to the English fella is one of the best character intros i've ever seen. It's the best thing Tommy Tiernan has ever done, even better than the depressed priest in the last episode of Father Ted. (and that bar was high) Barisan Selmy on the other hand has had plenty of experience in living in a world dominated by small women with bleached blonde hair. The episode with the miracle had me weeping.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Yeah it's wonderful, tied with The Kominsky Method as the best comedy of the year so far. I liked all the characters, but especially the Headmistress, or Top Nun, or whatever she's called. Brilliant dead pan character acting.

[WOM]

Yeah, we're at episode 7 of Kominsky and I'm sad it's almost over. Really enjoying it.

[WOM]

... the full series of Derry Girls and watched it with my dad. My god it's glorious.

My God, is it ever. One episode in and I'm in love with it.

[Hot Pepsi]

I watched Secret City and now am trying The Code. All about Canberra. It looks like a nice place. Like DC but much smaller and whiter. And dryer.

[Anorak Smith]

I'm 8 episodes into Mayans M.C. and it's excellent, however, I've not seen a single episode of Sons of Anarchy, am I missing out?

[Amor de Cosmos]

I've never watched Mayans M.C. but, SoA was hilariously camp, also quite violent but impossible to take seriously. It was like a cross between Peyton Place and a drive-in biker movie from the mid-60s. Highly recommended.

[San Bernardhinault]

Same here. SoA was fun and ridiculous. I think it sometimes found it hard to keep track of its threads and of what it actually wanted to be, but it was generally well made and good fun. My main three criticisms were that Charlie Hunnam was (unsurprisingly) rubbish; that it seemed like it chose to escalate season to season - if it had kept the violence and silliness at the levels of the first season it would have been much better; and that the violence was perhaps excessive even in the silly context.

[Femme Folle]

I started The Umbrella Academy on Netflix last night and watched three episodes before I had to stop to go to bed. I'm going to pace myself instead of racing through it, like I do with every other series.

[Simon G]

The wife and I have also started Umbrella Academy - we're both suitably hooked and are watching one episode an evening.

[Ray de Galles]

I really enjoyed last night's 'Fleabag'. Quite different from the first series in it's structure and tone but very promising for how it's going to develop. Brett Gelman's Martin and Olivia Colman's godmother just get more enjoyably monstrous as the show goes on.

[beak]

Yeah, it was good that. It's hard to call it purely comedy, isn't it? Thinking about it, I think that's something that bothered me about the first series - the odd thing being played for laughs in a way that felt a bit incongruous, a bit mugging.

[Ginger Yellow]

I often wonder what it's like being someone like Gelman, or Rob Huebel to a lesser extent, whose entire professional persona is built around being an utter slimeball. It's more than just being typecast, or the sense that there's more of Partridge in Coogan or Brent in Gervais than you thought at first. They bring it over to everything they do, publicly at least, and yet it's still clearly a persona.

I have to say it didn't seem tonally all that different to me.

[Ray de Galles]

I'm not sure it was ever conceived or presented as pure comedy really, I mostly see the term comedy-drama used to describe it. I don't think categorising it is that important though.

Do you mean PWB's asides to camera are incongruous mugging? A lot of the time they make the scene work for me.

[beak]

IDo you mean PWB's asides to camera are incongruous mugging? A lot of the time they make the scene work for me.

Oh, absolutely not.

I'm thinking like in the first series where she ends up getting with the bloke with fucked up teeth, and his having fucked up teeth is played for laughs in a more up front way than any of the stuff that's actually funny, most of which is done in a super low-key way. Mugging probably isn't the word.