Favourite TV Series

Just started watching very sci-fi , seems very high budget and obv massive Ridley Scott influence (could imagine it being in the same universe as aliens / Prometheus). Has to be said Ridley does have a thing for a homicidal Android

hoping it develops well, but read a lot about it falling apart towards the nd of the series

 

I find him unbelievably boring. I always resented the way they sent such a dull, awkward man to these amazing places.

He's an older version of that guy @Clive_ofthe_Kremlin hates (Simon Reeves?)

 

Good grief. Ban?

 

His very first series, in its time when fewer people travelled the globe, was a novel idea and worked well with his character and presenting style. However, as so often, TV programme makers do a format to death when they have a ‘hit’ and all his subsequent series had less and less of an impact for me.

 

I hated it then. I watched 5 minutes of one the other day and it was exactly as I remembered. He was sitting, being boring, drinking wine with a chinese man, making dull jokes about how much he liked wine.

 

Massively behind the times, but I finished all of Breaking Bad last week. The last series takes a dark turn and doesn't let up. It's certainly a program that will stay with me.

The worrying thing is that I found myself identifying with Walter towards the end. I think it's being mid-40s and stuck at home, with the fear that life is sliding away.

 

Watched a documentary on the Estonia ferry sinking on DPlay here in Norway. If you can find it with English subtitles I would highly recommend it. Won't go into any details because I will ruin it for you. But it's a real eye opener.

 

I identified with the Latino fella who's acid bath glooped through the ceiling.

 

Agree entirely I'm afraid. I suppose Palin is inoffensive enough and at least doesn't offer banale freemarket 'solutions' which should be imposed on his hosts in the style of the odious scarf flapping Reeves.

He is indeed tediously dull though. Why don't they send someone who is an expert on the country, can maybe speak the language and can give us some proper insight into how things are to live there, rather than telling us that the sunset is nice and the wine is good and the sea is warm to swim in.

 

Because he visted dozens of countries in any given series? In any event, the programmes (certainly the early ones) were as much about the act of travelling as the countres visited. And it seems to me that the BBC meant to have some fun at Palin's expense, as the bumbling Brit abroad. I agree that you don't get that with Reeve.

Around the World in 80 Days was broadcast at a time when most Brits didn't go further than the Costa del Sol. Things are much different now (well, not literally now) of course.

 

I will go even further and say that I don't like Fawlty Towers. I've raised it on here before, but it was a while ago now and there should be a whole new array of people to shock with my hatred of a national treasure.

 

Cleese is a a **** by comparison with Palin.

What do you dislike about it?

 

I used to like Cleese well enough, but he fell into the trap of a lot of people of his generation, of gobbing off about stuff that nobody was interested in hearing from him about.

As for Fawlty Towers, it always reminded me of the Teachers Play at school. It was a farce, badly acted, poorly scripted IMO and with situations driven by people behaving utterly unbelievably. Like, if Basil just stopped shouting and hitting Manuel for 20 seconds, there wouldn't be a disaster in the kitchen. It is just annoying.

 

And I don't dislike Palin as such, I just felt he was dull enough to actually make some amazing places and people have some of the colour and wonder sucked out of them by him standing alongside like a beige vacuum cleaner of interestingness.

I dare say he's a lovely chap.

I will go even further and say, I always wished Attenborough had retired and handed over the mantle about 30 years ago. I wish Michela Strachan had been the voice of some of the more recent hits about global nature. He has clung onto that plum job like an auntie who just won't die and let anyone else have her inheritance.

You can't tell me that there aren't dozens of younger, educated presenters who could have gone into the Congo safely to see gorillas, rather than carting a 90 year old man into some of the most dangerous places on earth to do a voice over by a river, after a team of cameramen have taken 9 months to finally capture a rare Papua New Guinean purple pigeon taking a ****.

 

TBF it looked terribly dated in the late 90's (ISTR the beeb did a big 'revival' of it and the viewing figures were awful). Kerrist knows what a modern audience makes of it.

 

Mrs Keighley can't abide FT as she claims it is about a man having a mental breakdown. Mind you, she can't abide Curb either, so I wouldn't set much store by her view.

I don't care too much about Attenborough one way or another but there is some amazing filming in his programmes.

OK, I'll bite. What is the point of Joanna Lumley? She's just a posh bore, isn't she? And Absolutely Fabulous was ****.

 

JL was fit as **** in her day, but yeah, AB Fab was idiotic. The same joke of two people saying 'sweetie/dahling' and getting hammered.

She did some good stuff for the Gurkhas though. Yeah. I'm not too fussed about her.

Maybe we should start a whole other iconoclast thread.

 

She is now, absolutely. 30/40 years ago she had a lot more to offer...

 

Yeah, point taken on her past assets.

 

She got sent to Havana too recently.

She went for a ride in an old Chevrolet convertible along the Malecon, drank a cocktail in Hemingway's old bar and said that Cuba was a museum that was stuck in a time warp and hadn't changed since 1959.

Well it certainly opened my eyes.

 

Then we wouldn't have got the masterpieces that were "The Private Life of Plants", "Life in the Undergrowth", "Life in Cold Blood" and "The Trials of Life". They were only commissioned because 'his' name was attached to the projects. The name's a seal of quality. Even his 'vanity' projects ("Attenborough in Paradise and Other Personal Voyages") are extremely watchable or sky's foray into 3D ("Micromonsters).

That name brings me out in a cold sweat of fear and loathing - I cannot forget "The Hitman and Her" and I actually went to "...Mr Smiths in Warrington..." to see if she was less **** in real life. She wasn't.

 

Rather her than Kate Humble though.

 

Rather neither....

 

I thought Michaela was quite cute back in the day.

 

"The day" that you drank a bottle of scotch ?

 

Would still

 

A farce is exactly what Fawlty Towers was supposed to be.

 

i am with you it’s crap, hate that type of slapstick / awkward comedy , really really hated some mothers have em and Bean

 

Yep.

 

I enjoy comedy that centres on the personalities rather than the slapstick type, and I struggle with those that look like they were on a stage with the overacting we often see. Slapstick has its place though in all sitcoms, but only when it has a consequence.

I like understatement, with a combination of laughs and pathos.

Such as; The Office, Ever Decreasing Circles, The Vicar of Dibley, Please Sir, Men Behaving Badly, Only Fools and the later Blackadders.

Probably never see the likes again of these brilliant shows.

 

She was presenting when I went on Wide Awake Club when I was a child.

 

When it comes to comedy I watch at least one random episode of Peep Show, Curb and I’m Alan Partridge per week. I would add the office in there, but there just aren’t enough episodes that I could watch it weekly now.

 

Surely there are at least as many as there are of Partridge?

 

Yeah you’re right, actually. I can’t really put my finger on it really, I absolutely love the office but maybe I find it to awkward to watch too frequently. Obviously partridge is massively awkward, but in a far more comedic way.

 

I miss the proper good, witty comedies like Love Thy Neighbour and Mind Your Language. We'll never see the like again.