The idea Labour is using anti-Semitism to win Muslim votes is nutty, we've really fallen down the beergate hole.
Its really not nutty, unfortunately zealots tend to have hate for other groups. Anyone who appeals to religious votes tends to have some form of "other" they dislike whether it be Catholics, Protestants, homosexuals or unfortunately in this case Jews.
Ideally in 21st Century Britain we should be in a post-religious, secular society where people don't appeal to voters based on their religion and what that religious group's extremes tend to hate. Unfortunately we're not quite there yet and in some ways going backwards.
Want an end to civilian casualties? Then there's a simple solution: Hamas lays down their arms unconditionally and releases the hostages. Otherwise the war continues.
Exactly what David Cameron (pbuh) said yesterday in the HoL.
And we know that DC can say or do no wrong.
But ever civilian casualty recruits more people into Hamas rather than sitting on the sidelines.
Even before you see the complete lack of hope that Israel is offering everyone in Gaza which again will be pushing people towards actively supporting Hamas because they’ve got nothing else so they may as well.
Indeed. Nor do they offer any hope to Palestinians in the West Bank either. Nor that much to Arab Israelis.
The conflict in Northern Ireland was ended because the conditions of the Catholic population were improved. The conflict in the Basque country was ended because the conditions of the Basque population were improved. And so on.
Israel removed its military and settlements from Gaza in 2005.
From then on Gaza was the responsibility of the people who lived there.
What did they achieve apart from doubling its population.
Overpopulating doesn't improve conditions.
Hamas has done little to improve the condition of the people in Gaza. Nothing I wrote was supportive of Hamas. You, however, are misinformed about the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Gaza has long been blockaded by Israel (and, of course, a blockade is a casus belli according to Israel in 1967). It was not an independent statelet. It was still heavily under the control of Israel.
Also, Gaza is part of Palestine. It's good that Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, but Israel was and is still in the West Bank, building illegal settlements and oppressing the local population.
Gaza was not blockaded when Israel withdrew from Gaza, quite the opposite, Israel was supporting the Palestinian Authority in building up the Port of Gaza when it withdrew.
The blockade of Gaza began after Hamas took over Gaza, and I'm sure you agree that blockade is entirely justified thanks to the actions (past not just present) and intent of Hamas.
You're quite right that peace will not exist until Gaza develops, I agree wholeheartedly with you there. Gaza is not going to develop as long as Hamas exists.
So all roads lead back to the need to destroy Hamas. After Hamas is destroyed there will be a window of opportunity to see Gaza developed and a better future for all Gazans as well as Israelis, but only if Hamas are destroyed first.
Israel withdrawing but Hamas surviving and the blockade continuing is no future for Gaza and not humane.
Ah, the commander of the PB Chairborne division is back.
Why did no one tell me about the Apple Series FOR ALL MANKIND
It's fantastic. Admittedly, I have only watched one episode, but it is brilliant
The bait and switch on the moon landing is GENIUS
I've seen 3 episodes, and although it's well done, I'm beginning to suspect that after an intriguing opening it's descending into a slow-moving soap opera that they will milk for as many episodes as they can in the typical way. So I'm probably not going any further unless I hear different.
If you're on Apple + I can highly recommend Shrinking featuring a great turn by Harrison Ford as a grumpy old man.
Ach. dammit
That is my big fear
So many series now do this. Start with great promise, then fade away HORRIBLY
I have had to abandon three dramas in recent months for this reason. GRRR
Yes, it's very annoying. And sometimes the opposite happens - eg I was still enjoying The Path after 3 seasons (though it had got a bit slushy), and they didn't make any more despite the story clearly being unfinished.
I would say For All Mankind is still entertaining after 3 episodes but 7 seasons are planned, and I don't want to get hooked into having to know what happens because it's too much of a time commitment for me...
Rotten Tomatoes - which is modestly reliable - insists it contnues well into seasons 2 and 3. I shall persist for now
The worst of the recent bunch was Money Heist, which started cleverly and elegantly, but described a perfect smooth arc of descent into inanity, plot holes, non sequiturs, stupid characters and tedious distractions
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters immediately went from quite good in episode 1 to SHITE by ep 3, and stayed there
Let us know how it goes!
It took me 2 and a half seasons to give up on Mad Men.
I've never seen an episode of Lost, or The Crown, or Game of Thrones (probably too violent for me), or Eastenders. Maybe I am commitment-phobic.
Never heard of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I saw Money Heist advertised - it looked interesting but my wife can't be bothered with subtitles, and I refuse to watch anything dubbed (if it was even available) so didn't bother. Won't now.
Mad Men was great, until about season 4 or 5 (most dramas collapse by seasons 4 or 5, if they get that far - it is an actual rule, with very few exceptions)
The first season of the Crown is superb, second jolly good, then increasingly bad
Game of Thrones is sui generis. I loved it, mostly, even while finding the plot absurdly complex and difficult to comprehend, it had that knack that, just when you felt like abandoning it for its labyrinthine complexity, it would have a brilliant scene with clever lines, or a spectacular battle sequence, or just the midget being funny
Great actors helped; also good characterisation
I thought Mad Men was brilliant all the way through. It just got the 60s perfectly from beginning to end. The Wire and the Sopranos were sustained brilliance too. Those three stand head and shoulders above all else.
Breaking Bad, too.
Better Call Saul was quality almost throughout, although for me, it ended poorly.
I always forget Breaking Bad - but you're right, of course. Better Call Saul nearly got there.
For me it's about whether you can go back time after time and still enjoy it. You can with those four.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
Agreed; The Killing was superb. How many have you rewatched, though ?
Not many, in my case.
I rewatched West Wing with my kids quite some time ago, to educate them in the mechanics of US politics (which was great fun), and much more recently 6FD, which was every bit as good the second time round.
I don't count rewatching as any kind of metric. Life is too short (to my mind) to rewatch TV drama, especially when there is so much good NEW stuff
The only novel I have reread is Ulysses, otherwise no way do I reread a book
I will watch old movies again, as we discussed the other day, but more out of the comfort they bring
And yet I will relisten to favourite music and reread favourite poems ALL THE TIME
Quite strange. Some brilliant Philosopher of Aesthetics should write a book explaining why some arts can be re-experiened with pleasure, and some not. At least from my POV
Now Starmer is facing demands to suspend councillors who heard the anti semitism from the two hapless former labour candidates but did nothing about it.
I suppose this is fair. In the services, like the Police, people have been disciplined or dismissed not for making prejudiced comments but for not challenging them.
There are also shows which have one or maybe two briliant seasons, but then turn to shit, how do you classify them? Are they great or disasters?
Westworld is the classic example. Fabulous opening season. oh dear oh dear what happened then
Also Homeland, and Peaky Blinders, and the Crown
How I wish Westworld had stayed as one season only. At least the second season stayed within the Park(s) but after that it was awful. I wanted to like it, but the need for another big twist each series let it down. The twist in the first series (spoiler alert here) was great. First time through you have no inkling that its different times being shown, but on second watching, when you know, it makes sense. Glorious.
Designated Survivor got progressively worse from about three episodes in to Season 2 as well.
That said, it was always a bit flawed.
Relatedly, not sure if 24 falls into the remit of the golden age of TV or if its a bit too early, but its first seasons were great too, but it got progressively more absurd and recycled plot points until the end. The latter being a bit of an issue even in the first season too to be fair (how many times in the same day could his family escape only to be recaptured).
Still a very enjoyable series and very bingeable in streaming format, just recently started watching it again for the first time in a very long time on Disney+, just started day 2.
Strange, Guido and his pals were fine with ‘unsophisticated support’ for Project Brexit.
Guido posts racism about muslims shock.
My perception (which may be wrong) is that antisemitism is more pronounced in muslim communities. Are you saying that is wrong? Fine. The implication in Guido's point is that the numbers of muslims vastly outweighs Jews and thus appealing too members of the muslim community (selecting muslim candidates etc). The downside is that some seem to hold rather dodgy views.
I agree, partially. And this would be entirely true of his statement if he'd removed the words "sophisticated" and "unsophisticated".
Your point doesn't address the use of those words.
Doesn't unsophisticated and sophisticated relate to the support? I don't think he needed to bring Jewish voters into it. The point is, Labour want the Muslim block vote.
Don't you think Starmer would have been somewhat more critical of Israel and more pro-Palestinian over Gaza if this were the case? His stance has alienated many Muslim voters, for now.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
I loved the Killing but we did not get all of it, the sub-titles gave us a couple of sentences when it was clear a lot more was going on. The same with The Bridge - there was a sustained joke in that about the way Swedes and Danes speak that was totally inaccessible to non-Danish/Swedish natives. So, these were probably even better than we thought. Chernobyl was brilliant too. I thought we were talking about multi-series examples, not one or two. But it is true I don't watch a whole heap of telly.
I speak Danish and Swedish so was able to follow them both. An issue with the subtitltes is that they were sexed up - the detectives would say something like "What exactly do you mean?" and the subtitle would say "What the fuck do you mean?" The subtitler defended the changes by saying that British audiences would think that police who don't swear were implausible, which is a bit depressing if true,
Danish actually doesn't have sexual swear words, though young Danes borrow the English words - Danish doesn't get much rougher than "shit" and "devil". Whether that relates to the famous and long-standing Danish tolerance of sexual behaviour is an interesting question - maybe if you think that most kinds of sex are just a great part of life, then saying "fuck" in a negative sense is a bit pointless?
But yes, great series anyway!
Police who didn't swear would definitely move it to the fantasy genre over here.
FWIW I do not think the Golden Age of TV has ended
We have just had Succession, which for me is as good as Breaking Bad or Sopranos, and much better than The Wire (overrated)
We have just had The Great, possibly the funniest show ever made?
The Bear is weirdly weirdly brilliant, and is in the middle of its run
I've only finished Griselda two nights ago, it's not genius but it is excellent. And so on and so forth
I think we have simply got USED to great TV, so we are more blase and complacent, or we demand more
The volume of TV produced has greatly increased, so the density of great TV has reduced, even if there is as much as before.
Everyone gets very nostalgic about TV. How great it was in the Sixties, seventies, eighties etc etc.
People happily, nostalgically, remember stuff like Dad's Army and I Clavdivs, but no one remembers Come Back Mrs Noah or The Crezz or the rest of the drivel that was on offer at the time.
Mr. F, and yet, even after the seventh season the final one could've been good. The ending of seven was fine.
The eighth is amazing for the errors and poor decisions involved. I especially like two characters setting off early to arrive somewhere before the army (leaving from the same place) and arrive there after the army. Fun fact: two individuals move a lot faster than a whole army. The idea they'd be slower is demented. And the concept they wouldn't notice a whole army passing them is something special.
I thought the final battle sequence with the dragons - third episode from the end? - was glorious. Didn't all make sense, but absolutely spectacular - if I am remembering correctly
But then it went on after that, with some insane plot twists
You know more about this than I do... how long can a saga like this keep going?
I recently fell down a Howard's Way binge watch rabbit hole (yes, I deserve condemnation, I don't care), and whilst that was always incoherent tosh, it became really incoherent tosh towards the end, with characters behaving really out of character.
Science nerd theory: You can only have so many characters in a story, because there's a limit to how many are enjoyable to hold in one's head on a Sunday evening. Once you have played everyone against everyone else, the game is broadly up.
Sitcoms are a bit different, because the whole point is that hardly anyone ever learns anything, and the lack of evolution is the enjoyable comfort. But stories and sagas are meant to be about change.
I have observed, personally and professionally, that the 4-5 seasons thing is a pretty iron rule. Of course plenty of dramas don't even make it that far, they die after 1 season, and are not renewed, or they make it to 3 and that was all they planned
But there seems to be some algorithm which says you will run out of character changes, plot twists, likely scenarios, new and believeable angles, after 4 or 5 seasons. I note Succession, probably the greatest recent drama, ended on its 4th season, with people wanting more, but likely a very wise decision
Great dramas that go beyond this - House, Mad Men - generally tail off badly
There are vanishingly few exceptions. The Sopranos is probably one - six seasons, great to the end
Soap operas that constanrtly introduce new characters can go on much longer, perhaps eternally, but they are not cohesive dramas in the same sense
Lucifer made it to 6 seasons with only a couple of dodgy patches, but more comedy-drama than drama.
Science fiction/fantasy series, if successful, last longer. They have more fanatic fans (and then some) and a larger number of possible plots and settings. Even if we limit ourselves to 21st century series, BSG did four plus miniseries plus movies, The Expanse did six series, GOT did eight(!) series, the rebooted Dr Who is currently on gawdhelpus series fifteen (not counting the 1963-89 version!), and even Star Trek Discovery - not held to be an unalloyed success - will make it to five. Get a good one and you're made for life.
Coronation Street has over 11,000 episodes…
The Archers has over 20,000. Still going strong since 1951.
There are also shows which have one or maybe two briliant seasons, but then turn to shit, how do you classify them? Are they great or disasters?
Westworld is the classic example. Fabulous opening season. oh dear oh dear what happened then
Also Homeland, and Peaky Blinders, and the Crown
Have you seen Better Call Saul and Ozarks?
I've enjoyed SAUL, but it doesn't rank in my greats. He is a fantastic character, tho. I didn't like Ozark, perhaps I might try again, if I utterly run out!
Why did no one tell me about the Apple Series FOR ALL MANKIND
It's fantastic. Admittedly, I have only watched one episode, but it is brilliant
The bait and switch on the moon landing is GENIUS
I've seen 3 episodes, and although it's well done, I'm beginning to suspect that after an intriguing opening it's descending into a slow-moving soap opera that they will milk for as many episodes as they can in the typical way. So I'm probably not going any further unless I hear different.
If you're on Apple + I can highly recommend Shrinking featuring a great turn by Harrison Ford as a grumpy old man.
Ach. dammit
That is my big fear
So many series now do this. Start with great promise, then fade away HORRIBLY
I have had to abandon three dramas in recent months for this reason. GRRR
Yes, it's very annoying. And sometimes the opposite happens - eg I was still enjoying The Path after 3 seasons (though it had got a bit slushy), and they didn't make any more despite the story clearly being unfinished.
I would say For All Mankind is still entertaining after 3 episodes but 7 seasons are planned, and I don't want to get hooked into having to know what happens because it's too much of a time commitment for me...
Rotten Tomatoes - which is modestly reliable - insists it contnues well into seasons 2 and 3. I shall persist for now
The worst of the recent bunch was Money Heist, which started cleverly and elegantly, but described a perfect smooth arc of descent into inanity, plot holes, non sequiturs, stupid characters and tedious distractions
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters immediately went from quite good in episode 1 to SHITE by ep 3, and stayed there
Let us know how it goes!
It took me 2 and a half seasons to give up on Mad Men.
I've never seen an episode of Lost, or The Crown, or Game of Thrones (probably too violent for me), or Eastenders. Maybe I am commitment-phobic.
Never heard of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I saw Money Heist advertised - it looked interesting but my wife can't be bothered with subtitles, and I refuse to watch anything dubbed (if it was even available) so didn't bother. Won't now.
Mad Men was great, until about season 4 or 5 (most dramas collapse by seasons 4 or 5, if they get that far - it is an actual rule, with very few exceptions)
The first season of the Crown is superb, second jolly good, then increasingly bad
Game of Thrones is sui generis. I loved it, mostly, even while finding the plot absurdly complex and difficult to comprehend, it had that knack that, just when you felt like abandoning it for its labyrinthine complexity, it would have a brilliant scene with clever lines, or a spectacular battle sequence, or just the midget being funny
Great actors helped; also good characterisation
I thought Mad Men was brilliant all the way through. It just got the 60s perfectly from beginning to end. The Wire and the Sopranos were sustained brilliance too. Those three stand head and shoulders above all else.
Breaking Bad, too.
Better Call Saul was quality almost throughout, although for me, it ended poorly.
I always forget Breaking Bad - but you're right, of course. Better Call Saul nearly got there.
For me it's about whether you can go back time after time and still enjoy it. You can with those four.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
I loved the Killing but we did not get all of it, the sub-titles gave us a couple of sentences when it was clear a lot more was going on. The same with The Bridge - there was a sustained joke in that about the way Swedes and Danes speak that was totally inaccessible to non-Danish/Swedish natives. So, these were probably even better than we thought. Chernobyl was brilliant too. I thought we were talking about multi-series examples, not one or two. But it is true I don't watch a whole heap of telly.
Killing, truly great. Landmark prog for me. Hadn't realized tv drama could be like that. However Bridge, not so much. I liked it but could never quite 'buy' the lead character, that Saga. I found her a bit false, a bit mannered.
