Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

Feature length episode of Kingdom now out

The Korean series?

Yep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTqz2QYsSeY

was wondering the same, there's like at least 3 different TV shows called Kingdom in the past decade

I still have a soft spot for the dopey MMA one (also on Netflix, last I checked) w/ Frank Grillo, Jonathan Tucker, Matt Lauria and uhh Nick Jonas

oh and Paul Walter Hauser's in there too

was curious about that one but it left US Netflix earlier this year i think

Thought maybe it could even be Lars von Trier’s Riget.

Decided to check out Nayattu, a Indian political thriller that I found out about from the Letterboxd top25 of the year so far list. Thought it was really great and tense, police corruption and brutality taken as givens. Checked out some reviews afterwards tho and apparently it's full of caste prejudice that totally went over my head? The perils of engaging w/ culture you don't know shit about, I guess.

Thought maybe it could even be Lars von Trier’s _Riget_.

Right, thought I heard something about that

Feature length episode of Kingdom now out

― groovypanda, Friday, 23 July 2021 10:42 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

This was v bleak, from the plot to the selection of hats. Rural Korea in the 16th century wasn't much fun to live/die in I guess.

What's the Neko Case song that's featured in the Country episode of This Is Pop?

Ah, "Furnace Room Lullaby"!

I binged the first season of Never Have I Ever in maaaaayyybe two days? It maxes out on "avert your eyes from this terrible life choice" tension that I can only tolerate by spacing out and mainlining it without thinking about it too much. But one thing I am LOVING is how non-white it is!! Just out here being about Black, brown, Afrolatina, Asian, etc, people and giving zero fucks. It's delightful.

yeah i loved s1

s2 took me to the max of “ok she’s kind a nut & a terrible person? & i dont enjoy watching this?” so i stoped

I finished season 2 eventually - spacing out the episodes helped in reducing the urge to yell at Devi through the TV. I didn’t really like the show rationalising her behaviour as a response to her father’s death, some of the things she got up to were pretty terrible.

I quite liked the complicated friendship she had with Aneesa though and glad they fleshed Paxton out a bit more too.

i really really REALLY love John McEnroe as the narrator. genius move.

Shadow and Bone is quite good! Had very low hopes for a NF fantasy series, but it comes together well. A lot of world building details are packed in or not fully explained so it's easy to get lost, but the story is still compelling. Hope we get additional seasons

Brand New Cherry Flavor, anyone? A few episodes in and it’s pretty good - excellent, fucked up body horror and 90s fashion that actually looks like 90s fashion. Rosa Salazar is fantastic even if she does look like she could be Aubrey Plaza’s twin.

there were a couple posts on the not-Netflix thread...maybe a sign to have one rolling tv thread as that keeps happening and we don't all live in the same country

Ah ok, I’ll look over there. a rolling TV thread sounds like a good idea but makes it very hard to avoid spoilers if you don’t have access to certain services (e.g. Hulu isn’t available where I am)

Is anyone else as curious about writers as I am? Every time I watch an episode of a show I like and the writing seems above or below usual standard I turn to the Wikipedia episode guide and see if it's a writer who's new or whatever.

Like yesterday I watched Dead to Me s2e3, a show I've felt has been consistently good so far, and it right from the off it just seemed bad, characters acting out of character, weak dialogue, weird plot holes. I look it up and it's the first one from that particular writer. And I make a mean mental note against that name.

I'm sure I sometimes conflate it with directing or acting choices, but anyway.

Honestly, I have no idea how credits work. Meaning, there's often a writer's room, but only one or two writers gets the credit on a show. Does that mean those one or two writers wrote everything themselves, or just the bulk/concept? I have no idea. I haven't been watching White Lotus or even know what it is, but I know Mike White not only created it but wrote every episode himself, by himself. That seems sort of unusual. A lot of the top tier TV seems to be a product of a team, even if only one person gets the actual "written by" credit. And yeah, the director makes a big difference, too, maybe even bigger, because there's only one of them, even if I assume the showrunner can influence things.

