Posts about TV (RSS, JSON)

7PM — I apply simple tests to assess the quality of a movie or TV show. How much do a fiddle with my phone when I’m supposed to be watching is one? For TV shows, another is how much I anticipate what is going to happen next when an episode ends. Do I want to watch the next episode right now, or do I feel indifferent?

Fargo‘s latest instalment passed both these tests. It’s a dense story posing many questions. What does a wife owe her husband? A mother a child? A small town police women with a man-child husband to her debtors? And how is this debt paid? All set in the familiar chilly atmosphere of the Minnesota winter, inhabited by familiar nice Minnesotans.

John Hamm playing a right-wing Sheriff, who only beholds himself to the word of the Bible, is his best role since Mad Men. In most of his characters I only see the sleek, charismatic and immensely good-looking Don Draper. Here he’s overweight and has nipple piercings. Nipple piercings! Also refreshing is Juno Temple in a real role, after her talents were wasted in Ted Lasso as the prototypical Essex marketing gal covered in thick make up and pink fur.

5PM — Let’s not pretend the idea isn’t appealing: A league with the best clubs from Europe, the best players constantly facing each other, banging fixtures every week. I’ve created plenty such tournaments on FIFA. But the idea is best left in the virtual world on a Playstation. In reality, such a construct would have wide-ranging consequences on football, further accumulating wealth with a few big clubs, leaving smaller teams struggling for financial survival.

There’s one thing this documentary makes abundantly clear: Not one of the men running football at the highest levels is in it for the love of the game but out of pure self interest.

Andrea Agnelli puts in succinctly:

It’s a business proposal. We’re not in it because we’re emotionally involved. We’re involved because we believe we can improve the system.

The driving forces behind the league, Andrea Agnelli of Juventus, Joan Laporta of FC Barcelona, and Florentino Pérez of Real Madrid, they all lead football clubs, which struggle financially, so obviously they favour a guaranteed yearly income.

Gianni Infantino tells people what they want to hear. He wants more influence on club football but more importably he wants to stay in the top position in FIFA. He needs the support from UEFA members so he’s against the league. Nasser Al-Khelaifi saw an opportunity to widen his influence across European football by aligning with Čeferin and becoming chairman of the European Club Association (ECA). Aleksander Čeferin was against super league to save his position. If there was a way to extract more money from the fans without upsetting them he’ll support it. His half-hearted approach towards financial fair play in European football says it all. If he was serious about protecting small clubs, he’d have to confront his new ally Nasser Al-Khelaifi and put screws on how much PSG can spend.

And Boris Johnson found a welcome distraction from the political pressure he faced at the time after repeatedly making bad decisions.

The documentary series gives room to different views and opinions, moreover it show football is in very bad hands. Super League may not have happened this time, but it may well happen in five or ten years.

6AM — Halt and Catch Fire is one of the shows that have developed an ardent following over now but never enjoyed the level of commercial success of other shows. It seems people can’t relate to a bunch of nerds on TV building computers or making web sites discoverable.

Season 4 really hit home for me, because it reminded me of the time I first went online:

But in its final season, “Halt” managed to convey a sincere nostalgia for the optimism of the early Web. Those crappy early HTML pages, with their corny cartoons and lists of links, were doors leading to endless other doors.

Yes. Grey backgrounds, serif fonts, table layouts, blue (as in #0000ff) hyperlinks, the complete lack of white space. This is what the Web looked like when I went online for the first time. Seeing the design and the excitement for the early Web portrayed in Halt and Catch Fire, I developed a nostalgic urge to write some HTML in notepad, slap on some font attributes, and push the whole thing online using FTP.

8PM — There’s something addictive about these spoilt children in adult bodies who fail over and over again to take control of their dad’s company without ever losing one iota of conviction that they are, by birthright, destined to run a multi-billion-dollar business.

Their sense of entitlement paired with their complete inability to function outside their own little world sometimes makes hilarious comedy. “I had to fly on a scheduled flight, dad” — “Sorry, son.”

9AM — I started watching Barry after the final episode aired; and I would have stopped watching after season 2 if the following ones hadn’t been available. There’s a tedious slump in season 2, leading up to the darker turn that follows. It has the annoying elements of Dexter; Barry keeps murdering and always gets away with it. At some point there’s a faint hint of guilt but due to unforeseen circumstances he has to murder another human. And another.