Gives a Labour majority of 92, which would be smaller not only than Labour's majorities in 1997 and 2001 but also their majorities in 1945 and 1966. Best Tory poll for weeks
Did you forget to mention this is the Gold standard pollster too, that one that gets it right when everyone else gets it so wrong? The regular community note we give your seat numbers though, you factor in zero tactical voting?
BJO asks us to explain this -5 Labour +2 Tory huge change poll just 12% lead , I can’t. Other than it’s a movement month on month. Except to say maybe the Conservatives relentless campaigning for May 2nd General Election will show signs it’s working, swingback and closing the gap in one poll first before all others at some point.
My question to all you in the Conservative Party, are you picking up on anything that suggests May 2nd GE? My Dad isn’t, he’s convinced it’s October or Later, so doesn’t subscribe to my theory at all.
Want an end to civilian casualties? Then there's a simple solution: Hamas lays down their arms unconditionally and releases the hostages. Otherwise the war continues.
Exactly what David Cameron (pbuh) said yesterday in the HoL.
And we know that DC can say or do no wrong.
But ever civilian casualty recruits more people into Hamas rather than sitting on the sidelines.
Even before you see the complete lack of hope that Israel is offering everyone in Gaza which again will be pushing people towards actively supporting Hamas because they’ve got nothing else so they may as well.
Indeed. Nor do they offer any hope to Palestinians in the West Bank either. Nor that much to Arab Israelis.
The conflict in Northern Ireland was ended because the conditions of the Catholic population were improved. The conflict in the Basque country was ended because the conditions of the Basque population were improved. And so on.
Israel removed its military and settlements from Gaza in 2005.
From then on Gaza was the responsibility of the people who lived there.
What did they achieve apart from doubling its population.
Overpopulating doesn't improve conditions.
Hamas has done little to improve the condition of the people in Gaza. Nothing I wrote was supportive of Hamas. You, however, are misinformed about the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Gaza has long been blockaded by Israel (and, of course, a blockade is a casus belli according to Israel in 1967). It was not an independent statelet. It was still heavily under the control of Israel.
Also, Gaza is part of Palestine. It's good that Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, but Israel was and is still in the West Bank, building illegal settlements and oppressing the local population.
- Israel does not control all entrances and exits from Gaza and therefore cannot "blockade" it. You would need to say that "Gaza has long been blockaded by Israel and Egypt, which doesn't change the facts on the ground but obviously weakens your point significantly. - Clearly, Israel hasn't been "blockading" Gaza very effectively, given the amount of weaponry that's got in. - "Gaza is part of Palestine": says who, exactly? Sure, it was part of the mandate, but then occupied by Egypt for nearly 20 years. Why is everyone so obsessed with preserving all borders as they were at the end of WW2, forever, regardless of changes in circumstances?
The people of Gaza consider themselves one with the people of the West Bank. That is also the view of pretty much every country in the world, and the UN.
"Why is everyone so obsessed with preserving all borders as they were at the end of WW2, forever, regardless of changes in circumstances?" The preservation of borders is central to the rules-based international order that has been widely seen as the best way of keeping the peace for over 70 years. Borders can and do change peacefully with agreement of the peoples affected. Attempts to change borders without consent are illegal under international law.
The Philadelphia Corridor is patrolled by Egypt, not Israel, and there's also a massive wall the Egyptians have built along the entire length of their border, so I assume you've been relying on Wikipedia to disprove my position and misinterpreted what you read.
On the borders, the point is that there isn't one - the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected opportunities to define them, so there's no reason to preserve something that doesn't actually exist. There's no way to get a contiguous Palestinian state (including both the West Bank and Gaza) whilst preserving Israel's borders, and there's also no reason to, since they haven't been part of the territory since 1948. It makes way more sense to separate them and work towards a three state solution - Gaza has the advantage of no Israeli settlements, and therefore no difficult negotiations on land. It could be granted statehood tomorrow if all the terrorists were expelled and reasonable guarantees provided on Israeli (and Egyptian) security.
What has really really been fascinating to see about the Starmer project, and he did do alot of good initially ditching the Corbynite stuff, is how the whole thing is collapsing in real time under scrutiny.
The Sue Gray story, making people cry, with the investigation into the leak as well does not help.
Labour needs to get a handle on this and quick otherwise it will be SKS in coalition with the Lib Dems and the nationalists, and not an overall majority.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
I loved the Killing but we did not get all of it, the sub-titles gave us a couple of sentences when it was clear a lot more was going on. The same with The Bridge - there was a sustained joke in that about the way Swedes and Danes speak that was totally inaccessible to non-Danish/Swedish natives. So, these were probably even better than we thought. Chernobyl was brilliant too. I thought we were talking about multi-series examples, not one or two. But it is true I don't watch a whole heap of telly.
I speak Danish and Swedish so was able to follow them both. An issue with the subtitltes is that they were sexed up - the detectives would say something like "What exactly do you mean?" and the subtitle would say "What the fuck do you mean?" The subtitler defended the changes by saying that British audiences would think that police who don't swear were implausible, which is a bit depressing if true,
Danish actually doesn't have sexual swear words, though young Danes borrow the English words - Danish doesn't get much rougher than "shit" and "devil". Whether that relates to the famous and long-standing Danish tolerance of sexual behaviour is an interesting question - maybe if you think that most kinds of sex are just a great part of life, then saying "fuck" in a negative sense is a bit pointless?
But yes, great series anyway!
That's disappointing. I would have thought part of the attraction of such a series for an English audience would have been the window into a different culture.
Why did no one tell me about the Apple Series FOR ALL MANKIND
It's fantastic. Admittedly, I have only watched one episode, but it is brilliant
The bait and switch on the moon landing is GENIUS
I've seen 3 episodes, and although it's well done, I'm beginning to suspect that after an intriguing opening it's descending into a slow-moving soap opera that they will milk for as many episodes as they can in the typical way. So I'm probably not going any further unless I hear different.
If you're on Apple + I can highly recommend Shrinking featuring a great turn by Harrison Ford as a grumpy old man.
Ach. dammit
That is my big fear
So many series now do this. Start with great promise, then fade away HORRIBLY
I have had to abandon three dramas in recent months for this reason. GRRR
Yes, it's very annoying. And sometimes the opposite happens - eg I was still enjoying The Path after 3 seasons (though it had got a bit slushy), and they didn't make any more despite the story clearly being unfinished.
I would say For All Mankind is still entertaining after 3 episodes but 7 seasons are planned, and I don't want to get hooked into having to know what happens because it's too much of a time commitment for me...
Rotten Tomatoes - which is modestly reliable - insists it contnues well into seasons 2 and 3. I shall persist for now
The worst of the recent bunch was Money Heist, which started cleverly and elegantly, but described a perfect smooth arc of descent into inanity, plot holes, non sequiturs, stupid characters and tedious distractions
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters immediately went from quite good in episode 1 to SHITE by ep 3, and stayed there
Let us know how it goes!
It took me 2 and a half seasons to give up on Mad Men.
I've never seen an episode of Lost, or The Crown, or Game of Thrones (probably too violent for me), or Eastenders. Maybe I am commitment-phobic.
Never heard of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I saw Money Heist advertised - it looked interesting but my wife can't be bothered with subtitles, and I refuse to watch anything dubbed (if it was even available) so didn't bother. Won't now.
Mad Men was great, until about season 4 or 5 (most dramas collapse by seasons 4 or 5, if they get that far - it is an actual rule, with very few exceptions)
The first season of the Crown is superb, second jolly good, then increasingly bad
Game of Thrones is sui generis. I loved it, mostly, even while finding the plot absurdly complex and difficult to comprehend, it had that knack that, just when you felt like abandoning it for its labyrinthine complexity, it would have a brilliant scene with clever lines, or a spectacular battle sequence, or just the midget being funny
Great actors helped; also good characterisation
I thought Mad Men was brilliant all the way through. It just got the 60s perfectly from beginning to end. The Wire and the Sopranos were sustained brilliance too. Those three stand head and shoulders above all else.
Breaking Bad, too.
Better Call Saul was quality almost throughout, although for me, it ended poorly.
I always forget Breaking Bad - but you're right, of course. Better Call Saul nearly got there.
For me it's about whether you can go back time after time and still enjoy it. You can with those four.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
I loved the Killing but we did not get all of it, the sub-titles gave us a couple of sentences when it was clear a lot more was going on. The same with The Bridge - there was a sustained joke in that about the way Swedes and Danes speak that was totally inaccessible to non-Danish/Swedish natives. So, these were probably even better than we thought. Chernobyl was brilliant too. I thought we were talking about multi-series examples, not one or two. But it is true I don't watch a whole heap of telly.
Killing, truly great. Landmark prog for me. Hadn't realized tv drama could be like that. However Bridge, not so much. I liked it but could never quite 'buy' the lead character, that Saga. I found her a bit false, a bit mannered.
Yep, that's where I am
The Killing is in the dizzying heights, some of the greatest TV in history
Gives a Labour majority of 92, which would be smaller not only than Labour's majorities in 1997 and 2001 but also their majorities in 1945 and 1966. Best Tory poll for weeks
Did you forget to mention this is the Gold standard pollster too, that one that gets it right when everyone else gets it so wrong? The regular community note we give your seat numbers though, you factor in zero tactical voting?
BJO asks us to explain this -5 Labour +2 Tory huge change poll just 12% lead , I can’t. Other than it’s a movement month on month. Except to say maybe the Conservatives relentless campaigning for May 2nd General Election will show signs it’s working, swingback and closing the gap in one poll first before all others at some point.
My question to all you in the Conservative Party, are you picking up on anything that suggests May 2nd GE? My Dad isn’t, he’s convinced it’s October or Later, so doesn’t subscribe to my theory at all.
I just cannot see that being correct. There is no way the SNP will lose over 60% of their seats. I just cannot see it.
FWIW I do not think the Golden Age of TV has ended
We have just had Succession, which for me is as good as Breaking Bad or Sopranos, and much better than The Wire (overrated)
We have just had The Great, possibly the funniest show ever made?
The Bear is weirdly weirdly brilliant, and is in the middle of its run
I've only finished Griselda two nights ago, it's not genius but it is excellent. And so on and so forth
I think we have simply got USED to great TV, so we are more blase and complacent, or we demand more
The volume of TV produced has greatly increased, so the density of great TV has reduced, even if there is as much as before.
Everyone gets very nostalgic about TV. How great it was in the Sixties, seventies, eighties etc etc.
People happily, nostalgically, remember stuff like Dad's Army and I Clavdivs, but no one remembers Come Back Mrs Noah or The Crezz or the rest of the drivel that was on offer at the time.
I don't think anyone will look back on Mrs. Brown's Boys, affectionately.
Want an end to civilian casualties? Then there's a simple solution: Hamas lays down their arms unconditionally and releases the hostages. Otherwise the war continues.
Exactly what David Cameron (pbuh) said yesterday in the HoL.
And we know that DC can say or do no wrong.
But ever civilian casualty recruits more people into Hamas rather than sitting on the sidelines.
Even before you see the complete lack of hope that Israel is offering everyone in Gaza which again will be pushing people towards actively supporting Hamas because they’ve got nothing else so they may as well.
Indeed. Nor do they offer any hope to Palestinians in the West Bank either. Nor that much to Arab Israelis.
The conflict in Northern Ireland was ended because the conditions of the Catholic population were improved. The conflict in the Basque country was ended because the conditions of the Basque population were improved. And so on.
Israel removed its military and settlements from Gaza in 2005.
From then on Gaza was the responsibility of the people who lived there.
What did they achieve apart from doubling its population.
Overpopulating doesn't improve conditions.
Hamas has done little to improve the condition of the people in Gaza. Nothing I wrote was supportive of Hamas. You, however, are misinformed about the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Gaza has long been blockaded by Israel (and, of course, a blockade is a casus belli according to Israel in 1967). It was not an independent statelet. It was still heavily under the control of Israel.
Also, Gaza is part of Palestine. It's good that Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, but Israel was and is still in the West Bank, building illegal settlements and oppressing the local population.
- Israel does not control all entrances and exits from Gaza and therefore cannot "blockade" it. You would need to say that "Gaza has long been blockaded by Israel and Egypt, which doesn't change the facts on the ground but obviously weakens your point significantly. - Clearly, Israel hasn't been "blockading" Gaza very effectively, given the amount of weaponry that's got in. - "Gaza is part of Palestine": says who, exactly? Sure, it was part of the mandate, but then occupied by Egypt for nearly 20 years. Why is everyone so obsessed with preserving all borders as they were at the end of WW2, forever, regardless of changes in circumstances?
The people of Gaza consider themselves one with the people of the West Bank. That is also the view of pretty much every country in the world, and the UN.
"Why is everyone so obsessed with preserving all borders as they were at the end of WW2, forever, regardless of changes in circumstances?" The preservation of borders is central to the rules-based international order that has been widely seen as the best way of keeping the peace for over 70 years. Borders can and do change peacefully with agreement of the peoples affected. Attempts to change borders without consent are illegal under international law.
The Philadelphia Corridor is patrolled by Egypt, not Israel, and there's also a massive wall the Egyptians have built along the entire length of their border, so I assume you've been relying on Wikipedia to disprove my position and misinterpreted what you read.
On the borders, the point is that there isn't one - the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected opportunities to define them, so there's no reason to preserve something that doesn't actually exist. There's no way to get a contiguous Palestinian state (including both the West Bank and Gaza) whilst preserving Israel's borders, and there's also no reason to, since they haven't been part of the territory since 1948. It makes way more sense to separate them and work towards a three state solution - Gaza has the advantage of no Israeli settlements, and therefore no difficult negotiations on land. It could be granted statehood tomorrow if all the terrorists were expelled and reasonable guarantees provided on Israeli (and Egyptian) security.
Indeed the lands of Gaza and the West Bank categorically do not belong to the Palestinians, and have not since 1948. Blame Jordan and Egypt for that, not Israel.
They are disputed territories, which could end up with Israel, or Palestine, or somehow be divided between the two. Which is entirely thanks to the actions of Jordan and Egypt in 1948 and 1967, not Israel.
There are also shows which have one or maybe two briliant seasons, but then turn to shit, how do you classify them? Are they great or disasters?
Westworld is the classic example. Fabulous opening season. oh dear oh dear what happened then
Also Homeland, and Peaky Blinders, and the Crown
Have you seen Better Call Saul and Ozarks?
I've enjoyed SAUL, but it doesn't rank in my greats. He is a fantastic character, tho. I didn't like Ozark, perhaps I might try again, if I utterly run out!
I couldn't find anybody sympathetic or interesting (even as villain) in Ozark. I was put off Narcos by a really nasty rape scene, quite early on..
There are also shows which have one or maybe two briliant seasons, but then turn to shit, how do you classify them? Are they great or disasters?
Westworld is the classic example. Fabulous opening season. oh dear oh dear what happened then
Also Homeland, and Peaky Blinders, and the Crown
How I wish Westworld had stayed as one season only. At least the second season stayed within the Park(s) but after that it was awful. I wanted to like it, but the need for another big twist each series let it down. The twist in the first series (spoiler alert here) was great. First time through you have no inkling that its different times being shown, but on second watching, when you know, it makes sense. Glorious.
Designated Survivor got progressively worse from about three episodes in to Season 2 as well.
That said, it was always a bit flawed.
Relatedly, not sure if 24 falls into the remit of the golden age of TV or if its a bit too early, but its first seasons were great too, but it got progressively more absurd and recycled plot points until the end. The latter being a bit of an issue even in the first season too to be fair (how many times in the same day could his family escape only to be recaptured).
Still a very enjoyable series and very bingeable in streaming format, just recently started watching it again for the first time in a very long time on Disney+, just started day 2.
Good call
The first season of 24 was cracking. Mad and impossible but compulsive to watch, I binged it in about 3 days
Second season also pretty good
Downhill from there
But that first season, what a great idea, and they really carried it off triumphantly
FWIW I do not think the Golden Age of TV has ended
We have just had Succession, which for me is as good as Breaking Bad or Sopranos, and much better than The Wire (overrated)
We have just had The Great, possibly the funniest show ever made?
The Bear is weirdly weirdly brilliant, and is in the middle of its run
I've only finished Griselda two nights ago, it's not genius but it is excellent. And so on and so forth
I think we have simply got USED to great TV, so we are more blase and complacent, or we demand more
The volume of TV produced has greatly increased, so the density of great TV has reduced, even if there is as much as before.
Everyone gets very nostalgic about TV. How great it was in the Sixties, seventies, eighties etc etc.
People happily, nostalgically, remember stuff like Dad's Army and I Clavdivs, but no one remembers Come Back Mrs Noah or The Crezz or the rest of the drivel that was on offer at the time.
I don't think anyone will look back on Mrs. Brown's Boys, affectionately.
I believe @Dura_Ace is a fan, he talks of it a lot
Now Starmer is facing demands to suspend councillors who heard the anti semitism from the two hapless former labour candidates but did nothing about it.
