Current Watching

[Hot Pepsi]

[Benjm]

That sounds like Mysterious Island, NS. It turns up now and again on Talking Pictures, Legend and other thriftily budgeted digital channels.

[Nocturnal Submission]

This has stirred a bitter childhood memory.

I would often be enjoying a TV programme in the early evening, only to be told to turn it off and go to bed. My mum kept strict bedtime hours and was fairly inflexible about them. One film has stuck in my mind - a bunch of American Civil War POWs escape from a camp in a balloon and end up in some sort of land that time forgot. Obviously I don't know the story proceeded from there.

Ring bells with anyone?

[Hot Pepsi]

Ah, sounds fantastic. I was thinking of The Land That Time Forgot possibly same stable.

I recalled seeing part it it on a Disney Channel free weekend when I was about 10, and thought it looked cool. So now, 40+ years later, I saw it on Disney+ and thought maybe it would be entertaining.

But it’s just awful.

The guy who used to be on Good Morning America gives the most wooden performance I’ve ever seen.

The main “eskimo” is a stereotype of the simple-but-helpful asian sidekick.

The special effects are awful even for 1974. The “Old Norse” spoken by the Vikings is just modern Swedish and Norwegian.

Good performance by the dog.

[Tony C]

‘When Bob Marley Came To England’ documentary on BBC iplayer is very good.

[Sits]

Ah, sounds fantastic. I was thinking of The Land That Time Forgot possibly same stable.

[Hot Pepsi]

No, an airship and vikings.

[Sits]

Is that the one with dinosaurs and cave people?

[Hot Pepsi]

I’m watching The Island at the Top of the World. (1974)

Breathtakingly terrible film.

[Sits]

I watched both series of Trigger Point (starring Vicky McLure fron Line of Duty). After the first couple of episodes, I thought that this is going to be crap. It did improve, but not significantly.

Agreed. Not a patch on LoD but thinks it is.

We are now watching the latest iteration of Dalgliesh starring Bertie Carvell in the role Roy Marsden owned so well. Considering the odious character he played in Doctor Foster, Carvell does a decent job. It’s not groundbreaking but sits comfortably in the Morse zone. And not everything has to be relentlessly grim.

[WOM]

Trial By Media is an interesting little docu-series on a bunch of ‘made for court tv’ crimes in the States from the mid-90s through the oughts. Hot Pepsi and ursus arctos would likely know all the stories, but it’s a bit of a trip. It’s on Netflix.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The BBC's The Space Shuttle that Fell to Earth, about the loss of the Columbia, is fascinating, infuriating, incredibly moving. It leaves you full of admiration for some and full of contempt for others. It's brilliant.

Thanks for the tip HO, I’ll watch it. I know some of the history already, in particular I have a vague recollection of reading about the shocking absence of safety prioritisation at NASA, but no doubt I’ll learn a lot from it.

[DPDPDPDP]

I watched both series of Trigger Point (starring Vicky McLure fron Line of Duty). After the first couple of episodes, I thought that this is going to be crap. It did improve, but not significantly.

[Hot Orange]

The BBC's The Space Shuttle that Fell to Earth, about the loss of the Columbia, is fascinating, infuriating, incredibly moving. It leaves you full of admiration for some and full of contempt for others. It's brilliant.

[Bored Of Education]

Oh, it’s frightening.

[Sits]

I correctly guessed that one of the actors in S2 of Crime could be Dougray Scott's son, and sure enough it was (Gabriel Scott).

Now we have started Mr. Bates Versus The Post Office which has finally arrived on an infuriatingly ad-laden commercial channel. We've just seen Ep.1 - my God, now this really is bleak. Just utterly awful what went on.

[DPDPDPDP]

Working our way through Series 2 of Irvine Welsh's Crime. It's very good but my God it's bleak.

I watched both series recently. Agree with you that it’s bleak, but very good nonetheless.

[RobW]

Have just started I'm A Virgo and sufficiently satisfied with episode one to continue watching.

[Simon G]

I completed Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt today (the actual series, the special I've got 5 mins into and given up because it's one of those pick your own story things that I hate).

I absolutely loved it, it was easy viewing and completely and utterly stupid. It helps that Ellie Kemper is probably my first celebrity crush since Anna Kournikova when I was in my early to mid-teens.

[Plodder]

I really enjoyed that. Better than expected.

[Sits]

Working our way through Series 2 of Irvine Welsh's Crime. It's very good but my God it's bleak.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Popped out tonight with the missus to a screening (by the local branch of a French cultural promotion outfit called Alliance Francaise) of the 2017 French film "Le Brio", starring Daniel Auteuil as a curmudgeonly old conservative and racist law professor who, in order to head off possible dismissal at a disciplinary hearing about his racist comments in lectures, is given the task of coaching a female law student of north African ethnicity from the banlieue (played by Camelia Jordana) for a national rhetoric/debating competition. Wiki doesn't do the plot or the tenor of the flim justice at all. It was sodding wonderful, and the missus and I both absolutely loved it. Best film I've seen for months.

[diggedy derek]

Yes. That documentary is remarkable. I watched it wondering just how it could exist, and how you would go about making it happen

[Foot of Astaire's]

Watched Beyond Utopia on BBC catch up last night. A Storyville documentary about people defecting from North Korea. Absolutely gripping and the risks that so many must have taken to get some incredible secret footage, are off the scale.

[Ray de Galles]

A minor, possibly slightly spoilery, question for people who have seen all of True Detective S4 below ;

[SPOILER]Does Danvers quote in Episode 1 "Not a Beatles fan, OK?" have any deeper relevance that reveals itself later in the season? I don't want to know what that is, if so - just if it's there.[/SPOILER]

Hmm, has that worked?