Telly thread

[Chris B]

1 hour ago, organizedkaos said:

I meant that's an admirable stance but also in this case isn't the psychic power

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The shining?

I mean it's a supernatural horror story. Stephen King loves premonitions and psychic energy. Probably shouldn't consider watching anything based on his work?

Also, Psychic powers in King books are generally connected - between The Dark Tower and a bunch of other books making things more explicitly connected, things like The Shining, The Dead Zone, Carrie and Firestarter are all part of the same thing.

I haven't had any interest in Welcome to Derry - partly, the second part of the film wasn't great anyway, and also I had some high hopes for Castle Rock at first. But easter eggs and references aren't enough, and it just ended up quickly feeling sub-American Horror Story.

Edited November 27, 2025 by Chris B

[BomberPat]

1 hour ago, LaGoosh said:

I don't have much issues with them using psychic powers in the show in theory but they are going about it in the most boring nonsensical way possible. Not to go too deep into spoiler territory but a story about the US military using a psychic so they can capture IT and drop it on Moscow is very stupid indeed and not really in the spirit of what the novel is about.

that feels like the ongoing mutual cannibalisation between IT and Stranger Things; bringing The Russians into it because it's a period piece, at the expense of it being a small town story, was one of the many ways ST went off the rails, and while Stranger Things started out as IT, I think IT spin-offs are increasingly aping Stranger Things.

[Lorne Malvo]

12 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

that feels like the ongoing mutual cannibalisation between IT and Stranger Things; bringing The Russians into it because it's a period piece, at the expense of it being a small town story, was one of the many ways ST went off the rails, and while Stranger Things started out as IT, I think IT spin-offs are increasingly aping Stranger Things.

You've also got Stephen King now writing books (that later become TV shows) like The Institute, which is apeing all of the Eleven laboratory stuff in Stranger Things, which was originally aping King's Firestarter and the like. It's all very pop will eat itself.

You had the 2017 IT relocated to the 1980s on the back of Stranger Things, then things like The Black Phone coming along with a very similar time period and visual language. The entire small-town America King-esque (Kingian?) genre is really, really derivative and watered down since Stranger Things first aired in 2016. I'll be happy not to see another 80s-set horror film again (unless it came out in 86 and I'm only just discovering it, of course).

[BomberPat]

aside from the lazy nostalgia of it, my pet theory for why so many horrors are being set in the 1980s is because people who grew up on 1980s horror want to keep making films and TV in that genre, and can't figure out ways to make it work in the present day - rather than reckoning with how cultural changes, mobile phones, the internet, social media and so on would impact on the story they're telling, or how things like advances in DNA profiling and forensic science would impact on how the police approach a slasher movie villain, they just turn back the clock to a time when they don't have to worry about any of that stuff. A lot of this stuff will just stay in the 1980s forever, pretending that there's anything left to say about the pop culture of that decade to mask the fact that it's just lazy writing.

 

The small town thing actually annoys me more - the point of these stories being in a small town is that good horror is often about isolation, and that it's conceivable that something could happen in one of these towns that people living elsewhere would never hear about. And that small towns are often weird and creepy and hang on to their secrets. But too many horror, fantasy, and sci-fi writers when called upon to do sequels or another series fall back on making everything bigger, which kills the point of the small town story. When, by the end of Stranger Things, you've got hellmouths opening and swallowing an entire town, government conspiracies dating back decades, secret Soviet bases on American soil....well, then that's not really a small town story any more, is it?

Edited November 27, 2025 by BomberPat

[gmoney]

I'm not going to say anything other that the finale of The Chair Company S1 was incredible, and I can't wait for the next series. The best written comedy I've seen in many, many years, excluding The Rehersal S2, which was based in a semi-reality.  I think The Curse was the only other recent thing that comes close, but that didn't have the belly laughs. 

Edited December 2, 2025 by gmoney

[Mr_Danger]

Landman

Urgh, Taylor Sheridan is a busted flush at this point. To go from the screen plays for Sicario, Hell or High Water and Wind River then to creating Yellowstone a harmless bit of fluff, fancy Dallas with Kevin Costner but entertaining enough then turning that in to some weird central right soapbox where the murderous cowboys teach activists and wokies the error of their ways to this seems an odd trajectory.

