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Post by dfunked on Jul 22, 2024 16:22:03 GMT
Afraid so at the moment. Hopefully it doesn't take too long for BBC to catch up.
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Post by Reviewer on Jul 22, 2024 16:42:37 GMT
The Boys s4 7/10
It was alright but the over the top scenes are a bit tiresome now and the story didn’t go anywhere fast. Homelander is by far the best thing about it but having more of him isn’t the answer, making the rest of it better is.
Still, it’s better than a lot of things.
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Mark1412
Junior Member
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Post by Mark1412 on Jul 22, 2024 21:57:45 GMT
The Boys s4 7/10 It was alright but the over the top scenes are a bit tiresome now and the story didn’t go anywhere fast. Homelander is by far the best thing about it but having more of him isn’t the answer, making the rest of it better is. Still, it’s better than a lot of things. Agree having finished it this evening. I find it easily watchable and solid even at its worst, which this season probably was. Trying too hard to shock but still enjoyed it. I heard a lot of negativity going in but guessing the negativity is from those who found the shift from using a hammer to apply political commentary to a sledgehammer meant they finally got that Homelander's not the goodie. Loved the simmering rage burning in him throughout and he carries it this season. Needs to reach a finale though as it's feeling stretched out. |
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MolarAm🔵
Full Member
Bad at games
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Jul 22, 2024 22:03:52 GMT
The problem is that Homelander has had simmering rage burning in him for, oh, about 2.5, 3 seasons now. There's nowhere for him to escalate to, aside from the natural endpoint of him going on a massacre.
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Post by simple on Jul 22, 2024 23:39:07 GMT
Bodkin (netflix)
Its Irish Only Murders In The Building would be the simplified pitch. Its also the kind of comedy drama that never quite manages to function properly as either a comedy or a drama.
That said it does have its charms. Ties itself in knots a bit at times but if this had been on ITV it certainly wouldn’t be the worst thing like this they’ve made.
7?
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Post by clemfandango on Jul 23, 2024 7:42:55 GMT
I’m half way through Poundland Gladiator.
It’s crap, but very watchable crap…
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Post by muddyfunster on Jul 26, 2024 8:31:41 GMT
The Daley Thompson doc on iPlayer
Great Olympics warm up fodder. I wasn't especially familiar with Daley the person having been born in 84. I remember his C64 game and appearances on question of sport rather than seeing him compete live.
Now have massive respect for him. Flawed character for sure who was actively antagonistic and sometimes went too far to get a reaction. In the context of his upbringing it's hardly surprising that he wasn't a well rounded individual. I guess this chippiness nuked a media career.
At 65 he comes across very well though and I left feeling that he's underappreciated. Deserves to be regarded more highly than some other athletes who achieved less and receive more acclaim.
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Post by Bill in the rain on Jul 26, 2024 8:38:29 GMT
I remember him being kinda a hero when I was growing up.
The Linford Christie documentary sounds worth watching as well.
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Post by dfunked on Jul 26, 2024 8:44:22 GMT
simple we got through the first episode eof Bodkin and just gave up. Fairly pants acting, and as you say it doesn't excell as a comedy or a drama. I think I enjoyed it a bit more than my other half mind you, but not enough to add another show to my solo backlog.
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Post by muddyfunster on Jul 26, 2024 10:05:47 GMT
I remember him being kinda a hero when I was growing up. The Linford Christie documentary sounds worth watching as well. I'm in two minds about watching the Linford one. Simply because I was that bit older and have a pretty good recollection for his career. I'm fairly sure he was a drugs cheat, though it's likely that all successful 100m sprinters were at it in that era (late 80s and 90s). Definitely impacts his legacy on my mind. Same as Carl Lewis. I just don't buy the vehement denials given the evidence and testimony from people around that scene. I'm not sure he's that different to Dwain Chambers. No excuse for the racism he experienced though and you still have to dedicate your life and do all the training, even if you are 'on the test'. |
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Post by jimnastics on Jul 26, 2024 10:07:20 GMT
The Daley Thompson doc on iPlayer Great Olympics warm up fodder. I wasn't especially familiar with Daley the person having been born in 84. I remember his C64 game and appearances on question of sport rather than seeing him compete live. Now have massive respect for him. Flawed character for sure who was actively antagonistic and sometimes went too far to get a reaction. In the context of his upbringing it's hardly surprising that he wasn't a well rounded individual. I guess this chippiness nuked a media career. At 65 he comes across very well though and I left feeling that he's underappreciated. Deserves to be regarded more highly than some other athletes who achieved less and receive more acclaim. I got a massive rush of nostalgia when the part with him playing Decathlon on the speccy came on, I was not prepared for that... proper goosebumps. Brought back intense magical memories playing with my big bro back then. |
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Post by Reviewer on Jul 26, 2024 10:13:46 GMT
Star Trek TNG S1 6/10
Some of the episodes are really awful, a few are very good but on the whole this is pretty bad but at least I know things will get a lot better.
