Oh, worry not - the way things are going lately, I’m sure you’ll get a lot of chances to re-use that one! 
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Task on HBO is excellent. The story doesn’t tread much new ground - FBI investigation into a series of hits on biker gang drug stash houses - but it’s just all done so exceptionally well
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If there’s a crime show or mini-series to be made, you can bank on HBO doing it right, a bit like Apple TV and sci-fi over the last few years.
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Yeah, it really is the sort of show that you can identify as being HBO just from watching the first episode even had you not known anything about it. It’s from the guy who made Mare of Eastown and it’s very much a spiritual sequel to that.
I think one of the most interesting things HBO does with shows like this is the confidence they have in their casting, not feeling like they have to fill every big role in the high profile shows with recognizable big names the way Netflix or especially Apple do. People will recognize Tom Pelphry, one of the co leads, when they see him, but in that “what have we seen him in” sort of way, but he is superb in this. You compare this to Netflix’s Black Rabbit, with the star name attention grabbing casting and its just much less fulfilling once you sit down to watch it.
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Started watching Monster (Ed Gein) yesterday. Enjoying most of the Charlie Hunnam scenes but the inclusion of the other ‘timelines’ (Ilse Koch, Hitchcock) makes it a difficult watch and feels unnecessary.
I actually thought that the use of the films related to Ed Gein, like Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence if the Lambs was contextual and served to show how his actions influenced others.
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Charlie Hunnam is really good, his ability to show a lack of emotion is great acting
S2 was great. It was a bit more serious and character focused, but the direction the plot went was really well done. I wouldn’t call it a twist because they signposted it pretty well so you end up enjoying the character’s obliviousness and waiting for the penny to drop, even before they’ve come right out and said what is happening. There is even a point to it in the new dance sequence
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I wasn’t sure where to plonk this, but here seemed as suitable as anywhere. I filled in a survey for the BBC as an overseas viewer a while ago, and they have published the results here. This is related to the future of the BBC:
TBH, I found the questions rather leading and/or not nuanced. However, there are a few interesting things in there. One big thing is that many people find their output to be too influenced by the government. It’s not clear what this covers, although on the questionnaire I filled out, I said that I wanted the news to be factually correct, complete and to explain the UK perspective on world events. (This was as a BBC World Service user). I recently saw some of the domestic BBC news coverage and it leaves a lot to be desired, particularly when compared to similar broadcasting in Germany which originates from a very similar model.
What I did find telling was the age of the respondents:
18-34: 68,553
35-54: 213,420
55+ 571,822
That’s heavily skewed towards an audience born before 1970 who grew up with 3 or 4 channels at most. It rather paints the BBC as a legacy organisation, which is a real pity.
I’m interested to see what they propose from this. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of trust in the current BBC management and I don’t think the government appreciate the soft power value is of a strong and respected broadcasting sector.
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Not sure if the last bit is particularly BBC specific, it’s kind of what you’d expect. Young people overall don’t watch linear TV and mostly get their news from other sources.
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Mrs Limie watches very little TV. Stranger Things is one of only about 3 things Ive ever seen her make a point to watch, so with the final season about to start we’ve started an end to end rewatch. I have been surprised and disappointed by how poorly it stands up. It’s still got an enjoyable vibe, but the plot, at least for the first 3 seasons, is absolutely wafer thin.
I do remember thinking at the time that S4 was a big step forward in terms of the depth of the plot. I guess it’s a reminder that for all the adulation and attention it gets, it was ultimately a kids show. I guess S4 was richer because the show grew up a bit as the actors did, but we’ll see in a few weeks after we work our way through those episodes how much even that perspective holds up.
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I’m currently on season 4 of superstore. I absolutely love this show. I can’t believe I had never watched it before this summer. I wish there were more shows like this.
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That’s one that we picked up on because the kids were watching it. (I was going to say the same for Stranger Things). We loved it from start to finish. We also picked up on Bob’s Burgers the same way and are currently watching Abbott Elementary which is a mockumentary about a primary school teacher in America.
I think there is a tendency to watch identikit TV programmes, so it’s nice to have a few left-field suggestions.
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I cannot handle Abbott Elementary because I think the American approach to replicating the office is incongruent. It isnt just the wealth of “me too” rehashes that use the mockumentary approach where basically they just write sit coms the way they always would but add a 4th wall breaking element, but I felt even the US office did this and lost what made the original work.
Oh that character really is crazy. And just in case you missed it look at how the main character just gave that “can you believe I have to put up with this” look at the camera.
It feels like the standard US sit com now just replaced the laugh track with those 4th wall break elements to signal to the viewers what they were supposed to laugh at
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BBC confirms future of Doctor Who and a new Christmas Special in 2026:
Disney are definitely pulling out of this, so I’m guessing that they are doing this in-house and setting it up for a new international streaming partner.
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Disney did a bollocks job of distributing it in the US. It was mostly an app issue but they didnt know how to position the christmas specials and so buried them. They didnt have them organized as part of the regular series, andso just left them free floating making them almost unfindable even with search (insisted I watch the tennant specials). Even after I found one and watched it the app didnt realize I would want to watch the remaining ones and so in the end I gave up and so didnt watch any of Gatwa’s second season
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If anyone was a fan of Reservation Dogs the guy behind that has a new show called the Lowdown with Ethan Hawke that is worth checking out.
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Me!
I found it similar in Germany. It was buried and difficult to find with a search (It kept offering up Grey’s Anatomy - wrong Doctor)
They also fouled up and didn’t have the German dubbing to begin with. I frankly think that Disney didn’t know what to do with it. I wonder what will happen to those series if the BBC get another international streaming partner.
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I didnt watch it, but this is supposedly kind of a cross-over shared universe thing, which mostly comes from the writer wanting to continue working in Tulsa and using the same (largely native) crew for the show so several of them have cameos in it as their RD characters (allegedly).
The show is about a bumbling writer who stumbles upon a story of political corruption involving white nationalists and the governor’s race.
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