I suppose this is fair. In the services, like the Police, people have been disciplined or dismissed not for making prejudiced comments but for not challenging them.
What has really really been fascinating to see about the Starmer project, and he did do alot of good initially ditching the Corbynite stuff, is how the whole thing is collapsing in real time under scrutiny.
The Sue Gray story, making people cry, with the investigation into the leak as well does not help.
Labour needs to get a handle on this and quick otherwise it will be SKS in coalition with the Lib Dems and the nationalists, and not an overall majority.
"Collapsing" how? He has a double-digit poll lead in almost every poll.
If you simply mean that he is not pandering to antisemitic scum? Is that all? He's not supposed to either.
Gives a Labour majority of 92, which would be smaller not only than Labour's majorities in 1997 and 2001 but also their majorities in 1945 and 1966. Best Tory poll for weeks
Did you forget to mention this is the Gold standard pollster too, that one that gets it right when everyone else gets it so wrong? The regular community note we give your seat numbers though, you factor in zero tactical voting?
BJO asks us to explain this -5 Labour +2 Tory huge change poll just 12% lead , I can’t. Other than it’s a movement month on month. Except to say maybe the Conservatives relentless campaigning for May 2nd General Election will show signs it’s working, swingback and closing the gap in one poll first before all others at some point.
My question to all you in the Conservative Party, are you picking up on anything that suggests May 2nd GE? My Dad isn’t, he’s convinced it’s October or Later, so doesn’t subscribe to my theory at all.
Savanta had a 14 point Labour lead a couple of weeks ago. It went up to 19 last week and has now come down again. It's basically a reversion to mean from a pollster that generally scores Labour lower. If the poll is right, the Tories should comfortably hold Wellingborough on Thursday.
Gives a Labour majority of 92, which would be smaller not only than Labour's majorities in 1997 and 2001 but also their majorities in 1945 and 1966. Best Tory poll for weeks
Did you forget to mention this is the Gold standard pollster too, that one that gets it right when everyone else gets it so wrong? The regular community note we give your seat numbers though, you factor in zero tactical voting?
BJO asks us to explain this -5 Labour +2 Tory huge change poll just 12% lead , I can’t. Other than it’s a movement month on month. Except to say maybe the Conservatives relentless campaigning for May 2nd General Election will show signs it’s working, swingback and closing the gap in one poll first before all others at some point.
My question to all you in the Conservative Party, are you picking up on anything that suggests May 2nd GE? My Dad isn’t, he’s convinced it’s October or Later, so doesn’t subscribe to my theory at all.
Savanta had a 14 point Labour lead a couple of weeks ago. It went up to 19 last week and has now come down again. It's basically a reversion to mean from a pollster that generally scores Labour lower. If the poll is right, the Tories should comfortably hold Wellingborough on Thursday.
Sure, even if that's the final result, it would mean a comfortable win for Labour.
Strange, Guido and his pals were fine with ‘unsophisticated support’ for Project Brexit.
Guido posts racism about muslims shock.
My perception (which may be wrong) is that antisemitism is more pronounced in muslim communities. Are you saying that is wrong? Fine. The implication in Guido's point is that the numbers of muslims vastly outweighs Jews and thus appealing too members of the muslim community (selecting muslim candidates etc). The downside is that some seem to hold rather dodgy views.
I agree, partially. And this would be entirely true of his statement if he'd removed the words "sophisticated" and "unsophisticated".
Your point doesn't address the use of those words.
Doesn't unsophisticated and sophisticated relate to the support? I don't think he needed to bring Jewish voters into it. The point is, Labour want the Muslim block vote.
Don't you think Starmer would have been somewhat more critical of Israel and more pro-Palestinian over Gaza if this were the case? His stance has alienated many Muslim voters, for now.
Labour is more than just Starmer, the likes of Ali etc are a part of Labour too, or Ali was until a few days ago. And yes, unfortunately, some elements of Labour absolutely appeal based on antisemitic and religious desires which are unfit for 21st Century secular Britain.
Starmer recently has been better than his party. I hope that continues, but that does not mean there are not still problems within his party.
The fact that you think Starmer cracking down on antisemitism is alienating Muslim voters speaks volumes unfortunately.
Our politics will be much more healthy when the idea of appealing to "Muslim" voters is gone and buried and Muslims are treated with respect as secular individuals and not as zealots who hate Jews over mundane secular policies like education, health, tax, the economy etc.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
I loved the Killing but we did not get all of it, the sub-titles gave us a couple of sentences when it was clear a lot more was going on. The same with The Bridge - there was a sustained joke in that about the way Swedes and Danes speak that was totally inaccessible to non-Danish/Swedish natives. So, these were probably even better than we thought. Chernobyl was brilliant too. I thought we were talking about multi-series examples, not one or two. But it is true I don't watch a whole heap of telly.
I speak Danish and Swedish so was able to follow them both. An issue with the subtitltes is that they were sexed up - the detectives would say something like "What exactly do you mean?" and the subtitle would say "What the fuck do you mean?" The subtitler defended the changes by saying that British audiences would think that police who don't swear were implausible, which is a bit depressing if true,
Danish actually doesn't have sexual swear words, though young Danes borrow the English words - Danish doesn't get much rougher than "shit" and "devil". Whether that relates to the famous and long-standing Danish tolerance of sexual behaviour is an interesting question - maybe if you think that most kinds of sex are just a great part of life, then saying "fuck" in a negative sense is a bit pointless?
But yes, great series anyway!
Korean is a bit like that (although they do have "fuck" etc). Because it's a language based around formality, something like "are you mad" can be swearing.
The idea Labour is using anti-Semitism to win Muslim votes is nutty, we've really fallen down the beergate hole.
No. The idea is that Labour turns a blind eye to a range of un-Labour views to keep Muslim voters on board.
Precisely. This also explains why almost no Birmingham Labour politicians were prepared to get involved when groups of Muslim parents were threatening teachers at their children's schools for teaching them about same sex relationships.
Why did no one tell me about the Apple Series FOR ALL MANKIND
It's fantastic. Admittedly, I have only watched one episode, but it is brilliant
The bait and switch on the moon landing is GENIUS
I've seen 3 episodes, and although it's well done, I'm beginning to suspect that after an intriguing opening it's descending into a slow-moving soap opera that they will milk for as many episodes as they can in the typical way. So I'm probably not going any further unless I hear different.
If you're on Apple + I can highly recommend Shrinking featuring a great turn by Harrison Ford as a grumpy old man.
Ach. dammit
That is my big fear
So many series now do this. Start with great promise, then fade away HORRIBLY
I have had to abandon three dramas in recent months for this reason. GRRR
Yes, it's very annoying. And sometimes the opposite happens - eg I was still enjoying The Path after 3 seasons (though it had got a bit slushy), and they didn't make any more despite the story clearly being unfinished.
I would say For All Mankind is still entertaining after 3 episodes but 7 seasons are planned, and I don't want to get hooked into having to know what happens because it's too much of a time commitment for me...
Rotten Tomatoes - which is modestly reliable - insists it contnues well into seasons 2 and 3. I shall persist for now
The worst of the recent bunch was Money Heist, which started cleverly and elegantly, but described a perfect smooth arc of descent into inanity, plot holes, non sequiturs, stupid characters and tedious distractions
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters immediately went from quite good in episode 1 to SHITE by ep 3, and stayed there
Let us know how it goes!
It took me 2 and a half seasons to give up on Mad Men.
I've never seen an episode of Lost, or The Crown, or Game of Thrones (probably too violent for me), or Eastenders. Maybe I am commitment-phobic.
Never heard of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I saw Money Heist advertised - it looked interesting but my wife can't be bothered with subtitles, and I refuse to watch anything dubbed (if it was even available) so didn't bother. Won't now.
Mad Men was great, until about season 4 or 5 (most dramas collapse by seasons 4 or 5, if they get that far - it is an actual rule, with very few exceptions)
The first season of the Crown is superb, second jolly good, then increasingly bad
Game of Thrones is sui generis. I loved it, mostly, even while finding the plot absurdly complex and difficult to comprehend, it had that knack that, just when you felt like abandoning it for its labyrinthine complexity, it would have a brilliant scene with clever lines, or a spectacular battle sequence, or just the midget being funny
Great actors helped; also good characterisation
I thought Mad Men was brilliant all the way through. It just got the 60s perfectly from beginning to end. The Wire and the Sopranos were sustained brilliance too. Those three stand head and shoulders above all else.
Breaking Bad, too.
Better Call Saul was quality almost throughout, although for me, it ended poorly.
I always forget Breaking Bad - but you're right, of course. Better Call Saul nearly got there.
For me it's about whether you can go back time after time and still enjoy it. You can with those four.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
I loved the Killing but we did not get all of it, the sub-titles gave us a couple of sentences when it was clear a lot more was going on. The same with The Bridge - there was a sustained joke in that about the way Swedes and Danes speak that was totally inaccessible to non-Danish/Swedish natives. So, these were probably even better than we thought. Chernobyl was brilliant too. I thought we were talking about multi-series examples, not one or two. But it is true I don't watch a whole heap of telly.
Killing, truly great. Landmark prog for me. Hadn't realized tv drama could be like that. However Bridge, not so much. I liked it but could never quite 'buy' the lead character, that Saga. I found her a bit false, a bit mannered.
I think Saga was supposed to be an exaggerated version of how Danes (and other Nordics) see Swedes: really weird, really uptight. It was sort of my point that however good these Scandinoir series are, we are still not getting all of it. They're even better than we think.
Strange, Guido and his pals were fine with ‘unsophisticated support’ for Project Brexit.
Guido posts racism about muslims shock.
My perception (which may be wrong) is that antisemitism is more pronounced in muslim communities. Are you saying that is wrong? Fine. The implication in Guido's point is that the numbers of muslims vastly outweighs Jews and thus appealing too members of the muslim community (selecting muslim candidates etc). The downside is that some seem to hold rather dodgy views.
I agree, partially. And this would be entirely true of his statement if he'd removed the words "sophisticated" and "unsophisticated".
Your point doesn't address the use of those words.
Doesn't unsophisticated and sophisticated relate to the support? I don't think he needed to bring Jewish voters into it. The point is, Labour want the Muslim block vote.
Don't you think Starmer would have been somewhat more critical of Israel and more pro-Palestinian over Gaza if this were the case? His stance has alienated many Muslim voters, for now.
Labour is more than just Starmer, the likes of Ali etc are a part of Labour too, or Ali was until a few days ago. And yes, unfortunately, some elements of Labour absolutely appeal based on antisemitic and religious desires which are unfit for 21st Century secular Britain.
Starmer recently has been better than his party. I hope that continues, but that does not mean there are not still problems within his party.
The fact that you think Starmer cracking down on antisemitism is alienating Muslim voters speaks volumes unfortunately.
Our politics will be much more healthy when the idea of appealing to "Muslim" voters is gone and buried and Muslims are treated with respect as secular individuals and not as zealots who hate Jews over mundane secular policies like education, health, tax, the economy etc.
If it is alienating voters who are anti-Semitic then I back him 100%. I don't want these arseholes voting Labour.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
I loved the Killing but we did not get all of it, the sub-titles gave us a couple of sentences when it was clear a lot more was going on. The same with The Bridge - there was a sustained joke in that about the way Swedes and Danes speak that was totally inaccessible to non-Danish/Swedish natives. So, these were probably even better than we thought. Chernobyl was brilliant too. I thought we were talking about multi-series examples, not one or two. But it is true I don't watch a whole heap of telly.
I speak Danish and Swedish so was able to follow them both. An issue with the subtitltes is that they were sexed up - the detectives would say something like "What exactly do you mean?" and the subtitle would say "What the fuck do you mean?" The subtitler defended the changes by saying that British audiences would think that police who don't swear were implausible, which is a bit depressing if true,
Danish actually doesn't have sexual swear words, though young Danes borrow the English words - Danish doesn't get much rougher than "shit" and "devil". Whether that relates to the famous and long-standing Danish tolerance of sexual behaviour is an interesting question - maybe if you think that most kinds of sex are just a great part of life, then saying "fuck" in a negative sense is a bit pointless?
But yes, great series anyway!
Norwegian as well.
Fy faen is usually translated as 'for fucks sake' or similar. But faen actually means devil. I don't think the Norwegians have any sexually based swear words. They just use the English ones instead.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
I loved the Killing but we did not get all of it, the sub-titles gave us a couple of sentences when it was clear a lot more was going on. The same with The Bridge - there was a sustained joke in that about the way Swedes and Danes speak that was totally inaccessible to non-Danish/Swedish natives. So, these were probably even better than we thought. Chernobyl was brilliant too. I thought we were talking about multi-series examples, not one or two. But it is true I don't watch a whole heap of telly.
I speak Danish and Swedish so was able to follow them both. An issue with the subtitltes is that they were sexed up - the detectives would say something like "What exactly do you mean?" and the subtitle would say "What the fuck do you mean?" The subtitler defended the changes by saying that British audiences would think that police who don't swear were implausible, which is a bit depressing if true,
Danish actually doesn't have sexual swear words, though young Danes borrow the English words - Danish doesn't get much rougher than "shit" and "devil". Whether that relates to the famous and long-standing Danish tolerance of sexual behaviour is an interesting question - maybe if you think that most kinds of sex are just a great part of life, then saying "fuck" in a negative sense is a bit pointless?
But yes, great series anyway!
That's disappointing. I would have thought part of the attraction of such a series for an English audience would have been the window into a different culture.
The banter between Danes and Swedes was lost in the subtitling. Brit audience just assumed they were all speaking Scandinavian.
Gives a Labour majority of 92, which would be smaller not only than Labour's majorities in 1997 and 2001 but also their majorities in 1945 and 1966. Best Tory poll for weeks
Did you forget to mention this is the Gold standard pollster too, that one that gets it right when everyone else gets it so wrong? The regular community note we give your seat numbers though, you factor in zero tactical voting?
BJO asks us to explain this -5 Labour +2 Tory huge change poll just 12% lead , I can’t. Other than it’s a movement month on month. Except to say maybe the Conservatives relentless campaigning for May 2nd General Election will show signs it’s working, swingback and closing the gap in one poll first before all others at some point.
My question to all you in the Conservative Party, are you picking up on anything that suggests May 2nd GE? My Dad isn’t, he’s convinced it’s October or Later, so doesn’t subscribe to my theory at all.
Savanta had a 14 point Labour lead a couple of weeks ago. It went up to 19 last week and has now come down again. It's basically a reversion to mean from a pollster that generally scores Labour lower. If the poll is right, the Tories should comfortably hold Wellingborough on Thursday.
Trouble is that "Labour still very comfortably ahead" doesn't get journalistic juices flowing whereas "Labour lead tumbles, there's still a story here folks" does.
After all, a three point MOE (even if they are systematically wrong, they're hopefully consistent with themselves) means that a five point change is just about interesting. But only just.
I know why that is - it is because it really was conceived as a standalone season. One season of great drama
But then it proved so popular that by episode 9 of season 1 the producers told the writers to rework the ending of season 1 to provide cliffhangers and untied plotlines that would then segue to season 2
The result, they fucked up the end of season 1 (after a great initial 8 or 9 episodes) and then season 2 was poor anyway
FWIW I do not think the Golden Age of TV has ended
We have just had Succession, which for me is as good as Breaking Bad or Sopranos, and much better than The Wire (overrated)
We have just had The Great, possibly the funniest show ever made?
The Bear is weirdly weirdly brilliant, and is in the middle of its run
I've only finished Griselda two nights ago, it's not genius but it is excellent. And so on and so forth
I think we have simply got USED to great TV, so we are more blase and complacent, or we demand more
The volume of TV produced has greatly increased, so the density of great TV has reduced, even if there is as much as before.
Everyone gets very nostalgic about TV. How great it was in the Sixties, seventies, eighties etc etc.
People happily, nostalgically, remember stuff like Dad's Army and I Clavdivs, but no one remembers Come Back Mrs Noah or The Crezz or the rest of the drivel that was on offer at the time.
I don't think anyone will look back on Mrs. Brown's Boys, affectionately.
I will! How many series do you know where the whole family can shout in unison "You know she's married to his daughter" and it makes perfect sense. Honestly, you'll go after "Call The Midwife" next. "It was Christmas in Nonnatus House and all was quiet, but then..."
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
I loved the Killing but we did not get all of it, the sub-titles gave us a couple of sentences when it was clear a lot more was going on. The same with The Bridge - there was a sustained joke in that about the way Swedes and Danes speak that was totally inaccessible to non-Danish/Swedish natives. So, these were probably even better than we thought. Chernobyl was brilliant too. I thought we were talking about multi-series examples, not one or two. But it is true I don't watch a whole heap of telly.
