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What have you been watching recently?


Duck in a Top Hat

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I don't know if there's ever been a film counterpart to the "What have you been reading recently?" thread, but it strikes me that there should be one. I haven't been reading a lot lately, but I've been discovering increasingly profound stories in television and film, so maybe it's time we talked about some of those.

 

I just finished watching Joss Whedon's newest movie, In Your Eyes. It's a touching supernatural romance, and you can rent it online. Its characters were well-developed and relatable. I really recommend it.

 

And I'm currently watching quite a few old TV shows. I finally discovered The Wire at the start of this school year, and at my slow pace I've now almost reached the end of the fourth season. It's an incredible show.

 

I watched the first season of Twin Peaks and really enjoyed it, but got sidetracked with everything else.

 

I've also started Mad Men. The characters really pull me in and the show paints such a detailed and fascinating picture of the '60s. I love how the show makes you feel emotions that facts in a history textbook just can't convey.

 

So, what have you been watching recently?

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Reruns of The Big Bang Theory, The Simpsons, F-Troop, Batman (1966-8), and whatever seems good. I'm somewhat nostalgic for the shows I grew up with from the 1960s and 70s.

 

Later when it really heats up I'll start watching DVD sets of cable series like Burn Notice, Psych, and Warehouse 13. After it goes up another 10 degrees I only go out to get food.

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I most recently watched Third Rock from the Sun and Coach on Netflix. But it's been a while now.

 

I watched the documentary "Fat Head", which is sort of a response to "Supersize Me". And sort of a thing of its own. Hard to explain, worthy watch.

 

When I'm home alone I might sneak in an episode of Fullmetal Alchemist or Pokemon or Gundam Wing. I'm a professional in my early 30s so most people consider this strange, and it isn't my wife's favorite thing to watch either. I tried to make her watch Escaflowne once and it just didn't go well. I don't have terribly much time to watch TV anyways. Come this fall I'll probably make time to catch the Steelers games, even though I've pretty well soured on sports over the years.

 

 

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I've been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation again on Netflix. I forgot how great that show is.

 

I've also been watching a number of programs from ABCFamily, and look forward to the next season of Pretty Little Liars (returning next week).

 

The last movie I saw in the theaters was "Noah" - which is good if you just take it as a movie along the lines of a mythology story.

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I never turn the TV on to watch something for myself, but I sometimes see something that someone else in the family is watching. So I've seen some things lately, but I wouldn't say I've "been watching" anything at all for years.

 

It's not that I think nothing on TV is worthwhile, but I always found that watching TV for an hour was like eating one peanut. If I sat down to watch something, it somehow put me into a passive frame of mind in which I just kept watching for an hour or two more than I really wanted. Even when that first hour was something great, hours two and three usually weren't good enough, for the time they consumed.

 

I can't say that I've taken all that time that I would have wasted on mediocre TV and done great things with it. I've found other ways to waste time. I don't think those other ways of wasting time have been quite as effective at time-wasting as TV would have been, however. I think I've made a substantial profit in good use of time, by skipping TV.

 

For somebody who can just find a couple of great shows and watch them every week, and that's it, I can't see anything wrong with TV. If a lot of TV is mediocre at best, well, a lot of everything is mediocre at best. If anyone else is like me, though, and finds that any TV becomes too much TV too easily, I can report that it's really not hard to live without TV. I've really never missed it.

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although to be honest I haven't seen the Doctor in like nine months.

You're barely behind then. There have been two specials in the past 9 months, but that's it.

 

Shows still in production that I watch include but are probably not limited to Archer, Black Sails, Boardwalk Empire, CSI, Californication, Castle, Continuum, The Daily Show, Doctor Who, Downton Abbey, Elementary, Falling Skies, Foyle's War, Game of Thrones, Hell on Wheels, Last Week Tonight, Mad Men, Masters of Sex, Mr. Selfridge, NCIS, The Newsroom, Once Upon a Time, Orphan Black, Ripper Street, Royal Pains, The Simpsons, Sons of Anarchy, Top Gear, Under the Dome, Vicious, The Walking Dead, and White Collar.

