Re: Last TV show you watched
 

This might be seen as too much quibbling but things about the Clegane fight irked me.

How much of zombie Mountain is science and how much is magic? He seemed to survive being stabbed in the brain?
Might as well say he could have survived the fall.

If my eyes were being gouged, I think I'd stab him in the eyes rather than shoulder first.

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It's been awhile since I've read them but I think in the books the Mountain doesn't even have a head anymore after Qyburn resurrects him, that it's empty under the helmet. I think it's more magic keeping him alive (in the books at least) than anything else, as Qyburn is also a necromancer.

To be fair if your eyes were being gouged it might be hard to see where you're aiming your blade, ha ha.

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Okay, well, it's an unconfirmed theory but close enough:

Robert Strong/Theories - A Wiki of Ice and Fire

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A comment from a fine weird fictioneer

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Watched the last episode of Chernobyl last night.
A riveting real-life nightmare.

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I have become enchanted by 80s British fantasy series Robin of Sherwood. It is mystical, wyrd and occasionally becomes outright folk horror. I can think of nothing like it on television today, save for Sky Atlantic's Britannia, which would be a guilty pleasure if I were capable of guilt.

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I haven't seen it, but I am curious to find out if they address the positive impact on the environment and wildlife when the human pest is removed.

Nearly 30 Years After Chernobyl Disaster, Wildlife Returns to the Area

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Nuclear power is actually the safest non-renewable source of energy in the long run considering the impending apocalypse fossil fuels have wrought.

Chernobyl is a good series. Jared Harris is a fine actor. Possibly my favourite screen Moriarty, too.

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I finished the last season of Crazy Ex Girlfiend last night.
I don't even like musicals, but this show was amazing.
The songwriting was phenomenal.

I hate when shows have musical episodes (e.g. Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Once More With Feeling) - although episode 200 of Supernatural was special.

I hope there isn't a musical episode of The Walking Dead.

Re: Last TV show you watched
 

Oz (the prison drama) had an episode with musical interludes but they didn't actually happen in the story. Sometimes I think Oz is my favorite modern tv series after Twin Peaks. The characters really stay with you and there's an abundance of them.

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Chernobyl, unsettling, terrifying, body horror...a monster is unleashed and cannot be contained. Something that this planet has never seen before...true cosmic horror.

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I finally saw Chernobyl this weekend and your assessment is dead on. Amazing how a true event can come as close to cosmic horror as any film I've seen.

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The last TV shows I have seen are Chernobyl, the final season of Game of Thrones and the second season of The Dragon Prince.

Chernobyl is such a masterpiece that I cannot believe the same guy who created it is the one who directed, wrote and produced Superhero Movie, and was also the writer of Identity Thief, Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4, The Hangover 2, The Hangover 3, and The Huntsman: Winter's War.

It is mind-boggling.

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I managed to finish Too Old to Die Young. I honestly don't know how I feel about it; I kind of love it and hate it at the same time.

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I thought it was comically pretentious - like it was deliberately trying to provoke that reaction. I'm glad I watched it all the way through, but I won't rewatch it.

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Most recently finished The Big Bang Theory and the first season of True Detective; currently watching the second season of Punisher and the good old series Friends...

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Friends, nice, love that show... my brothers and I have watched and rewatched all ten seasons of that show so many times over the years it's not even funny, ha ha. I'll say this about NBC, in the 1990's they had Friends, Frasier, AND Seinfeld, which is kind of mindboggling. It really was kind of the golden age of sitcoms.

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I have a soft spot for The Big Bang Theory; I've watched the seasons so many times since it started airing... it's the only show in my list that have always been able to lighten up my mood...

Friends is more critically acclaimed and consistent, but BBT is my kind of thing, I kinda grew up with it!

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Apparently Friends is huge on Netflix with people who were too young to see the original airings, and comes across to them like a lovely picture of a more carefree time, or so I hear.

Although I do like about a quarter of the jokes well enough, I generally cant stand Big Bang Theory and Friends, and I've seen most of the episodes (!) while eating with family. Wish I hadn't.

Seinfeld was the only one I really appreciated, but still I wish I had been doing other things more often.

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Friends has had huge influence on sitcoms later; now that I'm watching Friends I know this, there are so many familiar jokes, sarcasms and references... BBT "copied" a lot from Friends...

