[tv show] What TV shows are you watching

[caffrey]

Peacemaker, funniest thing I've watched in ages

 

Also watching Yellowjackets which is great too

[LeMarchand]

Catching up on Mythic Quest. Really enjoy the show but when we have a 1/2 hour slot we normally plump for Kim's Convenience. Anyway, just watched the S2 one set in the 70s, which was really quite moving. The author lookalikes were pretty good, once they'd named Ursula K LeGuin, I probably would have got Ray Bradbury given a second or two more and managed to get Isaac Asimov before he was named.

[LeMarchand]

For those that like the new Trek shows (seems I'm in the minority there) DISCO, Picard, Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds have all been renewed for 2023 seasons, even though DISCO is the only one to have started its 2022 run. Haven't heard about Prodigy, but some recent reviews have piqued my interest, so I may give S1 a go.

 

Who knows what UK channel/service will be showing these. PIC and LD are probably staying with AMZ and DIS on Pluto. Paramount keep threatening to try their own streaming service in non-US territories, though.

 

UPDATE: Prodigy S2 had been announced previously and PIC S3 is already in production.

Edited January 19, 2022 by LeMarchand

[Boredguy]

Hopefully Disco ends up on somewhere other than Pluto for the next season, as it's a real pain to have to remember to be sat there on the 3 evenings they have it on and no way to pause it... like being stuck in the days before VHS/Betamax tapes

[JATSO]

On the last but one episode of True Story with Kevin Harte and Wesley Snipes on Netflix.

[LeMarchand]

Finally finished Doctor Who: Flux. Had its moments but generally poor apart from the penultimate episode, which led me to have unjustified hope for the finale. It seems that recent Who is made by older fans for older fans who are going to get obscure references and be paying 100% attention, rather than a general audience. Shame that Kevin McNally's character didn't join the crew; I think he would have been good. John Bishop is OK but he often looked like he was thinking, "What the hell have I signed myself up for?".

 

Plus the "Big Climax" saw the ,, and the supposedly wiped from existence but the trailer for the NY Special featured the .

[hallb15]

Finally finished Doctor Who: Flux. Had its moments but generally poor apart from the penultimate episode, which led me to have unjustified hope for the finale. It seems that recent Who is made by older fans for older fans who are going to get obscure references and be paying 100% attention, rather than a general audience. Shame that Kevin McNally's character didn't join the crew; I think he would have been good. John Bishop is OK but he often looked like he was thinking, "What the hell have I signed myself up for?".

 

Plus the "Big Climax" saw the ,, and the supposedly wiped from existence but the trailer for the NY Special featured the .

 

I agree 100%. I found myself missing Bradley Walsh!

[ICTDirect_Dave]

Finally finished Doctor Who: Flux. Had its moments but generally poor apart from the penultimate episode, which led me to have unjustified hope for the finale. It seems that recent Who is made by older fans for older fans who are going to get obscure references and be paying 100% attention, rather than a general audience. Shame that Kevin McNally's character didn't join the crew; I think he would have been good. John Bishop is OK but he often looked like he was thinking, "What the hell have I signed myself up for?".

 

Plus the "Big Climax" saw the ,, and the supposedly wiped from existence but the trailer for the NY Special featured the .

I've really enjoyed Flux and the New Year special was good also. The special went some way toward explaining the fates of the , though I'd just put it down to "trime travel fantasy show, don't expect too much continuity"

 

John Bishop was enjoyable. I'm liking the "Oi Scouse!" / "Alright Sheffield" banter.

[Koldov]

Who knows what UK channel/service will be showing these. PIC and LD are probably staying with AMZ and DIS on Pluto. Paramount keep threatening to try their own streaming service in non-US territories, though.

 

That confused me for a bit... I enjoyed Star Trek Discovery (Picard not so much, but it was watchable) and watched it all so far on Netflix. I often flick through waiting for a new series to appear and I presumed it had not been renewed or was on hold during Covid (I don't keep up with these things obviously). So do I presume that rather than selling it to Netflix for $$$ they are releasing it on their own Paramount+ in the USA and on the free PLUTO TV over here...?

 

Finally finished Doctor Who: Flux. Had its moments but generally poor apart from the penultimate episode, which led me to have unjustified hope for the finale. It seems that recent Who is made by older fans for older fans who are going to get obscure references and be paying 100% attention, rather than a general audience..