So I’m only 3 episodes in and I only showed up for Billy Bob Thornton and he does deliver but this just doesn’t seem interesting at all. It’s basically even fancier more Dallasy Dallas but this time instead of having lovely shots of Montana and cowboy montages I’m expected to buy into oil men as the working class hero’s standing up to political correctness gone mad and chai latte swilling businessmen. I’ve already decided to finally finish off The Curse instead. 

[JLM]

On 12/2/2025 at 11:19 AM, gmoney said:

I'm not going to say anything other that the finale of The Chair Company S1 was incredible, and I can't wait for the next series. The best written comedy I've seen in many, many years, excluding The Rehersal S2, which was based in a semi-reality.  I think The Curse was the only other recent thing that comes close, but that didn't have the belly laughs. 

Spoiler

My GOD the Mike Santini/Lynette story. Unreal. Also “a new shape that’s never been done before” slayed me. 
 

What a spectacular show. Hilarious, heart warming, surreal and genuinely gripping. It’s rare for me to be so intensely focused when watching a comedy, I feel like I don’t blink for the whole episode. Don’t want to miss a single throw away line or visual gag because every one of them counts and the call backs are so rewarding. Every new character or diversion is fascinating and there isn’t another show that feels anything like it. I love all of Tim Robinson’s stuff but this is his finest work by some distance. 

 

[SaitoRyo]

12 hours ago, Mr_Danger said:

Landman

Urgh, Taylor Sheridan is a busted flush at this point. To go from the screen plays for Sicario, Hell or High Water and Wind River then to creating Yellowstone a harmless bit of fluff, fancy Dallas with Kevin Costner but entertaining enough then turning that in to some weird central right soapbox where the murderous cowboys teach activists and wokies the error of their ways to this seems an odd trajectory.

So I’m only 3 episodes in and I only showed up for Billy Bob Thornton and he does deliver but this just doesn’t seem interesting at all. It’s basically even fancier more Dallasy Dallas but this time instead of having lovely shots of Montana and cowboy montages I’m expected to buy into oil men as the working class hero’s standing up to political correctness gone mad and chai latte swilling businessmen. I’ve already decided to finally finish off The Curse instead. 

I liked the first season of Landman but am struggling a bit with the second, to be honest. Billy Bob is excellent, but the writing, particularly of the female characters, can be fucking atrocious. They're either the fiercest women who ever lived and you better not mess with them or they're bipolar airheads who live to give blowjobs. 

Like with Yellowstone, Sheridan also can't help but have one of his characters give an anti-woke 'Listen, sweetheart, here's why mass cattle production/fossil fuels are actually better than any of that green shit' speech pretty much every episode. 

Still, I like the style of Landman, Thornton is ace and it has a killer soundtrack, so I'll continue to watch it (while rolling my eyes at how Dallasy it has become).

Edited December 5, 2025 by SaitoRyo

[gmoney]

On 12/4/2025 at 11:16 PM, JLM said:

  Reveal hidden contents

My GOD the Mike Santini/Lynette story. Unreal. Also “a new shape that’s never been done before” slayed me. 
 

What a spectacular show. Hilarious, heart warming, surreal and genuinely gripping. It’s rare for me to be so intensely focused when watching a comedy, I feel like I don’t blink for the whole episode. Don’t want to miss a single throw away line or visual gag because every one of them counts and the call backs are so rewarding. Every new character or diversion is fascinating and there isn’t another show that feels anything like it. I love all of Tim Robinson’s stuff but this is his finest work by some distance. 

 

Just found out one of the guys Ron encounters was Ted Arcidi!

[Handsome Tex Hardcastle]

Just finished watching Welcome to Derry. There were parts that made my toes curl, and there were bits that I enjoyed. I managed to see it through to the end, but thats more down to Pennywise as a character than anything else. There was some very ropey acting, but Skarsgard was excellent once he was let loose. 

Spoiler

The final act featured the ghost of a recently deceased child heroically running into the scene from absolutely nowhere in slow motion while sticking his middle finger up at Pennywise as IT looked on gormlessly. The ghost then helped the other kids plunge a magic space artefact into the ground just in time to banish Pennywise back to its relic-warded confinement. Just when you think it couldnt possibly get any worse, someone asks "Whats that?" as the grinning, defiant ghost jogs by. 

I actually had to look away as someone replied "Its a mother fucking miracle". It was horrible. 

