osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2018-01-06 10:01 am
osprey_archer) wrote2018-01-06 10:01 am
2017 TV Shows
One last round-up post for the new year, and then I think I’m caught up! (Or so I like to hope.) I have been disgracefully lax about posting about TV shows this year, which is too bad because I’ve watched a lot of really good television.
Brideshead Revisited: I watched the 1981 Brideshead Revisited with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews all the way back in last January and I meant to post about it ever since because I loved it so much, but I never did get around to it. It starts off golden and beautiful (“Et In Arcadia Ego” is the name of the first episode, and never has anything been more aptly named) and becomes incredibly sad.
Gankutsuou: THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO IN SPAAAAAAAAACE, which somehow manages to be even more extra than the book EVEN THOUGH THE BOOK IS ALREADY THE MOST EXTRA THING EVER WRITTEN. I totally recommend it although it will probably make you cry.
It’s a surprisingly faithful adaptation (given that it’s set in SPAAAAACE) that pulls the nifty trick of telling the same story while giving it a totally different moral spin, simply by shifting the focus. The main characters here are the younger generation, the sons and daughters of the men who ruined Edmond Dantes’ life, and whose lives will be ruined in return by the Count’s revenge.
Also, there’s a mecha battle (WHY? BECAUSE WHY NOT, THAT’S WHY) and ridiculous self-sacrifice and SO MANY EMOTIONS.
The Good Place, season 1: You have probably heard good things about this show and they are all 100% deserved. The ensemble cast is amazing – I love Eleanor, Chidi, Michael, Tahani, and Janet – the worldbuilding is tight, and the ethical discussions are both thoughtful and lots of fun. I am SUPER looking forward to season 2 whenever Netflix gets it.
Grantchester, season 2 & 3: Sidney Chambers is an Anglican priest in 1950s Cambridge who becomes an amateur detective. I really like stories with religious themes, but they often strike me as anodyne – the characters get easy outs or pat answers to their dilemmas, which are meant to affirm their faith but really only show that their faith hasn’t been truly tested. American shows seem particularly prone to this, perhaps because there’s a certain audience in America that might be offended by characters who truly wrestle with their faith – who might genuinely be in danger of losing it.
This is not a problem in Grantchester. The murder mystery aspect means that the show’s moral dilemmas come to a real point (they make wonderful use of Sidney’s sermons in this regard). And the show is simply really well done in other regards, too: the characters are sharply drawn and the mysteries well-plotted. I thought they did a particularly fine job with Leonard, Sidney’s curate, who is gay and really struggling to reconcile that with his faith and with the expectations of the church.
He’s also very fond of obscure philosophical sermons and at one point attempts to give a Brechtian retelling of the Nativity play. This is exactly as hilarious as you might imagine. The show is not all serious moral pondering and murder all the time: there are also some wonderful humorous bits and also a few luminous moments where the characters are simply having a good time together.
Also, beautiful settings, beautiful costuming, lovely English countryside. The show is a feast for the eyes.
The Librarians: Honestly I’m not too thrilled with this show. The worldbuilding is shoddy and I have become actively averse to Flynn, which is unfortunate because the showrunners love him. But Julie likes it and, you know, there’s Jenkins, so probably I’ll be watching season 3 this month.
Parks and Rec, season 2-6: I’ve tried to get into this show before and always bogged down in season 1, but Julie insisted we could skip straight to season 2 and after that all was smooth sailing. This show is a joy and a delight and I love pretty much all the characters, although my favorite is probably Leslie because she is like a bulldog in human form, if bulldogs are both incredibly friendly and unbelievably stubborn.
I also enjoy the faint absurdity of Pawnee – the way that the writers use it as a microcosm of American politics, so that (for instance) it has its own newspaper and tabloid and its own version of the White House correspondents’ dinner, even though in reality one small town probably couldn’t support all of that. The writers just run with it and it’s fun.
The one thing I don’t like about this show is that it has a mean-spirited streak that shows up particularly in the way the other characters mock Jerry, a long-serving Parks employee who is fat and clumsy and prone to mistakes, but basically good-hearted. This poor guy. I feel so bad for him.
Shetland: Another mystery show from the UK, this one set in the Shetland Islands. (And yes, there are lots of lovely shots of island scenery.) I picked it up because I was going through Grantchester withdrawal, but it’s almost too understated for me. The characters are calm, professional people, who don’t make big emotional declarations, and don’t have dramatic character arcs but just keep on keeping on and perhaps change a bit as they go.
There’s a certain realism to this that I admire, but it does have a distancing effect. Part of the draw of fiction for me is that you get to know these people, the way that in real life you only know your closest friends: their hopes, their fears, the moments when they break down. The characters in Shetland are more subdued – more opaque.
Underground, Season 2: Shows that have a really stellar first season (which Underground did) often struggle in the second – which Underground definitely did; I realized that they had definitively lost all sense of pacing when the show stopped dead for an entire episode midseason as Harriet Tubman gives a speech.
You may think that I am exaggerating. Allow me to assure you that this is literally true. I do not understand why they decided they needed to devote fifty minutes to the thrilling spectacle of a woman giving a speech in a barn. Surely they could have cut it down to fifteen minutes and thereby left space for some of the season’s many, many other subplots to advance. Maybe used the action and character development in those subplots to underscore Harriet Tubman’s points, even!
I also watched The Crown, but I ended up moving that one to a separate post because I went on about it so long. Watch this space!