I speak Danish and Swedish so was able to follow them both. An issue with the subtitltes is that they were sexed up - the detectives would say something like "What exactly do you mean?" and the subtitle would say "What the fuck do you mean?" The subtitler defended the changes by saying that British audiences would think that police who don't swear were implausible, which is a bit depressing if true,
Danish actually doesn't have sexual swear words, though young Danes borrow the English words - Danish doesn't get much rougher than "shit" and "devil". Whether that relates to the famous and long-standing Danish tolerance of sexual behaviour is an interesting question - maybe if you think that most kinds of sex are just a great part of life, then saying "fuck" in a negative sense is a bit pointless?
But yes, great series anyway!
Interesting. When we talk about books there's an acknowledgement that it's a particular translation. Perhaps this needs to be more clearly attributed with subtitles. The defence for changing words seems silly. The whole point is that people are knowingly watching a drama featuring characters who's cultural norms may be different to your own.
Zuckerberg expected Apple’s headset to be better: "after using it, I don't just think that Quest is the better value. I think Quest is the better product period."
Want an end to civilian casualties? Then there's a simple solution: Hamas lays down their arms unconditionally and releases the hostages. Otherwise the war continues.
Exactly what David Cameron (pbuh) said yesterday in the HoL.
And we know that DC can say or do no wrong.
But ever civilian casualty recruits more people into Hamas rather than sitting on the sidelines.
Even before you see the complete lack of hope that Israel is offering everyone in Gaza which again will be pushing people towards actively supporting Hamas because they’ve got nothing else so they may as well.
Indeed. Nor do they offer any hope to Palestinians in the West Bank either. Nor that much to Arab Israelis.
The conflict in Northern Ireland was ended because the conditions of the Catholic population were improved. The conflict in the Basque country was ended because the conditions of the Basque population were improved. And so on.
Israel removed its military and settlements from Gaza in 2005.
From then on Gaza was the responsibility of the people who lived there.
What did they achieve apart from doubling its population.
Overpopulating doesn't improve conditions.
Hamas has done little to improve the condition of the people in Gaza. Nothing I wrote was supportive of Hamas. You, however, are misinformed about the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Gaza has long been blockaded by Israel (and, of course, a blockade is a casus belli according to Israel in 1967). It was not an independent statelet. It was still heavily under the control of Israel.
Also, Gaza is part of Palestine. It's good that Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, but Israel was and is still in the West Bank, building illegal settlements and oppressing the local population.
- Israel does not control all entrances and exits from Gaza and therefore cannot "blockade" it. You would need to say that "Gaza has long been blockaded by Israel and Egypt, which doesn't change the facts on the ground but obviously weakens your point significantly. - Clearly, Israel hasn't been "blockading" Gaza very effectively, given the amount of weaponry that's got in. - "Gaza is part of Palestine": says who, exactly? Sure, it was part of the mandate, but then occupied by Egypt for nearly 20 years. Why is everyone so obsessed with preserving all borders as they were at the end of WW2, forever, regardless of changes in circumstances?
The people of Gaza consider themselves one with the people of the West Bank. That is also the view of pretty much every country in the world, and the UN.
"Why is everyone so obsessed with preserving all borders as they were at the end of WW2, forever, regardless of changes in circumstances?" The preservation of borders is central to the rules-based international order that has been widely seen as the best way of keeping the peace for over 70 years. Borders can and do change peacefully with agreement of the peoples affected. Attempts to change borders without consent are illegal under international law.
The Philadelphia Corridor is patrolled by Egypt, not Israel, and there's also a massive wall the Egyptians have built along the entire length of their border, so I assume you've been relying on Wikipedia to disprove my position and misinterpreted what you read.
On the borders, the point is that there isn't one - the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected opportunities to define them, so there's no reason to preserve something that doesn't actually exist. There's no way to get a contiguous Palestinian state (including both the West Bank and Gaza) whilst preserving Israel's borders, and there's also no reason to, since they haven't been part of the territory since 1948. It makes way more sense to separate them and work towards a three state solution - Gaza has the advantage of no Israeli settlements, and therefore no difficult negotiations on land. It could be granted statehood tomorrow if all the terrorists were expelled and reasonable guarantees provided on Israeli (and Egyptian) security.
The buffer zone was created by Israel, and is patrolled now by Egypt under an agreement with Israel. Sure, criticise Egypt too if you want, but Palestine or Gaza have no control over their own border. Israel ensured that. One can argue they had good reason to do that. My point is that Gaza has not been allowed to be anything like a real independent state, as was implied.
There are several countries in the world that are not contiguous, including Russia, Azerbaijan, Equatorial Guinea and, on a much smaller scale, India, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Bangladesh. A 3-state solution is a ludicrous situation and not going to happen. The current Israeli administration is not interested in granting statehood, whatever guarantees are provided.
Why did no one tell me about the Apple Series FOR ALL MANKIND
It's fantastic. Admittedly, I have only watched one episode, but it is brilliant
The bait and switch on the moon landing is GENIUS
I've seen 3 episodes, and although it's well done, I'm beginning to suspect that after an intriguing opening it's descending into a slow-moving soap opera that they will milk for as many episodes as they can in the typical way. So I'm probably not going any further unless I hear different.
If you're on Apple + I can highly recommend Shrinking featuring a great turn by Harrison Ford as a grumpy old man.
Ach. dammit
That is my big fear
So many series now do this. Start with great promise, then fade away HORRIBLY
I have had to abandon three dramas in recent months for this reason. GRRR
Yes, it's very annoying. And sometimes the opposite happens - eg I was still enjoying The Path after 3 seasons (though it had got a bit slushy), and they didn't make any more despite the story clearly being unfinished.
I would say For All Mankind is still entertaining after 3 episodes but 7 seasons are planned, and I don't want to get hooked into having to know what happens because it's too much of a time commitment for me...
Rotten Tomatoes - which is modestly reliable - insists it contnues well into seasons 2 and 3. I shall persist for now
The worst of the recent bunch was Money Heist, which started cleverly and elegantly, but described a perfect smooth arc of descent into inanity, plot holes, non sequiturs, stupid characters and tedious distractions
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters immediately went from quite good in episode 1 to SHITE by ep 3, and stayed there
Let us know how it goes!
It took me 2 and a half seasons to give up on Mad Men.
I've never seen an episode of Lost, or The Crown, or Game of Thrones (probably too violent for me), or Eastenders. Maybe I am commitment-phobic.
Never heard of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I saw Money Heist advertised - it looked interesting but my wife can't be bothered with subtitles, and I refuse to watch anything dubbed (if it was even available) so didn't bother. Won't now.
Mad Men was great, until about season 4 or 5 (most dramas collapse by seasons 4 or 5, if they get that far - it is an actual rule, with very few exceptions)
The first season of the Crown is superb, second jolly good, then increasingly bad
Game of Thrones is sui generis. I loved it, mostly, even while finding the plot absurdly complex and difficult to comprehend, it had that knack that, just when you felt like abandoning it for its labyrinthine complexity, it would have a brilliant scene with clever lines, or a spectacular battle sequence, or just the midget being funny
Great actors helped; also good characterisation
I thought Mad Men was brilliant all the way through. It just got the 60s perfectly from beginning to end. The Wire and the Sopranos were sustained brilliance too. Those three stand head and shoulders above all else.
Breaking Bad, too.
Better Call Saul was quality almost throughout, although for me, it ended poorly.
I always forget Breaking Bad - but you're right, of course. Better Call Saul nearly got there.
For me it's about whether you can go back time after time and still enjoy it. You can with those four.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
Agreed; The Killing was superb. How many have you rewatched, though ?
Not many, in my case.
I rewatched West Wing with my kids quite some time ago, to educate them in the mechanics of US politics (which was great fun), and much more recently 6FD, which was every bit as good the second time round.
I don't count rewatching as any kind of metric. Life is too short (to my mind) to rewatch TV drama, especially when there is so much good NEW stuff
The only novel I have reread is Ulysses, otherwise no way do I reread a book
I will watch old movies again, as we discussed the other day, but more out of the comfort they bring
And yet I will relisten to favourite music and reread favourite poems ALL THE TIME
Quite strange. Some brilliant Philosopher of Aesthetics should write a book explaining why some arts can be re-experiened with pleasure, and some not. At least from my POV
Fiction, written or screened, relies heavily on the pleasure of not knowing what will happen, whereas with music, especially music with a bit of complexity to it, knowing what will happen increases the enjoyment hugely. With serious classical music it’s rare for a piece to grab you first time, because it requires repeated listening to properly enjoy. Because music is about understanding patterns and structure and links; with popular music, the hook is obvious, hence why it is called popular. With complex music these take time to puzzle out.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
I loved the Killing but we did not get all of it, the sub-titles gave us a couple of sentences when it was clear a lot more was going on. The same with The Bridge - there was a sustained joke in that about the way Swedes and Danes speak that was totally inaccessible to non-Danish/Swedish natives. So, these were probably even better than we thought. Chernobyl was brilliant too. I thought we were talking about multi-series examples, not one or two. But it is true I don't watch a whole heap of telly.
I speak Danish and Swedish so was able to follow them both. An issue with the subtitltes is that they were sexed up - the detectives would say something like "What exactly do you mean?" and the subtitle would say "What the fuck do you mean?" The subtitler defended the changes by saying that British audiences would think that police who don't swear were implausible, which is a bit depressing if true,
Danish actually doesn't have sexual swear words, though young Danes borrow the English words - Danish doesn't get much rougher than "shit" and "devil". Whether that relates to the famous and long-standing Danish tolerance of sexual behaviour is an interesting question - maybe if you think that most kinds of sex are just a great part of life, then saying "fuck" in a negative sense is a bit pointless?
But yes, great series anyway!
Norwegian as well.
Fy faen is usually translated as 'for fucks sake' or similar. But faen actually means devil. I don't think the Norwegians have any sexually based swear words. They just use the English ones instead.
In Spain the worst swear words relate to religion and mothers. Tu madre, your mother, is a terrible insult, though funnily enough de puta madre means something is very good. The F'ing and blinding are everyday. When I lived there, I would hear parents calling their kids c***s and nobody batter an eyelid. It was regularly used on television and in the press. I remember Paul Gascoigne getting sent off in a game in England for calling the referee that and there being a big article in El Pais about how the Anglo-Saxons are so prudish!
FWIW I do not think the Golden Age of TV has ended
We have just had Succession, which for me is as good as Breaking Bad or Sopranos, and much better than The Wire (overrated)
We have just had The Great, possibly the funniest show ever made?
The Bear is weirdly weirdly brilliant, and is in the middle of its run
I've only finished Griselda two nights ago, it's not genius but it is excellent. And so on and so forth
I think we have simply got USED to great TV, so we are more blase and complacent, or we demand more
The volume of TV produced has greatly increased, so the density of great TV has reduced, even if there is as much as before.
Everyone gets very nostalgic about TV. How great it was in the Sixties, seventies, eighties etc etc.
People happily, nostalgically, remember stuff like Dad's Army and I Clavdivs, but no one remembers Come Back Mrs Noah or The Crezz or the rest of the drivel that was on offer at the time.
I don't think anyone will look back on Mrs. Brown's Boys, affectionately.
I recently re-read Kill Your Friends, John Niven's novel about a vile, amoral A&R in the 90s, at the height of Britpop.
Our protagonist Stephen Stelfox - loosely based on Simon Cowell, supposedly - says something along the lines of 'there are millions upon millions of people in the UK who buy four CDs a year from the supermarket, who want to be able to hear all the words. These people far outweigh the couple of hundred thousand people who might buy the latest critically acclaimed album.'
That's true, and that explains the enduring success of Mrs Brown's Boys. There are millions upon millions of people out there who don't want to watch The Killing, or The Wire, or The Sopranos. Or Breaking Bad. They don't want to be challenged, they don't want to have to work at understanding something, analysing its sub-texts, considering its sociological impact, all that jazz.
They want a gentle comedy that reflects their own loves - a close family, who clearly love each other, who's lives are intimately intertwined, who get into scrapes and arguments but who ultimately come together and love each other and everything ends happily.
The critics don't like Mrs Brown's Boys, the middle-class cultural gatekeepers sneer at this depiction of working-class life. But for millions of people that's the life they live, that's the kind of family they would like to have. And Mrs Brown's Boys reflects that.
These people don't post on PB. These people would be overjoyed to have the kind of identikit new build Barrett boxes that draw such gasps of horror from the sophisticated aesthetes who shudder at new estates, and their quote of affordable housing, being built near them.
And I get it. I don't romanticise the working-classes I come from. They're just as frustrating, as vibrant and dull, as intelligent and as stupid, as outgoing and parochial, as curious and incurious, as different and uncategorisable as any mass of people.
But millions of these people love Michael Macintyre. And Mrs Brown's Boys. And all the other dreck that infects mainstream TV channels. The antiques shows, the property porn shows, etc, etc, etc.
Gives a Labour majority of 92, which would be smaller not only than Labour's majorities in 1997 and 2001 but also their majorities in 1945 and 1966. Best Tory poll for weeks
Did you forget to mention this is the Gold standard pollster too, that one that gets it right when everyone else gets it so wrong? The regular community note we give your seat numbers though, you factor in zero tactical voting?
BJO asks us to explain this -5 Labour +2 Tory huge change poll just 12% lead , I can’t. Other than it’s a movement month on month. Except to say maybe the Conservatives relentless campaigning for May 2nd General Election will show signs it’s working, swingback and closing the gap in one poll first before all others at some point.
My question to all you in the Conservative Party, are you picking up on anything that suggests May 2nd GE? My Dad isn’t, he’s convinced it’s October or Later, so doesn’t subscribe to my theory at all.
Savanta had a 14 point Labour lead a couple of weeks ago. It went up to 19 last week and has now come down again. It's basically a reversion to mean from a pollster that generally scores Labour lower. If the poll is right, the Tories should comfortably hold Wellingborough on Thursday.
I keep getting Savanta and Survation muddled 🤦♀️ I’ve got a mental block on that one.
However, I am right, if the polls “turn” one poll will report it first before all the others catch up - and we will all look at it is an outlier, not start of a trend. 😇
Strange, Guido and his pals were fine with ‘unsophisticated support’ for Project Brexit.
Guido posts racism about muslims shock.
My perception (which may be wrong) is that antisemitism is more pronounced in muslim communities. Are you saying that is wrong? Fine. The implication in Guido's point is that the numbers of muslims vastly outweighs Jews and thus appealing too members of the muslim community (selecting muslim candidates etc). The downside is that some seem to hold rather dodgy views.
I agree, partially. And this would be entirely true of his statement if he'd removed the words "sophisticated" and "unsophisticated".
Your point doesn't address the use of those words.
Doesn't unsophisticated and sophisticated relate to the support? I don't think he needed to bring Jewish voters into it. The point is, Labour want the Muslim block vote.
Don't you think Starmer would have been somewhat more critical of Israel and more pro-Palestinian over Gaza if this were the case? His stance has alienated many Muslim voters, for now.
Labour is more than just Starmer, the likes of Ali etc are a part of Labour too, or Ali was until a few days ago. And yes, unfortunately, some elements of Labour absolutely appeal based on antisemitic and religious desires which are unfit for 21st Century secular Britain.
Starmer recently has been better than his party. I hope that continues, but that does not mean there are not still problems within his party.
The fact that you think Starmer cracking down on antisemitism is alienating Muslim voters speaks volumes unfortunately.
Our politics will be much more healthy when the idea of appealing to "Muslim" voters is gone and buried and Muslims are treated with respect as secular individuals and not as zealots who hate Jews over mundane secular policies like education, health, tax, the economy etc.
If it is alienating voters who are anti-Semitic then I back him 100%. I don't want these arseholes voting Labour.
Well said. And if he does follow through like that, then he'll lose their votes but probably win mine which is still up for grabs.
Why did no one tell me about the Apple Series FOR ALL MANKIND
It's fantastic. Admittedly, I have only watched one episode, but it is brilliant
The bait and switch on the moon landing is GENIUS
I've seen 3 episodes, and although it's well done, I'm beginning to suspect that after an intriguing opening it's descending into a slow-moving soap opera that they will milk for as many episodes as they can in the typical way. So I'm probably not going any further unless I hear different.
If you're on Apple + I can highly recommend Shrinking featuring a great turn by Harrison Ford as a grumpy old man.
Ach. dammit
That is my big fear
So many series now do this. Start with great promise, then fade away HORRIBLY
I have had to abandon three dramas in recent months for this reason. GRRR
Yes, it's very annoying. And sometimes the opposite happens - eg I was still enjoying The Path after 3 seasons (though it had got a bit slushy), and they didn't make any more despite the story clearly being unfinished.
