Your Ten Favorite Shows Currently on Television

IMO bump it to the top of your priority list

there are too few shows with the visual and sound design of Samurai Jack out there; both episodes have felt like I'm watching the creation of a new type of symphony

I don't have cable, so I'm gonna have to wait for DVD. (I own the first four seasons; I hope when they put this one out, they make some effort to match the box art of those sets.)

and this season will be in HD! :D

I liked the original run a lot but, for whatever reason, never sat down and watched all of the episodes, so I'm not coming into this as a Jack superfan who knows the entire mythology of the show backwards and forwards. I mostly tuned in to see if the new episodes were any good. I wasn't quite prepared for them to be THAT good.

i think part of it is that I loved the show so much when it was on the air a decade ago, really afraid it can't live up to that promise. but you're giving me hope

god, 16 years ago. so old.

i haven't watched crashing (us) and i never will bc pete holmes sucks and it looks annoying, so maybe this take-down is inaccurate, but i found it entertaining to read: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/03/there-should-be-fewer-shows-about-comedians.html

fave things right now

Catastrophe
The Americans
Review

nothing new is really grabbing me right now besides Trial and Error, which is good fun. I am unreasonably excited for Twin Peaks, American Gods and The Leftovers all coming in around the same time. peak weird TV.

leftovers is awesome and so weird

I need to catch up on The Americans. I'm probably a season and a half behind but I can't keep up the attention span to binge it -- I think it's a little too heavy to digest more than a couple episodes at a time.

im the same way w that show

Hey na, Crashing (US) is definitely a pretty harmless show and nothing mind blowing but the article is inaccurate IMO. Peter's lack of self awareness is hinted at through other people's perceptions of him, in one scene the fellow comedians he is crashing with remark that he sucks once he has left the room. But certainly, Pete plays the naive nice dude role straight. His jokes are the least good part tbh, unless you got an appreciation for bad jokes told well.

Fargo season 2 was great for eight episodes, but it really shit the bed in the last two.

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UFOs? Get fucked.

well i was thinking about watching that show someday, guess i won't bother now

I liked that part

what that was the best thing

Completely pulled into Into The Badlands - I have a pretty high tolerance for genre mashup schlock (Brotherhood Of The Wolf is a secret fave movie of mine) as long as it's played straight and w/o any of the wink/wink/nudge/"we know this is crap" that plagues low-budget TV.

I've lost touch with TV in recent years, where's good to find out about the best upcoming/current comedies, documentaries, radio docs, etc?

The BBC and Ch4 sites are kinda useless, is there a better site or reliably good columnist/reviewer? I know Jack Seale at RT is pretty good, and I used to love Jacques Peretti's stuff for the Guardian - anyone else?

Hey NI,

http://www.metacritic.com/tv

Saw Izombie was back on and other things were ending so I assume that means there's a whole new season of programmes out.
Anything else worthwhile appearing over teh next couple of weeks?

Check in here: http://www.metacritic.com/feature/tv-premiere-dates
Better Call Saul next week is a must.
Chewing Gum season 2 is on Netflix. MST3K on next week (cautiously curious).
I'm looking forward to checking out Brockmire.
I am backlogged on Legion, Taboo, American Crime (great but depressing)

Ah great, thanks Ross. That looks perfect for US stuff. Is there anything more for UK tv/radio?

i just posted a couple of things in the serial thread..

Line Of Duty is currently on UK TV by the way..

I've only watched the last episode of Big Little Lies but omg, that was intense and astonishing.

Taboo seems like a very badly conceived vanity project by the Hardy family that can't even be saved by featuring a load of good actors and impressive sets cos it's a load of tosh. Sorry ppl if you like it, but it is in a style of everything I have hated about the BBC for ages - yeah even though it was an AMC co-production or whatever.

I like Taboo because it's this unbounded historical fan fiction where the scheming is secondary to weird shit going on, not like the weird characters mugging for the audience on Sherlock that's just tiresome and used in place of plot

Big Little Lies was so good! Even when I knew what was going to happen the execution would surprise me. Smart and intriguing and moving, felt very lived-in and nuanced

Except the dumb talking-head greek chorus of minor characters. LAME

But i legit cried at the ending

A+

SO GOOD. I was more tense about the show wrapping up satisfyingly than I was about the actual who-done-what. But that was a good ending! Which Night Of and True Detective did not manage.

