Your Ten Favorite Shows Currently on Television

Beforeigners, on HBO Europe, is a car crash of SF-themed procedurals (Alien Nation comes to mind) - not particularly great, but compellingly not bad either.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/review-time-travel-and-murder-combine-in-hbos-riveting-beforeigners-series/#p3

I'm going to be re-activating my HBO subscription next month for the second season of My Brilliant Friend and am definitely planning on watching Beforeigners.

Have watched the first episode of Beforeigners and I'm in

Thanks to whichever one of you recommended Stath Lets Flat. It's been a while since I saw a cast so thoroughly, convincingly dedicated to hilarious idiocy.

Anyone else (still) watching Briarpatch? I'm really enjoying it.

Yes! Really good so far!

josh how are you watching stath lets flat?

i was curious to try it but didn't invest any energy into figuring out how to watch it in the u.s.

I downloaded it from some BBC forum. Wasn't a torrent, was a direct download, and it took forever to find a place that was sharing it.

huh ok

i don't think it's been discussed here but I'm going through the first season of Home on Channel 4 and it's enjoyable and well-written and well acted and often quite funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA8KEVWmd88
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/home

I enjoyed both series. Skirts just the right edge of preachy, but doesn't maybe hit as many comedy points as the commissioning staff might have been promised.

Run was... okay? Coasting on casting imo; not much happening at all. I'll try once or twice more.

Insecure's first episode leaning a little too heavy into soap opera and recycled storylines. I love love love Issa Rae though and am willing to put up with a lot just to get the parts with her doing physical comedy.

New season of What We Do in the Shadows basically picks up where they left off, which is to say it's pure fun without much friction or deep engagement but well worth anyone's time.

Brockmire is secretly the second best show on television right now, behind Better Call Saul.

Slowly going through the first season of Summer Camp Island which is a must for anyone who misses Adventure Time. NB: do not watch more than two 10 minute episodes at a time.

Desus and Mero locked up at home is really the only remote talk show worth a shit in the midst of this plague. Julia has ended up being a major element in the show's structure, she's kinda becoming the Robin Quivers of the 2020's

Three Busy Debras is okay. Beef House is not.

The first episode of Run was interesting in the sense that I'm curious to see where it is going to go next.

Beef House is likely pointless, but hilarious.

I want to be mad at Devs because it bears a very strong resemblance to a project I was developing/writing, but I can't, because it's really fucking watchable.

I would have watched Run if it was a 90 minute movie. A series? Forget it.

Agree re Insecure. Not great out of the gate, but I'm already along for the ride.

kinda feel like that about Devs. after ep 1 i’m like, okay i get it. not sure i need 10 episodes of low-rent spyjinks and this guy pining for his daughter.

Yeah, it's not that kind of show really. Also, only 8 eps!

It’s not what kind of show? hmm 8 eps is better than I was thinking. Still think it would have made a better movie.

The kind of show that focuses on "spyjinks" or thankfully spends THAT much time on the grief angle. Mostly it's a playground for Garland to toy with pet themes and get real weird with it visually

Devs and Dispatches from Elsewhere are shows I've mostly enjoyed moment-to-moment while being generally unsure of where they were going or whether they were ultimately going to add up to anything of substance but I think I've ultimately come around to and will give a thumbs-up to both.

(P.S. It's been a little weird watching Devs and Westworld in tandem as the current season of the latter is exploring territory very similar to the former.)

I thought Devs stuck the landing, unlike a lot of other high-concept limited series I've seen

Ok well I’ll probably watch. the “themes” have been extremely on-the-nose so far tho. And very.... earnest

A friend agreed with me that the coda to Devs fell a little flat. I like Garland's films/show and I'm very into work where the resolution is less than total, but he often crafts a lot of tension that seems to evaporate at the end.

Basically it feels like every one of his stories should end with the protagonist burning a building down and walking away.

I'm also very corny and enjoy the Jonathan Nolan/Lisa Joy dumb-smartness of Westworld. The newest season feels like a mash-up of the prior seasons and his previous show, Person of Interest, which was at times a little boring but surprisingly unpretentious in its presentation, although as a prime time major network show sandwiched next to crime dramas that may have been a requirement.

this is probably a good place to mention that what we do in the shadows is back and the first episode was incredible

i was so unsure about dispatches from elsewhere when i started it but i'm really in love with where it's gone

great characters/performances, full of twee bryan fuller energy (ymmv) but toward increasingly abstract purposes

lmao the more of it I watch the more I hate it, it's sort of impressive

it seems like a show you would hate

I mentioned this on its thread but it doesn't help that in a lot of ways it feels like a more expensive, much less enjoyable Lodge 49, on the same network that just killed it

or really like a show that any reasonable person could approach and say "oh, no thanks"

but since the end of the game i've been absolutely enraptured xp

well i do still need to see lodge 49

yes, you should!

I will allow that Eve Lindley is delightful

i didnt know that it was a Fuller show

i may check it out!

Fuller's not involved but it sure is twee

oh fuller ~energy~ i see now

hmm

oh yeah sorry didn't mean to mislead

goddammit brad

:)

I figured the tweeness would make ILXors gag. It ain't that fuckin twee, tho, really. Some solid, affecting moments and the leads are v good.

Brad is otm about Fuller energy btw (although I guess 'Fuller energy' as a blanket term must now somehow account for Hannibal, as well, so I'm not sure if it's misleading in this case). I've been thinking as we watched that I might recommend Wonderfalls to my gf as a follow-up.

Insecure's first episode leaning a little too heavy into soap opera and recycled storylines. I love love love Issa Rae though and am willing to put up with a lot just to get the parts with her doing physical comedy.

Yup, this. Episodes 1 and 2 saw Molly and Issa both literally telling the other one some variation of "You know you don't have to go through this drama, right?" But it's still great fun and, given where we're at, poignant to watch Issa's crew interacting.

even hannibal has that fuller energy, it is just running beneath all of the gnarly shit. it's part of why season three is so... unlike anything ever made

IDK about that Dispatches finale. There were some intersting elements but I feel like if you're gonna go in...that direction you kinda need to have a fresh angle on that direction to stand out from the million other times projects have gone in that direction.

I just read about it and yeahhhhhhh no thx

lmao that was pretty indulgent

show was still a pretty fun ride

Over the past two seasons, I've completely lost the thread of Better Things. It's gotten entirely too self congratulatory and fatuous and isn't hitting anywhere near me... which is fine obviously, not everything is for me.

If it's for you though, 92Y is doing a livestream conversation with her and Mario Cantone tonight at 5pm ET
https://www.92y.org/archives/pamela-adlon

i thought last season of better things wasnt as good, this season is better imo it hits for me, still;

i almost want to ask her why they chose tom waits 'martha' for the serenade wedding song in the new orleans ep.. its a pretty song obv but idk why/how it would be expected to function in that context its kinda mystifying

Amy Schumer Learns To Cook is pretty charming so far.