Pandiculate

Well-known member
I actually don't mind a lack of likable characters, my issue is Shiv smiling with satisfaction as she realises (or thinks) she has become the favoured heir - as a viewer you're thinking "but doesn't she remember the last three times this happened before he switched to someone else?". Where is it going? Where can it go without it finishing? Nowhere really. So, as entertaining as the machinations are, this built-in frustration is becoming increasingly frustrating.
I felt this way at times, that it was spinning it's wheels a bit, but the end of season 3 was a massive shift imo and sets up the final 1-2 seasons nicely.
 

luka

Well-known member
the BBC thing? my sister made me watch that. very badly acted, very corny, liberties with the facts, but sort of enjoyable.
 

Leo

Well-known member
just finished "Giri/Haji" on Netflix, pretty good. Japanese detective searching for his presumably thought dead yakuza brother in London, mostly soho. Charlie Creed-Miles is great in the role of a London gangster. also will Sharpe, from "flowers".
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
the BBC thing? my sister made me watch that. very badly acted, very corny, liberties with the facts, but sort of enjoyable.
Yeah, it totally missed out the CIA saboteurs who caused the "accident" in the first place. :mad:
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
If anyone is itching for a bleak hard-science tragedy, Chernobyl is an excellent miniseries.
I enjoyed the first episode a lot but some of it is not so good. I remember Liza getting annoyed at the way that the government expert who gets phonecalls from the president is portrayed as living in some kind of student bedsit as though the Soviet Union was so poor even its elites lived in grey grinding poverty.

The guy from Friday Night Dinner was really good though. It's sad cos I've only really become aware of who he is these last few years and then he's suddenly died just like that.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
You mean the protagonist? I was under the impression he was just some expert who didn't have any affiliation with the state before being added to this commission.
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
the BBC thing? my sister made me watch that. very badly acted, very corny, liberties with the facts, but sort of enjoyable.
Yeah the BBC one. There were some hollywoody moments that I actually think detracted from the film. Overall I understand it was extensively researched but took some liberties for dramatic license, like amalgamating a bunch of real figures into Emily Watson's character.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
You mean the protagonist? I was under the impression he was just some expert who didn't have any affiliation with the state before being added to this commission.
He was a respected expert already though even before that albeit seemingly slightly out of favour, he wouldn't have been living in such a dive but that plays into British (in fact western) ideas of Soviets all living in tiny pokey flats and considering half a turnip an unimaginable delicacy. I dunno, that's what Liza thought anyhow.

I really liked in the first one with the scenes in the reactor with the workers realising that they had fucked up and blown the core - although at first unable to grasp or, more accurately, accept that it had actually happened. To me it really reminded me of that feeling that you have done something badly wrong, there is no doubt about it, you have made a horrible mistake and it's about to come out and nothing can stop that or can stop you from getting the most almighty and deserved bollocking. Imagine the worst time that's happened - I assume it's a pretty much universal feeling to some degree - and then scale it up to a mistake that is gonna kill countless people, destroy wildlife and territory.... cause damage for generations. Imagine that sinking feeling... i thought they got it across pretty well, or maybe I'm just so used to fucking up my imagination was primed to do the work for them.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
People keep recommending Yellowjackets to me so yesterday I gave in and watched the first two episodes. Straight off the bat it is a lot of fun and also intriguing. I never watched Lost but the "mysterious stuff arising from people stranded by a plane crash" story line will inevitably draw comparisons. My understanding is that the general consensus with Lost was that it created a load of tantalising mysteries but that people ultimately got very frustrated with it cos it didn't wrap them up or even do anything interesting with them and it felt as though the writer had lost control of his story and was just chucking in random stuff to catch attention without he himself really knowing why he was doing it.

Yellowjackets has a split timeline - it jumps between 1996 where the football (sorry soccer) team's plane crashed in the snow forest, and 2021 where at least four of the team are still alive and seemingly keeping secret the (no doubt horrible) details of what exactly happened while they were lost in the wilderness for 19 months - and, maybe I'm imagining it, but part of me thinks that one of the reasons for this format is to reassure the viewer that they do have it all planned out, they know what happened to take us from there to here and we are not going to be left hanging with a load of "It means whatever you want it to mean man" stuff at the end.

The problem with the split timeline of course is that we know that the four main characters don't die and so that will remove a bit of drama you might think. They are minimising that by being very coy so far though, they haven't explicitly said what happened to everyone else or how our protagonists survived and so, for the moment at least, almost anything can happen in the past without it contradicting what we see unfolding now - I hope that they can maintain that stance without it becoming ridiculous.