 

Going to be a little controversial here I guess, but I am often turned off by 'big' or 'well-known' actors in things (there are exceptions of course and those actors who have defined a particular role)... I stopped watching Dr. Who when I was about 12 and have never really been attracted back. I've tried to watch it a few times but unfortunately I'm afraid to say that 'made by 'older fans for older fans' sums it up, sets and effects are almost no better than in the 80's or 90's (well a little better but not much considering what is available now) even a target audience of children won't be impressed these days and it could be so much slicker instead of quirkily reminding us of it's quaint BBC history (just my opinion and the reason why I can't watch many British TV dramas, spoilt by too much American TV)... and the actors are not very believable for me or worth investing in.

I can never watch Bradley Walsh in anything without expecting him to aside to camera a joke about something (or slip in that an alien reminds him of a particular Chaser) and the same with John Bishop who I expect to throw in a few jokey reminiscences about his childhood from the 'Pool. I'm just not sure who came up with the need for a well known face to be a side-kick... I am not a fan of the current Dr. Who either for similar reasons and it just feels to me they are (over) playing the part and not being the part (difficult I know), but possible for some...

 

I have a similar issue with big name 'voice actors' for movies... I can honestly say that I have never once seen an animated movie purely based on the fact that so and so has voiced a character, some fit just fine or add whatever is needed to a character, but quite a few could (should) have been voices by A.N. Other actor and it wouldn't have impacted the films worth for me....

 

Anyway, currently watching 'Archive 81' (Sci-Fi/Supernatural/Paranormal/Demonic/Witchcraft/Psychological/Thriller/Horror...ish) on Netflix. Not completely blown away, but so far it seems well worth the time spent. Man given the job of restoring some old video tapes, finds more than he bargained for... Obviously given its subject matter it isn't 'believable', but most of the actors give credible performances. There is a nice undercurrent of 'ethereal menace', no real substantial sub-plots as such and it mostly focusses on the main story and characters. Lots of build up as to the who and why questions... not sure if I'm going to be disappointed with an open-ended, cliff hanger ending (in the expectation of them securing another season).

 

[ICTDirect_Dave]

currently watching 'Archive 81' (Sci-Fi/Supernatural/Paranormal/Demonic/Witchcraft/Psychological/Thriller/Horror...ish) on Netflix. Not completely blown away, but so far it seems well worth the time spent. Man given the job of restoring some old video tapes, finds more than he bargained for... Obviously given its subject matter it isn't 'believable', but most of the actors give credible performances. There is a nice undercurrent of 'ethereal menace', no real substantial sub-plots as such and it mostly focusses on the main story and characters. Lots of build up as to the who and why questions... not sure if I'm going to be disappointed with an open-ended, cliff hanger ending (in the expectation of them securing another season).

 

 

Archive 81 is excellent, if only for the absolutely superb sound design. Every noise has a place and a reason, often designed to make you feel uncomfortable or on edge. Great work from the sound team!

[LeMarchand]

That confused me for a bit... I enjoyed Star Trek Discovery (Picard not so much, but it was watchable) and watched it all so far on Netflix. I often flick through waiting for a new series to appear and I presumed it had not been renewed or was on hold during Covid (I don't keep up with these things obviously). So do I presume that rather than selling it to Netflix for $$$ they are releasing it on their own Paramount+ in the USA and on the free PLUTO TV over here...?

 

I think the original idea was to launch P+ as a competitor, but now it seems to be going to Sky. Whether it will be a Sky exclusive like the HBO stuff on Sky Atlantic, who knows?

 

Read an article earlier that Netflix signups are slowing, especially after they lost some content to Disney+. Are we reaching peak streaming?

[Norphy]

The issue I see with streaming is this:

 

When Netflix was first a thing in this country, both the customer and the content provider had very little choice when it came to streaming networks. There was Netflix and there was Prime and that was pretty much it, outside of the more obscure networks. I'm not counting iPlayer/All4/ITV Hub and other similar catchup services as they serve a different purpose. If content providers wanted their stuff to be streamed, it had to go out on one of those two. The content providers may not have liked it very much, but speaking for myself as a consumer of said content, it was good because I was getting a metric crapton of content for <£20 a month, which is a price I was relatively content to pay.

 

The trouble was that the content providers couldn't let that lie; they wanted a piece of that pie so now we've got Britbox, Disney+, Pluto, whatever Sky are calling their streaming service, Paramount+ coming soon, Apple TV+ and a million other piddly little streaming services that get pushed at you. They've all taken or are in the process of taking their content away from Netflix and/or Prime (Disney/Fox/Marvel stuff from Netflix to Disney+, Paramount removing content from Netflix are two examples that come to mind), thinking that people are going to pay an additional £8-10 a month to access their service to watch their favourite show. The way that ViacomCBS acted with the new season of Discovery is especially low.