I would say For All Mankind is still entertaining after 3 episodes but 7 seasons are planned, and I don't want to get hooked into having to know what happens because it's too much of a time commitment for me...
Rotten Tomatoes - which is modestly reliable - insists it contnues well into seasons 2 and 3. I shall persist for now
The worst of the recent bunch was Money Heist, which started cleverly and elegantly, but described a perfect smooth arc of descent into inanity, plot holes, non sequiturs, stupid characters and tedious distractions
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters immediately went from quite good in episode 1 to SHITE by ep 3, and stayed there
Let us know how it goes!
It took me 2 and a half seasons to give up on Mad Men.
I've never seen an episode of Lost, or The Crown, or Game of Thrones (probably too violent for me), or Eastenders. Maybe I am commitment-phobic.
Never heard of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I saw Money Heist advertised - it looked interesting but my wife can't be bothered with subtitles, and I refuse to watch anything dubbed (if it was even available) so didn't bother. Won't now.
Mad Men was great, until about season 4 or 5 (most dramas collapse by seasons 4 or 5, if they get that far - it is an actual rule, with very few exceptions)
The first season of the Crown is superb, second jolly good, then increasingly bad
Game of Thrones is sui generis. I loved it, mostly, even while finding the plot absurdly complex and difficult to comprehend, it had that knack that, just when you felt like abandoning it for its labyrinthine complexity, it would have a brilliant scene with clever lines, or a spectacular battle sequence, or just the midget being funny
Great actors helped; also good characterisation
I thought Mad Men was brilliant all the way through. It just got the 60s perfectly from beginning to end. The Wire and the Sopranos were sustained brilliance too. Those three stand head and shoulders above all else.
Breaking Bad, too.
Better Call Saul was quality almost throughout, although for me, it ended poorly.
I always forget Breaking Bad - but you're right, of course. Better Call Saul nearly got there.
For me it's about whether you can go back time after time and still enjoy it. You can with those four.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
Agreed; The Killing was superb. How many have you rewatched, though ?
Not many, in my case.
I rewatched West Wing with my kids quite some time ago, to educate them in the mechanics of US politics (which was great fun), and much more recently 6FD, which was every bit as good the second time round.
I don't count rewatching as any kind of metric. Life is too short (to my mind) to rewatch TV drama, especially when there is so much good NEW stuff
The only novel I have reread is Ulysses, otherwise no way do I reread a book
I will watch old movies again, as we discussed the other day, but more out of the comfort they bring
And yet I will relisten to favourite music and reread favourite poems ALL THE TIME
Quite strange. Some brilliant Philosopher of Aesthetics should write a book explaining why some arts can be re-experiened with pleasure, and some not. At least from my POV
Fiction, written or screened, relies heavily on the pleasure of not knowing what will happen, whereas with music, especially music with a bit of complexity to it, knowing what will happen increases the enjoyment hugely. With serious classical music it’s rare for a piece to grab you first time, because it requires repeated listening to properly enjoy.
Yes, I think you are bang on
Fiction and drama rely on STORY, once you know the story, much of the pleasure is gone
Poetry and music do not rely on story, they rely on beauty and complexity, which can often intensify over renewed encounters - you see beauties and complexities you missed
Noticeably, the one novel I have re-read, Ulysses, famously has no story at all, but is extremely beautiful and complex
OMG I think people could be right. The golden age of TV could well be over.
If you were to put a gun to my head and say "I need to watch 10 things recommendations please" I'm not sure I would include any current series.
I note that Fargo has a new season which I am quietly confident and hopeful of because the other seasons were so masterful but other than that?
Not sure. The new Black Mirror is half strength compared with previous series, and all the other excellent series have finished. I've just got Apple so am looking forward to Slow Horses but other than that?
It's up to whichever is the new BBC police procedural. I v much wish Adeel Akhtar (note: a(nother) Four Lions graduate) had got a spin off with his sidekick for Fool Me Once and I can't think of anything else.
No more Top Boy, Fauda (although perhaps they were on location recently in a hospital setting), Boiling Point (so much better than The Bear), which have all recently finished.
FWIW I do not think the Golden Age of TV has ended
We have just had Succession, which for me is as good as Breaking Bad or Sopranos, and much better than The Wire (overrated)
We have just had The Great, possibly the funniest show ever made?
The Bear is weirdly weirdly brilliant, and is in the middle of its run
I've only finished Griselda two nights ago, it's not genius but it is excellent. And so on and so forth
I think we have simply got USED to great TV, so we are more blase and complacent, or we demand more
The volume of TV produced has greatly increased, so the density of great TV has reduced, even if there is as much as before.
Everyone gets very nostalgic about TV. How great it was in the Sixties, seventies, eighties etc etc.
People happily, nostalgically, remember stuff like Dad's Army and I Clavdivs, but no one remembers Come Back Mrs Noah or The Crezz or the rest of the drivel that was on offer at the time.
I don't think anyone will look back on Mrs. Brown's Boys, affectionately.
I recently re-read Kill Your Friends, John Niven's novel about a vile, amoral A&R in the 90s, at the height of Britpop.
Our protagonist Stephen Stelfox - loosely based on Simon Cowell, supposedly - says something along the lines of 'there are millions upon millions of people in the UK who buy four CDs a year from the supermarket, who want to be able to hear all the words. These people far outweigh the couple of hundred thousand people who might buy the latest critically acclaimed album.'
That's true, and that explains the enduring success of Mrs Brown's Boys. There are millions upon millions of people out there who don't want to watch The Killing, or The Wire, or The Sopranos. Or Breaking Bad. They don't want to be challenged, they don't want to have to work at understanding something, analysing its sub-texts, considering its sociological impact, all that jazz.
They want a gentle comedy that reflects their own loves - a close family, who clearly love each other, who's lives are intimately intertwined, who get into scrapes and arguments but who ultimately come together and love each other and everything ends happily.
The critics don't like Mrs Brown's Boys, the middle-class cultural gatekeepers sneer at this depiction of working-class life. But for millions of people that's the life they live, that's the kind of family they would like to have. And Mrs Brown's Boys reflects that.
These people don't post on PB. These people would be overjoyed to have the kind of identikit new build Barrett boxes that draw such gasps of horror from the sophisticated aesthetes who shudder at new estates, and their quote of affordable housing, being built near them.
And I get it. I don't romanticise the working-classes I come from. They're just as frustrating, as vibrant and dull, as intelligent and as stupid, as outgoing and parochial, as curious and incurious, as different and uncategorisable as any mass of people.
But millions of these people love Michael Macintyre. And Mrs Brown's Boys. And all the other dreck that infects mainstream TV channels. The antiques shows, the property porn shows, etc, etc, etc.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
I loved the Killing but we did not get all of it, the sub-titles gave us a couple of sentences when it was clear a lot more was going on. The same with The Bridge - there was a sustained joke in that about the way Swedes and Danes speak that was totally inaccessible to non-Danish/Swedish natives. So, these were probably even better than we thought. Chernobyl was brilliant too. I thought we were talking about multi-series examples, not one or two. But it is true I don't watch a whole heap of telly.
I speak Danish and Swedish so was able to follow them both. An issue with the subtitltes is that they were sexed up - the detectives would say something like "What exactly do you mean?" and the subtitle would say "What the fuck do you mean?" The subtitler defended the changes by saying that British audiences would think that police who don't swear were implausible, which is a bit depressing if true,
Danish actually doesn't have sexual swear words, though young Danes borrow the English words - Danish doesn't get much rougher than "shit" and "devil". Whether that relates to the famous and long-standing Danish tolerance of sexual behaviour is an interesting question - maybe if you think that most kinds of sex are just a great part of life, then saying "fuck" in a negative sense is a bit pointless?
But yes, great series anyway!
Korean is a bit like that (although they do have "fuck" etc). Because it's a language based around formality, something like "are you mad" can be swearing.
Russian appears to be the only language as good as English for swearing.
🗓 On February 13-14, 1945 the USA & the UK carried out barbarian bombing of Dresden.
❗️ The area of the city completely destroyed by the air raid was 4 times larger than that of Nagasaki after the US atomic bombing.
How’s about Rostov-on-Don for this year then, or is that a little too small? Pehaps Volgograd instead?
Peter the "Great" killed far more people -c 300,000- building the City of St. Petersburg in a swamp. The hypocrisy is faintly comic, and reminds us that the USSR was a formal ally of Nazi Germany for nearly 2 years until June 1941.
Russians appear to be in real denial that they were Hitler's friends for the first couple of years of WW2 (from the British/French perspective of when the war started).
The Russian invasion of Poland - in collaboration with the Nazis - at the beginning of the war is also something that seems to get skated over. I wonder how - or if - it is taught in Russian schools.
There are also shows which have one or maybe two briliant seasons, but then turn to shit, how do you classify them? Are they great or disasters?
Westworld is the classic example. Fabulous opening season. oh dear oh dear what happened then
Also Homeland, and Peaky Blinders, and the Crown
Have you seen Better Call Saul and Ozarks?
I've enjoyed SAUL, but it doesn't rank in my greats. He is a fantastic character, tho. I didn't like Ozark, perhaps I might try again, if I utterly run out!
I couldn't find anybody sympathetic or interesting (even as villain) in Ozark. I was put off Narcos by a really nasty rape scene, quite early on..
I quite liked Ozark. I have just started The Morning Show and it's a similar thing (so far) - they are all sh1ts and you want them all to fail horribly.
OMG I think people could be right. The golden age of TV could well be over.
If you were to put a gun to my head and say "I need to watch 10 things recommendations please" I'm not sure I would include any current series.
I note that Fargo has a new season which I am quietly confident and hopeful of because the other seasons were so masterful but other than that?
Not sure. The new Black Mirror is half strength compared with previous series, and all the other excellent series have finished. I've just got Apple so am looking forward to Slow Horses but other than that?
It's up to whichever is the new BBC police procedural. I v much wish Adeel Akhtar (note: a(nother) Four Lions graduate) had got a spin off with his sidekick for Fool Me Once and I can't think of anything else.
No more Top Boy, Fauda (although perhaps they were on location recently in a hospital setting), Boiling Point (so much better than The Bear), which have all recently finished.
Dear god I might have to watch Reacher.
Though sometimes it takes a few years for great TV to become well known and spoken about, with Black Mirror etc we're inevitably speaking about shows a few years in.
A great miniseries I saw recently was Fool Me Once. Short series but I would highly recommend.
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
OMG I think people could be right. The golden age of TV could well be over.
If you were to put a gun to my head and say "I need to watch 10 things recommendations please" I'm not sure I would include any current series.
I note that Fargo has a new season which I am quietly confident and hopeful of because the other seasons were so masterful but other than that?
Not sure. The new Black Mirror is half strength compared with previous series, and all the other excellent series have finished. I've just got Apple so am looking forward to Slow Horses but other than that?
It's up to whichever is the new BBC police procedural. I v much wish Adeel Akhtar (note: a(nother) Four Lions graduate) had got a spin off with his sidekick for Fool Me Once and I can't think of anything else.
No more Top Boy, Fauda (although perhaps they were on location recently in a hospital setting), Boiling Point (so much better than The Bear), which have all recently finished.
Dear god I might have to watch Reacher.
Reacher season 1: solid and watchable
I am afraid season 2 is crap
The Bear is brilliant, have you seen that?
Trouble is it is only ten eps of half hour each per season. It's like a canape, too quickly consumed
Edit: I see you reference the Bear, negatively. TUT. The Bear is masterful.
OMG I think people could be right. The golden age of TV could well be over.
If you were to put a gun to my head and say "I need to watch 10 things recommendations please" I'm not sure I would include any current series.
I note that Fargo has a new season which I am quietly confident and hopeful of because the other seasons were so masterful but other than that?
Not sure. The new Black Mirror is half strength compared with previous series, and all the other excellent series have finished. I've just got Apple so am looking forward to Slow Horses but other than that?
It's up to whichever is the new BBC police procedural. I v much wish Adeel Akhtar (note: a(nother) Four Lions graduate) had got a spin off with his sidekick for Fool Me Once and I can't think of anything else.
No more Top Boy, Fauda (although perhaps they were on location recently in a hospital setting), Boiling Point (so much better than The Bear), which have all recently finished.
Dear god I might have to watch Reacher.
Though sometimes it takes a few years for great TV to become well known and spoken about.
A great miniseries I saw recently was Fool Me Once. Short series but I would highly recommend.
Yep noted in my post. I wish Adeel Akhtar and his young colleague had got a spin off. They might just still.
Why did no one tell me about the Apple Series FOR ALL MANKIND
It's fantastic. Admittedly, I have only watched one episode, but it is brilliant
The bait and switch on the moon landing is GENIUS
There's actually an entire subgenre of SF (it has a name, but I forget it) of stories about 'the space program would have been so much more successful if x had(n't) happened'. Wish fulfillment for space nerds,which does include me, but I am a bit tired of these now.
Alternate History. The site alternatehistory.com covers it, including my only incidence[1] of fanfiction. The genre contains many attractors/cliches, including "Nazis win WWII", "Confederacy wins AC1", and "USSR wins space race".
No, it's not alternate history that covers the whole gamut. There is a SPECIFIC name for SF about the space race and what could have been better. It had a heyday a decade or two back, and is now a bit of a cliche
And to respond to @Leon Joyce is the only author I have re-read. You have to read Portrait of the Artist and/or Dubliners every year or three to keep you sane.
FWIW I do not think the Golden Age of TV has ended
We have just had Succession, which for me is as good as Breaking Bad or Sopranos, and much better than The Wire (overrated)
We have just had The Great, possibly the funniest show ever made?
The Bear is weirdly weirdly brilliant, and is in the middle of its run
I've only finished Griselda two nights ago, it's not genius but it is excellent. And so on and so forth
I think we have simply got USED to great TV, so we are more blase and complacent, or we demand more
The volume of TV produced has greatly increased, so the density of great TV has reduced, even if there is as much as before.
Everyone gets very nostalgic about TV. How great it was in the Sixties, seventies, eighties etc etc.
People happily, nostalgically, remember stuff like Dad's Army and I Clavdivs, but no one remembers Come Back Mrs Noah or The Crezz or the rest of the drivel that was on offer at the time.
I don't think anyone will look back on Mrs. Brown's Boys, affectionately.
I recently re-read Kill Your Friends, John Niven's novel about a vile, amoral A&R in the 90s, at the height of Britpop.
Our protagonist Stephen Stelfox - loosely based on Simon Cowell, supposedly - says something along the lines of 'there are millions upon millions of people in the UK who buy four CDs a year from the supermarket, who want to be able to hear all the words. These people far outweigh the couple of hundred thousand people who might buy the latest critically acclaimed album.'
That's true, and that explains the enduring success of Mrs Brown's Boys. There are millions upon millions of people out there who don't want to watch The Killing, or The Wire, or The Sopranos. Or Breaking Bad. They don't want to be challenged, they don't want to have to work at understanding something, analysing its sub-texts, considering its sociological impact, all that jazz.
They want a gentle comedy that reflects their own loves - a close family, who clearly love each other, who's lives are intimately intertwined, who get into scrapes and arguments but who ultimately come together and love each other and everything ends happily.
The critics don't like Mrs Brown's Boys, the middle-class cultural gatekeepers sneer at this depiction of working-class life. But for millions of people that's the life they live, that's the kind of family they would like to have. And Mrs Brown's Boys reflects that.
These people don't post on PB. These people would be overjoyed to have the kind of identikit new build Barrett boxes that draw such gasps of horror from the sophisticated aesthetes who shudder at new estates, and their quote of affordable housing, being built near them.
And I get it. I don't romanticise the working-classes I come from. They're just as frustrating, as vibrant and dull, as intelligent and as stupid, as outgoing and parochial, as curious and incurious, as different and uncategorisable as any mass of people.
But millions of these people love Michael Macintyre. And Mrs Brown's Boys. And all the other dreck that infects mainstream TV channels. The antiques shows, the property porn shows, etc, etc, etc.
Humanity, eh? Fascinating.
No, they're just fucking idiots
Haha, you little tinker. You're just trying to wind me up.
You ever met Niven? Perhaps Stelfox isn't based on Cowell after all...
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
Just another example of the ugliness brought by religious extremist peasant families to the UK as a result of terrible immigration policies. Sunak's immigration reforms should stop this poor quality immigration. Sadly I suspect Starmer will open the flood gates again.
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
OMG I think people could be right. The golden age of TV could well be over.
If you were to put a gun to my head and say "I need to watch 10 things recommendations please" I'm not sure I would include any current series.
I note that Fargo has a new season which I am quietly confident and hopeful of because the other seasons were so masterful but other than that?
Not sure. The new Black Mirror is half strength compared with previous series, and all the other excellent series have finished. I've just got Apple so am looking forward to Slow Horses but other than that?