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I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the third time (such a great show!). I've also been watching the spinoff Angel for the first time.

Me too, actually! Second time for Buffy, first for Angel. Just finished 6/3. Has been interesting. PM me if you have any interest in long commentaries.

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  • 2 months later...

This thread is super relevant to me right now, because I just started watching movies, pretty much for the first time in my life. Right now I'm working my way through some top 10 lists. I've watched The Matrix, Akira, Apocalypse Now, The Expendables 3, and Postal.

 

The Matrix: Good movie, but the first half where Morpheus explained the matrix over and over dragged a bit.

 

Akira: After watching it I feel like I know less about it than I did before watching it. I can't really decide if I liked it. I probably won't watch it again though.

 

Apocalypse Now: I found it incredibly boring and didn't understand the hype at all. Later I found out I'd watched the redux version, which adds a bunch of scenes that were cut from the original. A lot of people say the scenes ruin the movie and were better left out. So I guess I'll watch the original cinematic release at some point.

 

The Expendables 3: Kind of disappointing. I watched it because everyone on the internet said it was non-stop mindless action, but there actually wasn't much. I'm not going to do a detailed comparison but I think this movie had less action than any of the other movies on this list. That's pretty bad for a movie that's supposed to be all about action. I wouldn't mind if there was a good plot, but its plot is a standard dull action movie plot.

 

Postal: It's not for everyone but I loved it. It carries a lot over from the games and has the same nutty feel Postal 2 (the game) has.

 

As for TV, I just started season 2 of Justified. I'm a bit put off by how dark the show suddenly got, but I'll keep watching because I think Raylan Givens is an awesome character.

 

(Sorry if this is considered a necro post, it's giving me a warning but this thread is still on page one of the general forum.)

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I saw GotG last night too. Amusing enough that I will probably watch it again when it comes out on Netflix or whatever.

 

Currently working my way through season two of Hell on Wheels (good, but how do they find time to build a railroad in between all the murdering? Seriously, there are only like two characters I can think of who haven't murdered anybody yet), and season one of The Killing (good so far, but the incessant rain is so depressing that I'm not tempted to marathon it).

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I saw Guardians of the Galaxy as well. I really enjoyed it, but then again, I didn't go in expecting a sensation plot. It was a very fun movie, and for that reason, I enjoyed it.

 

In other news, I'm roughly halfway through my trek of watching the entire Star Trek franchise (TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise). It's been over a year already.

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I'm working my way through Parks and Recreation because somebody mentioned I reminded them of April. It was accurate. It's an alright show, and it beats doing dumb things like reading or eating or playing computer games.

 

I'm also watching Batman: The Animated Series, which is the greatest cartoon of all time.

 

edit: except maybe A:TLA and Cardcaptor Sakura

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I also just saw Guardians of the Galaxy. I actually saw it under mild duress and expected it to be awful. It wasn't. No high art, to be sure, but it walked the fine line to be a fine funny sci-fi action flick. I don't think I'd watch it again, but I'd happily recommend it.

 

—Alorael, who thinks the only way it could be sold at all was having decades of the kind of intense continuity scrutiny that only comics gather. Many people had already done their best to turn ridiculous premises into concepts that at least merit suspension of disbelief, and it worked just fine. Everything else was covered up with lampshades.

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Just finished first season of "Penny Dreadfull." It's OK, but I didn't love it. Kind of a "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" rip-off, but not as good (as the comics, anyway).

 

Currently watching:

 

Nathan For You (funniest show on TV, right now)

Leftovers (pretty good so far)

Rectified (second season isn't as great as season 1, but still worth watching)

Outlander (just started watching. It has promise, although only the pilot has aired so far. I'm a big fan of Moore's BSG, so I will watch this by default)

 

I don't watch a lot of TV, though, so the above shows are literally all I am watching right now.

