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    Informer - the 6 episode detective drama on BBC iplayer - is well worth a gander. A psychological whodunnit set in London involving counter-terrorism coppers and their narks. The always watchable Paddy Considine leads, there’s a few soapy drama actors getting stuck into meatier roles, plus some good turns by some younger newbies.

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      Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
      I watched the first two episodes of The Romanoffs, Matt Weiner's new thing. Meh. The acting is good and some of it is interesting, but the main characters are, so far, mostly assholes and it's anthology so it doesn't provide any urgent reason to want to watch the next one since the stories aren't directly related. Besides, the thread that does connect them - that they're all descendants of the the Tsar's family - isn't very compelling, IMO. It's not entirely clear if the writers understand how awful the Romanovs were and how being descended from them isn't really something to be proud of.
      Well I decided to finally watch the first episode despite the unappealing premise, as I absolutely love Mad Men.

      Yiiikes. I expected it to be merely mediocre based on the reviews, but everything about it was actively irritating. It's especially disappointing to see such poorly drawn female characters (the girlfriend in particular seems straight out of the MGTOW playbook) when Mad Men had a whole array of richly nuanced and interesting characters. This and the embarrassing wish-fulfillment Aaron Eckhart character have made me think much less of Matthew Weiner as a writer to be honest. Not sure I can stomach another episode.

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        The second episode is just as annoying.

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          I'm sort of relieved that I don't have Amazon Prime. My devotion to Mad Men would probably have led me to sit through the entire season persuading myself that it was bound to get better sooner or later.

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            Talking Pictures, a less route one than usual oldies channel over here, is currently showing Public Eye, a late '60s/early '70s series about an ex-con private investigator in Brighton. I'm a sucker for anything with location filming in familiar settings from around the time I was born. Also, watching lesser remembered series like this is a corrective to the popular version of TV history in which The Sweeney is the big bang moment for grittiness in UK crime drama. Public Eye is a bit like a less violent Callan in its seedy milieu and sense that the protagonist is never really that many steps ahead of the game.

            That said, virtually everything filmed in the '60s/'70s crossover period looks seedy to some degree. Diamonds Are Forever manages to be a seedy James Bond film.

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              I'm a big fan of 'Public Eye' - it felt a lot in parts like a documentary. He moves to Eton after a couple of personal issues; I lived in Windsor for a few years and very much enjoyed working out locations.

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                There you go; if one area is a byword for the seedy underbelly of Berkshire, it's Eton/Windsor.

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                  As you said - everywhere was seedy in them days.

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                    Amazon Prime is due to be added to Comcast Xfinity by the end of the year. Will change viewing habits in my house enormously.

                    Acorn TV has given us Ackley Bridge, an interesting if quite soapy Channel 4 offering about a joint white-Asian high school in West Yorkshire. Sort of Phil Redmond for the Brexit era.

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                      I've just started The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix. Not horribly scary so far, but I'm only halfway through the first episode. Will report back later.

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                        Just finished season one of Jordskot, Swedish police drama with a fantasy sub-plot.

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                          I have, over the last couple of years, watched the entirety of the West Wing. I finally crossed the finish line today. Fuck me, the last couple of seasons are turgid hard work. The first few seasons are overrated, and have hugely annoying parts to them, but it properly did some shark-jumping. The list of things wrong with that show - and, worse, all the trite and irritating elements that modern political shows that have borrowed from it - is huge. The thing that was most remarkable about it watching today is the cast. It really is a spectacular cast.
                          Last edited by San Bernardhinault; 21-10-2018, 23:19.

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                            I got stuck halfway through season 6 and just never got back to it or watched the final season.

                            Some episodes are so heavy handed they really annoying me. The post-911 show, where all the main cast take it in turns to explain how not all Muslims are terrorists to some young adults was excruciating.

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                              Yeah, I've avoided that show and I'm glad to hear that my suspicions were correct.

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                                Daredevil season 3. The only one of the Defenders series I really like.

