Started Tires last night - watched the first two episodes and I'm enjoying it. Shame there's only six episodes.
What other decent comedies are there around these days? Or any lesser known ones I might have missed in recent years? It feels like there aren't as many around any more but maybe I'm just missing them.
Shogun. Promised so much and delivered so little.
Shrinking is good, though I'm unsure it's messaging at the moment is positive. I'm only on the 3rd episode mind, however if it keeps up with the 'therapists are shit, get a coach' story I'll be annoyed.
It's a true story. Stick with it, I enjoyed it.
Obvs not actually going to watch this, but the review is terrific: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...usting-viewing
I mean, Mariah Carey being a joyless diva? Whodda thunk it?
The beeb were going big on Mariah last night and I had the misfortune to be in the same room as it. She just seems such an uninteresting person. A singing robot. Even the diva shit is deathly dull. At least Whitney was into her acting, drugs and dodgy relationships in addition to the singing, there's just nothing to commend Mariah, other than her singing, obviously. Not sure 30 years since the Christmas song really merits such extensive coverage.
She likes the BBC.
I still refuse to believe she's black. Rachel Dolezal was more convincing.
The song is awful as well. Its release marked the debasement of Christmas.
Finished day of the jackal. Thought it started OK but became complete balls as it went on.
I don't know if it's just me having high/snobbish standards, but all these post-Netflix era things tire me out massively. Everything must lack specificity, everything must be in plush houses or glass buildings, everything must be pitched as broadly as possible at a highly international audience. If there are any specific locations shown they have to be tourist board sponsored shots. We visit unionist Belfast and this has to be denoted by them standing in a shop with Union Jack bunting draped across its entire interior, because otherwise the international audience are (the showrunners assume) too stupid to work out any nuance between different codes of Irish people. There is woke box ticking (lots of black screen time and lots of white but zero of any other ethnicity. Would MI6 send a black woman on an undercover mission to Belarus? I fear not), and there is also commercial box ticking - the hot woman from Money Heist brings her audience, Eddie Redmayne brings the housewives and the Harry Potter people, black people bring the black audience, and so on. The twists are there but they are spelled out for 5 year olds, often by showing succinctly written text messages on screen in huge font such as never appears on anyone's actual phone screen.
There was some good tension built up at times but the ending was lame and the whole thing just smacked of 'how can we spin off a good standalone tale into a second and third series'.
Last edited by Jimmy Floyd; 14-12-2024 at 11:04 PM.
Tarantino just said something similar. They're all the same with no payoff. Totally forgettable.
Watched the first few episodes of The Agency last night. It’s the English language adaptation of The Bureau that I’ve been peddling in here. It was a good start but will need to pick up hard to reach the levels of its French counterpart.
Jim, consider this your periodic reminder to watch The Bureau.
It wouldn't surprise me if most of Netflix's scripts have been written by AI for years.
I think what I'm saying is that we no longer live in a golden age of television. It was good while it lasted.
Indeed. Tv has followed music and film into being safe, formulaic and dull. Everything is a rinse and repeat of what came before. Far better to over-milk a cash cow than give a rarebreed a chance.
We've long past the golden age of television. 2006-2008 was peak.
I don't think it's that they won't give things a chance, most of these things could be good if they wanted them to be good. The talent is there. It's that they refuse to treat their audience as intelligent because they're so afraid of being switched off in some territories for inaccessibility. It all results in things being watered down into a smooth, bland sauce that they think will suit every taste.
I would far rather watch something that I don't understand and have to work hard to follow, but is genuine and authentic and specific.
Speaking of old is best, we've been making our way through WIRE IN THE BLOOD with Robson Green from early 2000s. Surprisingly bloody and a good solid British thriller/drama. Like an early day version of the Mentalist.
Always thought he somewhat suffered from the whole Robson and Jerome thing, was a better actor than being some housewife pap that kept Wonderwall off number 1, which is essentially what I thought of him for years.
Yep. I still have this irrational hatred of him because of that but he's actually a good actor. It freaks me out a little that he's basically my age in this series.
Lol that's an awful takeOriginally Posted by Manc
Robson and Jerome were class you heathens.
I'd say the golden age ran from whenever The Wire came out until Covid. A good run.
It's actually a hot take.
It's an opinion you American gimps.
Literally nothing good came out in those years, apart from BB.
The IT Crowd
I was more referring to what was on TV at that point.
Mad Men
Breaking Bad
The Wire
The Sopranos
West Wing
Dexter
The IT Crowd
Dunno what Magic’s problem is here, 06-08 was great television everywhere. I’d say the golden age lasted longer, but those years were certainly in it.
