What are you streaming at the moment…

[Beardy]

We’ve got a what’s on TV thread, and a what was the last filum you watched threads, but I can’t see a streaming thread, so here’s one I’ve made out of sticky back plastic.

We’re currently watching For All Mankind on Apple TV and really enjoying it. It starts off with the original space race in the late 60s but plays around with the outcomes and then goes on to speculate what if the space race didn’t end in the early 70s. It hasn’t yet got to far fetched to really be considered as SF, although that is in fact exactly what it is. I think the genre is sometimes referred to as speculative history.

It’s interesting to consider how the emotions it engenders within me have changed from the first series to third series. Because the first series sticks quite closely to the actual space tech that I watched in real life, the emotions the space sequences fire in me are quite visceral, even when I know that they have deviated from reality. But as the programmes role by and the tech moves further from reality and more towards a speculative tech the emotions aren’t as grounded and so don’t affect me in quite the same way. I’m sure psychologist could produce papers and papers based on this stuff.

Anyway, if you’ve access to Apple TV I can highly recommend the show.

[T42]

Haven't got FruityVu and don't really want to give €€€ to Apple. Still, the series sounds interesting.

Been watching a Japanese serial about Fukushima on Netflux: fairly intense.  Can't quite believe that the PM of the time, Naoto Kan, was really such a clueless autocratic prick.

[MattH]

I'm on a free Apple TV trial (a credit card gave a five month free trial).

I was most most interested for Long Way Up (the Ewan and thingy ride electric motorbikes up from South America to LA) - good, but a lot more about the issues of powering electric bikes and pickup trucks and dealing with software bugs than exploring and interacting with locals. They are definitely decreasing in quality for me from Long Way Round, then Long Way Down and finally this, even though production values go up.

Slow Horses - loved the books, the two series are good too. Very much the flawed, grubby spies fumbling along rather than high tech shiny Bond. I like this partly as it doesn't try to be too real; the security services are in different buildings to reality, for example, so in a way it helps the suspension of disbelief as, for example, they aren't trying to say that a random London building is Thames House, they say that the HQ is Regents Park. In the books it's pretty obvious that one of the politicians is based on Boris, that's not so clear in the TV series.

Foundation - based on the Asimov books. Very well done, though some bits aren't how I remembered them. But it's been a good 20 years since I read the books, must dig them out again.

It does seem that Apple are trying for quality rather than quantity. Whether I'll keep it up beyond the free trial is another matter...

[ian]

For All Mankind is on our list, currently watching Servant, which is OK, if a bit of a one-series idea stretched to four series, but there's enough to keep us watching. Plus it's 30-minute episodes which ought to be more of a thing.

Slow Horses and Severance are, of course, Apple TV cannon. I like Apple TV as indeed they do seem focused on quality, rather than the Netflix scattergun approach (and then cancelling most of them after series one). We don't watch a lot of TV, so it's not like I need a new show every night. Other use cases might apply. Everyone tells me to watch Ted Lasso, but I find anything even adjacently related to football sends me to sleep.

Also watching Dark on Netflix, which is good but is also a workout for the brain, it takes the first series to figure out who's who in each time period (evidently not the only person, as the credits started to show a triptych of each character at different ages). On the last season now.

[T42]

Might have a gander at FruitLoop TV after all.

Watched Dark last year some time: engaging enough but loony.

[Beardy]

Watching Deadloch on Prime at the moment and it’s a bit of a cross genre oddity. On the one hand it’s a very crude comedy¹ and not the sort of thing that would appeal to Dr B at all, but on the other hand it’s a fairly clever whodunit, and in that respect it’s a bit of a ‘page turner’. It’s most certainly got Dr B hooked, and crude though it is, she keeps chuckling to herself and occasionally guffawing loudly.


^{1. Its Australian origin might have something to do with this.}

[fd3]

Manifest on the flix.  It’s ok but suffers from typical USAnian 20 episodes when in the U.K. they would have done it in 6.