Trying S1-3 8/10 (Apple tv)
The first season is better then it gets a bit too saccharine at times and the writing isn’t quite as good. It’s occasionally funny, usually just a bit light and fluffy background viewing.
The British Sewing Bee 5/10
Bit shit really.
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Post by cristar on Jul 26, 2024 10:30:41 GMT
The Bear S3: 6/10
Kinda boring and even more up it's own arse. The sister and mum episode was a snooze. Surely her going into labour could have been done during a service in the restaurant for some epic stressful madness. As was, it was just boring, and too many episodes nothing really happened. Still some great perfomances and cameos. Richie and Carm underused though.
The Boy S4: 8/10
I do think that an 8/10 is probably very generous, as storywise it was a pretty crap season. Hopefully no more Jeffrey Dean Morgan, that was just rubbish imo. The Ryan stuff was rubbish. There was other rubbish stuff too. Frenchie going to prison, terrible. But still enjoyable to watch, and I was looking forward to every episode.
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Post by rawshark on Jul 26, 2024 13:12:44 GMT
There are so many plot holes in S4 of The Boys. And yet I feel like a buzzkill if I try to care about it.
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Post by simple on Jul 26, 2024 13:36:11 GMT
simple we got through the first episode eof Bodkin and just gave up. Fairly pants acting, and as you say it doesn't excell as a comedy or a drama. I think I enjoyed it a bit more than my other half mind you, but not enough to add another show to my solo backlog. Its fine but it was a real filler programme for me. Its neither one thing or another and using a podcast as the framing device for a mystery has already been perfected several times over elsewhere. |
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Post by Trowel 🏴 on Jul 27, 2024 12:33:10 GMT
Fargo S3 - 9/10
Enjoyed S1, but S2 was a bit of a (Dunst/Plemons) slog. Started S3 as a way to fill some time, and it hooks you very quickly with the storyline and cast - McGregor is great in the lead role(s), but he's got a brilliant supporting cast especially David Thewlis as the menacing protagonist VM Varga. Highly recommended.
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Post by Dougs on Jul 27, 2024 13:05:40 GMT
I loved S2. Tied in nicely with S1 and i liked Patrick Wilson. Couldn't get in to S3 at all though.
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Post by clemfandango on Jul 27, 2024 13:39:38 GMT
Poundland Gladiator just gets crapper and better at the same time.
If you like the Spartacus series you’ll love it.
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Post by Nemesis on Jul 27, 2024 18:02:55 GMT
Those About To Die and Do Us A Favour.
140 Million budget. Is that a lot for a TV series these days?
The effects on the chariot racing are.....yeah. So bad, I kinda like them, but holy shit are they bad!
I say this, when Kwame's Mum does her crying she really goes for it. Settle down, bloody hell.
I finished it. Did I enjoy it? Yeah, I kinda did. Ramsey was excellent, but it's got a lot wrong with it.
I rate it....
