Your Ten Favorite Shows Currently on Television

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=RM2ERZymiJ0

So as of September, these are the best things I've seen this year:

Work in Progress (Showtime)
Joe Pera Talks with You (Adult Swim)
Desus and Mero (Showtime)
High Maintenance (HBO)
Better Call Saul (AMC)
Brockmire (IFC)
The Last Dance (ESPN)
The Dress Up Gang (TBS)
Ramy (Hulu)
What We Do In Shadows (FX)
All Gas No Brakes (YouTube)
I May Destroy You (HBO)
Looney Tunes Cartoons (HBO)
A House Through Time (BBC 2)
Bluey (Disney +)
PEN15 (Hulu)
Escape at Dannemora (2018, Showtime)
Country Music (2019 – PBS)

hat Third Day looks interesting from seeing the first episode tonight.
Obvious reminiscence of Wicker Man etc or possibly suggestion of limbo.
Will see next episode soon.

Anything else I've missed recently?
Phoebe Waller Bridge thing about yanks on trains?
Trying to catch up with things I didn't get around to d/ld earlier this year.

Watched the first episode of Star Trek Lower Decks which I hadn't heard of before. Attempt at Rick & Morty or something type humour within the Star Trek universe, not sure if it fully works.
May give another episode a shot.

Have been enjoying Harley Quinn though which I think is more successful.
Very potty mouthed and gorey which it seems to trade on.

Recommend staying with Lower Decks- it takes a few episodes to get funny. I was deeply nonplussed by it initially but I super love it now & it regularly makes me snort laugh

Phoebe Waller Bridge thing about yanks on trains?

Assuming you mean Run, I thought it was terrible. Might’ve made an okay movie but it did not justify being dragged out into a series. It did make me wish Archie Panjabi got more work

Yeah I watched a few eps of Run... I could take or leave it

Run looked like the kind of thing that would have worked better as a 90-minute movie. I canceled my HBO subscription before watching any of it.

yeah definitely felt more like a good movie romcom

Another vote for sticking with Lower Decks xps

ted lasso really frickin stuck the landing

A perfect season of TV.

bloody beautiful

i knocked out the last six episodes of Ted Lasso on a binge and yeah, it's good. Had some issues though: the terrible terrible music, an inclination toward mawkishness that's mostly but not entirely held in check by the writing, the predictability of the character arcs. BUT! Worth watching, worth recommending and I will be waiting for next season. NB: the guy who plays Roy was also a lead writer on the show and is the writer/co-creator of the new AMC show Soulmates.
https://www.vulture.com/article/brett-goldstein-ted-lasso-soulmates-interview.html

You know what I'm not looking forward to a second season of is Raised by Wolves. I've noted on this thread already how gleefully dumb and baldly aspirant it is in attempts at parable and deep meaning but it has gone completely off the rails into crazy town.

Here's some last episode spoilers for you: the pregnant android gave mouth birth to an evil flying leech baby so the other android (who is in love with her) took the whole family on a suicide crash mission into a bottomless pit in the whistle-shaped spaceship... but it didn't work because they went through the molten center and ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE HOLE IN THE PLANET and emerged in the jungle where the androids ran away and the giant leech baby flew off into the clouds. Space Jesus, who was left for dead in the prior episode but revived and killed a bunch of holy warrior after eating an android eyeball and tripping balls, appears to have mentally sent his crazy to his child - who is not actually his child because he and his wife killed his parents and stole their faces and have raised this kid for years - because the kid suddenly knows that his mother is an imposter (because god told him) so he shoots her in the belly and runs away into a barren landscape with no one but a magical white mouse to keep him company. This sets up a cliffhanger where the multicultural cast and gutshot woman can now look to a white twelve year old boy to lead them and protect them from the religious zealots, ghosts and devolving cavepeople that are hot on their trail and yes I KNOW this sounds awesome, that's why i'm watching it but they've been making it weirder every episode and I'm kinda exhausted with its cocaine sci-fi ravings.

The most recent episode of Lovecraft Country was OH MY GOD great

i regret opting for Raised by Wolves over Lovecraft Country and will rectify that shortly.

Yeah, Lovecraft Country is pretty much already in my all-time next-level top tier.

I seem to be blown away every week by Lovecraft Country. Final 5 minutes this week were *chef's kiss*

Other Recent Watches:
- Spitting Image 2020: Puppets doing the news? What will they think of next? (this was okay)
- Earth to Ned: Puppets doing talk shows? What will they think of next? (this was not okay)

First Episodes on Deck (i wish i had better focus for anything these days):
We Are Who We Are
The Third Day
Fargo
NeXt
Tiny World
Soulmates
Monsterland
The Good Lord Bird
Walking Dead: World Beyond
Honor
Cobra
Departure
Flesh and Blood
Gangs of London
The Trouble with Maggie Cole
Warrior
A Wilderness of Error
The Vow
Des
The Plot Against America

the first episodes of both Wilmore and Amber Ruffin's Peacock talk shows are very bad but i'm hopeful both will find their footing. doing a talk show without an audience seems like knitting a parachute on the way down.

