Recently Watched Shows

[Benjamin Haines]

We have a thread for recently watched movies, so here's one for TV shows. What have you watched recently? Whether it's a show that premiered on a broadcast network, a cable channel or a streaming service, post about it here!

I just finished the 2018 miniseries Maniac on Netflix. Loosely based on a Norwegian series of the same name, all ten episodes are directed by Cary Fukunaga and star Jonah Hill and Emma Stone as participants in a pharmaceutical trial for a drug intended to help people reconcile traumatic experiences. It takes place in a rather bleak future with retro-style technology. The show is dark, trippy, intense, funny and really well-written. It goes to all sorts of places in its exploration of what concepts like sanity and normality can mean. I recommend it.

Also, if you have Netflix and you're a fan of mind-bending science-fiction, Black Mirror is where it's at. It's a modern-day anthology series created by Charlie Brooker which originally aired on British TV but has been produced by Netflix since its third season. The show examines the dangers of technology's unrestrained potential. Each episode is a standalone story so you can watch them in any order that you want. The episodes tend to be either stories that could happen in today's world with existing technology, stories involving tech that's fictional now but could soon become reality, or stories set in dystopian futures. For a good introductory episode to the show, I recommend either "Be Right Back" or "White Christmas."

[lhb412]

You know, I have not watch that much TV in a long while. It seems like there are a thousand interesting shows out there on cable or streaming that I hear so much about just via osmosis and it's kind of petrifying to choose something out of that vast ocean. In the last many months, really the last year, I've devoted far more time to reading and watching movies.

But you know what I have been doing? This is kind of like TV... I mean, they are series, just not with visuals. I've finally gotten on the podcast train in a major way. Sure, I listened to things here and there for years, but now I've discovered I could consume media while working, which has been a great benefit to crushing boredom so much so that I could say it's helped my mental health!

My favorite shows are the ones by the McElroy Brothers, specifically their comedy advice show My Brother, My Brother and Me as well as their Dungeons & Dragons based role playing series The Adventure Zone. MBMBAM is like peanuts, I could just listen to it for hours and hours. The brothers receive inane or bizarre questions (some taken from the Yahoo Answers service) and spin them into tangents where the three brothers just riff on each others jokes and give little actual advice. In the past year I've been going backwards from what were the most recent episodes and I'm now back at episodes originally recorded in mid-2015. We're at the end of the decade and now via the show I'm going back and sampling a lot of the cultural moments of this decade in reverse, which is giving my odd dejavu! The Zone is also a delight, starting out just as the three brothers and their dad playing a goofy D&D game which gradually morphs into this enormous epic story that's rather mind-bending when you think back to what it was initially. I had the pleasure of seeing the McElroys perform last month. It was quite the awesome experience!

I've also been going through a lot of deep-dive documentary podcasts. There are a lot of good ones out there, and there's a lot of crap! The two best ones I've listened to so far are ones on the Heaven's Gate cult (it's simply called Heaven's Gate) and one on multi-level marketing (titled The Dream) I definitely recommend these. When learning about the beliefs of Heaven's Gate I was surprised by the extreme similarity to apocalyptic Christianity, which I was taught as a young child. Literally, in many cases the only thing different was the addition of aliens interjected somewhere in the theology. The MLN thing just pissed me off. I can't believe these pyramid schemes are allowed to run unabated and swallow so many people up.

Anyway, those are the shows I've been listening to but not watching! I should watch some TV... the recent series that intrigues me most is this Netflix one called Russian Doll?

[Dr Kain]

Doctor Who, lots and lots of Doctor Who. Except for Tom Baker's final season (BD comes out next week), I watched everything from Tom Baker through Paul McGann and then a bunch of stories from Patrick Troughton.

Also have been working through Batman The Animated Series on BD (just watched the first few episodes to Season 3), Kakuranger, Power Rangers Beast Morphers, Boogiepop and Others, and the CW DC shows.

Oh, and Magic Knight Rayearth since I have a Patreon request to review both seasons.

We also just finished Tokusatsu GaGaGa.

[jellydonut25]

Attempted to watch Umbrella Academy. About 3 episodes in, I completely lost interest and haven't gone back.

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

[lhb412]

^ It's become a little ritual to watch The Goldbergs with my Mom over the past few years, but I have to say that that show is becoming a bit more... cartoony? Like, it's reaching the final steps in the sitcom life cycle where everything becomes broad and exaggerated? I've noticed they've been playing faster and looser with the passage of time, with things like an A plot and a B plot where the A plot takes place over a few hours and the B plot takes place over a few days yet they're both cut together as though they're happening concurrently.

Not that it bothers me all that much, because to me the show's likeability is tied to the fact that it reminds me of the family sitcoms I watched when I was young. It's very much a TGIF style show, like Boy Meets World. It's easy to picture myself watching it as a kid.

[Benjamin Haines]

[lhb412]

^ From what I've heard, though I haven't actually read the comics myself, the series was created as a very conspicuous take-off of classic superhero families like the X-Men, the Doom Patrol, and the Fantastic Four. Also, created by the lead singer of My Chemical Romance!

