Your Ten Favorite Shows Currently on Television

Rick and Morty has so much awfulness to answer for.

I parted ways with cable so long ago that it does take a little effort to remember that Bravo doesn't show ballet anymore

thanks for the rundown, ulysses, luckily my wildly overpriced Canadian streaming service gets everything hbo

All three seasons of The Great Pottery Throwdown are on HBO in the US as of tomorrow and it should go without saying that I VERY MUCH rep that show and, if you find any enjoyment in Great British Baking, I recommend it strongly.

If you enjoy Great British Baking, they've been doing some hardcore quarantining/bubbling to make the new series

btw I feel my 'Raised by Wolves' joke some time ago was slept on

I just watched the 5th episode of Lovecraft Country and I am coming around. My biggest issue has been the weird tonal mix as I generally don't like my eldritch horror mixed with so much humor but if every episode is as good as this one I don't mind.

3 episodes into Lovecraft Country and it's not doing it for me yet. The episode formula so far is a starting story of racism leading into a second story that replaces the racists with literal monsters -- which is too neat of a formula for me. Also not Lovecraftian at all. It also feels like a white writer doing a story for every example of racism he knows.

really? wow. i am 5 episodes in and could not love this show more; it exceeds my expectations exponentially every episode

i have no idea where it is going one moment to the next, but i am along for the ride

You know the author of the book is White, right abanana?

The episode focusing on Ruby was so freaking good. It just fires off bullseye darts in every direction - racism, identity, self-identity, body horror, gender, class. The scene of Montrose and the drag queens dancing seemed a little out of left field, but was so well done and the seeming sense of self-realization was actually moving.

enjoyed that new show US which just finished on BBC1 but it was bugging me that I couldn't work out who the young him was.
Just looked it up, found out who the actor is and it's the guy who plays Fitz in Agents Of SHIELD or at least did for a number of series.
Just watching through series 7 of that and he's not around.
Only thing is he looks like he lost weight or something.
Was wondering if i knew hinm as a younger actor somewhere, guess i just about do.

oh yeah going to have a new Lovecraft Country tomorrow.
Have been really enjoying that.
Hadn't looked up the ethnicity of the writer but thought i had heard that there were black writers reworking the notoriously racist Lovecraft's tropes

Hadn't looked up the ethnicity of the writer but thought i had heard that there were black writers reworking the notoriously racist Lovecraft's tropes

You're looking for Victor LaValle's The Ballad of Black Tom, which is excellent.

Yeah, Fitz' absence was odd in the final season but seems like it was his choice/schedule and not the producers' xps

Not Lovecraftian is fair, even the book mostly feels like a series of broader pulp comic/novel scenarios than Lovecraft. Makes a good hook, though, I guess.

Raised by Wolves is just the most innovatively dumb show. It's mostly holding my attention out of sheer astonishment in its lack of interest for logic/character development/clarity of idea but keeps me held rapt in shock watching each weird curveball and new stupid story development. Not liking the current plot? Then how about we add ghosts! Lots of ghosts! The killer android matriarch not doing it for you? Let's put her in a VR hologram and have her pursue a sexual relationship with her human hacker/maker! Good guys are bad guys and bad guys are good guys and the good guys who were pretending to be bad guys are now bad guys for real except maybe they're secret good guys? Depends on which episode you're on! And let's make this guy Space Jesus!

The acting among the show's leads is mostly excellent but the red shirts are pure throwaway characters. All of the kids are exhausting to listen to, less because of their skills and more about them being drastically underwritten. It's impossible to care about anyone; the scripting and plotting are knotty and nonsensical nearly beyond belief. There's an unironic reading of the line “Make love to me like a great man.”

The show generally looks very expensive but the consideration and execution of its expensiveness is predominantly horribly realized and results in mugwump/alien baddies and shitty grey bodysuits and the lamest potential architecture and tech design.

I have three episodes to go and can't imagine why/how this got renewed but I am sadly fully onboard this garbage scow. It's a prestige cable b-movie inflated to blimp size and set out to careen wildly through the Grand Canyon. Wheeeeeee!

btw veg, Ted Lasso isn't bad! Slowly plunking out an episode every few days.