 

So in conclusion, I think that Netflix has two problems:

 

1) It's been on the market for long enough for it to get all the subscriptions that it's likely to get. There are only so many people in the world and only a subset of those that a) want the service b) have an internet connection good enough for the service c) can afford the service. I don't know if that counts as "Peak Netflix" or not.

2) Content is being taken away from them as other content providers open their own networks and their licenses to show the content expire. This is going to make the service less attractive to those people who meet a, b and c up above. They're trying to make up for that with their own original content, some of which is very good and some of which is very, very bad. Even with their own content, however, people are still going to want to watch Star Trek/Friends/Modern Family/Futurama (to name a few things that were on Netflix and now aren't) so that's going to count against them when people are deciding which network to subscribe to. I don't know about you, but I subscribe to three streaming services at the mo (Netflix, Prime, and D+) and that's my limit. I don't want or can afford another.

 

What's a little interesting is that Disney+ is becoming more like the old Netflix of yore as Disney hoover up every movie studio known to man. There's a heck of a lot of stuff on there now.

Edited January 24, 2022 by Norphy

[mavhc]

There's billions of people getting enough internet to be able to access streaming video in the future. And the longer it exists the more people won't care about some legacy show from the beforetimes.

 

Netflix knew everyone else would copy them and remove their licenced content, that's why they spent billions making their own.

 

They do have 1 advantage, lack of legacy contracts, in general a netflix show is available globally, because someone's not sold the rights to a show in Italy for 10 years

 

Netflix have 9 of the top 10 original streamed shows in 2020, Disney has 1

 

In 2021 Netflix had 12 of the top 15, Hulu 1, AppleTV 1, Disney 1

[Garacesh]

I don't know about you, but I subscribe to three streaming services at the mo (Netflix, Prime, and D+) and that's my limit. I don't want or can afford another.

 

Two here. One is by happy accident, and the other is leeching off the housemate.

So in reality, zero.

I don't really watch anything on Prime, the last thing I watched was Star Trek: Lower Decks, which was apparently released in 2020, and before that it was Mr. Robot (which I didn't watch until Season 2 was out, then bailed on Season 2 early in because it just got super weird.) So hardly getting my money's worth there.

Netflix is where I watch most of my streaming now, and if it isn't on there? Shrug. C'est la vie.

 

I'm maybe-sorta-kinda curious about the Star Wars stuff that's on Disney+, Clone Wars final season, maybe the Mandolorian (but not all that much).. And.. That's it?

I guess watching Encanto would be cool, but I'll just wait until it gets a physical release. And I don't really care about the Marvel universe all that much.

 

But that's Netflix's big draw. It's not just Disney stuff. I don't want to watch just Disney stuff. I don't want to watch just anybody's stuff.

Heck, can you imagine if studios broke off with Spotify? "Nah, you can only stream Rock of Angels Records stuff on the ROAR app", "You want Machine Shop? Warner Record app, mate." etc?

 

But I'd expect X% buying straight from Disney is still a higher dollar-amount than Netflix would pay to license $Media, so greed wins out, whereas - though illegal and I'm not condoning it - it's ridiculously easy to rip music from YouTube, so the music companies won't dare. I know there's plenty of dodgy movie piracy sites out there, but it's not an apples-to-apples comparison since they still operate very much in the 'dodgy' area of the internet, with shady ads, popups and malicious download links etc, whereas YouTube is a 'legit' website you know you can watch/rip from easily. If that makes sense. I know the point I'm trying to make here lol.

[MartinT]

I've been watching another Swedish-noir called Gasmammam on Prime. It translates as Mother Goose and centres around a mother who gets drawn into drug smuggling and gang wars while constantly trying to protect her children. Really good characterisation and superb ensemble acting starring Alexandra Rapaport. By the end of S3 it's become breathless and edge-of-seat. The best Scandi drama since The Bridge.

[LeMarchand]

Heck, can you imagine if studios broke off with Spotify? "Nah, you can only stream Rock of Angels Records stuff on the ROAR app", "You want Machine Shop? Warner Record app, mate." etc?

 

I'm wondering if this is why Spotify is going big on podcasts at the moment - even paying big bucks for exclusives; they're making sure they have a second string to their bow just in case.

