What TV Shows Are You Watching?

I'm struggling to finish Sirens. It's classified as a dark comedy but I don't find any of it all that funny. It actually reminds me a bit of Nicole Kidman and The Perfect Couple. People with a lot money with a lot of ordinary problems.

Also I'm not really liking the new Netflix TV interface. Maybe I'll get used to it. It reminds me of Amazon which is an interface where things get lost and you never find it again.
 
Okay. I don’t we will see another season of Sirens unless Kevin Bacon needs another younger girl to spawn babies and grandchildren.
 
Four Seasons. This one is billed as a comedy but comes off for me like a dark comedy. With licence to use Vivaldi’s composition you get snapshots of three couples getting together during spring, summer, autumn and winter. They clearly know each other from before but in their soon to be middle age sometimes party like uni kids.

I guess there is a fourth couple because Steve Carell ditches Kerri Kennedy-Silver for the younger Erika Henningsen. Tina Fey and Steve Carell fit this show like a glove although the story arc for Carell is uncannily like The Morning Show. He becomes this unlikeable person to his current girlfriend and ex wife. I don’t know. Maybe that is his shtick.

I don’t know if I needed the extra dimension of a gay couple but it takes the show into the obligatory Grindr threesome. There is a second season. I have no idea how since the four couples symmetry is broken. The show would have lightened up if there was a laugh track.
 
The fam of been getting into a lot of anime series lately and I guess I have as well. Looking for recommendations for something a bit more adult than Invincible, Jujutsu and Deathnote.
 
I don't watch anime. Well, I did. I watched Sailor Moon as a kid.
 
Reviews are not looking kind for season 4 of the Bear. If it is like season 3 I might give up on it.
 
The Bear (S4) has been very good. It’s settled into a kitchen sink drama, which it does well. 8/10

murderbot: this was the surprise of the season. The episodes are far too short, but this is fun and hilarious and fairly original. 9/10
 
I am watching Fubar season 2. It's pretty funny. I mean it doesn't take itself seriously so it's funny. Especially when you have Schwarzenegger try to explain the ingenious espionage plot devices and their technicalities that you know he clearly has no clue about. Don't reboot the computers! It also moves from planes to subs (James Cameron shout out) to tanks to spaceships.

So many sarcastic deadpan one liners and the equivalent of arching eye brows zoom ins. All it needed was the commercial break.

The only thing I don't understand is Guy Burnet's character. He is the bad guy foil to Monica Barbaro. Son of a spy but ends up on the bad guy side and in love with the CIA daughter. The guy has been wearing the same navy blue suit and open collar white dress shirt since he got taken into custody early in the season. At some point you would think no matter the London charm the guy must reek of body odour and the white shirt turns brown or yellow.


I also figured out Jay Baruchel is the guy from the BlackBerry movie. He really needs to get some other character parts or he is going to be stuck being the geeky goof.
 
Finished Fubar. You have to like Arnold movies. At some point Arnold needs to remember a password to stop a nuclear missile and he says he doesn't quite remember the voice password in his old age. His daughter then says you need total recall. It's corny. Then when the other people were egging him on with turn of the century commercials and movies one says "I'll be back".
 
Maschi veri or real men. Netflix actually made a better series here about four couples than the Four Seasons with the Hollywood talent.

Open relationships, cheating, alpha male breadwinner loses job and house wife or house girlfriend straps on the trousers, wife cheats with the personal trainer, daughter makes separated father go on tinder dates, etc. Similar subplots but more interesting and funnier when they regroup and recount the ascendancy (or deacendancy) of their respective lives.
 
I don’t know why but I am watching Owning Manhattan. Is there any other person more unlikeable than a realtor?
 
I will be very disappointed if we don’t get another season of Murderbot!
 
Dropbear said:
Insurance salesperson
Click to expand...

Personally I hate life insurance sales people. Especially in Canada because it's a vehicle to grow assets and turn it over to your beneficiaries tax free when you die. Morbidity and dodgy finances wrapped int one.

But if it's to disparage me, I'm not in sales.
 
And the Emmy goes to….
  • Apple TV+’s “Severance" led the pack of nominees, racking up 27 total nods for its second season. HBO Max's "The Penguin" followed with 24 nods.
Still not very motivated to watch either. I did watch the first Severance.