4 Scorpus Out of Andalusian Horses.
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Post by Nemesis on Jul 27, 2024 18:03:35 GMT
(But I still kinda really liked it - a guilty pleasure perhaps)
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Blue_Mike
Full Member
Meet Hanako At Embers
Posts: 5,431
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Post by Blue_Mike on Jul 28, 2024 23:31:49 GMT
Brockmire (Rewatch)
Season 1
Cast: Hank Azaria, Amada Peet, Tyrel Jackson Williams, Hemky Madera
After discovering his wife has been (quite, quite massively) unfaithful, major league baseball announcer Jim Brockmire has a (quite, quite massively) public meltdown and disappears overseas to drown his sorrows in alcohol, drugs, women and somehow starring in a Filipino remake of Hart To Hart, he returns to America ten years later at the invitation of a minor league team owner to become a stadium announcer, to find that his meltdown (and second meltdown) became a viral video and he is now infamous, as is his ex-wife. Teaming up with a young man named Charles and embarking on a romance with the team owner Jules, Jim's alcoholic antics in the announcers' booth bring in the crowds to the ailing team, and the dying town it calls home slowly start to turn their fortunes around despite the machinations of a fracking company with designs on driving them out of business. Hank Azaria and Amanda Peet are nothing short of amazing together in this. It's just so smartly written, dripping in nihilism and wry observation, and basically all predicated on Azaria's idea of a man who loves his job as a sportscaster so much that his intonation doesn't change when he's outside the booth; he just talks that way most if not all of the time. Frequently hilarious, frequently dark. A truly brilliant season of television.
Season 2 Cast additions: Utkarsh Ambudkar, Dreama Walker, Carrie Preston
Having moved to New Orleans with Charles, Jim spirals further downward as his drinking and drug use ramp up even further while competing with another announcer for a prestigious new job offer. After dealing with the death of his father and destroying almost every personal relationship he has left, he meets a deeply disturbed woman who is even further gone than he is, and it becomes a pivot point around which his life will turn. The first time I watched this season, I didn't think it stacked up nearly as well as the first, but on a second go, I have no idea why I thought that. It may not quite reach the masterful heights of the first season, but it's still a hell of a run. Plus it gives Tyrel Jackson Williams more of a spotlight to flex his acting muscle, although it does this at the expense of relegating Amanda Peet to a handful of appearances. The funeral episode is a very dark highlight, as is Charles' confrontation with his family. Carrie Preston may only turn up towards the end, but holy shit that woman is a force of nature. Season 3
Cast additions: Tawny Newsome, Richard Kind, J.K. Simmons
Now living in Florida, a newly sober Jim is teamed with fellow announcer Gabby, oddball producer Gus, and contends with AA meetings, a surprise tortoise, and an asshole co-worker who happens to be both a cancer patient and the posessor of possibly the worlds' largest penis. Discovering that attempting to have a new relationship while sober for the first time is more difficult than he ever expected, the self-destruction that Jim was so deeply entrenched in for the first two seasons is now replaced by him trying to figure out how a sober man relates to the people around him, and it does this by giving those people more of an arc than the other characters of previous seasons had.
Matt's story in particular is quite poignant, and J.K. Simmons final scene with Hank Azaria is one of the reasons they both deserve awards that I'm pretty certain they never got. Tawny Newsome is sadly a bit underused, apart from one particular episode where she shines. I swear Richard Kind is just playing himself at times, if his true self self is "I just want to wear dungarees and no underwear".
Season 4 Cast additions: Reina Hardesty
In the final season, a time jump takes the show to a dystopian not-too-distant-future, where Jim has ascended to become comissioner of baseball, while the popularity of the game is at its' all time low as America steams ever further towards self immolation. Jim has spent the preceeding ten years as a single parent, raising the daughter he didn't know he had from his adventures overseas back in his self-destructive blackout years, while Jules' life has slid further and further away down the tubes. In his new job role, Jim has become a somewhat watered down version of his former self, depressingly having to oversee what seems to be the death of baseball itself.
Dealing with the fact that daughter Beth wants to pull away from his overbearing love, and trying to help Jules get her life back on track after a decade in the doldrums, Jim seems destined to end his career in mediocrity, until a standout moment where he loses his shit with a boardroom of cartoonishly evil billionaires and blackmails them with a threat of exposing every dark secret he knows about them, of which there are plenty. Intercutting the episodes at various points are commericals for some truly horrific products and services that seem all too likely to become a reality by 2030, not to mention a background thread about a scarily omni-present AI personal assistant that makes Alexa's spying and data-harvesting look almost benevolent by comparison.
