What we do in the shadows. The show is based off the Taika Waititi/Jermaine Clement film of the same name. And is also written by Jermaine Clement
It’s a comedy/mocumentary about a group of vampires. The characters are really well written and it straddles the line between the banality of everyday life as a vampire, and obviously the weird supernatural aspects of vampires. It recently aired it’s final episode so you can binge it now and get through the whole thing.
If you like the office/community/parks and rec/I.T. Crowd type of stuff I think you’ll really like it
Ooh thank you for reminding me it has finished its run. Watched the first two seasons but kinda dropped off while waiting for S3.
I.T. Crowd type of stuff
Baat! 🦇
If you like what you we in the shadows, to might also enjoy “our flag means death”.
Created by and starring Waititi. Based on the true story of the gentleman pirate.
You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead
You’re dead, and out of this world.
Severance is an all too graphic caricature of life in corporate America and I had a visceral reaction to watching it that made me feel dead it was awful don’t watch it because the show is magnificently well done and immaculately satirical stay away from this terrifyingly good show watch it
Years ago I picked up the book ‘Gone Girl.’ I got about twenty pages into it and put it down because I couldn’t stand the smug, entitled yuppie narrator.
Later, I watched and enjoyed the movie, and read some of the author’s other books.
It made me realize what a good writer she is; she made me hate a character so much that I couldn’t read the book.
When I played Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time, I chose the “nomad” backstory which defines essentially a character who has been so burned by late stage capitalism that they ran away to live in a small commune in the desert.
While playing through the game, I thought the advertisements littering Night City were incredibly jarring like they were supposed to be from a Borderlands game, or at least one that was way more tongue-in-cheek. The world of Night City was far too depressing to reasonably include those utterly ridiculous ads and it made it hard for me to feel immersed. Then it hit me; that’s exactly how I was supposed to feel, and then it paradoxically made me feel like this game set in a future world with insanely high-tech appliances available to all its citizens was indistinguishable from my own. I literally forgot multiple times that this game was set in an alternate future and not just in some city in California
Nice story. Thank you for posting it
Severance is the best show of the 2020s IMHO.
Rewatching it now!
Succession, perhaps the best script I’ve ever experienced
The Expanse. I forgot how good the earlier seasons were, and looking forward to seeing the newer stuff for the first time.
Older than you are and worth looking at. [available on Youtube]
The Prisoner. Imagine if Ian Fleming and Franz Kafka got together to do a TV show. A government official resigns and is immediately kidnapped. He wakes up in The Village; a lovely little place with nice views, great food, plenty of fun things to do, and no possible escape.
I, Claudius. A very young Patrick Stewart is the least reason to watch this reenactment of the first five Roman emperors.
Connections. Non-fiction. Wonderfully entertaining and informative. The creator’s premise is that scientific progress is almost never straight forward. Coffee houses open in London = coffee houses become popular places to do business = coffee house customers join together to invest in ships to the New World = the new ‘companies’ begin looking for ways to make their ships safer = they start to invest in making pine tar to protect the ships = add two hundred years and you have insurance companies and the chemical industry
Welcome fellow gen-xer!
I tried rewatching The Prisoner but I can’t get past Patrick McGoohan’s acting now. He has one setting, a hard squint and rage.
I, Claudius is excellent and seeing John Hurt prancing about as a crazed Caligula is another reason to watch it. Brilliantly done series.
Connections is very interesting, well done, and I remember it fondly from watching it as a teen but I never bought some of his “connections”. Like you said, claiming, say, coffee led to the chemical industry. Well they could’ve just as likely met over ham sandwiches too. lol “These two physicists met while playing tennis, therefore the invention of tennis led to the first atomic bomb…” oy!
I kind of think that lloyd’s of London starting as a coffee shop sort of proves that argument.
I’d say it was a coincidence. It could’ve been a pub and we’d be talking about the creation of beer instead.
My wife has gotten into watching Green Acres. Omg the writing is so sharp, just one joke after another. The characters do get repetitive but that is the way with all sitcoms.
The Mary Tyler Moore show is very rewatchable. The writing and characters are so well done. Ted Knight and Betty White are brilliant.
I’m gonna download Green acres rn, thx.
Columbo
What I didn’t realize about Columbo until watching it last year is that every episode is basically a full movie. There’s no connection between each episode, Columbo himself is the only recurring character. Each episode is an hour 10 to an hour 40 long. Also, it’s by FAR the best production and acting on TV in that era. It’s legitimately like almost 70 individual films.
For sure. I’m only just now finishing the first season, and maybe 3 episodes in it should qualify as some of the best films ever made. The acting, the psycological warfare, the poor schlubby wife-guy underdog vs evil rich parasite undertones pervading everything… there’s so much going on, that I’m sure others have scratched the surface of.
I also love how it inverts the mystery drama by showing you exactly what happened, and the suspense is in guessing where they messed up, and gave enough clues to columbo.
Just one more thing….
Jury Duty, binge watched and loved it, I couldn’t stop laughing.
Silo.
Severance (rewatching cause season 2 is around the corner).
Star Trek Strange New Worlds (also rewatched waiting for next season).
Came here to say Severance. Great show, I just watched it this week.