On the plus side, they explored sides to Pennywise that were at least interesting. I always thought it would be cool to see an on screen depiction of how the entity became the clown and we got that and it wasnt bad. There were also points where ITs instinct wasnt to ruthlessly murder or fuck with anyone unfortunate enought to cross its path. Although it wasn't long before it reverted to murderous form, Skarsgards performance in these parts were very good. I also liked the dynamic of the townsfolk knowing nothing, the military/native Americans knowing something and the viewers knowing pretty much everything in terms of the reason behind the grim horror thats slowly unfolding. 

It was watchable, and id probably check out a second season, but there were too many bits they could have done without. In theory a person incapable of experiencing fear encountering an entity thats motivated by causing fear could be intriguing, but it was so poorly executed and the guy shat his pants everytime he saw the clown anyway so it was totally pointless. 

 

[Bruce85]

I’ve just started Down Cemetery Road, thought the first episode was a bit slow to start but picked up towards the end. I’ve just finished the second episode and I’m hooked now. You can tell it’s by Mick Herron who did Slow Horses so if you are a fan of that give it ago. 
 

My only complaint is that it’s been filmed in Bristol and one of the main locations is right by my exs old house haha 

[Mr_Danger]

Your Friends and Neighbours

Don Draper loses his wife and kids and then they take his jerb so he rips off his mega rich friends and neighbours with petty theft they’ll never notice because they’re so mega rich and materialistic. Loads of issues with this. The characters are all rich fucks with no depth or desire to resemble decent folk. Every fucker gets a storyline. The burglaries take a back seat for the most part to the melodrama. It’s sort of wants to be a cross between Breaking Bad and Desperate Housewives but only really achieves the Desperate Housewives bit.

Jon Hamm is it’s saving grace and even though his actions say otherwise he’s a super likeable guy. He’ll never reach the heights of Don Draper again but if they can pivot it on to more of the Thomas Crowne Affair stuff in the second series I’ll probably give it a go. 
 

Oh and he bones Olivia Munn a lot.

[FLips]

What's in The Box?

Confusing and 100% rigged Netflix gameshow hosted by Neil Patrick Harris.
Something like 8 teams of 2, each round starts with a closest to the pin-style question to determine who goes up to play first. Each round the teams play for the prize in a mystery box, they get a clue about the nature of the box and then have to choose numbers from a grid to reveal 3 key words to unlock it. Behind some numbers are the key words, others have decoys, extra turns, change teams, etc.

When the prize from the box is won, they move onto the next round. As the game progresses, new events are added like "steal prize" or "give away" sort of like a White Elephant style deal. The aim is to hold the most prizes at the end to play for the Super Box grand prize. As they progress some teams get eliminated in head to head duels. 

It's honestly a nightmare from start to finish. The contestants, and show in general, are "personality first" so in order to keep the gobshites in, you have rounds where one team who are actually really clever get "place these four capital cities in order from north to south geographically" and then the thicko team will get "place these eggs in size order from big to small, goose, chicken, quail, ostrich".
There's two dimwit bleach blonde, lip-filler'd twins on it who try to push a narrative of them always being picked last and never getting any attention and it's so transparent they're on there to become famous. They get shit canned first without ever getting a chance to play and as a wooden spoon prize the show gives them $100 each worth of botox vouchers.

There's a creepy mother and son team who talk as though they're a married couple. They're the first to heel turn when they steal a couple's electric vehicle prizes because "we deserve them". 

After the airheads, the actual good trivia team get eliminated because they choose the team of thickos to head to head and the show rigs the questions. Also the board is rigged, it's all electronic and conveniently spits out big moments for good TV to the point it starts becoming predictable. 

Eventually the final two teams head to head and the final prize is $300k worth of sponsored cryptocurrency and you see the winner's souls leave their bodies as they try and work out what the fuck that means, but know it definitely isn't the $300k cash they thought it was.

Absolute shit show. It's like a quiz show made by AI where it knows what a quiz show is, knows the rules of other games fed into it, but also got fed reality tv so spits out some scripted mishmash with a bullshit prize nobody would want.

 

 

Edited December 24, 2025 by FLips

[Merzbow]

11 minutes ago, FLips said:

hosted by Neil Patrick Harris.

That's me out already, no need for the rest of the shite.

[Mr_Danger]

I’ll just watch The Floor Is Lava again instead.