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Attack on Titan!

 

<snip>

 

If you don't watch anime, make an exeption for this. If you do, and still haven't seen it, are you living under a rock?!

 

YES!!!

 

As much as I hate watching, I do recommend anime if you've got nothing better to do.

 

A fair warning though, watching a single episode will make you realize that you're in the endless loop of the space-time continuum of anime addiction.

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  • 3 weeks later...

For the longest time I liked to make fun of reality TV shows and game shows and all that.

 

However, my partner and I have been watching MasterChef lately and it's ridiculous how much I learn from that show in terms of cooking techniques, as well as how attached I get emotionally. Tears have been shed.

 

The other show I've been watching, purely for nostalgia's sake, is Pokemon. Ash and the original crew wandering through Kanto. It's funny thinking the things that I didn't bat an eye at as a child (eg Brock's constant objectification of women) now seem so ethically repugnant to me.

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i've been watching babylon 5 recently.

 

i never got to watch the whole thing (or hell, i couldn't watch most of it really, just fragments when i was lucky enough to catch it), back when they were airing it it was always at such an inconvenient time i was at school or something similar, and a vcr was a luxury in a post communist country, so i couldn't use that either.

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  • 10 months later...

*wipes up the goat blood, snuffs out the candles*

 

I've been watching a lot of movies lately! A lot of them are old, so don't get too excited. Spoilers are tagged. In no particular order:

 

Doubt

Liked it a lot, recommend it highly. Philip Seymour Hoffman is great, Meryl Streep is super great. There are genuine twists and turns, it's a real humanly complicated situation, and the central mystery is kept in. . . doubt. . . for almost the entire movie.

Spy

Liked it mildly, not really recommended. It was nice to see Melissa McCarthy doing something other than "I am fat and gross, laugh!". And she did a pretty good job. Jason Statham is a delight the few times he shows up. I chuckled a few times, laughed once or twice. Any scene involving the arms dealer's daughter character really didn't get to me, and she's in like half of them. It wasn't bad, overall.

Enemy

LIked it a lot. No recommendation. This one's a bit infamous as a mindscrew. Not in the kaleidoscopic drug trip kind of way, but in the "This is a strange setup, they're

twins

, I guess maybe, but it's not using any of the normal tropes. Why is everything so tense? What did the intro have to do with- WHY DOES THAT LADY HAVE A

SPIDER HEAD

" way. I won't explain the premise here, but I promise everything makes a lot of sense and the unclear framing device is actually very clever. Jake Gyllenhal plays two people, and they're both the main characters, and his performance holds up quite well in the face of such a challenge.

Faults

Liked it. Recommended. It's the rare movie that's too short, but the twist is compelling and everything holds up. It's only ninety minutes long, and another half hour or so of buildup would not have gone to waste. The performances are good, and when they're not good, it's because they're not supposed to be good.

Weekend

Liked it. No recommendation. It's a movie about gay men that manages to be neither a bizarre melodrama nor fetishistic overartsy nonsense. There's no strange contrivances, no extreme situations. It is, instead, a mostly normal bittersweet drama/romance film about two gay guys, and by virtue of being mostly normal, it's a way better look at what that means than most films that try. I dunno, it was very refreshing for me. No recommendation because I'm not sure what anyone else will get out of it. Which is something the movie talks about, actually. . .

Only Lovers Left Alive

Liked it a lot. Very recommended. A vampire movie with Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston as leads, and they both do great performances.The first half-hour or so seems like it's going to be very, very Anne Ricey, but it's really not. It handily sidesteps the usual pitfalls of that kind of melodrama while keeping some of the most interesting compelling parts. It's also got a fantastic sense of dry humor. I laughed harder at parts of this movie than I did at any of the outright comedies here. It manages to humanize the hypercultured old soul model of vampire by grounding it in day-to-day life, with real problems and real happiness. It manages to not take itself too seriously and yet still treat its characters with the utmost respect.