Also Harrison Ford got a nomination at age 83. Better late than never. TikTok is next.
 
Colbert takes over for Letterman and now the The Late Show on CBS is no more.
 
Oh my God. Lucas Bravo isn't coming back to Emily in Paris. No more Emily and Gabriel!
 
Department Q. Matthew Goode aka Lady Mary Crawley’s husband was shot at. He survives but his partner is paralysed so he is given a new assignment to solve old unsolved crimes. He also has to go to therapy under Kelly MacDonald. I have to confess it’s slow to get started. All the PTSD and dream and flashbacks are cliche by now.

Across the episodes you get snippets of a woman locked in a hyperbaric chamber. Her kidnappers dump food in to keep her alive. She showers and occasionally talks to her captors. That part was more interesting - in a morbid way. And the sequences, which are framed differently than the regular scenes, get longer as the police are closer to finding her. In the end the storylines and cinematography all merge together. The only thing that kept me going was trying to find out if she escapes. Mindhunter I think does the same technique with vignettes of crimes played in parallel to the main story.

When I finished I discovered it got an Emmy nomination. Not entirely sure why.
 
The Waterfront. It’s like a small town soap opera with Holt McCallany as a local business owner / drug runner and Maria Bello as the matriarch. I thought McCallany lost a lot of weight from Mindhunters but actually he bulked up for that role and is back to his usual self in this one. Lots of "Let me explain it to you in terms you will understand" cool and collected attitude that he does best. They both have grandkids in this show. Maria Bello as GILF?!

Jake Weary plays the spoiled son who f$cks up and needs his father to bail him out because he can't do the dirty work. An aged Topher Grace makes a few appearances as the somewhat psycho drug supplier.
 
Finished The Waterfront. How does Topher Grace go through every movie and genre playing the same sarcastic deadpan jokester. Here he is the psycho evil guy in a drama. Back during In Good Company, he does the same mannerisms and self deprecating jokes but he is in a romantic comedy.

Maria Bello is 50 something and looks like she took care of her face even in 4K.
 
Everything Now. I had this on the background for a few weekends. The fall and decline of society is fully demonstrated in our Gen A kids.
 
Still making our way through the final Sandman, which has been excellent.

My wife is more excited about the new Foundation, but it’s ok.

The Aliens series has potential, but I suspect it won’t reach it. wtf is a SAR team going into a crash site with assault weapons and no rescue equipment???
 
Isn’t Alien always revolving around underequipped people who do nonsensical things?
 
I started The Lazarus Effect. This seems like something fun to watch while on the gym treadmill
 
Is it me or did a lot of the streaming services hold back their TV shows this summer? It feels like end of June happened and there weren't any major releases. Or maybe there wasn't anything that appealed to me.
 
Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, now on Bloomberg Originals.

Anything to get a pay cheque.
 
Apple’s The Studio leads with 23 nominations for Emmys. I did pass by a display for The Morning Show at the local film festival which I sort of lost interest in when Jon Hamm’s Bezos character came into the picture.
 
I have David Chang's Dinner Time Live on from time to time. The new season started last month. In one episode he is trying to make Italian Sunday Dinner. He says he knows all these Italian chefs, uses some of their ingredients on the show, and none of them have ever invited him to an Italian Sunday supper. He name drops all the Italians he knows. First of all, it's Sunday lunch so maybe you wanted to be invited to the light meal after the big meal.

But more evidently it's a sign you have a bad reputation in the industry:



In one of the later episodes with Chrissy Teigen he breaks a bearnaise sauce because he didn't want to use a bain marie live on TV. He almost goes mental on TV. Teigen looks like someone blew her face up like a balloon. Later she says she orders her husband John Legend to go make sandwiches and snacks every night so she can munch after midnight. But the worse was when they start doing audience polling and she freaks out people are saying bad things about her on social media.
 
I finished Sara. It's an Italian police/secret spy agency show about two women who were part of a covert operation. Teresa Saponangelo plays Sara who fell in love with the leader and then lived as a hermit. Her secret power is she can read lips. The other, Claudia Gerini, continued to run the operation. Their lives collide again when Saponangelo's son is killed and Gerini's boy toy is tortured to death.

