What have you been watching on (proper scripted) telly?

[SpursRiot2012]

On the subject of Always Sunny, all this talk that Dennis won't be in the new season or will, at best, have a bit part is the worst news. I'm not sure how successful he'll be away from the show, but it strikes me as a Chris Barrie leaving Red Dwarf kind of thing, where he'll be back once he sees the grass isn't greener!

[GlennCullen]

On 02/12/2017 at 11:03 AM, Thunderplex said:

We said goodbye to Vice Principals this week.  Excellent final episode, but I will miss it.

Have just watched the final episode, a tremendous show. It’s a testament to the writing that despite being so short, it still feels like I have a hole now that it is finished. McBride was brilliant as always, but Goggins was a revelation for me.

[ColinBollocks]

Finished Manhunt: Unabomber and it's pretty strong. I wasn't too familiar with the smaller details of the unabomber, so it was fascinating to see how it, loosely, played out. Paul Bettney is right good in it, so much so I didn't realise it was Paul Bettney until the penultimate episode, when he got a haircut - granted, the added makeup and what not change his face, but he is tremendous. They do a grand job fleshing out the unabomber too and lay out why he's a hunk of shite.

[BomberPat]

Didn't think much of the new League of Gentlemen. Barely cracked a smile, and too much of it was trading on familiarity, not doing anything new, felt like a step backwards.

[tiger_rick]

20 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Didn't think much of the new League of Gentlemen. Barely cracked a smile, and too much of it was trading on familiarity, not doing anything new, felt like a step backwards.

I thought it was great. Particularly because of the familiarity. Surely the point of bringing a show like that back is so we can find out what the characters are up to now? Thought the job centre sketch was superb. Looked like a total rip-off of the original and then revealed why brilliantly. Enjoyed the nod to Inside number nine at the end too. Looking forward to the next one tonight.

[BomberPat]

2 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

I thought it was great. Particularly because of the familiarity. Surely the point of bringing a show like that back is so we can find out what the characters are up to now? Thought the job centre sketch was superb. Looked like a total rip-off of the original and then revealed why brilliantly. Enjoyed the nod to Inside number nine at the end too. Looking forward to the next one tonight.

The familiarity felt like a step backwards to me - League was at its weakest when reduced to catchphrases and rehashing gags, and at its best when it got dark and outright weird. It just seems disappointing to me to reduce them to the Greatest Hits. That said, I can obviously see the appeal in that, and why they would do it - and I'm somewhat expecting that they've used the first episode to hook people with what they know, and will start changing it up and subverting our expectations later.

On paper, the twist with Pauline is the sort of thing I'm talking about - it's giving us something familiar, and then putting a new twist on it. But, in practice, it's not a "new twist", it's just an excuse to ignore the last two series' of character development and bring that whole format back to just doing her sketches from season one again. I can see that one going off in some crazy directions, though, so I'll withhold judgement.

Tubbs & Edward going up against the council infringing in to Royston Vasey, though, is just a complete rehash of "New Road" from Season One, and their sketch was probably the most obvious "greatest hits" outside of Chinnery. And I thought the Inside No 9 nod just felt incredibly smug.

 

Barbara was by far the worst of it, though. Took her from a character that was basically just absurd, and sometimes pitiable, until a lazy, one-note stereotype, and somehow managed to make her more offensive - just through that sheer laziness, more than anything - than she ever was as a character first time around. It felt like a shit Little Britain sketch, or something to pop the "political correctness gone mad" crowd, completely out of place.

[tiger_rick]

2 hours ago, johnnyboy said:

That bingo caller scene in the second LoG episode was near perfect.

I liked the second episode even more than the first. Loved the above sketch and Geoff killing the wrong woman the most.

[Astro Hollywood]

Oh God, the reprise of the beautiful score from the S3 finale in the LoG's return has me sobbing like I'm recently-bereaved. The League are my favourite thing ever, and have always been such an important part of my life, from inspiring me to write in the first place to just being a thing I can escape to during the bad times. These three episodes were exactly what they should have been, and I'm a complete wreck.

[Onyx2]

29 minutes ago, Astro Hollywood said:

Oh God, the reprise of the beautiful score from the S3 finale in the LoG's return has me sobbing like I'm recently-bereaved. The League are my favourite thing ever, and have always been such an important part of my life, from inspiring me to write in the first place to just being a thing I can escape to during the bad times. These three episodes were exactly what they should have been, and I'm a complete wreck.

Did you see the carrier bag floating across the tracks during the final shot? 

[Astro Hollywood]

6 minutes ago, Onyx2 said:

Did you see the carrier bag floating across the tracks during the final shot? 

