Topic: The Unoffical TV Show Mega Thread

@Rambler Yeah, I thought the same thing about Saul over Breaking Bad when I was watching it. It’s funnier without breaking the drama and the law stuff really snaps plus Chuck and Kim are some of my favourite characters from either show. Breaking Bad always seemed too much of a slow burn whilst Saul just gets into things.

I get what you’re saying about it not working as it’s own show. I reckon apart of it is because it’s a tragedy with the character’s fate sealed so they can play around with that which allows then to subvert what you expect to happen and be subtler which can only be done as a spin off/prequel as you require knowledge of it.

Finished a lot of shows over the weekend.

American Crime Story: Impeachment (Hulu) -
Dramatization of the events leading up to & surrounding the Clinton impeachment scandal.

Other than a bit of a mustache twirling vibe in terms of it's depictions of some of the conservative journalists of the time, I thought it did an impeccable job giving a nuanced, humanizing look at all parties involved.

Angel Cop (Pluto TV) - Old school OVA series that follows the exploits of a clandestine special police force in near future Japan as they go up against terrorists, some of which are cybernetically or psychically enhanced (sorta like a mix between Akira & Ghost in the Shell).

The further in I got the more sure I was I had seen it before at some point in the distant past, but it didn't stop it from gripping me. It's gritty & graphically violent in a way that modern anime aren't, and in spite of it's ancient profanity laced dub I was compelled to binge all six of it's episodes over the weekend. Currently free to watch on Pluto TV if you're in the US, so check it out if you're curious.

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (Disney+) - Take a journey through how the universe works, how it came to be, & where it's going, all through the lens of our current scientific understanding.

I watched this when it first came out, and I found it just as interesting today. Feels sort of like one of those videos you'd have to watch in science class, just stretched out over an entire series & with a much larger budget (for a network TV special the effects look impressive, outside of a segment on photosynthesis that looks like it has CGI 10-15 years behind everything else). Nice pallet cleanser.

New Better Call Saul and Russian Doll!

Might take a while to getting round to watching them

@Rambler I loved the first season but I’m not keen on the second season of Russian Doll myself. It’s does not pull off the risks it takes but at least Natasha Lyonne is still fantastic in it.

Well, I'm gonna put in my 2 cents on The Dark Crystal Age Of Resistance

Off the bat, I mean they really want to flex that it's The Dark Crystal with keeping it dark... They just kinda forgot that 80's fantasy knew where to draw a line. Besides it being a little ^"dark" the voice cast was pretty good I'd complain about them being draws for people who did not watch the 80's film but, Simon Pegg was amazing. Now putting that aside, the puppetry was amazing and as someone who is a HUGE fan of puppetry it was neat to see what they did with the designs, and the cinematography and filming style, was very new and different. And Toby Froud the son of Brian Froud, was the design supervisor for this show aka Toby the baby from Labyrinth (I'm sorry I had to fit that in somewhere)
I'm not going to talk about the story or the sorta cliffhanger, I'll just give my ranking.

6/10

I don't tend to watch much tv shows that aren't animated. I'd like to change that a bit, and I have watched Squid Game and some of the recent Marvel series in the past year.

But even if I watched a lot more live action series, my favorite (especially if you ignore anime) tv series the past 3 years is Infinity Train. Brilliant animated series, I've yet to see basically anyone give it anything but overwhelming praise and deservedly so.

I mainly watch live action right now, I find animation right now is very "mature" or "kid friendly" (AND yes I know it's been like that for a while now but more than ever it's become very two sided)

Honestly, I've mostly been a cartoon guy most of my life. Current favorite includes TrollsTopia and Trolls: The Beat Goes On (based off the DreamWorks Trolls movies) and working through Elena of Avalor, and previous shows I watched include My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and some Disney shows like Phineas and Ferb and Sofia the First (honestly, not a bad show considering its target audience). Consider all of these my favorites, even if they are on the "childish" side for lack of a better phrase. Just always liked cute cartoons personally.