Four episodes in and I still don’t know what to think of We Are Who We Are.

what... is it? Euphoria UK?

Soulmates looks dire

We Are Who We Are: The Ke$ha Story

Did we not talk about s2 of PEN15? Because it's wonderful. Much darker than the first, more aspirational and just more complete.

Two episodes in. Friends of mine told me it gets dark and, while that's not exactly what I want from the show, I can see it being a good pivot.

it's not gratuitously or painfully dark, it's "i'm going through puberty and everyone around me is insane" dark

My TV has just frozen during the final episode of Raised By Wolves and I'm taking it as a sign xps

i want to stress again: "the pregnant android gives mouth birth to an evil flying leech baby"

cosign DJP upthread re: new ep of Lovecraft Country, fkn incredible

Saw the first episode of All Creatures Great & Small yesterday which seems to be nicely done.
Seems more authentic than the previous tv version I'm aware of and probably less genteel.
I was trying to remember if I'd read any of herriot over the years and can't remember reading a full one. Probably have a few of tehm around.
Did notice taht my copy was from Channel 5 which I'm not sure how many original shows from I've seen.

Have now seen teh first 2 episodes of Ratched too. Which is really creepy.
Trying to think if the character in the book or film was shown to be psychopathic or just repressed and cruel.

Watching through the first series of that Star trek Lower Decks which I am really enjoying.

oh yeah really enjoying the Story of Writing the BBC4 show , did that end last Monday though.
Finding it very illuminating.

I've quite enjoyed All Creatures but it might be nostalgia for nostalgia. It made me think there might be something in this Channel 5 lark - having enjoyed the railway modelling competition they did - so I tried one of their 'real life Agatha Christie' dramatisations which disabused me of that notion.

Interesting piece on Channel 5's pivot to Yorkshire https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/oct/01/yorkshire-lockdown-gold-all-creatures-great-and-small-channel-5-tv-our-farm

the only things i watch on 5 are gadget show and susan calman's secret scotland.

was a time when it had all the csi shows but now it's all 'look at these kittens' or 'lidl vs aldi, fight'

5 has never come as part of the package of UK channels I have on my cable. & now they've removed UTV/Itv and replaced it with a Virgin channel as of a year and a bit ago I think.
THink I suddenly found myself unable to get something I'd been watching.

Not sure I'd even been aware of original programming from 5 or at least consciously aware of it until I noticed All Creatures Great & Small was showing on it. So am assuming it is an original commissioned show.

Finally saw the latest episode of Lovecraft Country. Amazing. They just continue to go there, successfully. Was Christina's self-simulation of the Emmitt Till murder part of the spell or just the way she wanted to die to verify the spell's success? Either way, it was like the ultimate act of cultural appropriation.

My take: It was appropriation, but it may have had the side-effect of bursting her bubble of imperious self-regard and made her actually empathize with Ruby's perspective? Only the subsequent episodes will say whether the latter is true; I think her desire for power and level of self-actualization will override any burgeoning kinship she feels with Ruby that falls outside of that dynamic but it will be more of a struggle than she thought it would be.

I'm also catching up Watchmen; I'm five episodes in and I know Jean Smart has kind of been popping up in everything but I really need her to continue popping up in everything.

Also, Regina King is as amazing as everyone said she was and I look forward to a future series starring her and Tim Blake Nelson as gun-toting insurance adjusters attempting to audit away the apocalypse.

have you seen The Leftovers? she gets some amazing stuff in that

It's on my list after Watchmen

(I watched part of season 1, liked it, got distracted by something shiny and never went back)

wait, Mark Lynn-Baker appears as himself in the last two seasons?

he sure does but to say more would be a spoiler

Yeah, I think your interpretation is pretty spot on. Beyond her acknowledged thirst for power, Christina's motivations are fairly opaque, but it does seem like an attempt at understanding Ruby's pain which is misguided inasmuch as the firsthand experience of a lynching still doesn't give her insight into the fear and anger of existing under that oppressive threat every day.

We probably need a dedicated Lovecraft Country thread at this point, huh.

LOVECRAFT COUNTRY

haven't watched yet but definitely thought it was called "Lovecraft County"

Didn't feel like bumping the Leftovers thread but now that it's been brought up I wasn't very into S1 and almost gave up but S2 (where Regina King comes in) and S3 are honestly some of the best TV I've ever seen and everyone should go watch it

yup.

honestly the best parts of Watchmen were mostly just pale echoes of The Leftovers for me

There's certainly a similarity to the shows, in that an episode feels like it could take you anywhere. But they were different enough to me that I loved both

Absolutely seasons 2 and 3 of the Leftovers are so far beyond just about any other TV made in the history of TV it's ridiculous.