It's up to whichever is the new BBC police procedural. I v much wish Adeel Akhtar (note: a(nother) Four Lions graduate) had got a spin off with his sidekick for Fool Me Once and I can't think of anything else.
No more Top Boy, Fauda (although perhaps they were on location recently in a hospital setting), Boiling Point (so much better than The Bear), which have all recently finished.
Dear god I might have to watch Reacher.
Reacher season 1: solid and watchable
I am afraid season 2 is crap
The Bear is brilliant, have you seen that?
Trouble is it is only ten eps of half hour each per season. It's like a canape, too quickly consumed
Edit: I see you reference the Bear, negatively. TUT. The Bear is masterful.
I'll have to give it another go. I bailed early. Have you seen Boiling Point (the series - the film was fantastic)? Really excellent only four episodes sadly but real heart. Hence my comparison with The Bear.
Edit: and Reacher is what it is. You have certainty which sometimes makes up for quality.
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
Also, seven years?!? Can judges be impeached in the UK?
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
So, they basically killed her, in the cruellest way, and they will be out of jail within four years
FWIW I do not think the Golden Age of TV has ended
We have just had Succession, which for me is as good as Breaking Bad or Sopranos, and much better than The Wire (overrated)
We have just had The Great, possibly the funniest show ever made?
The Bear is weirdly weirdly brilliant, and is in the middle of its run
I've only finished Griselda two nights ago, it's not genius but it is excellent. And so on and so forth
I think we have simply got USED to great TV, so we are more blase and complacent, or we demand more
The volume of TV produced has greatly increased, so the density of great TV has reduced, even if there is as much as before.
Everyone gets very nostalgic about TV. How great it was in the Sixties, seventies, eighties etc etc.
People happily, nostalgically, remember stuff like Dad's Army and I Clavdivs, but no one remembers Come Back Mrs Noah or The Crezz or the rest of the drivel that was on offer at the time.
I don't think anyone will look back on Mrs. Brown's Boys, affectionately.
I recently re-read Kill Your Friends, John Niven's novel about a vile, amoral A&R in the 90s, at the height of Britpop.
Our protagonist Stephen Stelfox - loosely based on Simon Cowell, supposedly - says something along the lines of 'there are millions upon millions of people in the UK who buy four CDs a year from the supermarket, who want to be able to hear all the words. These people far outweigh the couple of hundred thousand people who might buy the latest critically acclaimed album.'
That's true, and that explains the enduring success of Mrs Brown's Boys. There are millions upon millions of people out there who don't want to watch The Killing, or The Wire, or The Sopranos. Or Breaking Bad. They don't want to be challenged, they don't want to have to work at understanding something, analysing its sub-texts, considering its sociological impact, all that jazz.
They want a gentle comedy that reflects their own loves - a close family, who clearly love each other, who's lives are intimately intertwined, who get into scrapes and arguments but who ultimately come together and love each other and everything ends happily.
The critics don't like Mrs Brown's Boys, the middle-class cultural gatekeepers sneer at this depiction of working-class life. But for millions of people that's the life they live, that's the kind of family they would like to have. And Mrs Brown's Boys reflects that.
These people don't post on PB. These people would be overjoyed to have the kind of identikit new build Barrett boxes that draw such gasps of horror from the sophisticated aesthetes who shudder at new estates, and their quote of affordable housing, being built near them.
And I get it. I don't romanticise the working-classes I come from. They're just as frustrating, as vibrant and dull, as intelligent and as stupid, as outgoing and parochial, as curious and incurious, as different and uncategorisable as any mass of people.
But millions of these people love Michael Macintyre. And Mrs Brown's Boys. And all the other dreck that infects mainstream TV channels. The antiques shows, the property porn shows, etc, etc, etc.
Why did no one tell me about the Apple Series FOR ALL MANKIND
It's fantastic. Admittedly, I have only watched one episode, but it is brilliant
The bait and switch on the moon landing is GENIUS
I've seen 3 episodes, and although it's well done, I'm beginning to suspect that after an intriguing opening it's descending into a slow-moving soap opera that they will milk for as many episodes as they can in the typical way. So I'm probably not going any further unless I hear different.
If you're on Apple + I can highly recommend Shrinking featuring a great turn by Harrison Ford as a grumpy old man.
Ach. dammit
That is my big fear
So many series now do this. Start with great promise, then fade away HORRIBLY
I have had to abandon three dramas in recent months for this reason. GRRR
Season one was pretty good throughout, in my opinion. Season two also still fairly good and well worth watching. Season three had its moments and remained worth watching, but slower and a bit faded in comparison to the first two. Season four felt flat to me and I really only watched it through inertia.
OK so I should get three seasons of fun. That's good
I'd like to watch Masters of the Air but I CANNOT be arsed with this one episode a week bullshit. What is this, 1976?
If I like a drama I want to watch an episode a night, I don't want to wait A WEEK for the next one, RIDIC
So I will have to wait until the entire thing is broadcast, then watch it in toto
Six Flying Dragons is available on Rakuten Viki. Fifty episodes.
For all Mankind is superb. I really enjoyed it. There's some highly unrealistic stuff just for the drama - like how much time the head of NASA gives to a ten year old maths whizz kid who wants some tuition and too many rather over the top scenes 'macho astro men in bars slamming down the chasers' but overall it is all very well made and clever.
6FD is a fictionalised account of the founding of the Joseon dynasty.
While the storytelling is certainly not, the actual history is pretty accurate.
Even the philosophical debate is dramatically interesting. By the time this guy gets clubbed to death on the Sonjuk bridge, you're rooting for the guy with the flail. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeong_Mong-ju
I misread that as the “founding of the Johnson dynasty”… gave me quite a fright!
OMG I think people could be right. The golden age of TV could well be over.
If you were to put a gun to my head and say "I need to watch 10 things recommendations please" I'm not sure I would include any current series.
I note that Fargo has a new season which I am quietly confident and hopeful of because the other seasons were so masterful but other than that?
Not sure. The new Black Mirror is half strength compared with previous series, and all the other excellent series have finished. I've just got Apple so am looking forward to Slow Horses but other than that?
It's up to whichever is the new BBC police procedural. I v much wish Adeel Akhtar (note: a(nother) Four Lions graduate) had got a spin off with his sidekick for Fool Me Once and I can't think of anything else.
No more Top Boy, Fauda (although perhaps they were on location recently in a hospital setting), Boiling Point (so much better than The Bear), which have all recently finished.
Dear god I might have to watch Reacher.
Reacher season 1: solid and watchable
I am afraid season 2 is crap
The Bear is brilliant, have you seen that?
Trouble is it is only ten eps of half hour each per season. It's like a canape, too quickly consumed
Edit: I see you reference the Bear, negatively. TUT. The Bear is masterful.
I'll have to give it another go. I bailed early. Have you seen Boiling Point (the series - the film was fantastic)? Really excellent only four episodes sadly but real heart. Hence my comparison with The Bear.
Edit: and Reacher is what it is. You have certainty which sometimes makes up for quality.
You obviously know your TV and we might have similar tastes
I am checking out Boiling Point. Are you referring to the movie or the TV series, or suggesting I watch both? Aren't they the same story?
Want an end to civilian casualties? Then there's a simple solution: Hamas lays down their arms unconditionally and releases the hostages. Otherwise the war continues.
Exactly what David Cameron (pbuh) said yesterday in the HoL.
And we know that DC can say or do no wrong.
But ever civilian casualty recruits more people into Hamas rather than sitting on the sidelines.
Even before you see the complete lack of hope that Israel is offering everyone in Gaza which again will be pushing people towards actively supporting Hamas because they’ve got nothing else so they may as well.
Indeed. Nor do they offer any hope to Palestinians in the West Bank either. Nor that much to Arab Israelis.
The conflict in Northern Ireland was ended because the conditions of the Catholic population were improved. The conflict in the Basque country was ended because the conditions of the Basque population were improved. And so on.
Israel removed its military and settlements from Gaza in 2005.
From then on Gaza was the responsibility of the people who lived there.
What did they achieve apart from doubling its population.
Overpopulating doesn't improve conditions.
Hamas has done little to improve the condition of the people in Gaza. Nothing I wrote was supportive of Hamas. You, however, are misinformed about the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Gaza has long been blockaded by Israel (and, of course, a blockade is a casus belli according to Israel in 1967). It was not an independent statelet. It was still heavily under the control of Israel.
Also, Gaza is part of Palestine. It's good that Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, but Israel was and is still in the West Bank, building illegal settlements and oppressing the local population.
- Israel does not control all entrances and exits from Gaza and therefore cannot "blockade" it. You would need to say that "Gaza has long been blockaded by Israel and Egypt, which doesn't change the facts on the ground but obviously weakens your point significantly. - Clearly, Israel hasn't been "blockading" Gaza very effectively, given the amount of weaponry that's got in. - "Gaza is part of Palestine": says who, exactly? Sure, it was part of the mandate, but then occupied by Egypt for nearly 20 years. Why is everyone so obsessed with preserving all borders as they were at the end of WW2, forever, regardless of changes in circumstances?
The people of Gaza consider themselves one with the people of the West Bank. That is also the view of pretty much every country in the world, and the UN.
"Why is everyone so obsessed with preserving all borders as they were at the end of WW2, forever, regardless of changes in circumstances?" The preservation of borders is central to the rules-based international order that has been widely seen as the best way of keeping the peace for over 70 years. Borders can and do change peacefully with agreement of the peoples affected. Attempts to change borders without consent are illegal under international law.
The Philadelphia Corridor is patrolled by Egypt, not Israel, and there's also a massive wall the Egyptians have built along the entire length of their border, so I assume you've been relying on Wikipedia to disprove my position and misinterpreted what you read.
On the borders, the point is that there isn't one - the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected opportunities to define them, so there's no reason to preserve something that doesn't actually exist. There's no way to get a contiguous Palestinian state (including both the West Bank and Gaza) whilst preserving Israel's borders, and there's also no reason to, since they haven't been part of the territory since 1948. It makes way more sense to separate them and work towards a three state solution - Gaza has the advantage of no Israeli settlements, and therefore no difficult negotiations on land. It could be granted statehood tomorrow if all the terrorists were expelled and reasonable guarantees provided on Israeli (and Egyptian) security.
The buffer zone was created by Israel, and is patrolled now by Egypt under an agreement with Israel. Sure, criticise Egypt too if you want, but Palestine or Gaza have no control over their own border. Israel ensured that. One can argue they had good reason to do that. My point is that Gaza has not been allowed to be anything like a real independent state, as was implied.
There are several countries in the world that are not contiguous, including Russia, Azerbaijan, Equatorial Guinea and, on a much smaller scale, India, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Bangladesh. A 3-state solution is a ludicrous situation and not going to happen. The current Israeli administration is not interested in granting statehood, whatever guarantees are provided.
Oh, you've done some more reading. Nice.
Still missing the point that Egypt at least as much to blame for the people of Gaza not having their own state as Israel - arguably more, since if they'd won any of the 1948, 1967 or 1973 wars then Israel wouldn't exist anymore. Egypt is also much more invested in keeping Gazans inside the strip, since they don't want to import any more Islamist terrorist groups.
I can't speak specifically to any of the examples mentioned, but I assume they're all historical accidents, and clearly in all cases there's a dominant landmass plus some exclaves (you could also have had the USA). There's no reason to create a country that's never existed before that's formed of two similar sized enclaves with no historical justification. And no, the people living there claiming they are one people doesn't count, because a) it isn't true, and b) what they actually mean is they are united in their desire to see the state of Israel cease to exist.
Finally, you're correct that the Israel has no current interest in granting statehood in any form, but are completely missing the fact that there is still much greater public support for advancing the two (or three) state solution in Israel than there is in either the West Bank or Gaza. The Palestinian Authority's nominal support for the idea is one of many reasons they are widely seen as illegitimate US-imposed stooges by their own people.
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
WTF.
Surely needs a sentence review?
Such sadists should be removed permanently from society.
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
Also, seven years?!? Can judges be impeached in the UK?
The Crown can appeal lenient sentences, and if any sentence is unduly lenient, it is those. My God. It is possibly WORSE than murder, what they did
seven fucking years??? They destroyed her brain and tried to melt her with acid
Gives a Labour majority of 92, which would be smaller not only than Labour's majorities in 1997 and 2001 but also their majorities in 1945 and 1966. Best Tory poll for weeks
Did you forget to mention this is the Gold standard pollster too, that one that gets it right when everyone else gets it so wrong? The regular community note we give your seat numbers though, you factor in zero tactical voting?
BJO asks us to explain this -5 Labour +2 Tory huge change poll just 12% lead , I can’t. Other than it’s a movement month on month. Except to say maybe the Conservatives relentless campaigning for May 2nd General Election will show signs it’s working, swingback and closing the gap in one poll first before all others at some point.
My question to all you in the Conservative Party, are you picking up on anything that suggests May 2nd GE? My Dad isn’t, he’s convinced it’s October or Later, so doesn’t subscribe to my theory at all.
Savanta had a 14 point Labour lead a couple of weeks ago. It went up to 19 last week and has now come down again. It's basically a reversion to mean from a pollster that generally scores Labour lower. If the poll is right, the Tories should comfortably hold Wellingborough on Thursday.
I keep getting Savanta and Survation muddled 🤦♀️ I’ve got a mental block on that one.
However, I am right, if the polls “turn” one poll will report it first before all the others catch up - and we will all look at it is an outlier, not start of a trend. 😇
You are indeed correct. This Savanta may be the start of something, but we need a lot more data to tell us - and we have a couple of really good data points coming up tomorrow.
FWIW - for me, the elite pollsters are: Ipsos-Mori, Opinium and Survation. Omnisis (now We Think) got very close on the May 2023 local elections but do not have much of a track record so it's too early to tell with them. R&W, Deltapoll and Survation are the least reliable as they tend to move all over the place for no discernible reason. Then there are the hilarious Matt Goodwin polls.
There are also shows which have one or maybe two briliant seasons, but then turn to shit, how do you classify them? Are they great or disasters?
Westworld is the classic example. Fabulous opening season. oh dear oh dear what happened then
Also Homeland, and Peaky Blinders, and the Crown
Billions too. Great for three series, then absolutely disastrous.
I struggled to get beyond the first couple of episodes because it was so implausible and ridiculous. I remember thinking the writers clearly did not know how finance and big business worked.
Compare to Succession, which perfectly replicates how incompetent people in big roles speak.
OMG I think people could be right. The golden age of TV could well be over.
If you were to put a gun to my head and say "I need to watch 10 things recommendations please" I'm not sure I would include any current series.
I note that Fargo has a new season which I am quietly confident and hopeful of because the other seasons were so masterful but other than that?
Not sure. The new Black Mirror is half strength compared with previous series, and all the other excellent series have finished. I've just got Apple so am looking forward to Slow Horses but other than that?
It's up to whichever is the new BBC police procedural. I v much wish Adeel Akhtar (note: a(nother) Four Lions graduate) had got a spin off with his sidekick for Fool Me Once and I can't think of anything else.
No more Top Boy, Fauda (although perhaps they were on location recently in a hospital setting), Boiling Point (so much better than The Bear), which have all recently finished.
Dear god I might have to watch Reacher.
Reacher season 1: solid and watchable
I am afraid season 2 is crap
The Bear is brilliant, have you seen that?
Trouble is it is only ten eps of half hour each per season. It's like a canape, too quickly consumed
Edit: I see you reference the Bear, negatively. TUT. The Bear is masterful.
Good British producers know that if you have a great premise, you can get a great season (series) out of it, and if you succeed and have sufficient imagination, it will stretch to one or two series more. Hence most of the British TV greats, particularly from the BBC which isn’t reliant on advertising, run for just a few seasons at most: Fawlty Towers, Colditz, Secret Army, etc.
In the US, if a series succeeds based on its initial premise, the loyalty of series fans guarantees a steady stream of advertising income, because they know that viewers who have been hooked by the initial premise will stick it through to the end, despite the fact that the producers have run out of novel ideas by season three or four, and thereafter the quality is poor. Now and again, a long-running series comes up with a new twist that will keep it going for a few seasons more - Weeds, Sons of Anarchy, and Californication might be examples. But all too often, US producers simply milk the creativity of their opening seasons by going through the motions until the marginal revenue drops below marginal cost.
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
Also, seven years?!? Can judges be impeached in the UK?
The Crown can appeal lenient sentences, and if any sentence is unduly lenient, it is those. My God. It is possibly WORSE than murder, what they did
seven fucking years??? They destroyed her brain and tried to melt her with acid
Are "religious reasons" an aggravating factor for prison sentences. They should be.
Now Starmer is facing demands to suspend councillors who heard the anti semitism from the two hapless former labour candidates but did nothing about it.