Audition

Liked it. Recommended. A very strange Japanese horror movie. Chronologically discontinuous or involving a great deal of hallucination/other mind[censored]ery. Or both. Though I don't think there's a whole lot of room for interprettion, some elements of the movie are simply unclear. Which is not necessarily bad! Those parts were genuinely upsetting and added to the tense i-don't-know-what's-wrong-but-holy-[censored]-something-is atmosphere the movie was going for. Gory and gross in weird ways, and a fantastically unsettling performance by the lead actress. It's straight-up horror, though, so not everyone's thing.

LEGO Movie

Didn't like it. No recommendation. It wasn't dismal or intolerable or anything, it just wasn't ever funny or interesting or anything at all. I was completely uninvested in everything happening. I guess I'm the only person in the world that thought that, though, so it's probably safe to ignore me.

Birdman

Liked it. Recommended. I won't really get into it, because I'm sure you've heard plenty of wonderful stuff about this one. It's all only a little bit overstated.

Let the Right One In(Swedish version)

Loved it. Very highly recommended. Very minor spoiler, it's a

vampire romance

/horror movie, starring two kids and involving like two adults in the supporting cast. And the performances aren't bad! They're kinda good! The set design matches the tone perfectly, better than anything I can think of(which is why I mention such a specific detail). It uses violence real well, it has a great plot arc, many great dramatic or ~emotional~ moments. I'm running into the old problem here: its real good, so it's hard to specify the ways in which it's good because it just wraps you up in all the seamless goodness. It is important to watch the Swedish version, here. The American remake ruins a lot.

The Host

Liked it a lot. Very recommended. This is a Korean monster movie, revolving around a family of an old father and his adult children. I'll get right to the point - the best thing about this film is how preposterously well it mixes comedy, tragedy, and drama. It's a very funny film. It's a very sad film. It's a very dramatic film. It's really great at all of those and somehow they all work together perfectly. It involves outright slapstick, slow-motion fight scenes that are totally legitimately awesome and are not silly, and really truly heart-wrenching character deaths. I can barely understand how they did that, but they did, and it's amazing to watch.

The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness

Liked it. Recommend it, if the subject interests you. This is the Studio Ghibli documentary. It was interesting, but it's not exactly a documentary about Studio Ghibli. It is not much concerned with the history of the studio, or every movie they've made, or anything like that. Rather, it's a look at how the studio works today, the production and release of several of their more recent movies, the personal life and character of Miyazaki and a few other employees, and a little bit about the future. It's contemplative and melancholy.

Akira

Liked it. Mildly recommended. Speaking of anime. This was pretty okay, though it was very clearly a heavily compressed version of something much longer. It does a very poor job of making the main character's

insane breakdown in the face of godlike power

plausible.

What We Do in the Shadows

Liked it, recommend it. Another vampire movie, this one a comedic mockumentary. It's about a bunch of petty loser vampires who share a house and think they're way cooler than they really are. It is pretty funny.

V/H/S

Mixed bag. No recommendation. This is a compilation of horror shorts. It's a real mixed bag. The framing device is pretty dumb, and several of the shorts are very dumb and bad and not worth watching. Some of them are good, though! The first one is quite well put-together, if fairly perfunctory, and another gave me the first feeling of real physical revulsion I've gotten from a film - I got very dizzy and lightheaded and nauseous and had to lie down for a bit. Might have been a fluke, but it did happen to me.