I just finished Only Murders in the Building. I love it. Its a whodunit with Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez. The whole cast always feels to me like they’re always having a lot of fun!
Shōgun
Easily my favorite show of the last 5 years
The whole show is remarkably well made. Great scenery and costume design.
Man, and it keeps getting better! I don’t want to finish Season 1 and have to wait for Season 2 😭
Arcane.
I missed the hype for Arcane season 1, mostly because it didn’t really seem up my alley. I figured it’d be boring to me because I wasn’t into that specific game, or too juvenile for me, or something.
I was really wrong. Really, really wrong. It stands on its own and season 1 has the strongest storytelling I’ve seen in anything in a good, long time. You don’t need to care about or play League of Legends to watch the show. And it’s very much NOT a kid’s show even if it starts with kid characters…it touches a lot on crime, poverty, mental illness, etc. It’s very honest and truthful and complex and nuanced on these things.
And every aspect of storytelling was strong. EVERY ONE.
What I mean by that is this…in most TV shows, animated or live, you usually have one form of strong(ish) storytelling carrying the entire thing and compensating for other things that are weaker. So a show will have one or two stand-out aspects, and others that are okish to bad, but able to be overlooked because of the other awesome things going on.
Like, you might have a poor script but really good actors who can elevate the poor script with their spoken intonation or physical acting. Or you might have a good script and really good soundtrack but mediocre acting and bland costume/set design. Basically, script, art/costume design, music, and actor ability all play together to deliver a story, and usually you have one or two of those that are strong, and the rest are being carried by the strong parts and ranging from competent-but-not-awesome to mediocre to bad.
Arcane’s not like that.
Arcane has top-tier storytelling on the writing level, AND on the art and animation level, and in the choice of songs for the soundtrack. Like, the script itself is fantastic, but then you watch the animation and see they decided not to use common animation shorthand. Instead, they went back to actually LOOK at how humans display emotion and move their bodies and translated THAT into their animation. So you have a strong script AND strong “physical acting”. How they frame shots is fantastic too. And if that wasn’t enough, all the music is stellar and pertinent to the scenes it’s used in. And if THAT wasn’t enough, even the design of the characters BEFORE they even move or speak is top-notch. And if THAT isn’t enough the voice actors are phenomenal too.
For Season 1, nothing’s carrying anything else, everything is strong. And that’s EXTREMELY rare in ANY show. So, so, SO rare.
Season 2 is not as good–but that’s really just in comparison to how outrageously and unusually good Season 1 was. I’d say in Season 2, the script is not as tight, but all the other things are still as good as Season 1. So the animation/art design/music/etc. carry the script a little in the second season. The script isn’t HORRIBLE though…it’s mostly the pacing is off and it’s missing some appropriate build-up in some parts. I’ve read they had to cut some scenes, and if that’s true it would completely explain the flaws. The second season also suffers a bit in comparison to Season 1…Season 1 did everything right, so anything that’s not perfect in Season 2 naturally sticks out. It doesn’t make it bad though.
Anyway, yeah. Watch Arcane, if you missed that boat previously.
Apparently, there are many cuts from s2
I would personally say season 2 kinda missed the mark for me. Scale/power creep turned the story from being much more character driven to be this plot with a lot of odd threads IMO. That said season 1 is incredible. Probably the best show I’ve ever watched.
Schitt’s Creek is currently on Netflix. One of my favorite, wholesome sitcoms!
It takes a little while to get going but man is it good.
My wife and I weren’t sure what to expect. We took one run at it, failed, then a few months later took another run. We are now thinking we need to watch it again. Truly wholesome.
- Silo
- Ted Lasso
- A Man on the Inside
Silo is dogshit. The pacing is so unnecessarily dragged out. And season 2 is boring af. No idea why they did what they did. Thr books had perfect pacing.
Huh. I’m only a few episodes in but it seemed promising so far. Oh well.
You may be ok if you’re not waiting week to week for a new episode. S1 was good…really good. S2 is still good but slow.
I loved Silo S1.
Meh, there are always people who think their opinion is the only valid one. FWIW, I’m enjoying the hell out of S2 and liked S1 and the books. If you’re enjoying what you’re seeing so far, keep it going and hopefully you’ll keep liking it and if you don’t, you can always quit.
Yea it’ll slow wayyyyy the fuck down. Keep watching lol. The first few eps were solid. Then it plunges off a cliff.
Is it just me or has the main character really done nothing all season except several failed attempts at a supply run? My brain keeps tuning out
Yeah S2 is not so good so far…just watched 2 episodes and they were not that good…too slow. S1 was really good through
Yeah s02_has been a bit slow but I am optimistic
Me fast forwarding through the underwater stuff so I don’t have to hold my breath. Might get the books for the same reason.
You don’t have to hold your breath during the underwater stuff. It’s not a video game.
Silo season 1 was 5% plot, 5% character development, and 90% emoting to dramatic music, so I didn’t bother checking out season 2.
Season one of Silo was great. Season two is a poorly edited mess.
Halt and Catch Fire.
Set in the 80s, it’s about a company in Texas trying to build a computer to rival IBM. Er, that’s how it starts. I liked it so much, I bought it.