I suppose this is fair. In the services, like the Police, people have been disciplined or dismissed not for making prejudiced comments but for not challenging them.
Totally fair. A Labour meeting which does not call out/report unacceptable language writ to anti-Semitism tells us what much of the party is like.. just below the surface veneer.
Why did no one tell me about the Apple Series FOR ALL MANKIND
It's fantastic. Admittedly, I have only watched one episode, but it is brilliant
The bait and switch on the moon landing is GENIUS
I've seen 3 episodes, and although it's well done, I'm beginning to suspect that after an intriguing opening it's descending into a slow-moving soap opera that they will milk for as many episodes as they can in the typical way. So I'm probably not going any further unless I hear different.
If you're on Apple + I can highly recommend Shrinking featuring a great turn by Harrison Ford as a grumpy old man.
Ach. dammit
That is my big fear
So many series now do this. Start with great promise, then fade away HORRIBLY
I have had to abandon three dramas in recent months for this reason. GRRR
Season one was pretty good throughout, in my opinion. Season two also still fairly good and well worth watching. Season three had its moments and remained worth watching, but slower and a bit faded in comparison to the first two. Season four felt flat to me and I really only watched it through inertia.
Yeah I agree, I'm becalmed about 4 eps into season 4.
The Peter Capaldi thing on apple is quite good.
Good? Its *fantastic*
For me, I think quite good is accurate. I’m not the biggest fan of police procedurals - though it is a good example of the genre and I like its ambition and the questions it asks - but I’m not totally gripped by it.
Not like I have been with Traitors. OMFG! I don’t watch loads of reality TV - unless you class loads of YouTube as reality TV - but Traitors is amazing! I started watching season 2 when I was ill a few weeks ago and wanting something easy to watch whilst laid in bed, suffering stoically.
I’ve since burned through the two UK seasons and the two Aussie and one US season they have on iPlayer. They’re fascinating studies of the human character.
Hot tip - skip the pointless tasks they do in each episode and just mainline the good stuff when they’re a-murdering and a-banishing. Compelling TV. Reality TV for people who are too snooty to watch reality TV. Like me.
The new Gladiators lost its nostalgic novelty (oxymoron?) after 3 eps.
It’s old, but I’ve just discovered Blacklist on NetFlix. Really like James Spader
It’s a police procedural so gets a little samey after a while but am still intrigued to figure out the relationship between the two main characters
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
Also, seven years?!? Can judges be impeached in the UK?
The Crown can appeal lenient sentences, and if any sentence is unduly lenient, it is those. My God. It is possibly WORSE than murder, what they did
seven fucking years??? They destroyed her brain and tried to melt her with acid
I can’t understand why they weren’t charged with attempted murder and GBH.
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
Just another example of the ugliness brought by religious extremist peasant families to the UK as a result of terrible immigration policies. Sunak's immigration reforms should stop this poor quality immigration. Sadly I suspect Starmer will open the flood gates again.
Down thread we have someone asking why there are negative perceptions of Muslims in this country. Apart from the beheadings, the terrorism, the quasi blasphemy laws, the cousin mariages (with ensuing birth defects in children), the arranged marriages, the homophobia, the misogyny, the massive racist rape gangs, the sharia law, the over reliance on benefits, the attacks on teachers, the niqabs and burqas, the rampant anti-Semitism, the honour killings, the drug gangs and the new tendency to melt women with acid, I cannot think of a single reason
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
Just another example of the ugliness brought by religious extremist peasant families to the UK as a result of terrible immigration policies. Sunak's immigration reforms should stop this poor quality immigration. Sadly I suspect Starmer will open the flood gates again.
Starmer will open the floodgates?
Have you seen the current immigration figures? I think you’ll find the floodgates are open.
OMG I think people could be right. The golden age of TV could well be over.
If you were to put a gun to my head and say "I need to watch 10 things recommendations please" I'm not sure I would include any current series.
I note that Fargo has a new season which I am quietly confident and hopeful of because the other seasons were so masterful but other than that?
Not sure. The new Black Mirror is half strength compared with previous series, and all the other excellent series have finished. I've just got Apple so am looking forward to Slow Horses but other than that?
It's up to whichever is the new BBC police procedural. I v much wish Adeel Akhtar (note: a(nother) Four Lions graduate) had got a spin off with his sidekick for Fool Me Once and I can't think of anything else.
No more Top Boy, Fauda (although perhaps they were on location recently in a hospital setting), Boiling Point (so much better than The Bear), which have all recently finished.
Dear god I might have to watch Reacher.
Reacher season 1: solid and watchable
I am afraid season 2 is crap
The Bear is brilliant, have you seen that?
Trouble is it is only ten eps of half hour each per season. It's like a canape, too quickly consumed
Edit: I see you reference the Bear, negatively. TUT. The Bear is masterful.
I'll have to give it another go. I bailed early. Have you seen Boiling Point (the series - the film was fantastic)? Really excellent only four episodes sadly but real heart. Hence my comparison with The Bear.
Edit: and Reacher is what it is. You have certainty which sometimes makes up for quality.
You obviously know your TV and we might have similar tastes
I am checking out Boiling Point. Are you referring to the movie or the TV series, or suggesting I watch both? Aren't they the same story?
Yours, Confused of Phnom Penh
The film is the one-shot Stephen Graham vehicle and is excellent. There is also a (Stephen Graham-produced) series (4 episodes) on the BBC which is a sequel of sorts to the film (same cast plus some newbies) and is excellent. It redefines the meaning of tension.
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
Also, seven years?!? Can judges be impeached in the UK?
The Crown can appeal lenient sentences, and if any sentence is unduly lenient, it is those. My God. It is possibly WORSE than murder, what they did
seven fucking years??? They destroyed her brain and tried to melt her with acid
The Crown made it through the first few seasons because the artistic license (aka ‘just making stuff up’) enhanced our enjoyment of what is our ancient history, known mostly only to our dead grandparents.
As the series approached the current day, the artistic license that the producers were taking became more and more ludicrous to the many of us who lived through it, such that older, and increasingly younger, viewers were left thinking “hang on a minute, that’s not what happened at all!” Such that the series’ credibility has declined as viewers start to see that those behind the curtain are simply having a laugh.
And, yes, I know my post is an OT non-sequitur, but I couldn’t resist.
Strange, Guido and his pals were fine with ‘unsophisticated support’ for Project Brexit.
Guido posts racism about muslims shock.
My perception (which may be wrong) is that antisemitism is more pronounced in muslim communities. Are you saying that is wrong? Fine. The implication in Guido's point is that the numbers of muslims vastly outweighs Jews and thus appealing too members of the muslim community (selecting muslim candidates etc). The downside is that some seem to hold rather dodgy views.
I agree, partially. And this would be entirely true of his statement if he'd removed the words "sophisticated" and "unsophisticated".
Your point doesn't address the use of those words.
Doesn't unsophisticated and sophisticated relate to the support? I don't think he needed to bring Jewish voters into it. The point is, Labour want the Muslim block vote.
Don't you think Starmer would have been somewhat more critical of Israel and more pro-Palestinian over Gaza if this were the case? His stance has alienated many Muslim voters, for now.
Labour is more than just Starmer, the likes of Ali etc are a part of Labour too, or Ali was until a few days ago. And yes, unfortunately, some elements of Labour absolutely appeal based on antisemitic and religious desires which are unfit for 21st Century secular Britain.
Starmer recently has been better than his party. I hope that continues, but that does not mean there are not still problems within his party.
The fact that you think Starmer cracking down on antisemitism is alienating Muslim voters speaks volumes unfortunately.
Our politics will be much more healthy when the idea of appealing to "Muslim" voters is gone and buried and Muslims are treated with respect as secular individuals and not as zealots who hate Jews over mundane secular policies like education, health, tax, the economy etc.
My question wasn't aimed at you, actually. I know your views. Repeatedly.
Why did no one tell me about the Apple Series FOR ALL MANKIND
It's fantastic. Admittedly, I have only watched one episode, but it is brilliant
The bait and switch on the moon landing is GENIUS
I've seen 3 episodes, and although it's well done, I'm beginning to suspect that after an intriguing opening it's descending into a slow-moving soap opera that they will milk for as many episodes as they can in the typical way. So I'm probably not going any further unless I hear different.
If you're on Apple + I can highly recommend Shrinking featuring a great turn by Harrison Ford as a grumpy old man.
Ach. dammit
That is my big fear
So many series now do this. Start with great promise, then fade away HORRIBLY
I have had to abandon three dramas in recent months for this reason. GRRR
Yes, it's very annoying. And sometimes the opposite happens - eg I was still enjoying The Path after 3 seasons (though it had got a bit slushy), and they didn't make any more despite the story clearly being unfinished.
I would say For All Mankind is still entertaining after 3 episodes but 7 seasons are planned, and I don't want to get hooked into having to know what happens because it's too much of a time commitment for me...
Rotten Tomatoes - which is modestly reliable - insists it contnues well into seasons 2 and 3. I shall persist for now
The worst of the recent bunch was Money Heist, which started cleverly and elegantly, but described a perfect smooth arc of descent into inanity, plot holes, non sequiturs, stupid characters and tedious distractions
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters immediately went from quite good in episode 1 to SHITE by ep 3, and stayed there
Let us know how it goes!
It took me 2 and a half seasons to give up on Mad Men.
I've never seen an episode of Lost, or The Crown, or Game of Thrones (probably too violent for me), or Eastenders. Maybe I am commitment-phobic.
Never heard of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I saw Money Heist advertised - it looked interesting but my wife can't be bothered with subtitles, and I refuse to watch anything dubbed (if it was even available) so didn't bother. Won't now.
Mad Men was great, until about season 4 or 5 (most dramas collapse by seasons 4 or 5, if they get that far - it is an actual rule, with very few exceptions)
The first season of the Crown is superb, second jolly good, then increasingly bad
Game of Thrones is sui generis. I loved it, mostly, even while finding the plot absurdly complex and difficult to comprehend, it had that knack that, just when you felt like abandoning it for its labyrinthine complexity, it would have a brilliant scene with clever lines, or a spectacular battle sequence, or just the midget being funny
Great actors helped; also good characterisation
I thought Mad Men was brilliant all the way through. It just got the 60s perfectly from beginning to end. The Wire and the Sopranos were sustained brilliance too. Those three stand head and shoulders above all else.
Breaking Bad, too.
Better Call Saul was quality almost throughout, although for me, it ended poorly.
I always forget Breaking Bad - but you're right, of course. Better Call Saul nearly got there.
For me it's about whether you can go back time after time and still enjoy it. You can with those four.
There are dozens of others, you are being insanely restrictive
The Golden Age of TV (let's hope it hasn't ended) has produced maybe 100 fantastic shows
Remember The Killing, the Danish version?
OMFG. Just absolutely compelling. not merely some of the greatest TV drama, some of the greatest drama of any form I have ever watched. You could not take your eyes off it, even tho it was bitterly harrowing. What a show
Squid Game Chernobyl Vikings
&c &c
Agreed; The Killing was superb. How many have you rewatched, though ?
Not many, in my case.
I rewatched West Wing with my kids quite some time ago, to educate them in the mechanics of US politics (which was great fun), and much more recently 6FD, which was every bit as good the second time round.
I don't count rewatching as any kind of metric. Life is too short (to my mind) to rewatch TV drama, especially when there is so much good NEW stuff
The only novel I have reread is Ulysses, otherwise no way do I reread a book
I will watch old movies again, as we discussed the other day, but more out of the comfort they bring
And yet I will relisten to favourite music and reread favourite poems ALL THE TIME
Quite strange. Some brilliant Philosopher of Aesthetics should write a book explaining why some arts can be re-experiened with pleasure, and some not. At least from my POV
Fiction, written or screened, relies heavily on the pleasure of not knowing what will happen, whereas with music, especially music with a bit of complexity to it, knowing what will happen increases the enjoyment hugely. With serious classical music it’s rare for a piece to grab you first time, because it requires repeated listening to properly enjoy.
Yes, I think you are bang on
Fiction and drama rely on STORY, once you know the story, much of the pleasure is gone
Poetry and music do not rely on story, they rely on beauty and complexity, which can often intensify over renewed encounters - you see beauties and complexities you missed
Noticeably, the one novel I have re-read, Ulysses, famously has no story at all, but is extremely beautiful and complex
That can be true of drama, too, though, of it's good enough. Don't you ever rewatch Shakespeare ?
Maybe that explains why the K-dramas I rewatched were satisfying - having picked up some of the language, more nuance was understandable.
OMG I think people could be right. The golden age of TV could well be over.
If you were to put a gun to my head and say "I need to watch 10 things recommendations please" I'm not sure I would include any current series.
I note that Fargo has a new season which I am quietly confident and hopeful of because the other seasons were so masterful but other than that?
Not sure. The new Black Mirror is half strength compared with previous series, and all the other excellent series have finished. I've just got Apple so am looking forward to Slow Horses but other than that?
It's up to whichever is the new BBC police procedural. I v much wish Adeel Akhtar (note: a(nother) Four Lions graduate) had got a spin off with his sidekick for Fool Me Once and I can't think of anything else.
No more Top Boy, Fauda (although perhaps they were on location recently in a hospital setting), Boiling Point (so much better than The Bear), which have all recently finished.
Dear god I might have to watch Reacher.
Reacher season 1: solid and watchable
I am afraid season 2 is crap
The Bear is brilliant, have you seen that?
Trouble is it is only ten eps of half hour each per season. It's like a canape, too quickly consumed
Edit: I see you reference the Bear, negatively. TUT. The Bear is masterful.
I'll have to give it another go. I bailed early. Have you seen Boiling Point (the series - the film was fantastic)? Really excellent only four episodes sadly but real heart. Hence my comparison with The Bear.
Edit: and Reacher is what it is. You have certainty which sometimes makes up for quality.
You obviously know your TV and we might have similar tastes
I am checking out Boiling Point. Are you referring to the movie or the TV series, or suggesting I watch both? Aren't they the same story?
Yours, Confused of Phnom Penh
The film is the one-shot Stephen Graham vehicle and is excellent. There is also a series (4 episodes) on the BBC which is a sequel of sorts to the film (same cast plus some newbies) and is excellent. It redefines the meaning of tension.
So it is worth watching both in that sequence? Film then series?
I am sold, it has rave reviews on Tomatoes etc, just need to know how to watch it
FWIW I do not think the Golden Age of TV has ended
We have just had Succession, which for me is as good as Breaking Bad or Sopranos, and much better than The Wire (overrated)
We have just had The Great, possibly the funniest show ever made?
The Bear is weirdly weirdly brilliant, and is in the middle of its run
I've only finished Griselda two nights ago, it's not genius but it is excellent. And so on and so forth
I think we have simply got USED to great TV, so we are more blase and complacent, or we demand more
The volume of TV produced has greatly increased, so the density of great TV has reduced, even if there is as much as before.
Everyone gets very nostalgic about TV. How great it was in the Sixties, seventies, eighties etc etc.
People happily, nostalgically, remember stuff like Dad's Army and I Clavdivs, but no one remembers Come Back Mrs Noah or The Crezz or the rest of the drivel that was on offer at the time.
I don't think anyone will look back on Mrs. Brown's Boys, affectionately.
I recently re-read Kill Your Friends, John Niven's novel about a vile, amoral A&R in the 90s, at the height of Britpop.
Our protagonist Stephen Stelfox - loosely based on Simon Cowell, supposedly - says something along the lines of 'there are millions upon millions of people in the UK who buy four CDs a year from the supermarket, who want to be able to hear all the words. These people far outweigh the couple of hundred thousand people who might buy the latest critically acclaimed album.'
That's true, and that explains the enduring success of Mrs Brown's Boys. There are millions upon millions of people out there who don't want to watch The Killing, or The Wire, or The Sopranos. Or Breaking Bad. They don't want to be challenged, they don't want to have to work at understanding something, analysing its sub-texts, considering its sociological impact, all that jazz.
They want a gentle comedy that reflects their own loves - a close family, who clearly love each other, who's lives are intimately intertwined, who get into scrapes and arguments but who ultimately come together and love each other and everything ends happily.
The critics don't like Mrs Brown's Boys, the middle-class cultural gatekeepers sneer at this depiction of working-class life. But for millions of people that's the life they live, that's the kind of family they would like to have. And Mrs Brown's Boys reflects that.
These people don't post on PB. These people would be overjoyed to have the kind of identikit new build Barrett boxes that draw such gasps of horror from the sophisticated aesthetes who shudder at new estates, and their quote of affordable housing, being built near them.
And I get it. I don't romanticise the working-classes I come from. They're just as frustrating, as vibrant and dull, as intelligent and as stupid, as outgoing and parochial, as curious and incurious, as different and uncategorisable as any mass of people.
