TV Watching thread

[Deleted]

Series 6 of Hale and Pace.

Very funny but probably has their darkest and most meanspirited material. Not sure they'd get away with any of this now but it's a great highlight of early 90s comedy. I wish they still made this show because I don't recall any recent sketch shows that are worth the time. I did watch the Kevin Bishop show in my early teens but that was for Karen Gillan. It wasn't as good as H&P though.

[Deleted]

The Sketch Show


This aired in 2001 and starred Lee Mack, Tim Vine, Karen Taylor, Jim Tavaŕe and Ronnie Ancona (who was replaced by Kitty Flanagan in Series 2). It holds up pretty well and it's probably one of the better sketch shows out there honestly. I watched it for the first time back in 2019 and it was a pleasure to rewatch it again this week.

[Deleted]

The Champions League final.

Wanted Liverpool to win so naturally enough they lost despite the majority of the chances falling their way. It was a bit of a strange final in truth and not one of the best I've seen. No football for a month or so now until the Women's Euros. It's coming home this year, I'm certain. The women can do it.

[burrunjor]

Been watching Pennyworth again. It's short so until I can make my mind up for another big series to watch it was quite a good interim one.

Just as good as ever. It's the only DC show worth watching right now which is a shame. Shows you though what talented people can do. The makers of Doom Patrol in a show about a robot, a mutant, a man possessed by an alien intelligence and a mad scientist played by Timothy f*cking Dalton, couldn't get anything interesting out of it, whilst Pennyworth about Batman's f*cking Butler still ended up being an absolutely brilliant series.

Jason Flemyng I'd say gives the best performance of his career. Yep even better than his character in Primeval. His performance in that was great, but it was more straight forward. His character in Pennyworth is one of the most complex villains I've seen in a long time. An evil fascist dictator who we can still end up feeling some sympathy for and who ends up going out like a hero!

I am glad to see there will be a season 3.

[Deleted]

Hale and Pace Series 9

Much better than 7 and 8 but not as good as 10. It's more comfort viewing than anything else. I like the recurring characters and the fact that it's shot on videotape in the late 90s means it looks brand new.

[iank]

Chucky. Yeah, it's... not very good. Some of the actual Chucky stuff is fine, but the new characters are dull as dishwater, Tiffany gets on my tits and Alex Vincent was a better actor at the age of seven than he is now.

[rushy]

I rewatched the Blake's 7 episodes "Terminal" and "Rescue"

[Deleted]

Jun 3, 2022 23:28:26 GMT rushy said:

I rewatched the Blake's 7 episodes "Terminal" and "Rescue"

Two great episoces. I slightly prefer Rescue myself.

[rushy]

I also rewatched "Gold" today. My opinions of it have never changed. Fun western hijinks, but a bit too fast-paced for its own good. And I heavily dislike Roy Kinnear as Keiller.

[Deleted]

Series 10 of Hale and Pace, the last series.

I don't know how, but the boys deliver something close to perfect to round their highly successful show off. The new characters are wonderful. The two Yorkshire guys who complain about literally everything, the two betting scousers who bet on the weather... and whether or not someone is going to commit suicide, the comfy brothers and of course the Dopplers who repeat everything - that's everything, people say. Despite thinking 3-6 is the best period of the series, I genuinely think Series 10 might be the best of the lot. It's funny, it's confident and the show could have easily gone on for another year or so if they wanted it to. Either way, it's 90s comedy at its best. I've even got my mum quoting the series now.

[iank]

The Avengers: The Winged Avenger. Steed and Emma are hot on the trail of a vigilante knocking off ruthless business types in the manner (and costume) of a comic book character. Really fun episode, the drollery of the finale (Steed bashing the villain over the head with large comic book art displaying words like "splat!" and "pow!" is sublime). These look so good on the remastered StudioCanal DVD sets too, showing off how stylish and spiffing the show looked with its beautifully atmospheric lighting and direction. It's been a while, so I'm happy to get back to this show.

[Deleted]

Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans

A part of the long running gundam franchise, though this is one of its alternate universe series.