[PaulF]

Invasion on Apple. Bit different from your standard alien invasion plot; I’m 4 episodes in and only seen a fleeting glimpse of them. Instead it focuses on how it affects 4 different groups of characters.

[ian]

Invasion on Apple. Bit different from your standard alien invasion plot; I’m 4 episodes in and only seen a fleeting glimpse of them. Instead it focuses on how it affects 4 different groups of characters.

Spook, same thing, though episode 3. I quite like the way it's slowly building without actually being slow.

[fd3]

I believe that Prime has dropped the sequel to Good Omens ...

[Mr Larrington]

My pal Jim reports this to be the case.

[Beardy]

When you say sequel, do you mean series 3? I ask, as series 2 appears to still be present on Prime

[spesh]

It may depend on how fd3 is using the word "dropped", because it is sometimes used (especially by Leftpondians and other abusers of the King's English) instead of "released" or "published". For example:

In the 2006 reprinted edition of Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett’s 1990 classic “Good Omens,” the co-authors did a Q&A in which they answered the question “Why isn’t there a sequel?” like this:

“We played around with ideas, but we could never work up the enthusiasm. Besides, we wanted to do other things (and some of those ideas probably ended up, bent to a different shape, in the works of both of us). Recently, though, we’ve both been wondering if ‘never again’ is set in stone. So there might be a sequel one day. Maybe. Perhaps. Who knows? We don’t.”

Well, now we do know, because on July 28, Amazon Prime Video dropped the second season of TV adaptation of “Good Omens,” which sees Michael Sheen and David Tennant reprise their roles as apocalypse-fighting, millennia-long best friends: the fussy angel and rare-book dealer Aziraphale and fast-living demon Crowley.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/good-omens-season-2-ending-explained-neil-gaiman-1235680606/

(Article contains spoilers from the season 2 finale, so caveat lector!)

Looking at Neil Gaiman's Tumblr earlier, he said in one post that he'd have preferred Amazon to have released each episode on a daily or weekly basis, instead of the entire series being "dropped" in one go.

As far as the third - and final - series is concerned:

transmasc-tfw2 asked:

Please tell me that a season 3 of Good Omens is confirmed. I beg of you Mr. Gaiman.

It won’t be confirmed unless enough people watch Season 2 to make Amazon happy. And it’s strike season, which makes everything harder.

But obviously Season 3 is all planned and plotted and, if I get to make it, will take the story and the people in it we care about to a satisfying end. If I wasn’t on strike I’d be writing it currently. Our set is still standing in a studio in Bathgate and we would all love to get back there and finish the story in the way Terry and I plotted, long ago.

https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/724064743015481344/please-tell-me-that-a-season-3-of-good-omens-is

ihatetomatoes3000 asked:

do you imagine if a season 3 were to be produced that it would come out faster than season 2? could we be expecting any type of closure before 2027?

If it wasn’t for strikes I’d have most of it written by now. As it is, a first draft of Episode 1 and the final fifteen pages of Episode 6 (in case I get hit by a bus) are written, and the rest of it has to wait until the strike is done and we can pick up our pens. When the strike was called I took the post-it notes with the Season 3 episode breakdowns off the walls and put them sadly away.

If we shot it in 2024 it would probably be released in early ‘26. (We started shooting S2 in October 2021. It’s about a year in post-production from wrap to release.)

https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/724098700328255488/do-you-imagine-if-a-season-3-were-to-be-produced

[T42]

It may depend on how fd3 is using the word "dropped", because it is sometimes used (especially by Leftpondians and other abusers of the King's English) instead of "released" or "published".

As a mare drops a foal or a cow drops a calf, for example. Probably influenced by their cowboy history.

In any case, we dropped off the end of G.O.2 last night and had a bit of a WTF? moment.  But now I'm thinking it was brilliant, and liable to raise many hackles over there <===.  Looking forward to G.O.3 now, unless plans for it are dropped when the Amazon bigwiggery realize that it might seriously piss off a hefty slice of their devout clientele.

