Good TV (aka, the TV series spamthread), the second series

[Hatredsheart]

I was on the fence when I watched season 1 last year but after the reveal

Spoiler

That the Captain and bridge crew are incompetent actors and the only qualified crew are a handful in the grubby bowels of the ship

I got more into it . Season 2 seems OK so far.

[Solitaire]

Avenue 5
Set on a spaceship luxury liner with Hugh Laurie as the captain. I never knew this existed until yesterday and it's got 2 seasons. Not watched much but it seems to be pretty good so far, cringe comedy in space is probably the best description. Starship Titanic was an influenced maybe.

Started watching it. Got 3 episodes in and couldn't watch any more. Not one likeable/relatable character. Everyone's an idiot. I thought I loved Armando Iannucci. Obviously not

I honestly tried watching it, but every actor's dialog interrupted every other actor's dialog, to the point that I didn't know wtf anyone was even trying to say. I quit 20 minutes in, sorry - nothing else about it really grabbed me.

[Rusty]

I was on the fence when I watched season 1 last year but after the reveal

Spoiler

That the Captain and bridge crew are incompetent actors and the only qualified crew are a handful in the grubby bowels of the ship

I got more into it . Season 2 seems OK so far.

In fact that reveal made me hate it more.

Spoiler

This was a life threatening emergency and they hadn't come out at all in the few days since it happened? Plus I realised the 'crew' weren't real and were actors from pretty much the start.

[Sly Boots]

Avenue 5
Set on a spaceship luxury liner with Hugh Laurie as the captain. I never knew this existed until yesterday and it's got 2 seasons. Not watched much but it seems to be pretty good so far, cringe comedy in space is probably the best description. Starship Titanic was an influenced maybe.

Watched the first few, and I'm not minding it. It's not laugh-out-loud funny, although it gets the odd chuckle (such as the orbiting corpses), but it is at least quite watchable.

[Snowy]

Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (Netflix)

My wife and I have watched these, and by and large they are very entertaining horror shorts (about an hour apiece). There are even a couple of Lovecraft stories in there, my favourite being Pickfords Model which is superb. Well worth a watch.

Oh, except for episode 7. Absolute fucking ballhang!

Spoiler

The episode starts with Peter Weller (Murphy from Robocop) which I thought boded well. Only he is getting jacked up with heroin by some lass, which is shot with a weird reverence for such a destructive drug. He is some wealthy fella hosting a gathering of individuals for an unknown purpose.

Meet the individuals, a bespectacled oriental scientist who looks about 12, an angry aging novelist, a music producer and some other fella who is quite forgettable. I have forgotten anyhow.

They come in and find their favourite drinks laid out for them along with the heroin-injecting lassie who looks spaced out/bored. One of the characters wonders how their host knows what their favourite drinks are, but fuck it, that is never mentioned again. He also has some cigs that another of the characters loves, for no discerible reason.

In comes Peter Weller and starts fucking around with a stripy light diddler that causes uninspired synth music to play. Woo.

Peter Weller opens a bottle of whisky, a 50 year old single malt and he whiffles on about what it has survived to get to them, cracks it open and they all have a drink. I don't like whisky and it could be gods own whisky, distilled from the tears of angels, and to me it would still taste like shit, but all the guests enjoy it anyhow, even the prepubescent oriental science goddess. Robocop burbles about getting them all in the right place for what is to come.

He continues fiddling with the stripy light diddler and more uninspired synth music plays. Woo.

They then break out the mother of all platters of what is described as the best cocaine in the world, and the jacker-upper lass sprinkles some blue shit on it that apparently makes it even better. The oriental scientists balks about nailing a line but a quick "Oh go on" from Robocop and she is hoovering that shit up.

Oh, they would need hoovers too. The lines of Peruvian marching powder are about 1 inch wide and 6 inches long. If they really are snorting utterly pure pharmaceutical chang, I am pretty sure the amount they consume would result in the kind of story arc followed by Mrs Mia Wallace. But wait! Peter Weller has unslung his colossal love spuds and doesn't fuck around with a line of coke, no he has a platter piled so high with the devil's dandruff that if you look closely you can see Eddie the fucking Eagle skiing down it. He thunders about half of it down in one blast. More drivel about getting them in the right place.

Fiddle. Uninspired synth. Woo.

You might be wondering, around now, where the horror is (other than the ridiculous self-indulgent wankery of the director). I was too. At this point we are about 45 minutes into the hour long story.

They get invited to go and see something. Now we have all come across folks on Florida snow before I expect, and with the amount they have just consumed in my experience they would all be locked into that couch speedbabbling over the top of one another. But no, off they go.

Into a room, within which is a weird looking rock on a plinth. Music producer lights a smoke, Robocop says no smoking. Music producer then for some reason lights a spliff. Robocop says no smoking again. Music producer exhales and the smoke goes into the stone, upon which happening it all goes weird.

