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


Dynamite Duane

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22 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

My only criticism is that the female scientist character they've created is a little too ideologically pure - an article in the New Yorker called her a "truth knower", which is pretty accurate.

The postscript to the show says that she represents a cohort of scientists working on the research, which probably gives her a bland character. I can see why she was required for the screenplay though. I highly recommend the accompanying HBO Chernobyl podcast with the main writer who explains decisions like that very intelligently.

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1 hour ago, Onyx2 said:

The postscript to the show says that she represents a cohort of scientists working on the research, which probably gives her a bland character. I can see why she was required for the screenplay though. I highly recommend the accompanying HBO Chernobyl podcast with the main writer who explains decisions like that very intelligently.

I'll definitely check that out.

I thought the postscript was fascinating, and as heartbreaking in its way as the whole series was. And I understand the need to have created her as a kind of composite character that the story probably required to give it a cohesive structure. 

It's just something of a pet hate in historical drama that there always seems to be one character capable of hindsight, who tends to share the morality or world-view of the audience, rather than what would be expected of the time. That she existed purely to represent a critical view of the party line took me out of the narrative a little, but it's a necessary evil to fit the narrative into 5 episodes, rather than a big sprawling mess looking at human fallibility. 

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Been watching the latest series of Brooklyn Nine Nine. It has drastically reduced in quality. The writing is much worse, it seems a bit all over the place. They are trying to do a lot of character driven plot stuff that feels out of place, rushed and/or unearned. It still has its moments but overall it's a huge disappointment.

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On 6/11/2019 at 1:36 AM, Hannibal Scorch said:

All my Matt Berry loving friends have said Year of the Rabbit was fucking awful

Its... actually it's odd. Some bits are great, some bits are childish, some bits are sweary and some bits just oddball. The other half loves it. I find it something I enjoy and loath in equal measures. Much like Dead Pixels.

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6 hours ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Been watching the latest series of Brooklyn Nine Nine. It has drastically reduced in quality. The writing is much worse, it seems a bit all over the place. They are trying to do a lot of character driven plot stuff that feels out of place, rushed and/or unearned. It still has its moments but overall it's a huge disappointment.

I think that's maybe a bit drastically but it's definitely hit and miss at the moment. Overall I'm still into it and it wouldn't be hard to correct the ship. It's not like it's dropped off a cliff.

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For the Chernobyl fans, BBC 4 on Sunday at 8pm is repeating a documentary about how they built a steel dome to stick on top the remains of the reactor a couple of years back. That might not sound like much except its not safe to build over the reactor so they had to build it to the side and then wheel it in place with millimeter accuracy. Oh, and at 36,000 tonnes it's the biggest thing that's ever been moved on land.

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Been binge re-watching That 70s Show on Netflix all week as I've had the week off work. Still holds up in parts but a lot of the humor hasn't aged well, I'm at the early point in season 4 where Eric and Donna have split up but are rebuilding a friendship after a lot of frostiness, Fez is still the best character though, fight me

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10 hours ago, DEF said:

I think that's maybe a bit drastically but it's definitely hit and miss at the moment. Overall I'm still into it and it wouldn't be hard to correct the ship. It's not like it's dropped off a cliff.

Yeah, perhaps I'm being a little dramatic. But only because I hold the previous seasons in such high regard - it's clearly still better than a lot of other things out there and hasn't fallen off as hard as, say, Community or Modern Family did.

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Speaking of that, this past week I binge watched The Royle Family through for the first time ever. Well, I've got up to the Queen of Sheeba Christmas special. I seemed to have completely missed it first time round somehow.

Really enjoyed it except for the third series which I found a bit annoying. They went way overboard trying to hammer home Denise's lack of enthusiasm for being a parent to the point where I really started to hate her. And Jim going on about everyone else being lazy except him about 10 times per episode. It really seemed like they were running out of ideas during that series in comparison to the first two.

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First two seasons are great, but then somehow Dave and Denise go from a bit slow and a little lazy yet generally decent people to full blown retards and unfit parents. It really jars. The Chriostmas Spedcials are forever diminishing returns. You're probably best sacking it off after Queen of Sheba.

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10 hours ago, PowerButchi said:

First two seasons are great, but then somehow Dave and Denise go from a bit slow and a little lazy yet generally decent people to full blown retards and unfit parents. It really jars. The Chriostmas Spedcials are forever diminishing returns. You're probably best sacking it off after Queen of Sheba.

The second series is the start of the laziness. It's still very good but the seeds are all over it that will grow into sections of script that just say " Jim says My arse".

In order, I'd rank it Royal Family S1 top, then both series of Early Doors, then Royal Family Series 2 and original Xmas special then pretend the rest doesn't exist.

Remember a special called Sunshine with Steve Coogan? Not watched it since it first aired but remember it being really good.

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Technically this counts as scripted (according to at least one participant) but BBC just repeated I Love 1989. All the talking head clips felt really weird and unsettling, which turns out to be because it was first shown in 2001. So it's 18-year-old clips of people talking about stuff only 12 years earlier. We're talking full head of hair Gail Porter, Johnny Vegas with bumfluff, sober Bez, and Ross Noble the size of a house.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00062vd/i-love-the-1980s-i-love-1989

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51 minutes ago, JNLister said:

Technically this counts as scripted (according to at least one participant) but BBC just repeated I Love 1989. All the talking head clips felt really weird and unsettling, which turns out to be because it was first shown in 2001. So it's 18-year-old clips of people talking about stuff only 12 years earlier. We're talking full head of hair Gail Porter, Johnny Vegas with bumfluff, sober Bez, and Ross Noble the size of a house.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00062vd/i-love-the-1980s-i-love-1989

I assumed it was. I remember the series when it was first on because they used to show one of the films they were reminiscing about after. I love 1985 had The Brrakfast Club for example. But weird to repeat these now 

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