[perpetual dan]

I’ve started watching “Halt and catch fire”, having missed it before. Not looking for spoilers, but there seems to be some depth to the characters. Also, I didn’t work in an office until a bit after this time so it works a bit like a period drama for me.

[ian]

Invasion on Apple. Bit different from your standard alien invasion plot; I’m 4 episodes in and only seen a fleeting glimpse of them. Instead it focuses on how it affects 4 different groups of characters.

Spook, same thing, though episode 3. I quite like the way it's slowly building without actually being slow.

(click to show/hide)

Quite enjoyed it. Pros: the aliens take the back seat (honestly, it would have been better if they'd held out and never really showed them), nice suspenseful buildup. Cons: the last couple of episodes were confused, I suspect someone was demanding more action and aliens; too many annoying children storylines; the ubiquitous 'special' humans who have some power or connection to the aliens, can read their minds that kind of thing, which is a tired trope and wasn't at all necessary to the plot.

The Sam Neill storyline was very odd as it was never revisited nor played any part in the rest of the show.

Of course, any aliens capable of travelling across the galaxy would just squash us, not settle for giving kids nosebleeds and messing with our tv reception.

[fd3]

New streaming releases are "dropped", it's what teh yoot say these days.
We watched Chinese puzzle (third of the auberge espagnole series) which was free with a trial of studiocanal on prime.  We then watched The Guernsey literary and potato peel pie society, which was a decent find (if in one aspect too telegraphed) and then most of Infiniti which is a 6 partner in the vein of the Missions series.  It struggled because
Khazak subtitles in white on a white background
Compelling wtf mystery that is then resolved thru bullshit in the last episode.
We watched the first 3 episodes, then the recaps at the start of 4 and 5 before watching ep 6 (so that we could cancel our free trial because we are cheap - don't think I would have paid to watch infiniti, the other two were decent).

[T42]

Watched a short serial called The Consultant over the last two evenings.  Droll, incongruous, ending a bit disappointing.

[ian]

Secret Invasion. 8/10 mehs. You got Samuel Jackson and Olivia Colman on the menu and you serve them up with a poorly reheated plot that's been done many times before and many times better, even by Marvel themselves (you won't need spoilers, I spent the entire brief run wondering if they'd do something – anything – different and they didn't). I wouldn't bother.

[ian]

FUBAR on Netflix. First episode was a solid 5/10 mehs*, but it's grown on me a lot and I'm quite enjoying it. I mean, it's obviously intensely stupid, but Arnie seemed to be enjoying himself and well, it's Arnie, you don't expect acting. I'm dropping it down to 2.5/10 mehs. It's a good end of the evening brain-softener.

*I've now adopted the meh scale for reviews, 10/10 mehs is solid awful, 1/10 mehs is good.

[T42]

Watched Inside Man on Netflux, not the film but a serial with Stan Tucci & David Tennant. The bits with Stan Tucci were droll and entertaining but the chunk of plot centred around poor David Tennant (he had to spout that shit) relied on people constantly acting impulsively and talking over each other; and was bloody stupid.

[fd3]

Agree re Inside Man, I would rate it highly on the meh scale, a solid 6, though arguably the fact that it has enough good moments to sucker you into watching it could mean it rates higher as opposed to lower.  I would not recommend.
Fubar is basically "True Lies" turned into a series.  It's enjoyable in a candy type way.

[Beardy]

We’re currently watching the second series of Foundation on Apple TV, and it’s quite entertaining. However, having read the books some 40 years ago, I remember enough of the story to know that the televised version is not faithful to the source material and it’s quite distracting in that I’m constantly trying to work out how it is diverting. And the ‘mystical’ element they’ve added is most irritating.

[T42]

Rewatching the Lupin serial on Netflux to prepare for the next season in October. Good story, must read the books some time.

[sam]

Wolf Hall again. If memory serves, it doesn't end well for any of them.

Now picturing Mr VIII as a secret Muslim.