 

I've also recently rewatched:

 

Watchmen

This is the first movie that I can recall deciding to watch as an autonomous being. I really wasn't into movies at all for most of my childhood. And I love the comic, because of course I do. So, this movie's a little personally important. I liked it a lot when I was twelve or w/e, even before reading the comic. It's reeeaaally not a great movie. It spends a lot of time poorly introducing characters and concepts, it's way too actiony, a lot of the performances are bad, and not in a campy way(really the only decent ones are Ozymandias and Rorschach), a lot of the writing is unforgivably expository or manufactured or wooden, the plot is rushed, and dear lord, whoever did the makeup for this movie should be crucified. I actually like the big change it makes to the comic's ending, and the source material is good enough to shine through in spots, but then there's all that other stuff. I still like it for my own idiosyncratic reasons, but I really can't recommend it.

Dune

I like this movie a lot. And I think it's straight-up pretty good, if you're good at picking up on context. It doesn't have anything close to the problems Watchmen does, but still suffers for being (apparently) impenetrable if you haven't read the book. Changing the weirding way to the sound guns is a minor negative. Stuff left out makes me sad. Still, it gets a good deal of Dune right, and I love Dune.

Django Unchained

This is one of my very favorite movies to watch! I don't usually rewatch movies, despite the existence of this portion of the list. Django is an exception. It's just plain fun to watch, and it's unique and smarter than anyone gives it credit for and the soundtrack is fantastic. Jamie Foxx is a delight, DiCaprio is a delight, the entire supporting cast is a delight. The action is fast and ridiculous and cathartic. And it expertly mixes being serious and being darkly funny and being ridiculously funny. It's great.

Dredd

It's a nice action movie. A simple premise, simple characters, good fights, just enough twists along the way. Not a whole lot else to say about it. It's just a competent movie with simple ambitions that it follows through on well. An enjoyable watch.

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The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness

Liked it. Recommend it, if the subject interests you. This is the Studio Ghibli documentary. It was interesting, but it's not exactly a documentary about Studio Ghibli. It is not much concerned with the history of the studio, or every movie they've made, or anything like that. Rather, it's a look at how the studio works today, the production and release of several of their more recent movies, the personal life and character of Miyazaki and a few other employees, and a little bit about the future. It's contemplative and melancholy.

 

Almost as melancholic and haunting as the best that Ghibli has put out. I found it more watchable than some Ghibli movies - and I'm probably this forum's greatest fan of these movies (I concede that Slarty is probably a bigger Spirited Away fan).

 

Definitely watch it if you can.

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Almost as melancholic and haunting as the best that Ghibli has put out. I found it more watchable than some Ghibli movies - and I'm probably this forum's greatest fan of these movies (I concede that Slarty is probably a bigger Spirited Away fan).

 

Definitely watch it if you can.

 

is that the one where miyazaki says that anime is trash

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I used to be rabidly into Doctor Who but I stopped in the Matt Smith seasons... I dunno man, it's just always so convoluted and implausible, there's only so much stuff I can accept before I start raising an eyebrow. I can't tell if the show has changed or if my tastes have changed. I would like to muscle through it eventually to see the Doctor after him, maybe I'll like him a little better.

 

I'm in this rut right now where all the interesting shows on my queue are ones my husband wants to watch with me, but he's always working evenings when I am in the mood to watch TV, so I "save" shows for him and try to scrounge around for other stuff to watch instead. So I've been watching all those somewhat trashy throwaway shows like Storage Wars and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. They're like potato chips... fun but not filling and not usually memorable once it's over. I've also been watching every true crime show on Netflix. Going to run out soon.

 

When husbando and I actually DO watch stuff together, we've been going through the new season of Bojack Horseman and MLP. I joked that it's the depressing horse show followed by the optimistic horse show. We also are huge Steven Universe and Gravity Falls fans and catch the new episodes of those a few days after they air.

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I recently watched the new Daredevil series on Netflix and found it to be very enjoyable.

Me too, but you have to not think too much about the fact that he's using savage beatings and torture to try to save his neighborhood from crime.

 

I'm about 4 or 5 episodes into Bojack Horseman. I was doubtful at first, but it's actually very good!

