What I'm watching

Nothing much happens in this sweet little show about the goings on at a cafe in a seaside British town.  People come and go and they interact and go about their lives, yeah, I know, it sounds boring but it's really cute and sweetly humorous.  We watched the first series on HuluPLUS and are currently catching the second on KPBS Presents on the Roku PBS channel.

I confess, I'd watch James Corden in about anything.  I find him to be funny and he's got an every-man quality that I really empathize with, although I will say I fucking hated History Boys.  This series is about two ordinary blokes who get drawn into international intrigue and sexual and financial shenanigans when one of them picks up a cell phone that fell out of a car after a nasty wreck.  It's all very good and well done.  And Croden and Matthew Baynton and both excellent in it.

I'm catching this show on Netflix and it took me a few episodes to get into the rhythm of it.  But now, midway through the third season, it's funny as hell.  I love Katie Aselton and the guy who plays her brother in law.  And the character of Rafi is pure fun.

I'm also watching this show on Netflix, I'm two episodes in and it's pretty good.  I'm hoping it gets better because there's so much there to work with.  A cop who works for a fascist corporate state in the future goes back in time accidentally with a bunch criminals.  Will they get back to the future?  Will she catch them in the past?  So many questions.  My only problem with this show is the bland lead.  She's pretty, but she's pretty dull too.

I watched the first episode of this BBC import the other night.  It's about a man and a woman in their mid 30's who hook up one night and how they deal with the consequences of their having had sex with one another.  The first episode was painfully funny and to be honest, I'd watch Sharon Horgan in anything.  She's cute and funny as hell.

I quite like this police procedural that's playing now on HuluPLUS.  As you can tell from the publicity photo, it's a female centered cop show and that's where it's strength lies.  I really like the two leads and the messy back-stories they've concocted for them. Sometimes the episode is more about their lives than the crime du jour.

I am over the moon about this Australian import that's currently running on Netflix.  Essie Davis is strikingly gorgeous in her role as the self confident and wildly sexy Miss Fisher, a semi private detective in 1920's Australia.  It's hard to notice anything else when she's onscreen, and thankfully, she's on screen most of the time.  The show is well written, well acted, and well produced.  And I love the fact that Miss Fisher doesn't hide the fact that she likes having sex.

I watched a couple episodes each of UFO and Space 1999, a pair of sci fi TV shows from my youth in the early 1970's, that are currently running on HuluPLUS, but I had to bail on them both.  They were so bad that I wanted to punch everyone involved with making them.  If you're into nostalgia for cheesy sci fi from the 1970's then these shows are for you, but for me, there's too many other TV shows and films on Netfilx and HuluPLUS that are way better than these two.

Top TV for the past year

These are my top TV shows for the past year, they may not have come out in the past year but I saw them in 2012.

1. Laid-Brilliant Australian comedy about one woman's possibly deadly vagina.
2. Spy-Sweet and funny Britcom about a spy having custody issues with his ex wife over their wildly intelligently son.
3. Underbelly-Very compelling Australian crime show.  I'm making my way through series 3 after watching the first two series.  Very well done show.
4. Rev-Another in a long line of sweetly amusing British TV shows about oddball vicars with a parish full of oddball residents.
5. Doc Martin-This series just keeps getting better and better.  This round of shows they made ol' Doc Martin a little more likeable.
6. Breaking Bad-I swore I'd never watch this show but they sucked me in and I'm hooked.  Believe the hype.
7. Modern Family-One of the best things on American TV.
8. Slings and Arrows-Being the recovering theater geek that I am, this show is right up my alley.  I finally saw it all last summer and I loved it.
9. Gavin and Stacey-After years of never releasing series 2 and 3 over here in the USA, I finally got to see them on Amazon Prime.  Great slice of life stuff.  I love this TV show.
10. Wild at Heart-Pasty British people running a wild game resort in South Africa...somehow it all worked.  
11. The Librarians- Another screamingly funny Australian comedy about a mildly racist head librarian and her staff at a public library in Australia.
12. Downton Abbey-So much to love.
13. Great Expectations (2011 version)-Excellent adaption of the Dickens novel.  Very very very well done and yes, Gillian Anderson pulled off being the youngest Miss Havisham ever.
14. Raising Hope-I'm not really buying the romance between Jimmy and Sabrina but overall this one is still consistently funny and winning.
15. Curb Your Enthusiasm 8- Another great season of the American king of the comedy of uncomfortableness.

Double review

Our love for BBC produced period dramas is well known so last year on her birthday I gave Sparky the first series DVD of Lark Rise to Candleford. Then wonder of wonders, my local library got the rest of the DVD sets for the other three series they made of this show and after seeing series 2 and 3 this summer we just finished series 4.

We both really liked this show. It has all the requisite things in a BBC produced period drama, great costumes, locations, great acting, sets, and this one had the added pleasure of being overtly political. The basic story is that Laura, the cute blonde in the center, is from Lark Rise, a poor working class village, and she gets the chance to move to Candleford to work in the post office which is run by her distant cousin Dorcas. The lives of the citizens of both the towns inter mingle and as time progresses all sorts of interpersonal dramatic and gentle comedic things happen. Lives grow complicated, love finds those who seek it, and everyone's lives are a bit richer and better because they all got close and folks had their back at one time or another.

I liked the fact that this show got political at times, it showed the plight of the working people and the indifference of the wealthy towards them. I also liked the many guest stars that it had and the fact that they didn't wear out their welcome. The show had several characters that it was built around and other characters came and went as needed. It was all very British and all very good. My favorite characters were Minnie the post office maid, the Pratt sisters, priggish Postman Brown, Alf, Twister and Queenie, and Robert and Emma.