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I believe that a lot of these sitcoms shared many of the same writers.

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The only real post-FRIENDS sitcom that I've seen is HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER... in fact, I'm currently up to season 6. While it's not on the same level as FRIENDS, I do like how a lot of attention was put into the show's inner chronology... it's a very self-referential show, I feel, which I like.

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The funniest recent sitcoms are The Thick of It and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Also a shout out to The Detectorists, which isn't especially amusing to me, but has a beautiful portrayal of landscape and enters into Wyrd Britain territory. Recommended for fans of M.R. James and Arthur Machen.

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Haven't watched It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia yet, but I love the other two shows.

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Some days after finishing Too Old to Die Young and, after certain events that I experienced and me not being able to stop thinking about it, I can now say it is one of my favorite TV series ever. That said, I will never watch it again.

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I watch so little television anymore. I don't engage with the content much and I do not know why. I enjoy Book-TV on CSPAN2 on the weekends, but i know that's not the same thing.

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I am up to date with HBO's Watchmen. It is good, but I find myself unmoved by it. The soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is excellent.

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I'm going to give it a chance as I adored Lindelof's The Leftovers.

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"The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance"
While I do like this series a lot, at the same time, I miss the feeling of alienness that the original film had. Also I think the series relied a little too much on gross-outs.

Witcher
 

I have watched one episode of "The Witcher," and it seems like a YA version of "Game Of Thrones," albeit heavier on magic and monsters.
I'm on the fence with this, and would appreciate comments from other TLO members who have finished S01.

Re: The Outsider
 

HBO's new 10-episode series based on the (lackluster?) Stephen King novel is so far surprisingly good. Basically a tragic police procedural faced with an apparently-supernatural mystery.

Some critics felt that it unfolds too slowly, but for me the nuanced acting, the hypnotic, tension-building soundtrack, and the alienating offscreen-viewer, crepuscular cinematography are excellent on all counts. Shades of True Detective, Season One.

The first two episodes were released last weekend (1/12/20). Past Stephen King television has been uniformly poor; this one (so far) bucks that trend. Worth a watch.

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I 100% concur Gnosticangel.

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I finished watching HBO's CHERNOBYL today. Given my interest in the Soviet Union, and my almost lifelong fascination with the Chernobyl disaster (I recall being both horrified and fascinated by the story when it first broke when I was a child, and this led to an interest in industrial accidents in general), it might seem surprising that I did not watch this show when it first aired. But at the time the critics in general were using it as a cudgel against what was (mistakenly IMO) seen as an inferior final season of GAME OF THRONES, so rather than jump on the hype bandwagon I decided to wait for the DVD release.

But I enjoyed it as a work of entertainment. Certainly it could be seen as a triumph of production: it was shot in Lithuania and they found some really great examples of those iconic-looking Soviet Brutalist housing blocks (along with some very striking Soviet art murals), and the special effects and radiation make-up effects were top-notch stuff. Hildur Guðnadóttir's score for the series was very atmospheric, and the acting in general was very accomplished, from the main players down to the bit parts. I've long felt that Jared Harris is an underappreciated actor (go see him in I SHOT ANDY WARHOL: it's probably the best depiction of Warhol in a movie), so it was nice to see him getting mainstream recognition here. Stellan Skarsgård was equally good, and I liked how the series tracked the friendship between him and Harris' character (HBO seems to be very good at these "odd couple" male buddy TV shows: see also the first season of TRUE DETECTIVE). Even the costumes were great...

Having said that I did have some issues with it. The decision to have the actors speak in their natural accents (and all in English!) rather than Russian ones is somewhat distracting, and the writing varies in quality (no surprise there, seeing as the show's writer also wrote, among other things, SCARY MOVIE 4, one of the worst films I've ever seen); you know what you're go to be in for when early on characters are dropping lines like "I'm in charge here!" Some of the characters seem straight out of central casting, with Emily Watson's made-up composite character (the heroic truth-telling scientist) being probably the worst offender in that regard. And for a series that is so obsessed with the truth and anti-lying, there are in fact many historical inaccuracies, distortions, fabrications and pure Hollywood bunkum on display (most egregious being Jared Harris' character making a big speech at the show trial for Dyatlov, Fomin, and Bryukhanov, when in real-life he wasn't even present there: the TV Tropes website does a good job listing that and numerous other examples of, er, well I suppose the polite phrase for it is "Artistic License": Chernobyl / Artistic License - TV Tropes)

But that's the nature of these things, I suppose. In conclusion, the series serves as a nice tribute to the many scientists, firefighters, doctors, nurses, miners, and soldiers who put their lives on the line to try to contain the disaster. It's hard not to think about their often selfless acts of heroism and not be profoundly moved...