I did! (through the tears)

My favourite callback was

the use of an actual mow-mow!

Edited December 21, 2017 by Astro Hollywood

[BomberPat]

16 hours ago, johnnyboy said:

That bingo caller scene in the second LoG episode was near perfect.

Absolutely. Brilliant stuff - reminded me quite a bit of the crossword setter episode of Inside No 9, which is easily my favourite episode of that show.

I really, really enjoyed the second episode, and was prepared to accept that, yes, the first episode was about establishing familiarity, and from there it would go down some interesting new paths, but then there was a lot I didn't get on with in the third episode. I had assumed there were five episodes, for some reason, so there only being three had thrown me off, and felt like a few things were unfinished. Some stuff worth mentioning, good and bad;

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I actually squealed and jumped out of my seat a little bit at Mickey coming home from work as a fireman. That's beautiful.

The growth of Pop into a full-on monster was extraordinary - I had almost completely forgotten about those sketches when I re-watched the series earlier in the year, and they were a highlight this time around, so seeing them get given a lot of time now was great. That, along with Geoff, were probably the best and most logical "where are they now?" elements of any of the characters they brought back.

Les McQueen getting an ambiguously happy ending, with the nod to Searching for Sugarman, was one of my favourite sketches, and again a nice way of catching up with an old character.

Only having three episodes meant the Uncle Harvey/Benjamin story just felt rushed and didn't seem to accomplish anything. Beginning and ending with Benjamin returning to, and leaving, Royston Vasey was a good way of bringing the entire show full circle, and his parting message of "you can't go back, but you can always visit" seems to reflect the creators' thoughts on redoing the series in the first place, but the actual story arc didn't seem to go anywhere. They brought Benjamin back in one episode, turned him into Harvey in the next, and then back into Benjamin in the third. It didn't really achieve anything, and would have probably benefited from having a bit more time to play out.

Aside from Barbara, who I've already talked about from episode one, Edward & Tubbs were the bit I was least happy with, and the bit that made it feel most like what it was - a nostalgia trip Christmas special, and that was frustrating when it showed glimpses of still being so much better than that. Making Edward & Tubbs out to be heroes to the public of Royston Vasey, even briefly, felt like such a forced, "how can we give a big story to the most recognisable characters?", and felt all a bit Alpha Papa and difficult to believe.

There was something off about their portrayal in general, though - Reece Shearsmith didn't seem quite "right" as Edward any more, he was softer, and the voice wasn't as strong as it used to be. But mostly, it just seemed to miss the point of what made them work - Edward & Tubbs having a TV, and Tubbs using a mobile phone and talking about being on Strictly was just totally at odds for the characters. Edward shouldn't be a character who cares about local council issues or local news, or what's being said about them on the BBC, eh shouldn't even really care about Royston Vasey, or how they perceive him at all - in the original series, they had no interaction with the wider town whatsoever, and it was clear that most of the town didn't even know they, or the shop, was there. "Local" to Edward literally never expanded beyond the shop itself - "Local" was the shop, and his immediate family, and nothing else.

Speaking of Edward & Tubbs, and Barbara - the last time we saw Barbara, she'd just given birth to David's children. It feels even more egregious to just reduce her to a clumsy punching down stereotype when we left her with an interesting story.

 

I figured the photo booth would be connected to Papa Lazarou, and the prospect of Edward and Papa Lazarou being at odds, as the two most evil, sinister, possibly immortal figures in the show, is great, so it's even more disappointing it had to end there! "It's a wife mine now" was wonderful, though,

[Glenryck Pilchards]

I thoroughly enjoyed the League of Gentleman specials, but it did feel rushed at times and finished abruptly. I think if they did 2X 1 hour specials rather than 3X 30 minutes would have paced it out better.  

I am still howling at Pamela Doove's new role. I had to pause the TV for 5 minutes to try and recompose myself. 

[SuperBacon]

I honestly think that in a few years Detectorists will be viewed as the absolute masterpiece it is. 

That final episode was unbelievable, with so many different emotions packed into it, that if it finishes with that, it will be the perfect ending. 

[tiger_rick]

I've still got the last two Detectorists to watch. I'm deliberately delaying them because when they're watched, I'll never get that anticipation back! I can't recall the last new TV show I've loved as much as this. There have been several this decade that I really like, Friday Night Dinner and Car Share for instance, but Detectorists I just love.

[Kaz Hayashi]

I really need to give it another go rick. I watched the first 3 episodes, then got side tracked from it for a while and forgot about it. I really enjoyed what I saw if it.