While I'm not big on live action shows, there are some I do watch. Been mostly watching Young Rock lately as new episodes come out. Really like how it's a humorous look at Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's life, even if some of it is exaggerated for comedy. I also watch anime, IIRC, there is an anime thread. I'll mention I watch it too.

Well Infinity Train was made with that in mind on some level. It's still ultimately "kid friendly", but the creator has actively talked about the limitations of that and that its not made to pander to kids and it really pushes things to the limit past being "limited" by being kid friendly (as much as they could anyway).

@kkslider5552000 Ya, Infinity Train looks interesting last I saw a trailer for it. But right now animation is leaving a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, like I'd love to watch a (concept) show with robot goblins, but it would probably be rated TV-MA because the idea "kids" wouldn't like it, it's not #cool and funny I SO want to make a whole doc (google) on children's television. I don't know maybe I'm just rambling, eh if Brad Bird does something at skydance I might be interested.

(well, huh I guess video games are to a point animated films, when you think about it.)

Speaking of animation, last Friday I managed to catch a marathon of ReBoot on Pluto TV. It looks positively ancient by today's standards (though it was revolutionary in it's time as the first full length CGI TV series), however after an adjustment period I had a fun time revisiting one of my childhood favorites for a couple hours.

Too bad Netflix completely fumbled the reboot a few years ago (as they tend to do).

Infinity Train is definitely one of the better animated shows these days. I still need to see the final seasons as I only saw up to season 2.

@RR529 Oh wow, I haven't seen Reboot in such a long time, I remember liking this one a lot because it took place inside a computer. I have Pluto TV, wish I knew about it. Do you know if they're still streaming it, I wouldn't mind revisiting an episode or two. I even remember having an Enzo figure as a kid.

More animation related, recently started watching Alice's Wonderland Bakery. Being a Disney Junior show, it's definitely one for younger kids, it's become a bit of a comfort show for me. Also, I love the little nods the show makes to the Disney movie Alice In Wonderland, for example, the main character Alice is Alice's (from the classic movie) great granddaughter, and she even shows up as a painting in the bakery.

Sorry if I disappoint anyone, I just always been into more family friendly/kid friendly animated shows like Trolls, My Little Pony, and stuff like this.

@Sunsy, it's not currently being shown (it was on the "Tokushoutsu" channel of all things), however everything Pluto has can also be found in their on-demand section which is also free.

If your Pluto app has a search function (not all of them do, for whatever reason) you can find ReBoot just by searching for it, and if not, I found it under the "Sci-Fi & Fantasy TV" label in the on-demand section.

@RR529 Just checked Pluto on Roku, and it's there under on demand via searching. Thank you, think I'll put it on for a nostalgia trip later.

I finished Severance today. Am I allowed to admit I didn't love it? I thought it started really strong and it was bingeable thanks to the cadence of twists (and crucially, the quality of twists). However, when I look back on the show as a whole, it feels remarkably incomplete. Next to nothing really happened and we learned nothing. Maybe they have got the whole thing figured out and season 2 will bring everything together, but season 1 just feels like a collection of kooky weird moments with no connective tissue to bring it all together into a cohesive whole.

Christ Killing Eve turned into rubbish in its last season, it went from being one of the most interesting takes on spy vs spy into a drawn out bore. Presumably it's because of the loss of Phoebe Waller Bridge and then Emerald Fennell from being active writers on it as they went off to do bigger things but it's a shame one/both of them didn't come back to tie up the finale.

Oh well, I think I will give Hacks a watch now as it's getting good word of mouth.

Started watching The Ghost and Molly McGee on Disney+, three episodes in and I like it so far. It's about a very cheerful girl named Molly and her family moving to a new home where she meets a really grumpy ghost, and befriends the ghost. It's fun so far and I like how the two work together being opposites personality wise.

Another animated show, again, this is the kind of stuff I like watching.

@Sunsy Is it like Caspar? To me that plot kinda sounds like Caspar...

@Kermit1 I'd say different. The old Casper cartoon, Casper was friendly, while the other three ghosts were more on the grumpy mean side. This is about a girl named Molly who is cheerful and friendly moving into a home where one ghost is grumpy, and she befriends him against his will.