The online-virginity plot was a weird curveball though - awkward and felt like it didn't need to be there at all? Maybe it had more setup in the book.

Haven't seen Kidman in a good performance since To Die For, but she totally brought it. No weak links in cast, really.

Except the dumb talking-head greek chorus of minor characters. LAME

this prevented me from getting through the first episode

Its worth yr time.

Kidman gives such a haunted, slightly ethereal performance, its v Eyes Wide Shut in that way and I loved every minute

Laura Dern and Reese Witherspoon were str8 fire start to finish too.

Reese is very good in that show

greek chorus was initially annoying but became clear as it went on that they were part of the steady drumbeat of misogyny (internalized and otherwise) that the solidarity of the conclusion overcomes.

Kidman has been v good many, many times since EWS/TDF

I agree!

Ok alright she's good in Moulin, Australia, Golden Compass etc. But feels like she's wasted a lot of good performances in bad movies.

ANYWAY my sis recommends Liane Moriarty's novels, gonna try out My Husband's Secret, because who could resist that title

BLL should get awards for outstanding editing as well as special Best Actress awards for the five principal women (yes, I'm throwing Zoe Kravitz an award, too; her character seemed typecast but also felt like a real person)

Amusing -- had no idea BLL was set in Monterey. Not that anyone should be surprised that film != reality but anyone not from the area might enjoy this:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Big-Little-Lies-Monterey-locations-Big-Sur-HBO-11055103.php

In real-life Northern California, this melodrama would unfold on the Bay Area Peninsula, in say Atherton or Woodside, the epicenter of tech wealth. But this show takes place a world away in Monterey, leading you to believe it's a high-gloss tech town, an extension of the Silicon Valley.

NorCal locals knows this portrayal is slightly off. Monterey certainly isn't inexpensive, but it's too far from Google and Facebook for tech exec commutes and its main industries are tourism and farming.

True but they missed out the other biggie, the military. Pretty much the tech types as described aren't here constantly, instead they're down here on weekends, second homes, getaways etc. Still, for the scenery alone now you all know why I'm always happy to visit the area to see my family.

Yeah there are some beautiful shots -- the director Jean Marc Vallee did some beautiful work on this. He also directed Reese in 'Wild', which I thought looked gorgeous as well.

And DJP otm re editing and Zoe Kravitz

My favorite thing is how a lot of the details of Zoe's character is in her behaviour and how she carries herself, like she's probably got the least amount of dialogue of all 5 but, like DJP says, she feels like a real person

like like like like kill me

Bear in mind I formed my impression after watching only one episode of the show. I can't imagine what the payoff was like if you'd seen the rest of the series and lived with all of these characters.

big little lies was incredible
the therapy sessions with kidman were so great, the gradual unraveling of her denial was really done in such a subtle way, the actress who was calamity jane in deadwood was great as the therapist

all the female leads were fantastic

one of the best final episodes i've seen in a long time, i was so on the edge of my seat during the fundraiser party

I wached the last episode because I read a review that was like "Nicole Kidman's therapy sessions on Big Little Lies are Oscar-worthy, let alone Emmy-worthy"

I think I'm gonna start a thread, seems worthy of extended YAY discussion

Reese and Nicole and Laura and Audrey and Elvis: Thread for BIG LITTLE LIES on HBO

new thread here

I grew up in Salinas and spent just about every weekend in Monterey. My only gripe is that no one is driving across the bixby bridge to take their kids to school, not happening. It's like 40 miles south of main Monterey, closer to big Sur really.

Seems to be a constant with mass audience shows filmed in fixed areas that what makes good visual sense doesn't make geographical sense.
Jack Taylor had a kid waiting for a bus to go to a location 50 feet away around a corner. &a chase that went right across town in what looked to be 50 feet.

Oh yeah makes total sense to use it. that bridge/drive is one of the most awe inspiring that America has to offer

Yeah it's pretty much a standard visual gimme. When it comes to TV I just associate it with endless car commercials.