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


Dynamite Duane

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60 Days In – Heard about this & decided to check it out, blitzed through the first 6 episodes in no time. I think it was shown on C4 as ’60 Days In Jail’. It’s a documentary/reality show about a county jail in the USA that’s rife with corruption. After several failed attempts to uncover how drugs etc are getting into the prison & who the main players are (guards wont snitch on each other & inmates definitely won’t) the country sheriff’s dept. turn to undercover volunteers.

 

7 civilians who have applied are given schooling on jail life & then put in different cell blocks with the goal being they last 60 days, get info on the inner workings of prison life & report back.

 

Ahead of them going in (months before) all the CCTV in the prison was updated & the production crew went in there under the guise of filming a series on first time felons. This gave them access to interviews with staff/inmates & a cover story as no prison guards etc could know about the volunteers or the programme.

 

It’s fucking insane. Suffice to say, the 2 volunteers who ahead of going in were giving it the ‘prisons are like holiday camps’ talk had the rudest awakening. There’s 3 series which I suspect I’ll have finished by the weekend.

 

Ta for mentioning this - it sounded right up my street so I looked it up online last night. Only watched the first episode so far but it's definitely something I'll stick with. Really took an immediate dislike to Robert the teacher, so I'm very much looking forward to seeing him reduced to a quivering wreck as soon as possible!

 

 

Don't want to spoil too much for you, but don't get your hopes up too much on that front. He was a massive prick and basically cheated his way out of the experiment.

 

I watched the series when it was on Channel 4 recently. A fascinating experiment and made for brilliant TV.

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Currently rewatching Breaking Bad. You can totally see why the show picked up steam over time, rather than being so acclaimed out of the gate, as it really takes a while to reach the heights of the last couple of seasons. I forgot just how much of the first 3 seasons are straight-up family drama. Don't get me wrong, it's amazing, but the crazy pace of the final few years make you forget just how slow it was for the first few. Although, that steamrolling momentum is one of the reasons it is so great. By the time you do get to the second half, you're super invested in everything.

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Teaser for the Death Note Netflix show looks VERY intriguing indeed. Was a great Anime, really hope it translates well to screen.

 

Death Note must be one of the most adapted pieces of material ever, especially considering it's less than 15 years old.

 

There's the anime, the live-action Japanese movie and its 3 sequels, a live-action miniseries (which bridges two of the films), a live-action TV adaptation of the manga (which I downloaded at the time but haven't gotten around to yet), a theatrical musical, and now the American Netflix film.

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Currently rewatching Breaking Bad... By the time you do get to the second half, you're super invested in everything.

This should be right up your street: some friends of friends do a podcast on the writing process and pick apart all kinds of TV shows and films. Their Breaking Bad pilot one is particularly good on what they accomplish in the episode:

 

Podcast/Article:

#39: Breaking Bad — Creating a Pilot

 

URL:

http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/311024071-user-189942659-39-breaking-bad-creating-a-pilot.mp3

 

Description:

We breakdown the pilot to BREAKING BAD to examine the elements necessary for a pilot for a long-form series. Royalty free music from Bensound. Stock image by George Hodan.

 

This content comes from:

The Story Toolkit

 

URL:

http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:236886733/sounds.rss

 

If you like that seek out their one on The Fly.

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Currently rewatching Breaking Bad... By the time you do get to the second half, you're super invested in everything.

This should be right up your street: some friends of friends do a podcast on the writing process and pick apart all kinds of TV shows and films.

 

 

Lovely stuff. Definitely be checking those out, cheers.

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I just finished watching The Kettering Incident. Anyone seen it?

It's a great mix of is-it-aliens-or-isn't-it-aliens, police corruption, and very strange goings on. It's set in Tasmania and has been described as a cross between Twin Peaks and one of those Scandinavian crime dramas. The ending was a bit "What? Oh." and leaves it open for a second series but I read that there might not be one.

What I really loved though was that they included real life unsolved mysteries including the Valentich disappearance (Cessna pilot reports being followed by a metal object with flashing lights then he disappears never to be seen again) and the Dyatlov incident (a group of Russian hikers are all found dead on a mountain under very strange circumstances). I literally just last week listened to two Thinking Sideways podcasts about these stories so it was very weird that they both came up in The Kettering Incident.

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Sat and watched 13 Reasons Why on a binge with my missus, my choice is next and it's a rewatch of Twin Peaks in prep.

Not a bad show at all, a bit Dawsons Creek in places with teenagers talking WAY too much at times, but overall the suspense of the tapes kept it rolling and wanting to know more and more. It's very good, have heard it hyped up, and it doesn't match the hyperbole that seems to come from most shows from Netflix (I'm looking at you The OA) but it is certainly worth a watch.

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[META]I'm mildly amused we're all still commenting on a thread started by Dynamite Duane.

So, Doctor Who. I haven't watched a minute of the Capaldi era, having switched off during Matt Smith because of convoluted plotlines and payoffs I hadn't been paying enough attention to to understand.

But I'm hearing wonderful things about the new episode. Is it to good to be true? Is it worth trying?

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