What are you currently watching? (May contain spoilers)

I watched the first episode.

It's... fine, so far. There's a LOT of exposition to set things up, I guess because there might be people who have never seen or read a Dune before. But there's a bit of intrigue, and Travis Fimmel is doing his usual "I know many secrets but I'LL NEVER TEEEEEEELL, tee hee" thing with his eyes that he does so well.

I am cautiously optimistic.

Sure, but he does it so well!

Thank you to whoever it was recommended the Alan Davies episode of Bill Bailey’s Pub Walks. I’m very much on board with slower tv programmes at the moment and seeing genuine friendships like this or Mortimer & Whitehouse right now.

And as I complete the transformation into my dad I’ve discovered five series of Scrapheap Challenge on All4 and several series of Time Team on their second Youtube channel that escaped my original binge watch of what was on All4 for that.

Another go around of Detectorists is almost at the end of the second series too.

Bbc news in the morning were interviewing Mckenzie Crook earlier this week and asking him about it as they were big fans too.

Nearly cracked then. Absolutely love it.

Even our teen still loves it from watching it when he was wee.

Also, first time he heard the C bomb as i forgot about that! 😳

His face was a picture. 🤣 Missus was not so amused. 😆

We recently started watching Lost for the first time since originally watching it, the wife and I realised that whilst we watched the final seasons together we weren't together when it started, so it's been nice watching it all together.

We've just started season 4, and fuck me I forgot just how much that season 3 finale hits hard. .

I know the ending itself divides people, I remember liking it and defending it at the time, so we'll see how it feels on a second viewing. SO MUCH happens in this show that I forgot about, the first three seasons really do still hold up.

I think the ending of Lost is broadly fine. I think it was another example of a show being a victim of its own success and over extended. Like when everyone tried to guess the ending and the showrunners were all “no its not that” then basically was that.

Although its arguably the first boxset event type show that had that level of fan investment during the mass adoption of the internet. So they weren’t dealing with an audience (and its expectations) like the one shows had in the 90s.

Robin Ince has a story about how when he was tour support for Ricky Gervais during Gervais’s first tours he’d basically get bullied quite horrendously and very publicly by Ricky. At one point Gervais was reading a diary he’d written from the point of view of a pathetic worm version of Robin and it was Mackenzie Crook who stepped in to put a stop to it.

I think they’d worked together at XFM or Channel 4 before The Office happened. However between the mong incident and Ricky’s descent into anti-trans jokes they’re not friends anymore.

As a librarian turned academic Robin is, inevitably, a big favourite of mine.

Loaded: Lads, Mags and Mayhem (bbc2)

A documentary on Loaded that captures the zeitgeist of the 90s perfectly.

Listening to the Loaded team mirroring my own 90s lifestyle from the never ending high and 24/7/365 buzz of the early and mid 90s down to my 1999 burnout where serotonin levels so low that the weekend binge never quite scratched the itch and left me at 9 stone and health problems underlines that I probably lived that life a little more than most. I never was a beer boy, instead living on a diet similar to Hunter S Thompson and was full on deep in Londons night scene for so long. Listening to the team recounting something so similar kinda got my heart thumping and brought back a longing for nearly a decade of hedonism.

They do differ in a way, the overt laddishness or contempt for "new man" (which i guess, i evolved into) that i adopted in those years doesnt leave me with pride or make me want to celebrate it like some did. I also think they skipped over the fact Loaded still had some very good writing in places though. It wasnt all about Hollyoaks girls in bikinis.

Some of the bits leave you with a bad taste, like how i thought Gail Porter and her arse, (and it appearing on Westminster) was the greatest thing ever but in reality it was without consent and fucked up her up forever. The overt misogyny too, so normalised, so accepted, horrific now in retrospective. I'm kinda glad i had stop buying lads mags by the time they devolved into Nuts and Zoo. I like to think although i enjoyed it all back in the day it doesnt mean i would want it to be like that again.

First episode of Ludwig seemed ok. Made me laugh a couple of times, and seems to be something i can see least watch while the kids are around without anything too nsfw happening.

That song by Arooj Aftab is really lovely too, BBC6 have been playing it. It takes a few listens , and then it really connects

Inside Chernobyl with Ben Fogle. Channel 5.

So much more interesting than you'd expect. Anyone remember when BBC made documentaries that weren't hidden on bbc4? It's like one of them.

Interview with the Vampire

I think Blue Mike or someone else was gushing over this recently, so thought I'd give it a go after largely ignoring it back when S1 aired. Only one episode in, but I have a feeling it'll be very good. Greyworm is a decent Pointe du Lac, and the race switch feels like an inspired choice so far.

Billions S1E4
There have been multiple times where my missus has turned to me and asked if I understood any of what they've been waffling on about. Nope!
Excellent stuff if you can just ignore some of the impenetrable finance guy talk.
Giamatti is becoming one of my favourite actors after The Holdovers and now this.