Brideshead Revisited: I watched the 1981 Brideshead Revisited with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews all the way back in last January and I meant to post about it ever since because I loved it so much, but I never did get around to it. It starts off golden and beautiful (“Et In Arcadia Ego” is the name of the first episode, and never has anything been more aptly named) and becomes incredibly sad.
Gankutsuou: THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO IN SPAAAAAAAAACE, which somehow manages to be even more extra than the book EVEN THOUGH THE BOOK IS ALREADY THE MOST EXTRA THING EVER WRITTEN. I totally recommend it although it will probably make you cry.
It’s a surprisingly faithful adaptation (given that it’s set in SPAAAAACE) that pulls the nifty trick of telling the same story while giving it a totally different moral spin, simply by shifting the focus. The main characters here are the younger generation, the sons and daughters of the men who ruined Edmond Dantes’ life, and whose lives will be ruined in return by the Count’s revenge.
Also, there’s a mecha battle (WHY? BECAUSE WHY NOT, THAT’S WHY) and ridiculous self-sacrifice and SO MANY EMOTIONS.
The Good Place, season 1: You have probably heard good things about this show and they are all 100% deserved. The ensemble cast is amazing – I love Eleanor, Chidi, Michael, Tahani, and Janet – the worldbuilding is tight, and the ethical discussions are both thoughtful and lots of fun. I am SUPER looking forward to season 2 whenever Netflix gets it.
Grantchester, season 2 & 3: Sidney Chambers is an Anglican priest in 1950s Cambridge who becomes an amateur detective. I really like stories with religious themes, but they often strike me as anodyne – the characters get easy outs or pat answers to their dilemmas, which are meant to affirm their faith but really only show that their faith hasn’t been truly tested. American shows seem particularly prone to this, perhaps because there’s a certain audience in America that might be offended by characters who truly wrestle with their faith – who might genuinely be in danger of losing it.
This is not a problem in Grantchester. The murder mystery aspect means that the show’s moral dilemmas come to a real point (they make wonderful use of Sidney’s sermons in this regard). And the show is simply really well done in other regards, too: the characters are sharply drawn and the mysteries well-plotted. I thought they did a particularly fine job with Leonard, Sidney’s curate, who is gay and really struggling to reconcile that with his faith and with the expectations of the church.
He’s also very fond of obscure philosophical sermons and at one point attempts to give a Brechtian retelling of the Nativity play. This is exactly as hilarious as you might imagine. The show is not all serious moral pondering and murder all the time: there are also some wonderful humorous bits and also a few luminous moments where the characters are simply having a good time together.
Also, beautiful settings, beautiful costuming, lovely English countryside. The show is a feast for the eyes.
The Librarians: Honestly I’m not too thrilled with this show. The worldbuilding is shoddy and I have become actively averse to Flynn, which is unfortunate because the showrunners love him. But Julie likes it and, you know, there’s Jenkins, so probably I’ll be watching season 3 this month.
Parks and Rec, season 2-6: I’ve tried to get into this show before and always bogged down in season 1, but Julie insisted we could skip straight to season 2 and after that all was smooth sailing. This show is a joy and a delight and I love pretty much all the characters, although my favorite is probably Leslie because she is like a bulldog in human form, if bulldogs are both incredibly friendly and unbelievably stubborn.
I also enjoy the faint absurdity of Pawnee – the way that the writers use it as a microcosm of American politics, so that (for instance) it has its own newspaper and tabloid and its own version of the White House correspondents’ dinner, even though in reality one small town probably couldn’t support all of that. The writers just run with it and it’s fun.
The one thing I don’t like about this show is that it has a mean-spirited streak that shows up particularly in the way the other characters mock Jerry, a long-serving Parks employee who is fat and clumsy and prone to mistakes, but basically good-hearted. This poor guy. I feel so bad for him.
Shetland: Another mystery show from the UK, this one set in the Shetland Islands. (And yes, there are lots of lovely shots of island scenery.) I picked it up because I was going through Grantchester withdrawal, but it’s almost too understated for me. The characters are calm, professional people, who don’t make big emotional declarations, and don’t have dramatic character arcs but just keep on keeping on and perhaps change a bit as they go.
There’s a certain realism to this that I admire, but it does have a distancing effect. Part of the draw of fiction for me is that you get to know these people, the way that in real life you only know your closest friends: their hopes, their fears, the moments when they break down. The characters in Shetland are more subdued – more opaque.
Underground, Season 2: Shows that have a really stellar first season (which Underground did) often struggle in the second – which Underground definitely did; I realized that they had definitively lost all sense of pacing when the show stopped dead for an entire episode midseason as Harriet Tubman gives a speech.
You may think that I am exaggerating. Allow me to assure you that this is literally true. I do not understand why they decided they needed to devote fifty minutes to the thrilling spectacle of a woman giving a speech in a barn. Surely they could have cut it down to fifteen minutes and thereby left space for some of the season’s many, many other subplots to advance. Maybe used the action and character development in those subplots to underscore Harriet Tubman’s points, even!
I also watched The Crown, but I ended up moving that one to a separate post because I went on about it so long. Watch this space!
no subject
Gankutsuou is ludicrously delightful and made me cry, which is unfair. ALBERT. THINK ABOUT YOUR LIFE. THINK ABOUT YOUR CHOICES.
no subject
I watched it all free & legit with English subs at Viki.com so I'd give that a go if you one day wanna try it. Some shows are blocked in some regions, so IDK.