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Resumed my marathon of Brian Clemens' 70s Thriller anthology series. I'm at Series 4. Despite the wyrd and truly unsettling eerie title sequence, the show rarely delves into supernatural horror. I reached another exception. Black magic popped up again with Diana Dors turning up as a demon nanny. This is a terrific series and has a superior hit rate to the better remembered and regarded Hammer House of Horror or Tales from the Crypt anthology shows. I miss when television was more akin to small theatre than big "event" movies. Inside No. 9, which returned tonight, is a nice exception. I'd hoped the failure of Game of Thrones' idiotic final run might put people off more blockbuster spectacle on the small screen, but Disney+ look set to brain bomb everybody's watercooler conversation with Marvel shows for the next 100 years.

In terms of franchise shlock I feel unconsciously obligated to follow I think the recent Doctor Who series is largely okay by the show's often middling, formulaic standards (I loved the Jo Martin reveal) and am mildly looking forward to checking out Picard after the season has aired. I can't justify signing up for another streaming service.

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Speaking of the final season of GAME OF THRONES... on May 26th of last year I mentioned (in this very thread) the idea of doing a long blog post intended to (mostly) defend the final season... I was kind of joking about it at the time but a few months later I actually DID write it out (for the record, Justin Isis told me I was wasting my time doing that when I should have either been getting laid or writing new fiction), and posted it on my blog late November of last year, and I even linked it at various places... yet I never linked it on here, oddly enough. Well, here it is, for the curious:

The Onyx Glossary: Against the Grain: In Defense of GAME OF THRONES Season 8

I should say that all joking aside I didn't write this to be contrary, I stand behind my opinions 100%.

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Liking divisive television is one thing, but there probably aren't two writers in television less in need of defence. :p

As well as Thriller I'm going through Tales of the Unexpected. While in all honesty neither are as good as The Twilight Zone, the British setting hits the wyrd anti-nostalgia part of my brain's eerie landscape. The episode The Flypaper is excellent filmmaking. It captures the oppressive feeling of being a lonely child in Britain. Isolating landscape and the cruelty of the older generation are seemingly conspirators to kill the young. Brexit Britain in a mood piece, really.

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Anyone seen Gregg Araki's new tv show Now Apocalypse? I'll need reliable internet before I can stream the 5 hours (wish there was a disc). People complaining that he's as fixated on hot teenage gays as he was in the 90s and hasn't really changed at all. I didn't get much out of his last feature film but I'm glad he's still getting to do his own stuff on occasion, even if the show was cancelled after a season.

Very reluctant to watch tv series these days but Gregg Araki is an exception for me.

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I finished all nine seasons of Tales of the Unexpected. A charming and exceedingly addictive series that is more than the sum of its often scraggy parts. Season 1 (the only one where each episode is based on a Dahl story) might be the only one without an underwhelming "What was the point of that?" episode, but there are gems throughout the run. My favourites:

The Flypaper
The Landlady
Bird of Prey
The Sound Machine
The Open Window (I wish more episodes were based on Saki stories as he's a perfect fit for the show)
Stranger in Town
Scrimshaw
Taste

The next British anthology show I'll be tackling is Armchair Thriller.

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Have you watched Inside No. 9 which is now on its fifth series?
Like Tales of the Unexpected these are sinister stories with a twist, though usually with a lot of black humour.
To my taste it's one of the best TV series of recent years.

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I am indeed a fan of Inside No. 9. To my mind it is the best thing Shearsmith and Pemberton have done.

I enjoyed the BBC's recent folk horror/thriller The Pale Horse. Nothing too special, but I thought the central mystery came together nicely and recalled M. R. James' Casting the Runes, while some of the imagery was straight out of The Wicker Man. I'm now reminded I need to read more Agatha Christie. With this and Wurzel Gummidge it seems wyrd British television might be making a comeback. I heartily approve.