:D

i call that a win

so turnabout being fair play, i need to ask if you've seen brockmire.

i have not

Imagine Ted Lasso turned up to 11 with Hank Azaria in the lead and instead of wholesome sweetness, it's fucking filthy. Secretly one of the best shows of the past decade and well worth hunting down. In the USA, all four seasons are on Hulu.
https://www.hulu.com/series/brockmire-8fccfdbc-f77c-4647-9132-59f24606bb7f
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47VjZiIKmaA

^ that's the first episode of the second season.

Just caught up with The Expanse which is thankfully set up for another season but I wish wasn't disposing of characters I like.

Also just finished season 1 of Umbrella Academy which I hadn't been aware of until very recently. Have season 2 set up.

Also Agents Of SHIELD which I'd watched a couple of episodes of at the start of the year and then hadn't got the space to dld further episodes of so only just watched. Pretty good, shame it's gone now.
Think I may not have finished season 6 for some reason either.

Finally got to see I May Destroy you which was great. Hope there's more coming or the cast get more stuff going on.
Michaela Coel needs to be commissioned for more writing if this story did end there.

& got about 3 episodes away from season 2 of the Terror and didn't complete.
Think I even had more episodes on file since the start of the year.

So basically catching up on part watched things from pre Lockdown not sure why it's taken til now other than storage space. That and changing over to listening to podcasts and attending online things more.
May be wanting to catch Lovecraft Country that triggered watching more stuff.

Now wondering if I missed anything else over the last year that I would normally have grabbed.

Brockmire declined from season to season but that just means it went from 5/5 to 4/5 over four seasons.

the original Brockmire bit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M95P3DTYxqg

I have a fantasy of Hank Azaria doing a Rockford Files-style throwback cop show - dressed exactly like Brockmire.

lol at Brockmire getting the Godfather quote wrong (he says "Barzini's a pimp" but it's "Tattaglia's a pimp").

hmm - reading up on this, this could be my next thing to watch. like the concept.

Amanda Peet co-stars in the first season and she's as good as Azaria.

"Whoa - knowledge and assumptions! Those are like Loggins and Messina. They seem similar, but time proves one of them to be completely worthless."

k, I'm sold for the long run

you won't be disappointed. I think the final season is prescient and amazing but I think i'm in the minority.

anyone here seen the mid-'90s show nowhere man? been thinking of seeking it out after really enjoying bruce greenwood's performance in exotica

there's an ilx thread about it but it sucks

Final 30 minutes or so of this week's Lovecraft Country was wild (and amazing)

Probably my favourite show this year

I didn't like this one quite as much as the last two maybe, but it was amazing. The scene where she is floating in space was incredible.

yeah dug teh Sun Ra speech bit of Lovecraft Country .
& Hypolyta turning into the heroine of her daughter's comic I take it.

Wondered where the Amazons vs Confederates thing was supposed to be but had been thinking Amazon training had been supposed to be her dipping into a real situation. Which it possibly was.
Or is the set up a reference to an existing story?

Oh & the stellar hoop skirt was something else.

really want to see where it ends up next week, hope she returns enlightened or should I feel better that she's gone on to a place of self fulfilment. Afro futurism though, cool.

watched the first three eps of utopia (2020 amazon) after only finishing season two of utopia (2013, whatever british channel it was on, channel 4?) a few weeks ago. the differences in plot have me genuinely wondering how much of the british one i just forgot? (gf is watching uk one now tho so i at least know the entire premise for ep1 of US version is different)

anyway us one seems ok but so far not convinced it needs to exist/they shouldn't have just made the uk one more available instead

that said i am ALWAYS happy to see Desmin Borges in anything (even if his character in this one seems far dumber than his uk counterpart)

Nu Utopia (what little I saw of it before bailing the eff out, anyway) is one of the worst shows I've seen in a very long time.

xxpost - Yeah, that Hippolyta episode divulged pretty wildly from the corresponding story in the book, but that's not the first time the series has done so and I think the show did a much better job of getting around to the same essential point re Hippolyta coming to terms with everything she gave up to serve the travel guide. I think the Amazon thing was making explicit the link of her character's name.

xp re: Utopia.

Turning a formally distinctive conspiracy mystery into a sociopath road-trip with exposition dumps & social commentary was a bad move. Gillian Flynn has fallen in my estimation.

Looking forward to the HBO mini The Third Day, which shares showrunner/writer, director, and composer with the original Utopia. Ep 3 of 5 aired yesterday.

ooh thanks for bringing that to my attn, will check it out!

looking forward to Zeke with a Beak

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