I haven't been watching White Lotus or even know what it is,

okay

but I know Mike White not only created it but wrote every episode himself, by himself. That seems sort of unusual.

except

A lot of the top tier TV seems to be a product of a team, even if only one person gets the actual "written by" credit.

so... not that unusual? at least, not as unusual as not ever having seen a show or even knowing 'what it is' but knowing who has writing credit on each episode. imo!

there's often a writer's room, but only one or two writers gets the credit on a show. Does that mean those one or two writers wrote everything themselves, or just the bulk/concept? I have no idea..

you possibly could have just left it there ^

Honestly, I have no idea how credits work.

or even there!

Alba I have the same thoughts but I never actually bother to look any of it up. For instance, Stranger Things S3, Hopper was just doing all this dumb stuff that Hopper would never do. 11 too. The acting was fine, the direction was fine. They were just being made to say and do things that rang untrue to their characters. Of course this can be an interesting choice - deliberately show a beloved character who's out of sorts, or going through a transformation, but that's not really what it was.

I remember reading something about 30 Rock where they explained that they would sit around in a writer's room and come up with the general episode idea & outline, then assign it to one writer to actually come up with a script (whose name would be on the episode as 'written by'). But then of course the script would be reviewed by everyone, punched up, jokes added, etc.

But Mike White said in an interview that he didn't have a writer's room, he really did write it all by himself, which does seem unusual.

Yeah. In the UK that's how most dramas are written, actually. Sometimes big comedies will have a writer's room but in general it doesn't happen because writer's room are extremely expensive. This is the main reason there's never been a UK version of the Daily Show, for instance. You need a big team of writers.

writers' rooms would also be much more necessary for a 24-episode season

fyi, White wrote every episode of Enlightened too

lol yeah it helps that most UK dramas are like 6 episodes.

Notable exception is early West Wing, where Sorkin did pretty much write the entire first few seasons solo before completely burning out.

I was going to mention him but got distracted trying to recall whether "burning out" = got caught with mushrooms at the airport, or if I conflated the two

Probably both. And/or cocaine.

Even Sorkin had people coming up with story ideas, but he did write all the dialogue solo

Is anyone else as curious about writers as I am?

has literally never occurred to me to think about

The Chair is great and hilarious - Sandra Oh is fantastic as usual, but I really, really loved Holland Taylor in this. Also Jay Duplass as a ridiculously charming and crushable disaster <3

slightly amused that netflix paid the producers of Game of Thrones a fuckton of money to get this small-scale, six-episode satire about beleaguered English professors.

lol now seeing that discussion of The Chair is once again on that other TV thread I'm not on

Second season of Into The Night is out next week.

Can remember hardly anything about the first season other than the basic premise and that it was pretty decent.

Latest season of Money Heist has turned everything up to 11 and it was completely bonkers already

yes! is there a handy recap at the start?

No but if you look under the Trailers & More section there's short 3 minute recaps for each season so far

https://i2.wp.com/cospixy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/941108C3-3A32-4D2B-B32E-EEC509420B60.jpeg?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1

Finally saw Never Have I Ever. Love seeing my own childhood experience represented in media but I feel like these shows often hit the same notes, the same jokes. This show was very refreshing as it wove most of the experience into a fast-moving, often laugh-out-loud funny, broader scoped show. Lot of details rang true for a show that often veers from reality

Agree that S2 was not as good, Devi was getting quite unlikable and the plot was rehashing the same character interactions. But with a great supporting cast, there was still a lot to enjoy. I'll happily watch another season

I watched the first episode of the Voltron reboot, my god what an aggravating experience.

Money Heist S5: I signed up for high stakes but essentially lighthearted robin hood capers, not a war movie :(

Mobile Suit Gundam movies (stitched together episodes of the anime, but v watchable for that) are on netflix and I'm amazed that so much of what I had thought were Evangelion subversions of the mecha genre - traumatized, instrumentalised teen protagonist, a fundamentally amoral power structure behind the "good guys", kinky shit - was already in there.

SQUID GAME. Watch Squid Game. Totally binged this in 2 days. Best thing on Netflix in ages.

Has anyone else watched "Murder Among the Mormons" yet? It's absolutely riveting true crime stuff, really well made, with a fascinating story at its center.

yeah it’s really good! - that whole story is so wild