After seeing all four series of this show I liked the first one best but all of them are worth the time. This one is highly recommended.

I read this slender hardboiled Mexican mystery in a three day span. It's only 162 pages long and the story flew by at break neck speed.

A one eyed gimpy legged private eye is hired to find out why a woman's husband and brothers got murdered and why she's being muscled out of the money left behind in her father in law's bank account. The private eye is an intelligent but world weary guy who has seen his share of the ugly side of Mexico City and it's corrupt government officials. He's also old friends with a criminal who's high up in the crime world. His investigation takes him to places he doesn't want to go and he finds out that his hometown of Mexico City is even more corrupt than he imagined. With the help of a couple of retired pro wrestlers and a novelist named Paco Ignacio he solves the case and helps to bring a little bit of justice to a town that needs it badly.

I loved this book. I loved how fast the story moved and how Taibo painted all his characters. I'm sure things in Mexico City aren't as bad as they sound in this book and I'm sure Mr. Taibo his taken literary license with other tings about his adopted country. I also love how he made himself a character in the book. I could see elements of the famed Latin 'magical realism' in this book and they added to my enjoyment of it.

I highly recommend this novel and I'll be seeking out more books by this author.

A Monkey Mini Series Report

I remember watching this when it first aired way back in 1970:
I remember watching parts of it with my mother and that things I remembered most were the music and the hats the women wore. I checked out the DVD version from my local library recently and I tried to watch it again.

I made it through Henry's first wife and part way through his second before I gave up. I didn't stop watching it because the show was bad, in fact it's all quite good, the acting, the music, the direction. Nope, those things didn't put me off, what put me off was the super shitty sound quality.

They shot this series in the late 1960's when it was a badge of honor to see how cheaply one could make a BBC show, witness the Dr. Who's of this era. They did the same thing with this show. Everything was shot on a sound stage, which is not bad in and of itself, in fact that kind of thing forces the actors and all involved to be creative. But the thing about this production is that when they shot this series they evidently could not afford a boom microphone and all the mics were attached to the TV cameras. And that means that the further you are from the camera, the harder it is to hear you, which means I had to constantly turn the volume up and down and gawd help you if you had the volume up when Keith Mitchell as Henry VIII launches into one of his actorly bellowings.

I suffered through the first episode because of this woman:
If you watch British comedy or drama then you're familiar with the lovely Annette Crosbie. She's been in all kinds of shows and ever since I began really appreciating BBC stuff she looked like she does in the above photo. I was used to her as an older woman so it was kind of jarring to see her when she was a young smokin' hot actress:
She was fantastic in her episode. She played Henry's first wife Catherine with a quiet dignity that has rarely been matched and she looked very hubba hubba while doing it.

And as Henry's second wife Anne Boleyn, Dorothy Tutin was just okay in the first episode but when she got her own episode, she was fantastic.
However by the end of the Anne Boleyn episode I had had enough of the sound problem and I gave up on the rest of the series. Perhaps one day if we get a TV that allows me to equalize the sound of productions that were made on the cheap, like this one was, then I'll watch the rest.

Based on what I saw, I recommend this series but beware the sound fluctuations, they'll drive you batty.

The Doctor is dead, long live the Doctor

I didn't grow up with Doctor Who, thank goodness. I only had some vague recollection of Peter Cushing as Dr. Who but that was it. No TV stations around here ran the show and VCR's didn't hit big until I was in college and back then you were doing good to get movies that were made in the past ten years on video let alone some obscure sci fi show from the UK. I had no idea who Tom Baker was until my late 30's, which is good because I wasn't burdened with the memory of his portrayal of the Doctor like some of my friends are.

So when the new series hit a few years ago, I jumped in with not much background and no expectations. Which was a good thing.
I had some idea of who Russell T Davies was, I knew he created the highly popular show Queer as Folk, but I had never seen any of his work. But since he was gay and did a successful show about the lives of gays, it seemed to me that he'd do a bang up job on a show about an outsider who is always on the fringes of life. And I was right. I loved his Doctor Who shows right from the start. Christopher Eccleston was smashing as the Doctor and Billie Piper was pure fun as his companion.

I was hooked from the first episode because the scripts were good, the acting great, and the whole production was flat out entertaining. The way the episodes built on each other was a stroke of genius.
When Eccleston's contract was up they replaced him with David Tennant and the show didn't miss a beat. Sure Tennant took a bit getting used to and boy did he love to chew the scenery, but he jumped in without missing nary a beat. His relationships with his female companions and the way he saved the earth and other planets every week was engaging and fun.

I didn't care for the spin off Torchwood, but hey, to each his or her own. I know some of you love it so there you go.

But all good things must come to an end and both Davies and Tennant have left Doctor Who for other projects. Which will probably be seen as a good thing in time because the problem with staying with one show like that for so long is that one gets burned out and or the story telling begins to suffer because the quality slips after a while. I'm glad they tied up all the story lines and connected all the dots of the Davies/Tennant era in the last few episodes and they way they let Tennant's Doctor say goodbye to all his friends at the end of the last episode was kind of touching, it brought a tear to my eye and a lump to my throat.

Now we've got a new Doctor to look forward to:
And a new man behind the show, this time it's Steven Moffat. He actually wrote a few scripts for Doctor Who while Davies was producing the show so we know the man has chops when it comes to the character. He's also the man behind one of the funniest sitcoms ever written, Coupling, so we know he can bring the funny along with a deft dialogue touch to the Doctor Who franchise as well. I saw the trailer featuring the new Doctor and the show looks incredible. So, I'm not worried. The show is in good hands and unless they let FOX have the show and they cast Tony Danza as the Doctor, then it'll run for a long long time.

Long live the Doctor!