Anyone else seen this at all?
 

wild greens

Well-known member
Watching Archive 81 on Netflix. Film restoration nerd hired to restore lost/burned footage from possibly cursed apartment block, sent out into an abandoned complex in the middle of nowhere

Weird haunted possession style shit goes on, building might be haunted etc, nerd struggles with the isolation, pasts are intertwined, all that

Anyway pretty good for a netflix show, occasional Lynchian/Kingdom vibes
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I finished series one of Yellowjackets and, I dunno, I really enjoyed it I suppose but I was frustrated by the way it finished without really answering any of the questions you had from the start. In fact, if anything, it actually created a load more, and that makes me worried that the programme is just gonna keep on going like that, raising more and more intriguing questions in the all important quest for more series. I really don't want to get strung along by something that just never goes anywhere, with each revelation just unearthing more questions and no ultimate resolution.

It actually feels like a real dilemma, the programme is undeniably a lot of fun to watch. The set-up is good, the characters are great, with even background characters often turning out to have a little bit more to them than you might think. There are a few characters I didn't like, but luckily most of them are dead by now. The atmosphere is dark and creepy and that allows the odd moment of pitch black humour SPOILER I laughed out loud when Lorelei's plane blew up spectacularly /SPOILER. The problem is, I've been stung before by series that got cancelled (eg Lodge 49) in the middle of the story line and I'm starting to think that there is a real issue here with the way shows are commissioned, they are almost encouraged to leave viewers hanging in the name of making them demand more series, but at the same time, ruthless schedulers can just cut them off if they are not popular enough. And this means that there is a much higher chance than there ought to be of your programme being ended in the middle; every time you start a new series you are betting on it being finished satisfactorily. I'm wondering if it might be better to only watch series after they have concluded and you know that you are not at risk off wasting the time you invest - though if everyone took that position of course, all the series would be cancelled before getting that far.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
John Adams - afternoon off from family and work’s ongoing drugocalypse

bs nation origins, wtf is with the accents mostly, east coast is chilly (no shit), wigs, period hats/bonnet porn, redcoats, THE LAW!, soaring music, familiar faces

load of noncesense
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
I finished series one of Yellowjackets and, I dunno, I really enjoyed it I suppose but I was frustrated by the way it finished without really answering any of the questions you had from the start. In fact, if anything, it actually created a load more, and that makes me worried that the programme is just gonna keep on going like that, raising more and more intriguing questions in the all important quest for more series. I really don't want to get strung along by something that just never goes anywhere, with each revelation just unearthing more questions and no ultimate resolution.

It actually feels like a real dilemma, the programme is undeniably a lot of fun to watch. The set-up is good, the characters are great, with even background characters often turning out to have a little bit more to them than you might think. There are a few characters I didn't like, but luckily most of them are dead by now. The atmosphere is dark and creepy and that allows the odd moment of pitch black humour SPOILER I laughed out loud when Lorelei's plane blew up spectacularly /SPOILER. The problem is, I've been stung before by series that got cancelled (eg Lodge 49) in the middle of the story line and I'm starting to think that there is a real issue here with the way shows are commissioned, they are almost encouraged to leave viewers hanging in the name of making them demand more series, but at the same time, ruthless schedulers can just cut them off if they are not popular enough. And this means that there is a much higher chance than there ought to be of your programme being ended in the middle; every time you start a new series you are betting on it being finished satisfactorily. I'm wondering if it might be better to only watch series after they have concluded and you know that you are not at risk off wasting the time you invest - though if everyone took that position of course, all the series would be cancelled before getting that far.
i love Succession, but this thing of leaving every series without any kind of satisfying resolution in the story really fucks me off. not because i'm worried it might just stop, but because i feel like i'm being stung along by the village storyteller, endlessly delayed satisfaction
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
i love Succession, but this thing of leaving every series without any kind of satisfying resolution in the story really fucks me off. not because i'm worried it might just stop, but because i feel like i'm being stung along by the village storyteller, endlessly delayed satisfaction
Yeah cos you are, you are the king in 1001 Knights and the programme is Scheherazade*. In Succession I don't really care about the final result or anything like that, I just find it amusing to see the twists and turns and if it were cancelled there would be no burning issues left unanswered, but Yellowjackets is different in that it has set up intriguing story lines and the viewer really wants to know what happened out there in the wilderness. Why did they start dressing up in deerskins and sacrificing people and is Taissa still doing it? Did they eat each other? What happened to Shorna's baby? Who are the people who kidnapped Natalie and do they work for Lottie? Why did Misty kill the investigator? And loads more. It's a different type of show to Succession and so the viewer relates to it differently.




*spelled that right first time, oh yeah
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Late to the party as usual, but I started watching Toast of London last night. I was unprepared for how outrageously silly it is, even given that I knew what to expect from a Matt Berry vehicle, having seen Garth Marenghi's Dark Place and What We Do In The Shadows already. In fact, with the over-the-top set designs and musical numbers, there's an almost Mighty Boosh-esque quality to it (though less painfully 'random' than that show could be at times).

Overall pretty funny though, and I think I'll keep watching. I totally lost it in the first few minutes when he's getting it on with the woman with the electronic tag, and she confesses that her boyfriend is in a coma after she stabbed him, and then he notices the perfectly man-shaped blood stain on the rug...
 
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