What TV shows have you been watching ?

  • Currently watching "The Kemps: All True" which is by the same guy who created Brian Pern/Thotch, but is using Gary and Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet, and creating a spoof version of their story. It's about as funny as Pern, so probably best you don't waste your time. It uses some of the same actors, including the actor who played Brian Pern.

    Ian


    Putting the old-fashioned Staffordshire plate in the dishwasher!

  • I started the second season of Hanna on Amazon. First episode left me distinctly underwhelmed. Will persevere as I read a good review of it. Maybe it gets better.


    I'm also watching the second animated season of Trailer Park Boys and saw an episode last night that left me in tears laughing.

  • Mrs Backdrifter and I had only ever seen a couple of episodes of Detectorists and noticed the complete series was on the BBC iplayer so we've been working our way through it, currently nearly at the end of series 2. What a brilliant show it is. It's one of those ones that's slightly difficult to define. Obviously intended primarily as a comedy, but a location-based one rather than studio/audience. The comedy is gentle and mixed in with some tension, mainly involving the personal lives of the two lead characters. I highly recommend it to all who haven't seen it and can access the i-player.


    On the same platform I've been making my way through as much of the Glastonbury material as possible while it's still there for the next few weeks. It's performances from various years. I've watched Bowie (which I also recorded, as I did Coldplay), Lady Gaga, Elbow, Lorde, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, Billie Eillish, Grimes, Chemical Brothers, Freya Ridings, Kylie Minogue. A few others I want to get to including REM.

    Abandon all reason

    Edited once, last by Backdrifter ().

  • We just saw Robert Plant's Glastonbury performance. A couple of years ago Barry Gibb appeared & was excellent as always, as was Liam Gallagher. Going back further I must watch Bryan Ferry's performance again.

  • Getting through Dark as recommended earlier. On Series 2 . Very good. Facsinating . But I do feel I need to get out paper and pen and do a chart of all the characters , who are related who , and in what time zone!!!

  • Almost coming to the end of Cardinal. What to watch next?

    Blimey, you made it through then. On the basis of the first episode I don't know how you did it. Keen hearing must have played a part! It obviously was compelling enough to keep you going.


    I started ep1 of The Secrets She Keeps but didn't finish it. Like ep1 of Cardinal it simply didn't engage me. I'm a bit sick of seeing dramas about middle-class white people and their travails. In this case, a middle-class white woman pregnant with her 3rd child, in a nice big house with her middle-class white husband. All it needed was for one of them to be a lawyer, but I can at least say neither were. At one point they go for lunch at the big house of her slightly disapproving wealthy mother, and the maverick rebellious sister is present. So it ticks a few trope boxes.


    The potential interest comes from a down-at-heel shopworker, also pregnant and due the same time, who appears to have some sort of fixation on the first woman. So we are meant to think, ooh where will this lead, what will she do? And is she responsible for the hateful messages appearing in the first woman's yummy-mummy blog comments? But I couldn't work up enough interest. I might at least complete the 1st ep and see what I think.


    For Downton Abbey fans, the shopworker is played by Laura Carmichael in a jarringly different sort of role and look.

    Abandon all reason

  • I started ep1 of The Secrets She Keeps but didn't finish it. Like ep1 of Cardinal it simply didn't engage me. I'm a bit sick of seeing dramas about middle-class white people and their travails. In this case, a middle-class white woman pregnant with her 3rd child, in a nice big house with her middle-class white husband. All it needed was for one of them to be a lawyer, but I can at least say neither were. At one point they go for lunch at the big house of her slightly disapproving wealthy mother, and the maverick rebellious sister is present. So it ticks a few trope boxes.


    The potential interest comes from a down-at-heel shopworker, also pregnant and due the same time, who appears to have some sort of fixation on the first woman. So we are meant to think, ooh where will this lead, what will she do? And is she responsible for the hateful messages appearing in the first woman's yummy-mummy blog comments? But I couldn't work up enough interest. I might at least complete the 1st ep and see what I think.


    For Downton Abbey fans, the shopworker is played by Laura Carmichael in a jarringly different sort of role and look.

    Thanks for the summary, I’ll certainly give that a miss!


    One of the very few positive results of the pandemic is that some old drama series are being dug out & reshown, including ITV’s Broadchurch series 1 that I missed first time around, & BBC dramas from the 1990s & 2000s like Pride & Prejudice & Tess of the D’Urbervilles, just to remind us they could produce perfectly good adaptations of old classic novels before some overpaid manager decided that everything must be anachronistically rewritten to suit modern sensibilities :rolleyes:

  • Currently watching "The Kemps: All True" which is by the same guy who created Brian Pern/Thotch, but is using Gary and Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet, and creating a spoof version of their story. It's about as funny as Pern, so probably best you don't waste your time. It uses some of the same actors, including the actor who played Brian Pern.