Right, well they're on TV now so...?
How are you this autistic?
You know with on demand stuff everything is on all the time! Golden!
Silo season 1 was pretty good and kinda original. Silo season 2 has been a hot pile of nothingness mess.
Yeah, Season 2 has been so dull. Such a shame.
It's well overrated, with the exception of the admittedly great I'M DISABLED episode. I accept that writers will produce stuff that's similar and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I always felt like it was far too close to the Father Ted formula, with Catholic parochial house swapped out for an IT department, with far shitter characters and about 0.01% of the warmth.
Chris O'Dowd seems a reasonably likeable geezer and I really enjoyed Moone Boy, but Roy is so much worse than Ted as the exasperated straight man character.
Also, Father Ted was (in a way that I think people overlook) pretty fucking weird at times, yet never felt as forcibly ZANY as IT Crowd.
Last edited by igor_balis; 23-12-2024 at 11:30 AM.
Father Ted was 10 years earlier and that was a big ten years when it came to trends in British (or in this case Irish) comedy. Out had gone any form of sincerity, in was the postmodern ironic consensus that also led to (on the good side of things) Peep Show and (on the bad side) Inbetweeners.
At least it was still something though, fuck knows what British comedy even looks like now.
I think your theory is quite a good one, though I'd argue Peep Show is a great example of a show that straddles the line between those eras (artistically, if not strictly chronologically) - Peep Show was a lot more sincere and realistic in its early years, and was a lot better for it. It's not exactly The Simpsons, but Peep Show declined quite a lot more and quite a lot earlier than people remember IMO. It was already just a good tv show by about season 5, and season 1 is easily the best.
I also think Inbetweeners is genuinely great, but season 3 was noticeably worse, and the films were rubbish.
Last edited by igor_balis; 23-12-2024 at 11:51 AM.
The only thing that's aged really badly in the Inbetweeners is the really intrusive and shit landfill indie soundtrack, which is really fucking annoying.
I think it that's not a bad shout, series 1-4 it had a bit more heart in it, I still liked season 5 onwards but in what I will call the Isy Suttie years it was more just a series of good lines than a real knitted together show.
You wouldn't expect me to like Inbetweeners so we'll leave that one.
Yeah I can't argue with that, I basically feel exactly the same about the show as you do, I just like the earlier stuff a bit more and like the later stuff quite a lot less.
Everything after the end of the Sophie arc (the wedding) was a step down, but still very watchable, even if it wasn't quite as brilliant as season 1-4.
The IT Crowd is the most recent decent comedy - especially when it comes to terrestrial tv - I can think of. The Inbetweeners was great, but of it's time. Father Ted was superb and I will hear no slander of any kind against it.
Peep Show was great, but attempts to give it a second viewing have always ended in failure after a couple of episodes
Good question. Are there any decent comedies out at the minute? I'm not sure what the most recent British comedy I enjoyed was. Friday Night Dinner, maybe.
Actually, The Cleaner was alright. And Cuckoo was maybe more recent as well? Man Down too.
Basically Greg Davies is brilliant.
Oh, This Way Up. And Catastrophe. And Derry Girls. More British/Irish, I suppose but still.
Comedy- especially British comedy - is probably the biggest victim of the internationalism of tv and film that Jimmy was lamenting the other day. Chuck in a heavy spoonful of being scared to offend and it's dead in the water. Safe, bland and simple.
Even stand up has been a victim of it. It's either safe and gentle, punching UP at all times or... well, Ricky Gervais, basically. Just being offensive for the sake of being offensive, then saying "you can't say that". I'm not much of a James Acaster fan, but he really did nail him on that front.
Yeah, comedy has been killed by the woke era I think, not because people would be rattling off Bernard Manning jokes otherwise, but because it makes people scared to experiment or be different, and unwilling to commission things that could even potentially alienate anyone.
Hopefully it'll have a renaissance if we manage to emerge from the woke era.
The issue at the moment is that the attempt of a renaissance is just being deliberately anti-woke.
THAT TRANS WOMAN USED TO BE A MAN
HAHAHAHAHA
CALLED BRUCE HE WAS.
HAHAHAHAHA.
HAD A MISSIVE COCK!!
HAHAHAHAHA
Ahhh... you can't say that these days
Which is just as boring as Miranda or Michael Mcintyre.
The revolution will come if and when comedy stops caring about feelings, rather than trying to protect or hurt them, which is all we have on offer at the moment, really.
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