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                                  We watched The Day The Earth Caught Fire last night. It is a British eco-disaster film from 1961, in which accelerated climate change occurs when the planet is knocked off its axis by H-bomb tests. The film is also fascinating as a depiction of the old Fleet Street culture and of changing social mores as the '50s tip over into the '60s.

                                  Another incidental pleasure is an uncredited cameo from Michael Caine, whose voice is so unmistakeable even at this stage that it is almost as if he is embedding a sleeper piss take for activation in the event of his future fame.

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                                    I've managed to get a gratis ticket to see Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote film this Saturday (can't remember the actual title off-hand), which has finally been made and sort-of released. Given the lengthy development hell it's been through, it is exceedingly unlikely to be good. But, well, free, so worth a look, I guess.

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                                      I'm watching DC's Legends of Tomorrow. Yes, people die but it's a breezy romp thus far and Wentworth Miller is worth the admission price alone.

                                      Nice to see Rory Williams in charge of the TARDIS, too.

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                                        Shown this week on BBC4 (first aired in 2015) and an absolute must-watch:

                                        Britain’s forgotten slave owners (in 2 parts):

                                        https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...rofit-and-loss

                                        https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...ce-of-freedom#

                                        Historian David Olusoga (in the introduction):

                                        "When slavery was brought to an end in the 1830s, a huge sum of money was raised by the British gvt. That money, the modern equivalent of £17 billion, was paid out in compensation, not to the [800,000] slaves but to the [46,000] slave owners.

                                        […]

                                        "The slave owners’ compensation money seeped into every corner of the nation and the empire, They invested in industry, education, the arts and commerce. Their money helped lay the foundations of our modern world. These are Britain’s forgotten slave owners."

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                                          Bodyguard is pretty good.

                                          The new darkandedgy Sabrina the Teenage Witch is intriguing. It’s legitimately dark and not at all for kids like the 90s show. I’m sure it will draw protests from fundies - Sabrina’s aunts say are loyal to Satan, the dark lord, who they believe is beyond good and evil, and a major subplot is Sabrina helping her gender-non-conforming friend stand-up to bullies. The Wyrd Sisters are bitchy Mean Girls - two references most of the audience probably won’t get, but that’s ok.
                                          Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 26-10-2018, 22:17.

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                                            Originally posted by Janik View Post
                                            I've managed to get a gratis ticket to see Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote film this Saturday (can't remember the actual title off-hand), which has finally been made and sort-of released. Given the lengthy development hell it's been through, it is exceedingly unlikely to be good. But, well, free, so worth a look, I guess.
                                            Well, it wasn't that bad, but not spectacular either. Kind of woozy and confused with interlacing storylines, but as I was watching it I realised I didn't know the source material well enough to understand if this was a deliberate evocation of the book. It got a smattering of applause at the end, so some people clearly enjoyed it. Not that many laughs though, and Don Quixote is supposed to be uproariously funny, isn't it?

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                                              I’m going through a brief Monty Python phase - again - watching all the stuff they just put on Netflix, the films, and what not.

                                              There are a number of episodes of MPFC that I don’t recall seeing before. Perhaps because a lot of them have white actors in make-up playing Asian, Native American or African characters. I don’t think they meant that to be racist, but I’m sure that it would have been understood that way in the US by the 80s when I was watching them on PBS, so those episodes weren’t shown.

                                              I recently learned that the guy who plays Jesus in Life of Brian plays Admital Piett in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

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                                                Ray Donovan's back. Which is a surprise, as I thought he's drowned. But apparently not.

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                                                  Finished watching Strangers, with John Simm, Anthony Wong, and Emilia Fox in the early hours.

                                                  I really enjoyed it - Hong Kong looks brilliant, visually. The acting was fine, plot was a bit wonky but it came together sufficiently, and it’s refreshing to see mature actresses, Emilia Fox and Raquel Kennedy, without faces full of fillers or whatever.

                                                  Loved the reluctant buddy act of Simm and Wong.

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                                                    Just started Bodyguard. First episode was very good. Hope it keeps up the quality:

                                                    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7493974/

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