The season gets a whole extra star from me for implying that at some point in this alternate future, Fred Durst was killed by being pushed out of a blimp at a great height.
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Post by Nanocrystal on Jul 28, 2024 23:40:57 GMT
The Bear S3 - 10/10
Cementing itself as the best TV show on right now. Incredibly acted, beautifully written, stylishly shot. This season leaned into focusing on the human aspect and the internal hangups, traumas and relationship issues of the various characters. Fair enough if you're not into that and want more "plot" but I found it absolutely captivating. Maybe it didn't hit the dramatic highs of S2 but it was consistently great and is refreshingly wholesome where most shows these days tend to be much more cynical.
EDIT: Reading back on other people's reviews, it seems I'm destined to be an outlier on this show (thought season 1 was absolute shite, but at least we all seem to agree S2 was superb).
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minimatt
Junior Member
hyper mediocrity
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Post by minimatt on Jul 29, 2024 1:23:35 GMT
loving the brockmire notes, i think i fell away from this sometime in s2, tried to come back a bit s3 and gave up. was, and remains, like nothing else on telly and i think you've convinced me to give it another go
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Post by Red_Bool on Jul 31, 2024 12:16:56 GMT
Star Wars The Bad Batch S3 9/10
Enjoyed that very much. Good story, likeable characters, just enough fan service and some unexpected things happening.
For me the animated SW series have been consistently so much better than the live action efforts (save Andor and Mandalorian S1) and this is no exception.
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rftp
New Member
Posts: 779
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Post by rftp on Jul 31, 2024 12:55:39 GMT
Season 1 of Shogun, FX's retelling of Cavell's errr... epic.
It's a long time since I've read the books and I didn't love them then, but as I mentioned elsewhere, this was better than I expected.
It has the same issues; the characters are pretty one-dimensional sketches of the people they're supposed to be and it makes some of the motivations and reasons why stuff happens seem paper thin. But hey, I wasn't there, what do I know? It looked good and the setting, script and acting was good too. Oddly seemed left on a cliffhanger, which likely means a second series is going to deviate from the books, which could either be excellent or terrible.
7/10
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Post by simple on Aug 1, 2024 13:03:24 GMT
The Jetty (iplayer)
Its a pretty typical BBC/ITV crime drama with a few tropes of the airport thriller thrown in. Its kind of bollocks but there’s only four episodes and it trots along briskly enough. Biggest issues is, like a lot of these shows, no one in it talks or acts like any real person has ever done in their lives.
It also has a podcaster in it. Having watched a few mystery/thrillers with podcasters in them recently - have none of these writers ever listened to a podcast before?
At least it doesn’t live in the transatlantic uncanny valley that Netflix’s Harlan Coben adaptations do where they try and force an American setting onto the UK so the cultural references all end up failing to ring true. Its just a classic grim northern town with inexplicably large police force.
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Post by A46Matt on Aug 1, 2024 13:57:23 GMT
Really liked Brockmire seasons 1-3 but 4 didn’t do it for me. Didn’t even bother finishing it. The only other show that I’ve seen that is remotely in the same vein is Eastbound and Down, which is superior imo.
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Gruf
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Even more taciturn than my name suggests
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Post by Gruf on Aug 1, 2024 20:29:39 GMT
Thought the first ep of Time Bandits was decent, considering I thought it would be absolute pants.
Not sure about the casting of Lisa Kudrow, but it had enough about it to keep me onboard.
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Post by kingbambino on Aug 4, 2024 12:15:42 GMT
The Bear series 3- 8/10
Was a bit delayed watching this from the mixed reviews but still thought it was excellent. The first 2 episodes were very slow but I enjoyed the rest . The first 2 series had momentum and progression where this built up the characters and kinda showed a “what next?” Question for some of them. I think series 4 will be better for it
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Post by rawshark on Aug 5, 2024 20:46:32 GMT
House of the Dragon
Pretty, fairly compelling, but slow, meandering and frustrating.
6/10
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