Telly thread

[wordsfromlee]

The Curse

I thought I’d check this out after seeing all the praise it got on here and elsewhere. I remember people say how gob smackingly mad it was and I went through it thinking yeah, it can be very cringe and there’s some really good awkward tension, but I don’t get why Christopher Nolan was texting Nathan Fielder asking him how they pulled it off. 

Then I watched the final episode. Fuck me. I totally get it now. As mad as it was, it didn’t seem out of place with the rest of the show. It really worked. 

[SuperBacon]

Yeah I remember thinking I'm not sure why they've gone with that, but I'm glad they did.

 

[wordsfromlee]

5 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

Yeah I remember thinking I'm not sure why they've gone with that, but I'm glad they did.

 

Weirdly not as jarring as Benny Safdie's wig.

[SuperBacon]

Couldn't sleep so watched the whole of series 4 of The Bear.

Series 3 was really disappointing, and this in my opinion is a return to form, and there were some outstanding moments and episodes for me (Bears being the obvious highlight)

The final episode in the series contains the best acting I've ever seen in the show, and Carmy continues to be the fittest person in the world, and I can see him nailing that Springsteen film. White is fantastic this series.

It's not all positive though, some characters are given absolutely sod all to do and even with what they're given, you don't give a shit, and you're left thinking "I wish they'd given that time to Carmy, Syd, Richie and Sugar"

Looks gorgeous still and some excellent musical choices as well (including Most Of The Time by Bob Dylan, which apart from being his best song is a nice nod to another Chicago set film, High Fidelity)

 

[SaitoRyo]

Have watched the first four seasons of People Just Do Nothing over the last couple of weeks. Really funny, easy to watch television. Yes, it takes a lot of its cues from The Office (the original one) but the characters are great and they play off each other so well. Looking forward to what the fifth and final season has in store. My mate also says the film they did is worth watching, so there's that, too. 

[wordsfromlee]

1 hour ago, SaitoRyo said:

Have watched the first four seasons of People Just Do Nothing over the last couple of weeks. Really funny, easy to watch television. Yes, it takes a lot of its cues from The Office (the original one) but the characters are great and they play off each other so well. Looking forward to what the fifth and final season has in store. My mate also says the film they did is worth watching, so there's that, too. 

The film is alright but it’s made for people who’ve never seen any PJDN so there’s loads of recycled jokes from the TV show in it. 
 

Im still hoping for a PJDNxThis Country crossover one day. 

[FLips]

I finally finished watching Miami Vice and though it definitely fizzles out over the last couple of seasons, it was a pretty fantastic and in hindsight groundbreaking show. Seasons 1-3 are mostly brilliant with just a few filler episodes, Season 4 is mostly filler with two absolute all-time stinkers and a handful of great episodes, but Season 5 is fairly missable. Nothing as bad as the lows of Season 4, but outside of a fitting finale and the episodes that bleed over from the end of Season 4's arch, there's not much to see.

It was counter productive in that where most shows start with a lead character or two and the rest of the cast grow in popularity and it becomes an ensemble, Miami Vice started about the whole team with side characters getting their own strong focused episodes but eventually it became just about Tubbs and Crocket and it started to lose the magic those first seasons had where everyone had a part to play.

They also, I imagine due to waning popularity, lose sight of what makes the show good as they get into Season 5. 1-4 are all set in the 80s so what you usually get is that Vice City aesthetic of cocaine busts, speedboat races, bright beaches and 80s pop and it works beautifully because when they go darker in some episodes, the contrast is obvious. The whole show oozes personality and it (maybe) innovated the "dramatic moment set to chart music" that a lot of later shows followed.

Season 5 stumbles though because now we're in the 90s. Jan Hammer, the composer leaves and so the whole sound aesthetic changes. Aside from the carryover from Season 4 in the first few episodes, the synth and pop is replaced by moody guitar riffs. They never make a full transition into 90s music though so there's not much character there when it comes to big moments. The episodes get much bleaker, including a "lost" episode that wasn't aired in it's original run where CCH Pounder sells her daughter to her dealer for crack. 

When it's good though, it's great. Some episodes are outstanding and the cast of actors that show up throughout the run is unbelievable. It's a who's who of character actors, pre-fame celebrities and stars. It touches on heavy subject matters and does them quite sensitively; murder, rape, child prostitution, police corruption, racism, addiction and everything between. Highlight episodes include:

• Tubbs is undercover in a corrupt prison but his cover is blown and they have to break him out before he's killed. The Miami department storm the prison to The Damned's "In Dulce Decorum"

• Gina is undercover and in an attempt to not blow it sleeps with sleazy Burt Young and has a breakdown
•  An arc between Season 4 and 5 where Crockett gets amnesia in an explosion and believes he's his undercover identity "Burnett" and completely goes off the deep end. Season 5 opens with the Death music from Shadow of The Beast 2 (which the game stole from this)

• Several that feature Dennis Farina as Crime Boss Al Lombard, who has a somewhat respectful love/hate relationship with Crockett and Tubbs
• A Pre-Sopranos episode in the Burnett Arc where Crockett is having wild dreams trying to remember who he was

• An episode where Bruce McGill plays a "wacky" retired cop who turns up to help Crockett and Tubbs find a drug lord, but it turns out McGill retired because him and his partner killed him and buried him in a wall after he got off on a technicality when they originally busted him
• An episode where Crockett gets a serial killer off Death Row because even though he's a serial killer he didn't commit the murder of a cop he's being executed for, except in a big heartbreaking twist set to Peter Gabriel's "Milgram's 37" it's revealed he did actually kill them and he manipulated Crockett.