A stoned stone - I kid you not. Can a stone get stoned? A question which I am sure has plagued the greatest minds of nobody, ever, in history. Anyway this one does, cracks open and out comes some spooge with horn-penises poking out of its eyeballs. Because reasons it turns into a puddle then absorbs Robocop, turns into a weird man-monster-thing and escapes out of the house into a big culvert in a city, with all the electics in the vincinity of the creature are flickering.

The end.

Seriously? You made me sit through the wankiest soiree ever filmed in order to give the something vaguely interesting only at the end that goes completely unresolved (like every other vaguely interesting aspect of the episode)?

So yes, ballhang. An utterly pointless story told badly. Spoilered it just in case but seriously, my post will tell you the story and save you an hour, if you are considering the Cabinet as viewing material I can save you some time.

[Animalmother]

I'm in the middle of watching it and to be honest only episode 3 (Autopsy) has been any good and that episode was a wee bit gross even for me if I'm honest, but it was good. Currently on episode 4, which to quote your good self is ballhang so far. The series is like an updated Creep Show, which was mostly shite as well.

[Snowy]

I thought the autopsy one was one of the better episodes (a lot of them are a bit grim). Pickmans Model was the standout, Ep 7 the nadir, and sad to say their interpretation of Dreams in the Witch House (probably my favourite Lovecraft tale) was not very true to the original story to its detriment.

[Animalmother]

Andor
This has been consistently very watchable and I genuinely look forward to the next episode each week. When not bogged down by the fan service lore Star Wars can be very good.

[Hatredsheart]

Andor
This has been consistently very watchable and I genuinely look forward to the next episode each week. When not bogged down by the fan service lore Star Wars can be very good.

Really enjoyed it, looking forward to season two.

[Alan]

Lost In Space S3 The final season
I totally forgot this came out. I absolutly love this show so I'm sad its over but it was a lot of super schmaltzy daft fun with a big heart. All three seasons have been great in its over the top cheesy way where nobody can drive over a field without it exploding into lava and the answer to every single problem is "family" but its not shittly like TFatF! Theres so many far fetched coincidences that would annoy the shit out of me in anything else but it just works here.

The finale was super wonderfully dumb and I loved it. It was just everything I've come to love about it, lots of fun and feels. Its honestly my favourite scifi in recent memory and I'm sure a lot of folk would balk at that but man fuck those folk, its braw! What a great reboot!

[Animalmother]

1899
Same people who made Dark so I have very high hopes for this. It definitely has the same weird vibe as Dark and the same slowly creeping sense of dread.

Set on a German ocean liner crossing the Atlantic to America, all the passengers are running away from something it seems. I've watched the first 2 episodes and it just gets stranger and more interesting.

[Raid]

Only Murders in the Building
Loved it. The three leads are very entertaining and work well together, even if their relationship never feels like it really ought to. It does a fantastic job of making you care about the investigation, the characters, their histories and the victim, and it's all set in fairly opulent surroundings which I think works well for this genre.

[Animalmother]

Last episode of Andor was on yesterday and it was great, the whole series was excellent. Pretty dark for Star Wars but it worked so well with a character whose ultimate end we already know. There's no space wizards, no mention of the Force, stormtroopers can shoot straight and very few aliens make an appearance. Even the obligatory droid feels tragic. It's the least like Star Wars for a SW's show but so far it's the best.

There's a very brief end of credits bit on the last episode in case you skip it.

[Raid]

Agreed on all counts. This is exactly what I wanted from this show, getting down in the dirt with lower-level early Rebels and Imperials (while not ignoring the bigger picture), and it's both fairly well written and lavishly produced. It's certainly up there with The Mandalorian in terms of Star Wars TV shows, I'm sure some will say it's better. It's further proof if any were needed that this franchise is crying out for more stuff set in this era but barely connected to the main films, even though I love Jedi and Sith and lightsabers as much as anyone. It's an incredible universe and we deserve to see more of it, there is genuinely no other speculative fiction setting that I think has better design (both visually and aurally).

Spoiler

Also I guessed what the six-pronged brackets they were building in the prison were for, which in retrospect was probably fairly obvious, but there was some small amount of pride during the post-credits sequence.

[Sly Boots]

Wow... I know The Orville, and Seth Macfarlane in particular, isn't to everyone's taste, but I've just watched the S3 episode 'A Tale Of Two Topas', and it was simply outstanding. I'd liken it to the very best of ST:TNG, using the medium of science-fiction to address real-world issues without beating people around the head with it, in this case gender identity and the rights of a person to decide for themselves exactly what they are. It was quite emotive in places, and more to the point was a satisfactory conclusion to an arc that began in the first season (and back then 'ended' with what felt like a punch to the gut).