Off Topic The Review Thread

Some good shows there. I enjoyed Into the Badlands. Amazing fight scenes. Very very bloodthirsty though.

 

Jones or Scott?

Battle of the Alexes!

 

Discovered yesterday that my daughter has a student rate Amazon Prime account, so we fired it up on the smart TV yesterday and watched the first episode of American Gods.

Very good, but exceptionally violent and graphic, more so than I remember the book being. Ian McShane is perfect casting and he carries the whole thing. I’m sure we will watch the rest.

We’ve discussed Man in the High Castle before, I’ll have a look but I’m sure I will have to pretend that the book doesn’t exist.

 

Is TMITHC the one that imagines the Nancys won the war?

 

Nancy’s? Yes, it imagines a Nazi and Japan win, with America divided East Coast Nazi, West Coast Japanese and a buffer state in between, because there is tension between the ‘winners’. But the book, at least, is much more interesting than alternative history (which I have a weakness for), I’ll be interested to see if much of that survives into the TV version. Plus it’s a short book, so 4 series must involve a massive rewrite and expansion.

 

There's a good amount of tension between the two victors. The Japanese seem to be the more controlling of the two occupying forces, but it's the emergence of footage of the Allies winning both the war in Europe and the war in Japan that starts to causr problems.

Won't say too much, in case you do plan to watch it, but it veers off into alternate realities, which I quite like (I'm a bit of a fan of "clever" sci-fi), but don't see how they could incorporate all of this into a short book.

 

FFS lads.....now I gotta add TMITHC to my watch list.....another 4 bloody seasons

 

Watched “Miles Davis: The Birth of Cool” via Steel’s link. Really enjoyed the documentary and of course the soundtrack was perfect. Learnt a lot about the person and of course that flawed genius that has that drive to create amazing things and yet self destruct in so many different directions. Where does that come from? A few albums that I shall be listening to in the studio over the next few weeks now. Definite 9/10.

 

So Villenelle is back.....brilliant again. Dark, comic and a bit bloody too. BBC are streaming one episode of Killing Eve on iPlayer a week (somehow couldn't find time to fit it into their schedule, even though it's one of their most popular programs - weird)

 

One episode into series two of American Gods, which I am watching with my daughter two episodes a night after walking the dog. It’s really very good, and stunningly faithful to the book, which makes sense as Gaiman did the adaptation and his version of his book with Pratchett that was done for the telly (forget what it was called, with Sheen and Tenant) was word for word the book. Difference is American Gods is a very good book (streets ahead of anything else Gaiman has done). Ian McShane still the focal point, just great. It’s very graphic, perhaps unnecessarily so, but the visuals are spot on.

 

Been telling you to watch it for two years! Not sure when Season 3 starts, hopefully soon.

The Pratchet/Gaiman show was Good Omens

 

Watching because my daughter has Amazon Prime - its an Amazon original Ninesy.

 

Your daughters are a bit younger than mine, you might not want to watch it with them if you do have access.......check out a couple of episodes first.

 

Yeah, we watched it too. Sheen is superb in everything he does and it was a good show. It was adapted from a stage play where the audience were asked to give a verdict at the end of the performance. The majority tended to vote not guilty and this portrayal certainly cast doubt over the Ingrams' guilt, mainly, I think, because of the speech by the defence barrister (presumably verbatim). I still think they were guilty as hell.

 

Finally got to see Gervais’ “After Life”. The best thing he’s done, I reckon, irrespective of what one might think of him as a person (and I sit on the fence).