Gundam is know for spearhead the Real Robo genre of anime in the 80s, i.e. robots a military hardware then old style super weapons and heroes. Almost every Gundam series in based around conflicts between humans and have much more developed war stories then the Super Robots and their monsters of the week.

This one’s main theme seem to be based around the concept of child solders, which the original had also but Iron Blooded Orphans looks at this as a much harsher way. These are not normal children caught in a war, they are child solders, sold to a mercenary army in a desperate bid by their families to make money or for the orphans amount them, as the only line of work that will take them.

The story starts on Mar, and the planet is beholden to military government that acts as an overseer to the four economic blocks of earth. As a result massive amount of poverty on the planet, Mars and much of the space between earth and Jupiter very lawless, with pirates and gangs holding a lot of sway even in the face of earth military.

A young noble women of Mars is however trying to push for Mars’ independence, which coincides with the Earth block growing frustration with the military government. As a result the military wish her assassinated to send a message. What they didn’t count on was that Children of the Mercenary group the women hired to stage a revolt and take over the organisation, outing their commander who was going to hand her over to the military.

Now rebranded as Steel Flower, this group of child solders have promised to get the women to earth, but war is brewing in the solar system and their use of a 300 year old Gundam, lost technology from an old war that forged the current state of affaire, is seen as an ill omen of change.

[Deleted]

The Simpsons: Summer of 4 Ft. 2

This is my favourite episode of the entire show. Every joke works, the story is great and every character in it has several great moments including Lisa and Homer.

This scene cracks me up the most.

[Deleted]

Watched England's 4-0 defeat to Hungary this evening. One of the worst England games I've ever watched. No way are we winning the WC.

[Deleted]

Currently back to watching Return of Ultraman. The last few episodes have been pretty fun.

We’ve had Prisma, a crystal monster that feeds on light. Despite looking like alien iceberg it’s actually pretty powerful with light based abilities, time manipulation and a tractor beam. People who come into contact with it slowly turn to Crystal then disappear. Pretty horrifying actually.

We think egg n had Draculas. Yes is a giant vampire bat monster who seems to gotten its powers from the Vamperella school of vampiring. It’s an alien who just so happens to have all the traits of a vampire. It hates sunlight, dies from getting pierced through the heart and sucks blood. It also uses the corpse of a young women as a disguise. It’s goal? To kill all the women on earth so humanity will die out. More thought out then some alien plans but a bit ambiguous for one alien.

Final we had a two parter that genuinely shocked me. Alien Nackle is planning to invade earth and they view Ultraman Jack as the main threat to their plans. As a reminder all aliens in the series are identified as Alien to separate them from the monsters and the name can be used for both individuals and the race. Anyway Nackle sends out some stock footage to fight Ultraman so they can learn his weaknesses, nothing knew there, but then to my shock they not only try to kidnap his girlfriend and best friend (who are siblings) but both are injured in the attempt and left to die. The brother is killed outright when he was run over and the Sister dies at the hospital, right in ground of Go (Ultraman Jack), leaving our hero as the only career of their younger brother.

Nackle then send out their monster, Black King, to draw Ultraman Jack into a fight. Black King proves a tough fight, thanks to his tough hide and training against Ultraman Jack’s abilities, but then the Nackle leader grows to giant size to join the fight. This his mind in term oil, Ultraman Jack is beaten down by his foes and the chipped of yo planet Nackle for execution.

To make matters worse the rest of MAT (monster attack team and Go’s team) are taken over one by one. All seems lost until the original Ultraman and Ultraseven arrive on planet Nackle save Ultraman Jack. He then heads back to earth, frees his team mates and faces Nackle and Black King one more. With a bit of help from MAT, Ultraman Jack defeats his enemies and stops their plan to blow up Tokyo, but while the world is saved Go has to face the reality that he has lost to people he cared for and will have to raise their brother himself.

Probably the darkest story in the franchise so far and very unexpected turn of events. It’s not like those two were not main characters either, they have been around since episode one and I’m on the second the last disc. Still it gives the story a level of weight not found in the series or the two prior. The Ultramen are in essence like Superman, they have all manner of powers that can allow them to overcome seemingly impossible odds and so you know they will find a way to win, so this kind of personal lost is very unexpected and feels more hard hitting.