But millions of these people love Michael Macintyre. And Mrs Brown's Boys. And all the other dreck that infects mainstream TV channels. The antiques shows, the property porn shows, etc, etc, etc.
Humanity, eh? Fascinating.
Fun fact of the day: My username is as it is because Kill Your Friends was sitting on my desk at the time I registered on this site and I couldn't think of anything else that felt suitably anonymous (things were getting political in the office where I worked and I was terrified of getting doxxed at the time, and I also did feel a lot like killing them).
What Niven has to say about what Geri Halliwell would do for her 15 minutes of fame was one of the most laugh-out-loud moments I've ever had in a book that wasn't peak Martin Amis.
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
OMG I think people could be right. The golden age of TV could well be over.
If you were to put a gun to my head and say "I need to watch 10 things recommendations please" I'm not sure I would include any current series.
I note that Fargo has a new season which I am quietly confident and hopeful of because the other seasons were so masterful but other than that?
Not sure. The new Black Mirror is half strength compared with previous series, and all the other excellent series have finished. I've just got Apple so am looking forward to Slow Horses but other than that?
It's up to whichever is the new BBC police procedural. I v much wish Adeel Akhtar (note: a(nother) Four Lions graduate) had got a spin off with his sidekick for Fool Me Once and I can't think of anything else.
No more Top Boy, Fauda (although perhaps they were on location recently in a hospital setting), Boiling Point (so much better than The Bear), which have all recently finished.
Dear god I might have to watch Reacher.
Reacher season 1: solid and watchable
I am afraid season 2 is crap
The Bear is brilliant, have you seen that?
Trouble is it is only ten eps of half hour each per season. It's like a canape, too quickly consumed
Edit: I see you reference the Bear, negatively. TUT. The Bear is masterful.
I'll have to give it another go. I bailed early. Have you seen Boiling Point (the series - the film was fantastic)? Really excellent only four episodes sadly but real heart. Hence my comparison with The Bear.
Edit: and Reacher is what it is. You have certainty which sometimes makes up for quality.
You obviously know your TV and we might have similar tastes
I am checking out Boiling Point. Are you referring to the movie or the TV series, or suggesting I watch both? Aren't they the same story?
Yours, Confused of Phnom Penh
The film is the one-shot Stephen Graham vehicle and is excellent. There is also a series (4 episodes) on the BBC which is a sequel of sorts to the film (same cast plus some newbies) and is excellent. It redefines the meaning of tension.
So it is worth watching both in that sequence? Film then series?
I am sold, it has rave reviews on Tomatoes etc, just need to know how to watch it
OMG I think people could be right. The golden age of TV could well be over.
If you were to put a gun to my head and say "I need to watch 10 things recommendations please" I'm not sure I would include any current series.
I note that Fargo has a new season which I am quietly confident and hopeful of because the other seasons were so masterful but other than that?
Not sure. The new Black Mirror is half strength compared with previous series, and all the other excellent series have finished. I've just got Apple so am looking forward to Slow Horses but other than that?
It's up to whichever is the new BBC police procedural. I v much wish Adeel Akhtar (note: a(nother) Four Lions graduate) had got a spin off with his sidekick for Fool Me Once and I can't think of anything else.
No more Top Boy, Fauda (although perhaps they were on location recently in a hospital setting), Boiling Point (so much better than The Bear), which have all recently finished.
Dear god I might have to watch Reacher.
Reacher season 1: solid and watchable
I am afraid season 2 is crap
The Bear is brilliant, have you seen that?
Trouble is it is only ten eps of half hour each per season. It's like a canape, too quickly consumed
Edit: I see you reference the Bear, negatively. TUT. The Bear is masterful.
I'll have to give it another go. I bailed early. Have you seen Boiling Point (the series - the film was fantastic)? Really excellent only four episodes sadly but real heart. Hence my comparison with The Bear.
Edit: and Reacher is what it is. You have certainty which sometimes makes up for quality.
You obviously know your TV and we might have similar tastes
I am checking out Boiling Point. Are you referring to the movie or the TV series, or suggesting I watch both? Aren't they the same story?
Yours, Confused of Phnom Penh
The film is the one-shot Stephen Graham vehicle and is excellent. There is also a (Stephen Graham-produced) series (4 episodes) on the BBC which is a sequel of sorts to the film (same cast plus some newbies) and is excellent. It redefines the meaning of tension.
Stephen Graham is usually excellent in everything that he does. Which just goes to show that some Liverpudlians do have a societal contribution to make. He only has a bit part in the AppleTV film Greyhound, starring Tom Hanks, but it’s worth watching for that, nevertheless.
Comments
Ideally in 21st Century Britain we should be in a post-religious, secular society where people don't appeal to voters based on their religion and what that religious group's extremes tend to hate. Unfortunately we're not quite there yet and in some ways going backwards.
Lovely stuff.
The only novel I have reread is Ulysses, otherwise no way do I reread a book
I will watch old movies again, as we discussed the other day, but more out of the comfort they bring
And yet I will relisten to favourite music and reread favourite poems ALL THE TIME
Quite strange. Some brilliant Philosopher of Aesthetics should write a book explaining why some arts can be re-experiened with pleasure, and some not. At least from my POV
I suppose this is fair. In the services, like the Police, people have been disciplined or dismissed not for making prejudiced comments but for not challenging them.
Utter shambles from Labour now.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/14/starmer-councillors-meeting-israel-comments-azhar-ali-rochdale-labour
Still a very enjoyable series and very bingeable in streaming format, just recently started watching it again for the first time in a very long time on Disney+, just started day 2.
People happily, nostalgically, remember stuff like Dad's Army and I Clavdivs, but no one remembers Come Back Mrs Noah or The Crezz or the rest of the drivel that was on offer at the time.
Now hum the theme to Succession...
The regular community note we give your seat numbers though, you factor in zero tactical voting?
BJO asks us to explain this -5 Labour +2 Tory huge change poll just 12% lead , I can’t. Other than it’s a movement month on month. Except to say maybe the Conservatives relentless campaigning for May 2nd General Election will show signs it’s working, swingback and closing the gap in one poll first before all others at some point.
My question to all you in the Conservative Party, are you picking up on anything that suggests May 2nd GE? My Dad isn’t, he’s convinced it’s October or Later, so doesn’t subscribe to my theory at all.
On the borders, the point is that there isn't one - the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected opportunities to define them, so there's no reason to preserve something that doesn't actually exist. There's no way to get a contiguous Palestinian state (including both the West Bank and Gaza) whilst preserving Israel's borders, and there's also no reason to, since they haven't been part of the territory since 1948. It makes way more sense to separate them and work towards a three state solution - Gaza has the advantage of no Israeli settlements, and therefore no difficult negotiations on land. It could be granted statehood tomorrow if all the terrorists were expelled and reasonable guarantees provided on Israeli (and Egyptian) security.
The Sue Gray story, making people cry, with the investigation into the leak as well does not help.
Labour needs to get a handle on this and quick otherwise it will be SKS in coalition with the Lib Dems and the nationalists, and not an overall majority.
The Killing is in the dizzying heights, some of the greatest TV in history
The Bridge was fun, a nice diversion
They are disputed territories, which could end up with Israel, or Palestine, or somehow be divided between the two. Which is entirely thanks to the actions of Jordan and Egypt in 1948 and 1967, not Israel.
The first season of 24 was cracking. Mad and impossible but compulsive to watch, I binged it in about 3 days
Second season also pretty good
Downhill from there
But that first season, what a great idea, and they really carried it off triumphantly
Go on Taz, I’m calling you out - from what’s in the public domain point to what Ali said that is antisemitic as you libelled him in your post.
If you simply mean that he is not pandering to antisemitic scum? Is that all? He's not supposed to either.
Starmer recently has been better than his party. I hope that continues, but that does not mean there are not still problems within his party.
The fact that you think Starmer cracking down on antisemitism is alienating Muslim voters speaks volumes unfortunately.
Our politics will be much more healthy when the idea of appealing to "Muslim" voters is gone and buried and Muslims are treated with respect as secular individuals and not as zealots who hate Jews over mundane secular policies like education, health, tax, the economy etc.
We are also forgetting that the Golden Age of TV has produced superb animation
The first few seasons of The Simpsons, once it got in the swing, must be some of the funniest, cleverest TV ever made
Family Guy also good. South Park was patchy but when it was on form, fantastic
Fy faen is usually translated as 'for fucks sake' or similar. But faen actually means devil. I don't think the Norwegians have any sexually based swear words. They just use the English ones instead.
After all, a three point MOE (even if they are systematically wrong, they're hopefully consistent with themselves) means that a five point change is just about interesting. But only just.
But then it proved so popular that by episode 9 of season 1 the producers told the writers to rework the ending of season 1 to provide cliffhangers and untied plotlines that would then segue to season 2
The result, they fucked up the end of season 1 (after a great initial 8 or 9 episodes) and then season 2 was poor anyway
https://x.com/mattswider/status/1757564348875116914
HIMYM
There are several countries in the world that are not contiguous, including Russia, Azerbaijan, Equatorial Guinea and, on a much smaller scale, India, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Bangladesh. A 3-state solution is a ludicrous situation and not going to happen. The current Israeli administration is not interested in granting statehood, whatever guarantees are provided.
"You'll know the angels when they come, because they'll have the faces of your children"
Fargo Season 2 is a total work of ART
https://twitter.com/carlgardner/status/1757750082651242768
Our protagonist Stephen Stelfox - loosely based on Simon Cowell, supposedly - says something along the lines of 'there are millions upon millions of people in the UK who buy four CDs a year from the supermarket, who want to be able to hear all the words. These people far outweigh the couple of hundred thousand people who might buy the latest critically acclaimed album.'
That's true, and that explains the enduring success of Mrs Brown's Boys. There are millions upon millions of people out there who don't want to watch The Killing, or The Wire, or The Sopranos. Or Breaking Bad. They don't want to be challenged, they don't want to have to work at understanding something, analysing its sub-texts, considering its sociological impact, all that jazz.
They want a gentle comedy that reflects their own loves - a close family, who clearly love each other, who's lives are intimately intertwined, who get into scrapes and arguments but who ultimately come together and love each other and everything ends happily.
The critics don't like Mrs Brown's Boys, the middle-class cultural gatekeepers sneer at this depiction of working-class life. But for millions of people that's the life they live, that's the kind of family they would like to have. And Mrs Brown's Boys reflects that.
These people don't post on PB. These people would be overjoyed to have the kind of identikit new build Barrett boxes that draw such gasps of horror from the sophisticated aesthetes who shudder at new estates, and their quote of affordable housing, being built near them.
And I get it. I don't romanticise the working-classes I come from. They're just as frustrating, as vibrant and dull, as intelligent and as stupid, as outgoing and parochial, as curious and incurious, as different and uncategorisable as any mass of people.
But millions of these people love Michael Macintyre. And Mrs Brown's Boys. And all the other dreck that infects mainstream TV channels. The antiques shows, the property porn shows, etc, etc, etc.
Humanity, eh? Fascinating.
However, I am right, if the polls “turn” one poll will report it first before all the others catch up - and we will all look at it is an outlier, not start of a trend. 😇
Fiction and drama rely on STORY, once you know the story, much of the pleasure is gone
Poetry and music do not rely on story, they rely on beauty and complexity, which can often intensify over renewed encounters - you see beauties and complexities you missed
Noticeably, the one novel I have re-read, Ulysses, famously has no story at all, but is extremely beautiful and complex
Nostradumbass
https://twitter.com/ron611087/status/1757738243238343050
If you were to put a gun to my head and say "I need to watch 10 things recommendations please" I'm not sure I would include any current series.
I note that Fargo has a new season which I am quietly confident and hopeful of because the other seasons were so masterful but other than that?
Not sure. The new Black Mirror is half strength compared with previous series, and all the other excellent series have finished. I've just got Apple so am looking forward to Slow Horses but other than that?
It's up to whichever is the new BBC police procedural. I v much wish Adeel Akhtar (note: a(nother) Four Lions graduate) had got a spin off with his sidekick for Fool Me Once and I can't think of anything else.
No more Top Boy, Fauda (although perhaps they were on location recently in a hospital setting), Boiling Point (so much better than The Bear), which have all recently finished.
Dear god I might have to watch Reacher.
A great miniseries I saw recently was Fool Me Once. Short series but I would highly recommend.
https://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2024-02-14/husband-and-parents-jailed-for-abusing-and-burning-arranged-marriage-bride
A man has been jailed along with his parents after his wife was forced to take medication and doused with a corrosive substance, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state from which she will never recover.
Ambreen Fatima Sheikh was 30 when she was given the anti-diabetes drug glimepiride, which induced catastrophic brain injury, after she was brought to the UK from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, Leeds Crown Court heard.
Only the month before two police officers had visited the home, following concerns for her welfare, but they reported Ms Sheikh as being fit and well.
However, Judge Mrs Justice Lambert said she attached "little weight to that assessment" because Ms Sheikh spoke little English and her father-in-law was present during the visit.
Ms Sheikh's husband, Asgar Sheikh, 31, was jailed for seven years and nine months along with his father, Khalid Sheikh, 55, and his mother, Shabnam Sheikh, 52.
I am afraid season 2 is crap
The Bear is brilliant, have you seen that?
Trouble is it is only ten eps of half hour each per season. It's like a canape, too quickly consumed
Edit: I see you reference the Bear, negatively. TUT. The Bear is masterful.
You ever met Niven? Perhaps Stelfox isn't based on Cowell after all...
Surely needs a sentence review?
Edit: and Reacher is what it is. You have certainty which sometimes makes up for quality.
GRRRRRRRR
I am checking out Boiling Point. Are you referring to the movie or the TV series, or suggesting I watch both? Aren't they the same story?
Yours, Confused of Phnom Penh
Still missing the point that Egypt at least as much to blame for the people of Gaza not having their own state as Israel - arguably more, since if they'd won any of the 1948, 1967 or 1973 wars then Israel wouldn't exist anymore. Egypt is also much more invested in keeping Gazans inside the strip, since they don't want to import any more Islamist terrorist groups.
I can't speak specifically to any of the examples mentioned, but I assume they're all historical accidents, and clearly in all cases there's a dominant landmass plus some exclaves (you could also have had the USA). There's no reason to create a country that's never existed before that's formed of two similar sized enclaves with no historical justification. And no, the people living there claiming they are one people doesn't count, because a) it isn't true, and b) what they actually mean is they are united in their desire to see the state of Israel cease to exist.
Finally, you're correct that the Israel has no current interest in granting statehood in any form, but are completely missing the fact that there is still much greater public support for advancing the two (or three) state solution in Israel than there is in either the West Bank or Gaza. The Palestinian Authority's nominal support for the idea is one of many reasons they are widely seen as illegitimate US-imposed stooges by their own people.
seven fucking years??? They destroyed her brain and tried to melt her with acid
FWIW - for me, the elite pollsters are: Ipsos-Mori, Opinium and Survation. Omnisis (now We Think) got very close on the May 2023 local elections but do not have much of a track record so it's too early to tell with them. R&W, Deltapoll and Survation are the least reliable as they tend to move all over the place for no discernible reason. Then there are the hilarious Matt Goodwin polls.
Compare to Succession, which perfectly replicates how incompetent people in big roles speak.
In the US, if a series succeeds based on its initial premise, the loyalty of series fans guarantees a steady stream of advertising income, because they know that viewers who have been hooked by the initial premise will stick it through to the end, despite the fact that the producers have run out of novel ideas by season three or four, and thereafter the quality is poor. Now and again, a long-running series comes up with a new twist that will keep it going for a few seasons more - Weeds, Sons of Anarchy, and Californication might be examples. But all too often, US producers simply milk the creativity of their opening seasons by going through the motions until the marginal revenue drops below marginal cost.
It’s a police procedural so gets a little samey after a while but am still intrigued to figure out the relationship between the two main characters
Have you seen the current immigration figures? I think you’ll find the floodgates are open.
As the series approached the current day, the artistic license that the producers were taking became more and more ludicrous to the many of us who lived through it, such that older, and increasingly younger, viewers were left thinking “hang on a minute, that’s not what happened at all!” Such that the series’ credibility has declined as viewers start to see that those behind the curtain are simply having a laugh.
And, yes, I know my post is an OT non-sequitur, but I couldn’t resist.
Don't you ever rewatch Shakespeare ?
Maybe that explains why the K-dramas I rewatched were satisfying - having picked up some of the language, more nuance was understandable.
I am sold, it has rave reviews on Tomatoes etc, just need to know how to watch it
And thanks. I need more drama!
What Niven has to say about what Geri Halliwell would do for her 15 minutes of fame was one of the most laugh-out-loud moments I've ever had in a book that wasn't peak Martin Amis.