But thanks to the wonderful world of streaming, I binged through the show and made it to the end. I’m glad I did. Barry is fun and dark. It’s a world where almost no one has a moral compass, and everyone acts in their own benefit.

Besides the absurd plot—serial killer wants to be an actor to find himself—it’s the hints of a workplace comedy that did it for me. Early on, when Barry opens up to Fuches that he wants to pursue a different line of work, and Fuches, the “manager,” shows little interest in Barry’s interests or feelings and wants him to keep going to keep the business going—that perfectly sums up the relationship between many managers and their subordinates. Or in season 4, when Fuches and his crew try to calm Fuches’ visibly distraught partner and her daughter after beheading a couple of men; and it doesn’t occur to them that turning the TV louder or not doing the beheading in front of the women won’t solve the actual problem: that they shouldn’t murder anyone in the first place. Like a discussion at work, when one executive wants to do something questionable and everyone scrambles to put a positive spin on it.

12PM — Rogue Heroes is like the earlier seasons of Peaky Blinders, but set in the dessert, not the city, and with soldiers instead of gangsters.

12PM — Ted Lasso’s feel-good, uplifting optimism that carried people through the pandemic is still there in season 3. But it wears off quickly over the twelve tedious, hour-long episodes and, sadly, it’s not enough to carry a mediocre story. There are so many, vaguely related plots and shallow story telling—it’s hard to figure out what the show is about.

11AM — Donald Glover famously wanted to create a Twin Peaks but with Rappers, and with Atlanta, it’s fair to say he succeeded. The show initially follows Paperboi, an aspiring Hip Hop MC, and his cousin Earn, also Paperboi’s manager, on their way to commercial success.

But the coherent storyline vanishes in the later seasons. Sure, the characters are mostly the same, but the episodes are only loosely connected. Atlanta isn’t a novel; it’s a collection of short stories interlinked only by reoccurring protagonists and places. It’s a weird show, often funny, strange, and very, very uncomfortable—all at the same time. Atlanta is unpredictable, which is what makes the show great. It’s a breath of fresh air in a sea of TV series released on streaming services that all look and feel the same.

2PM — Mike Hale perfectly summarises Slow Horses:

It’s a complicated conspiracy thriller crossed with an office comedy, and it lightly dusts grungy realism with off-kilter, absurdist touches

Gary Oldman, in the centre of it all as the delightfully rude leader of a group of disgraced MI-5 agents, is the perfect casting for the role of Jackson Lamb. Few actors are as good at portraying functioning alcoholics. Case in point: Oldman as Herman J. Mankiewicz in Mank and as Winston Churchill in The Darkest Hour.

With only six episodes per series, Slow Horses is refreshingly short. Not everyone agrees; Mike Hale, again:

If there’s a problem with the show, it’s the inverse of what’s sometimes referred to as Netflix bloat. “Slow Horses” demonstrates that six episodes — a standard length for British crime dramas — isn’t necessarily enough time to adapt a complexly plotted, fully characterized book.

Six episodes per series are just right for Slow Horses—for any TV series, really. The plot is a bit dense at times, but I take that any time over the slog of many of today’s TV series.

Slow Horses Series 1 and 2 (2022). Cast: Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas. Streaming now on Apple TV+.

6PM — Land of the Giants: Titans of Tech is a documentary series that traces the history of big tech corporations known as FAANG: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google.

I saw episode S1E4 last night, which covers Google’s origin story, the role of Eric Schmidt, the acquisitions of YouTube and Android, the antitrust lawsuits and employee walkouts.

You will only gain few new insights if you generally follow developments in tech. What is worth noting, though, is the substantial airtime female experts received, including former employees like Marissa Mayer, Timnit Gebru, or Claire Stapleton and journalists such as Kara Swisher and Joanna Stern.

Land of the Giants: Titans of Tech (2022). Currently streaming on SBS On Demand in Australia.

5PM — I’m not sure why I watched the whole series of Loot. It’s terrible. The storyline couldn’t be more predictable. And for a comedy, it’s not funny at all.