[tg12]

There's a little bit of irony in that services like Netflix were set up because, I think particularly in the US, you'd be paying for various different cable packages to get all of the content. Netflix became popular because it was a centralised place to see everything. And then all the big media companies suddenly wanted a piece of the action, and now we're back in a fragmented market again.

[LeMarchand]

More on the film side but I know people who were generally happy to wait for a movie to turn up on the packages they subscribed to. Nowadays there's no way of telling when/where/if a film will arrive on something they pay for while it's less than a minute's work to "find" it if it's on a steaming platform. So guess what they do? Not condoning it, but I can understand why.

[Rob_D]

I saw an article a few years ago saying that Netflix's rise and ubiquity led to one of the biggest drops in p2p video sharing. You wonder if the fracturing of streaming services will lead to a rise p2p video sharing.

[Garacesh]

More on the film side but I know people who were generally happy to wait for a movie to turn up on the packages they subscribed to. Nowadays there's no way of telling when/where/if a film will arrive on something they pay for while it's less than a minute's work to "find" it if it's on a steaming platform. So guess what they do? Not condoning it, but I can understand why.

 

As true now as it was back then.

"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy," Newell said. "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24/7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country three months after the U.S. release and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."

- Gabe Newell, CEO Valve Corporation, 2011

 

Every single person I've ever spoken to that admits to have pirated content in the past (but no longer does, your choice if you actually beleive that or not) boils down to essentially the following progression:

 

The first reason a person pirates is because it's more convenient to obtain.

$Thing just straight-up isn't available to them on services or stores they have access to. Sometimes this is a dead easy fix, sign up for those services (such as when a game is Epic Games exclusive for a year), or order the thing online. Sometimes the fix necessitates a bigger commitment or a monetary cost, goto 2 or 3 as required.

 

The second reason a person pirates is because it's more convenient to use.

It's the classic meme that had the Matrix IIRC, of 'insert disk, get movie'. Pirated media has no Denuvo DRM slowing the game down, no 50-bajillion unskippable FBI warnings, etc.

 

Then and only then do we get to the third reason a person pirates, because of the financial cost.

In the realm of digital goods, this is mostly constrained to young people, where a fiver's pocket money isn't going to stretch to a £60 game, but this tends to fall off once people grow up and get jobs.

There are a subset of selfish adults who pirate just because they can, but

in general terms

, working adults are happy to pay for a service.

 

Thanks to Spotify and Netflix, we ended up in a digital era where it genuinely became more effort to pirate something, as long as you could afford/were willing to pay the sub (or just leech of someone else who paid the sub..)

Now though? We're seeing piracy spike back up again for tv shows and movies because everybody is spinning up their own platform.

 

When $Platform costs £X-per-month, but you only care about one or two offerings, what do you do? Of course, the moral answer is 'wait until the season is released, buy for a month, binge, done' but when people have a sour taste in their mouth about publication Y removing the thing you care about from you to try and make you pay for it again (hello, Star Trek: Discovery!), it's easy to see why they hoist the colours.

 

Edit: Err, we've probably derailed a fair bit now..

Edited January 26, 2022 by Garacesh

[Koldov]

You wonder if the fracturing of streaming services will lead to a rise p2p video sharing.

 

I weaned myself off P2P a long time ago for various reasons, subscription TV actually being one of them... (terrible copies, virus/malware, computers being left on 24/7 were a few of the others).

 

But I've got to say it honestly crossed my mind whilst trying to work out what the PLUTO TV is all about... Couldn't search, couldn't see what I wanted in the menu, no pause/rewind etc... Then researched and found out it had been playing Star Trek: Discovery since November anyway... and gave up!

[LeMarchand]

I'll drag us back on topic!

 

Close to the end of my "Due South" rewatch. It's odd that I mainly remembered "real" Ray, but a lot of what I remember as classic "Due South" happened with "fake" Ray. The show may not be as good as you remember but this is probably because it used devices that were fairly, if not uniquely, new at the time but are common now.

[Norphy]

Due South is one of my absolute favourites and it still held up quite well the last time I watched it, about five years ago. It veered into self parody a little bit in the third season but it's still a good series.

[mavhc]

https://torrentfreak.com/torrent-traffic-surpasses-netflix-in-europe-middle-east-and-africa-200508/

[6Foot2]

5Foot2 and I have just finished box setting "The Responder"

 

Link: [TV Trailer] The Responder

 

Despite Lord Sugar's (London centric?) objections to Martin Freeman's Liverpudlian accent (a BBC's decision, apparently ) I thought it was good stuff!