Speaking of entertainment, I’m now taking a hiatus on streaming Australian television (the last show I was watching is a family drama called Packed to the Rafters). I’m streaming a CBC series called Republic of Doyle set in Newfoundland. It’s a hoot.
My wife is binge-watching Parenthood on Netflix. I watch it with her when the opportunity arises. She says her objective is to catch up so she can watch the series finale when it broadcasts.
I’m still watching The Walking Dead although I think the fall season has started a bit slowly. Maybe it’ll perk up but it looks to me as though they’d run out of story lines which is the problem with series TV. I think most of the comic book-based series on TV have run out of steam for that reason.
Ugh, I’d rather take post-zombie-apocalypse world than Parenthood. Watched the first two seasons, I think, before I bailed. Everyone just too miserable, and so much of it of the manufacture of the writers. Ugh.
Down to about three series at the moment.
Person of Interest has managed to keep my interest. I was worried about the problem of an Ever Bigger Villain, but they’ve handled it well. It helps that the new bad guys think they’re serving God. Or a god, anyway.
Gotham has been quite entertaining. Loving a focus on everyone BUT Batman (who is still just the newly orphaned Bruce Wayne), and Robin Lord Taylor has been remarkable as a young Penguin. Really, I’m remarking on it!
And we’re still slogging thru Doctor Who. I love the new Doctor, and Mr. Pink has potential. The writing still leaves something to be desired. Somehow Moffat never quite nailed it down like Russell T. Davies did. Somewhere I read the criticism that Moffat has never gotten the Companion/Doctor relationships down, in part because he just hasn’t written good Companions, and I think that’s about right. Still sticking with it, at least a little longer.
(Don’t know why Moffat hasn’t quite clicked as showrunner, at least for me and my wife, given that he wrote some of the best episodes of the Russell T. Davies era.)
But I’m glad I don’t follow many current series. Saw an article from, I believe, The Hollywood Reporter last week about how smutty some of the shows have become. Most of the stuff stunned me for being on broadcast television, as it was pretty hard-core kind of stuff, but reading the article I actually ended up learning about a sexual practice that I would have not suspected. (No, I’m not going to mention it. Anyone interested can go looking for it.) Seriously, people do that? For fun?
Simple rule of the internet: If you don’t know what a term means but suspect it has a sexual connotation, do NOT look it up!
I’m a huge fan of Parenthood . The writing and acting are top notch. I disagree with ice’s assessment, and if anything rather than “miserable” my critique is that problems get resolved a bit too easily, but that’s the limitation of all family drama TV shows.
We got really hooked when art imitated life- several story lines in one of the early seasons (2 I think) hewed so closely to our lives that we felt that the show’s writers had hidden cameras in our home,
That said, I’m glad it’s the last season as it has played itself out. Still enjoying the last season, which is as it should be- more would be pushing past the sell by date.
Only The Walking Dead, which has its ups and downs. Will be checking out Constantine in a few weeks; I like occult/ psyhic detectives.
I’m interested to know how you are streaming the Aussie and Canadian shows, Dave. I’d like to find more series to queue up and see if we can cut the cable cord soon. We have Roku and a Netflix and Amazon Prime subscription but I’m not thrilled with the content that’s included.
“I’m interested to know how you are streaming the Aussie and Canadian shows, Dave.”
Acorn TV. Check out the website.
Thanks sam, I’ve been meaning to check out their offerings.
I think I mentioned this before. We subscribe to quite a few streaming services: Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu+, and Acorn. If the Warner streaming service would wise up and open up their entire catalog, we’d subscribe to that.
Acorn carries quite a bit of Canadian TV and some Australian. I’m a faithful viewer of the Canadian Murdoch Mysteries (syndicated in the States as The Artful Detective). Two of the Australian programs that are amusing are Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and Mr. and Mrs. Murder.