 

I'm also watching Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell on TMNgo. It's a long time since I read the book, so I'm not sure how faithful it is, but I'm very much enjoying it.

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I'm also watching Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell on TMNgo. It's a long time since I read the book, so I'm not sure how faithful it is, but I'm very much enjoying it.

I just watched that last week. It's great.

 

I'm currently watching A Young Doctor's Notebook because Netflix rightly suggested I would like it. I've also been watching new episodes of Dark Matter, Halt and Catch Fire, The Last Ship, and Ballers as they come out this summer.

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I recently rewatched Fargo (the film), which is just as lovely as I remember, and added on a binge-watching of the TV series. Highly recommended for anyone who liked the movie; it's set in the same fictional universe and the Coen brothers do a great job of a crime drama that doesn't revolve around CSI-style "Enhance! Enhance!" pseudoscience. Really looking forward to s02.

 

Before that I binged on the recent Orange is the New Black season, which is certainly better (and has less gratuitous lesbian sex scenes! yay!).

 

Also watched Akira, which Nalyd summed up nicely. Speaking of Nalyd, a few weeks ago he suggested Nightcrawler which is a lovely film about what happens when you give a psychopathic autist a camera (at first I thought the guy was just a horrible actor, but then I realized that he was just playing the character spot-on).

 

More recently, I've been rewatching From the Earth to the Moon, which is lovely. I'll probably tack on a rewatch of The Wind Rises.

Edited by sylae
Also ponies and top gear.
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I can say that A Young Doctor's Notebook truly speaks to the terrors of the newly minted doctor to the point that I find it a little bit uncomfortable to watch. I can manage an episode at a time, and only after good days.

 

—Alorael, who has not yet been physically and mentally humiliated by his future self. Give it time.

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  • 3 months later...

Watched The Usual Suspects, Changeling, Jodorowsky's Dune, and Tom at the Farm over the past couple days.

 

The Usual Suspects is very good, of course. It's in the pantheon of cinema. Nothing I need to say about it.

 

Changeling was okay. It's based on true events, but it goes way out of its way to portray them as perfectly just-so stories with eminently righteous heroes and wretched villains. Not even compared to real life, but to fictional movies. It's not bad, but it's super unsubtle.

 

Jodorowsky's Dune is a neat documentary. After watching it, I'm not sure I would have liked the movie that never was, but I am convinced that it was important.

 

Tom at the Farm is a French-language Quebecois movie. Tom's boyfriend Guillaume dies, and he stays with Guillaume's family at their farm for the funeral. Guilaume lied about his sexuality, and his family is creepy farm people. Tom has a bad time. I liked it a lot.

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  • 3 months later...

Just watched Blue Ruin. It's good! It's a mostly straightforward movie about a schmucky homeless guy that has to take revenge for the murder of his parents when the murderer is released from jail, and how doing so drags both of their families into it. Nicely paced, good shot design, nice contemplative mood, the violence is both graphic and understated. There's a little bit of comedy to it. I recommend it. It looks like it actually won some kind of award at Cannes? If you care about that sort of thing.

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  • 10 months later...

Reviving this topic.

 

I watched RWBY, then sucked the entire household into watching RWBY as well. Very good show (see if you can guess who my favorite is from my rotating avatar collection :p).

 

I also have been watching Designated Survivor, which is eh, The Grand Tour, which is fantastic, and some other stuff I cannot remember. Oh! and new sherlock :)

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Sherlock season 4 is quite a bit depressing, but it has plenty of foreshadowing of events in the previous seasons that finally happen.

 

Dirk Gently was 8 episodes to show things are really interconnected. A total blast with plenty of fun references to Douglas Adams past works with the best part was Dirk saying "Don't Panic" as he runs through a crowd.

 

The new Macgyver has been fun, but the science is becoming totally garbage. Powering a satellite phone with a Leyden jar where you don't know if you have the right voltage means either not enough or too much and you just fried the circuitry.

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