    Yes I saw that too & was disappointed. I liked Brian Pern in its heyday but by the end it had run out of original ideas & this was just more of the same but without the most amusing people from Pern, notably Paul Whitehouse & Nigel Havers. Martin Kemp’s brief cameo in Pern trying to heat up a pizza in a Corby trouser press was funnier than the whole of "The Kemps: All True".

  • Yes I saw that too & was disappointed. I liked Brian Pern in its heyday but by the end it had run out of original ideas & this was just more of the same but without the most amusing people from Pern, notably Paul Whitehouse & Nigel Havers. Martin Kemp’s brief cameo in Pern trying to heat up a pizza in a Corby trouser press was funnier than the whole of "The Kemps: All True".

    And ironically, in a life imitates art moment, it has caused Tony Hadley to resurface again and have a moan about the show and the band.


    Also, given that Gary Kemp is now playing in Nick Mason's early Floyd spin-off band, they could do a crossover show about the Kemps being absorbed into Thotch.


    But I hope they don't!


    But if they do, this post is my claim to ownership of the idea, and a share of the royalties. ;)


    Anyway, how are you doing, hun? If I remember rightly, you are in insurance, so I guess you are working from home now? In which case, I guess you are bored there too! ;(

    Ian


    Putting the old-fashioned Staffordshire plate in the dishwasher!

  • Getting through Dark as recommended earlier. On Series 2 . Very good. Facsinating . But I do feel I need to get out paper and pen and do a chart of all the characters , who are related who , and in what time zone!!!

    Uh... I have one episode left of the final season and I'm no longer sure who I am, let alone the characters on the show. I'm enjoying it but it is a total maze!

  • Everything?

    I identify as a period and find your flaunting of the '?' symbol oppressive and demeaning.


    I also hate that John Cleese is in the firing line. Faulty Towers, c'mon?! Can no level of humor transcend being a relic of the time? And I think they were self aware anyway, it's like a nascent South Park, it was funny because it was wrong,

  • Everything?

    “Everything” meaning “Everything written in the past”. Nobody filming Broadchurch would apply the morals & social conventions of the 1920s to the characters or story. So why do they apply the morals & social conventions of the 21st century when televising books written a century ago?

  • “Everything” meaning “Everything written in the past”. Nobody filming Broadchurch would apply the morals & social conventions of the 1920s to the characters or story. So why do they apply the morals & social conventions of the 21st century when televising books written a century ago?

    Can you give some examples?

    Abandon all reason

  • Don’t even suggest it! ^^ Being Genesis fans, the makers might read this & given that all musicians are currently unemployed & TV is desparate for new programmes, it’ll be dragged out into an hour-long concert performance on BBC2 next month, with each band member on his individual Skype screen …. & I bet they won’t even credit you. ;)


    Yes it can get pretty dull working from home & the company is in no hurry to return us to a crowded office. At least you can miss the odd meeting by pretending the internet connection’s failed - not that you need to pretend when Virgin Media does it for you anyway :rolleyes:

  • Can you give some examples?

    War of the Worlds on BBC a few months ago. They changed the story beyond recognition to make it all about a man trying to get a divorce from his wife so he could marry Demelza from Poldark while the Martian invasion that was the whole point of the book just happened quietly in the background. I’m sure the Edwardian divorce laws were unfair, but I rather suspect that’s not what most of the viewers tuned in to see! :/

  • War of the Worlds on BBC a few months ago. They changed the story beyond recognition to make it all about a man trying to get a divorce from his wife so he could marry Demelza from Poldark while the Martian invasion that was the whole point of the book just happened quietly in the background. I’m sure the Edwardian divorce laws were unfair, but I rather suspect that’s not what most of the viewers tuned in to see! :/

    I certainly had some caveats about that version but it's interesting how perceptions can differ - to me it didn't feel it was all about the divorce and the invasion didn't come across to me as a quiet background thing! Blimey. Anyway, no I didn't think the adaptation was especially good. It was frustrating as I'd been eager for a period version as WOTW usually gets updated, but I thought it could've been done better. In fact, when you read the book now (as I recently did) there are all kinds of modern parallels with our current circumstances.


    I don't know what other recent TV adaptations you might have in mind but going back to the general point you made earlier, in principle I'm not against period pieces being seen through a modern lens. In some ways it's unavoidable, as the programmes are being made by people who exist now and have the morals, ethics, viewpoints etc of now.


    I believe art can't help but be seen in context of a constantly evolving present, which is why for example I'm fine with Shakespeare stage adaptations being done with modern dress and settings etc, which some people object to. But ultimately it has to work. 19th/early 20th century pieces with a modern filter are fine in theory but like anything it can't be a shotgun marriage.

    Abandon all reason