[jellydonut25]

[klen7]

Love, Death, Robots - Kind of like the Oats Studio stuff, but I probably enjoyed these more. a Hard R sci fi animated anthology. Each episode is a different style, but it is dripping in style. It sometimes feels like they jam a bit extra mature content to it's detriment, but it's one of those things that has a real freshness to it. Definitely not for the kiddos.

[EricDent]

Was watching The Masked Singer when it was airing, now I'm not really into singing "competition" shows, but this was really interesting.
Obviously it will be renewed for a 2nd season, which hopefully will be just as good.

Also watching Gotham season 5, still kinda annoyed this is the last season of this, despite the lack of a real Batman, this is quite good IMO.

Other than that I finished the last season of A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix. It was quite good.

Of course if it counts, I watch a BUNCH of anime on DVD/Blu-Ray...which is covered over on the Anime area of this board.

[Benjamin Haines]

I've watched the first two episodes of Russian Doll. It's certainly interesting and the performances are top-rate. I want to see where this is going and if there's a reason why Nadia is particularly prone to dying by falling down stairs or if that's just a running gag.

[Dr Kain]

[klen7]

^ It seems like they wanted to make Gotham Central, but didn't want to pay Brubaker and Rucka

[Benjamin Haines]

I finished all eight episodes of Russian Doll on Netflix. Wow! I was not expecting the show to be this thought-provoking. It keeps getting better as it goes along.

A woman named Nadia is struck by a car and killed on the night of her 36th birthday, only to wake up in the bathroom back at the party earlier that same night. She tries to go about her night differently only to meet another untimely end and find herself right back at that same party. It's a spin on the core Groundhog Day premise and while Happy Death Day already did a great job of adapting that premise as a slasher movie, Russian Doll brings a unique approach to the concept. As the cycle unfolds and Nadia makes new discoveries, each revelation offers new hints while raising more questions about what's happening. The ending doesn't spell everything out but it offers enough information to bring the big picture into focus. I found it very satisfying and fun to ponder over.

[Dr Kain]

EDIT: Wrong topic.

[jellydonut25]

Anyone planning on watching What We Do in the Shadows? It premiers on FX tonight. I have it set to record.

[Benjamin Haines]

[Dr Kain]

I picked up both The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo and the new movie that is supposed to finally conclude that story at the library today, so we started watching that. The show is a lot cheesier than I remember, but there are still some solid pieces to it.

Also been watching some of the original Twilight Zone and finished Tom Baker's final season to Doctor Who.

[UltraDada72]

[Benjamin Haines]

^ Indeed, and Netflix has renewed Russian Doll for a second season! I wonder where they'll go with it, whether they'll continue to follow the same characters or introduce all new ones.


Forever - This 8-episode series debuted on Amazon Prime last year. It's a dark comedy with heart starring Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen. It's also a show that's best experienced totally unspoiled, so the best way for me to describe the plot is just to copy the logline for the first episode: "Married couple June (Rudolph) and Oscar (Armisen) live a comfortable but predictable life in suburban Riverside, CA. For 12 years they’ve had the same conversations, eaten the same meals and taken pleasant vacations at the same rented lake house. But after June talks Oscar into shaking things up with a ski trip, the pair find themselves in completely unfamiliar territory." I really liked this show. Amazon recently cancelled it but this season is such a self-contained story that I wasn't expecting a continuation. I recommend it.


Neon Genesis Evangelion - I had never seen an episode of this series or any of the Evangelion movies before. I really like Shin Godzilla and I knew that this was Hideaki Anno's most popular work so when Netflix added it a month ago I figured it was time to take the plunge. I've now watched all 26 episodes, the recap movie Evangelion: Death(True)2, and the movie finale The End of Evangelion. The whole saga really is brilliant. It's thought-provoking and very character-driven and the way it builds its lore is just captivating. The scale of the story keeps getting bigger even as the driving themes and character arcs become more intimate. I can see why this was so influential more than 20 years ago. Why the hell didn't I watch this sooner?


The Rebel - The free PlutoTV service has a Shout!FactoryTV channel and I recently caught a few episodes of this 1959-1961 western series starring Nick Adams! Similar to Doctor Who, each episode seems to be a standalone story following Johnny Yuma as he gets into new adventures and meets new people. I'd never seen this show before and it's delightful! Adams inhabits the role of Johnny Yuma so naturally and carries the show with understated style. Shout!FactoryTV seems to air the episodes in a random order. I've seen the episodes "A Grave for Johnny Yuma," "The Pit," and "The Executioner," and when I looked up the show online I found that the latter was actually the last episode of the series! It seems that ABC cancelled the show despite being a ratings success so they could replace it with a variety show that ended up lasting only a few months. That is a shame but I also found that the first season is actually available to stream on Amazon Prime so I'm going to keep watching this.

[superhedorahsaiyan]

The Dark Crystal: the Age of Resistance
Carnival Row

[klen7]

Loved Dark Crystal.

The trailers for Carnival Row have been a little cringey to me, what's your verdict so far?

[Dr Kain]

Wow, it's been a while since I posted. I've been watching Doctor Who, Torchwood, and am nearly done with the original Twilight Zone series.

[Benjamin Haines]

I'm also interested in what you thought of Carnival Row, superhedorahsaiyan. I haven't watched any trailers but I remember reading about Travis Beacham's spec film script A Killing on Carnival Row more than a decade ago. It's wild how that's been adapted into an Amazon series all these years later.