I know the post has been video heavy, but it's sort of what Miami Vice ultimately was about. At it's best it was Top of The Pops but with car chases and guns. To explain certain plots without the music backing them often doesn't do it justice. One of the biggest scenes from the whole run was a bunch of driving set to "In The Air Tonight" and it's one of those things that isn't done justice just explaining it, but when you watch it you get a feel for what Miami Vice was all about.

And outside of the Shadow of The Beast 2 riff, it obviously massively inspired Grand Theft Auto Vice City. Phillip Michael Thomas (Tubbs in MV) voiced Lance Vance, and Crockett's Theme was played on the in-game radio station.

So yeah, all in all, really enjoyed Miami Vice. It was mostly highs and a couple of lows, but it got a good finale to send it off and oftentimes felt like I was watching something important when it came to inspiring other work I'd seen or played before this. It balanced comedy, drama, tragedy and style really well and while it definitely felt like it was ready to end and the cast weren't arsed towards the end of Season 5 due to it being cancelled and the overall feeling of the 80s being over looms. There's less chart music, less glow, less pop, and Crockett and Tubbs are disillusioned and burnt out. It does make me wonder if they leaned more into the 90s aesthetics and grunge soundtrack, could it have kept it's heart and continued? 

An excellent show (for the most part) that could have an entire thread just about the soundtrack and another thread just for the amount of character actors show up in it. Will definitely watch again at some point but likely just Seasons 1-3, and the good bits from 4 and 5. 

My next boxset is Kojak. Who loves ya, baby?

 

Edited July 1, 2025 by FLips

[DavidB6937]

Well I was wondering what to watch next but now I feel like I have to watch Miami Vice.

[gmoney]

53 minutes ago, FLips said:

My next boxset is Kojak. Who loves ya, baby?

 

I've wanted to fully watch Kojak for a while now. I look forward to your thoughts. Have you ever got stuck into Columbo?

[FLips]

29 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

Well I was wondering what to watch next but now I feel like I have to watch Miami Vice.

My advice is to pirate it. I had to buy the DVD boxset because Amazon don’t have the final season or an excellent episode in Season 1 for some reason.

@gmoney Yeah Columbo will be after Kojak! This actually all started because Columbo got recommended into my Youtube Algorithm and that lead to me watching some episodes out of order, then some Kojak that was uploaded on YT. When Vice got added to Amazon I ended up starting there with the aim to watch all three.

Edited July 1, 2025 by FLips

[SuperBacon]

On 6/30/2025 at 8:57 AM, SaitoRyo said:

Have watched the first four seasons of People Just Do Nothing over the last couple of weeks. Really funny, easy to watch television. Yes, it takes a lot of its cues from The Office (the original one) but the characters are great and they play off each other so well. Looking forward to what the fifth and final season has in store. My mate also says the film they did is worth watching, so there's that, too. 

I'm legally obliged to mention this, which I probably watch once a month.

Genuinely brilliant, Grindah is a fantastic rapper and him and Beats corpse loads during this.

 

I've waxed lyrical about PJDN many times in here over the years, absolutely love it and they are forever my TW postcode brothers. 267 bus massive.

[gmoney]

31 minutes ago, FLips said:

My advice is to pirate it. I had to buy the DVD boxset because Amazon don’t have the final season or an excellent episode in Season 1 for some reason.

@gmoney Yeah Columbo will be after Kojak! This actually all started because Columbo got recommended into my Youtube Algorithm and that lead to me watching some episodes out of order, then some Kojak that was uploaded on YT. When Vice got added to Amazon I ended up starting there with the aim to watch all three.

Excellent. I find Columbo to be one of the most satisfying shows in all of television. The later ones don't quite keep up the standard, but it's such a great show overall. I've been watching Poker Face recently, which is sort of a tribute to it in many ways. It's fun for the most part but doesn't quite scratch the same itch. 

[FLips]

5 minutes ago, gmoney said:

Excellent. I find Columbo to be one of the most satisfying shows in all of television. The later ones don't quite keep up the standard, but it's such a great show overall. I've been watching Poker Face recently, which is sort of a tribute to it in many ways. It's fun for the most part but doesn't quite scratch the same itch. 

You’ll know what I’m talking about then when I say it was the episode with Donald Pleasance that made me want to watch the lot of them.

[ReturnOfTheMack]

So, was S19 of Taskmaster the best yet? Its surely up there, even if Im never going to recover from the phrase 'we have the same juices'

[Dr. Alan Grant]

34 minutes ago, ReturnOfTheMack said:

So, was S19 of Taskmaster the best yet? Its surely up there, even if Im never going to recover from the phrase 'we have the same juices'

It’s absolutely a contender. I loved each contestant and could not choose a favourite (though Stevie Martin comes close). Most of the previous series introduced me to someone I’m unfamiliar with and this time around it was Fatiha. She was a frequent highlight and in a perfect world her and Greg would get married after all.