It's a mix of a police operation and a bit of spy caper mixed in. No crazy action sequences of James Bond/Mission Impossible gadgets. Lots of shots of Napoli if you're interested.
 
Watching Next Gen Chefs. It's one of those competitions with the surprise ingredients and special challenges to avoid elimination. The contestants are pretty young. Most are 25 and below.

It was also pretty clear the private/personal chefs never worked as line cooks in a real kitchen. There were two episodes where they were cooking for a pub or a food stall at a canteen and literally there were lady chefs not doing a hell of a lot other than making a (singular) birthday ice cream sundae (from store bought ice cream) for service.

There are some creepy advertisements 2/3 into the season showing how Ecolab is the best cleaning agent.

There was a funny challenge to cook a French style omelette. I think they had 20 minutes to do it which meant they could cook it on low heat. One of the judges even says that. The show's editing and music make it sound like a monumental task till the finish. There are pans clanging and people rushing around the kitchen. It's an omelette - just let the eggs slowly set on a buttered pan and then fold it. I remember Wolfgang Puck making Jon Favreau do it with just a fork and a pan.
 
I enjoyed the first season of Aliens - with its focus more on the robots and corporations than the actual monsters. 8/10

The Lazarus Project has been a pleasant surprise: strong cast and script, with a decent production budget. 8.5/10

The Foundation still confuses me and I don’t pretend to be following it closely enough to know wtf it’s all about, but this season has been a little more digestible. 7.5/10
 
I am some ways into the second episode of Hotel Costiera. Honestly I was watching it to see Amanda Campana. Was a bit disappointed it caters more to English speaking audiences. So far I saw her for four scenes for about five minutes.

Jesse Williams is a former Marine who is basically the hotel's house detective. He has three eccentric sidekicks who supply drones, helicopters, black market goods and good old female seduction to solve capers posed to him by hotel guests going in and out of Tommaso Ragno's hotel. Mysterious deaths. Missing valuables.

The show is set on the Amalfi Coast with some visits to Napoli. It looks jaw dropping gorgeous. The show pairs it with corny detective caper tunes and the occasional Italian song. It comes off like Columbo or Magnum PI.

Amanda Campana is the hotel owner's daughter. Hopefully she gets more screen time soon.
 
Black Rabbit on Netflix with Jude Law and Jason Bateman.

Law is a restauranteur hustling to make ends meet. Bateman was a co-founder or bartender or resident drunk that convinced Law, his on screen younger brother, to invest in the venture. Bateman got into debt trouble and fled town. He comes back to New York.

He's like that family member everyone in a reasonable size family has that is a magnet for issues. It's like my second cousin being late. I swear I wouldn't have batted an eye if she rang me to tell me a dinosaur was on the highway so she would be another 30 minutes late. Bateman gets into all sorts of ideas to repay his debt, drags Law into it, including torching their parents' home. You could see from the flashbacks from hours away they were going to have a come to Jesus moment about their upbringing and their degenerate parents so when it finally happens in the last episode it feels drawn out.

The monetary amounts being thrown around with a working restaurant as collateral should be easily covered by a business line of credit. But hey that would make the show 1 episode long.

Who did cinematography on this? It's always dark. Even the daytime scenes are dark. If you watch it during the day you barely see anything of the night scenes. The jittery camera during the chase scenes (which is basically Bateman stealing something and bad guys chasing him) are too numerous.
 
My wife has been binge rewatching Altered Carbon. The first season was excellent and the second a massive disappointment.

I’ve started Slow Horses S5. Once again, off to a slow start and it would be easy to say that the show is in decline - but I was wrong in making that call at the start of precious seasons

Finally finished off The Foundation. What a hot mess of plot lines and characters. I really don’t know what the point of all that was.
 
Dropbear said:
I’ve started Slow Horses S5. Once again, off to a slow start and it would be easy to say that the show is in decline - but I was wrong in making that call at the start of precious seasons
Click to expand...
It gets good. The last episode was pretty funny.
Dropbear said:
Finally finished off The Foundation. What a hot mess of plot lines and characters. I really don’t know what the point of all that was.
Click to expand...
Foundation on AppleTV?
 
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