Series on TV or the Internet

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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby TeneReef » 2015-01-09, 1:06

Johanna wrote:
Lowena wrote:
Johanna wrote:
kibo wrote:How To Get Away With Murder. The show is very good, especially...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTFmSur_O0E

It's kind of curious how they made this fit to the standard "normal TV sex scene", with only one person at the time being showed naked from the waist up...

That's not what I was thinking about while watching it. :whistle:

I am asexual after all ;)

:whistle:
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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Meera » 2015-01-10, 0:01

I am currently obsessed with Scandal and The Walking Dead. I have been binge watching the walking dead I never thought I could get into a show about zombies but it's so good. I can't wait for the season premiere of Scandal!
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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Lauren » 2015-01-10, 2:29

Girlfriend and I watched Over the Garden Wall today. OMG it's so adorable!! :mrgreen: I so love that show.
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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Varislintu » 2015-01-10, 8:38

I started watching True Detective. It's been so long since there's been a new TV series that doesn't annoy the heck out of me, but this one doesn't. I hope it keeps it together to the end!

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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-01-13, 22:36

Varislintu wrote:It's been so long since there's been a new TV series that doesn't annoy the heck out of me, but this one doesn't.

Just out of curiosity, why is that? What is it that's so annoying about new TV series for you in general, and how come this one doesn't? :)

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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Varislintu » 2015-01-14, 7:23

vijayjohn wrote:
Varislintu wrote:It's been so long since there's been a new TV series that doesn't annoy the heck out of me, but this one doesn't.

Just out of curiosity, why is that? What is it that's so annoying about new TV series for you in general, and how come this one doesn't? :)


I'm not sure... I used to love TV-series, say 10 years ago, but now I usually don't. There's something that comes between me and immersion and it just turns into annoyance. I think they've started to look self-important, super-naive, badly acted, emotionally manipulative, pretend-intellectual, tiresomely moralising, and even morally repulsive to me. Many of the post-Lost ones seem to lack a proper story arch. The plot just goes in circles while pretending to be intellectually challenging (not even being honestly and self-ironically empty circular entertainment).

I used to get a magazine... I think it's the "New Yorker" (?) in my phone's news feed, but had to specifically unsubscribe because it was full of lengthy articles about "What does this episode's events in this popular intellectual TV-series intellectually say about modern US society?" type articles. Dear article writers -- the episodes don't say anything, let alone intellectually or on purpose. Trust me. It's poorly and lazily written circular drama about some people who don't tell each other things. Sometimes they're in a spaceship, sometimes they're in the suburbs, sometimes in a haunted house. They are there and they don't talk honestly with each other, and then the script writers expect me to feel their pain when that lands them in relationship difficulties.

And the hairdo thing... All the women all the time in long, loose-hanging, perfectly curled wavy heads of hair, positioned under a lighting source so that is shines around the edges. I had enough of this trope when they ran Touched by an Angel in Finland when I was a kid. Now I can't watch anything without them giving me the hairdo thing.

Sorry, this got ranty. :lol:

I guess True Detective, so far (two episodes down), seems to be short (8 episodes), dirty (no hairdo thing), cynical (no moralising), well acted (truly), and hasn't featured as a main plot event the main characters not telling each other something.

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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-01-14, 7:49

Hey, I don't blame you for getting ranty. I may not have the exact same reasons for not watching TV these days, but I don't watch it either. :lol:

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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Varislintu » 2015-01-14, 17:22

vijayjohn wrote:Hey, I don't blame you for getting ranty. I may not have the exact same reasons for not watching TV these days, but I don't watch it either. :lol:


Now I'm curious about your reasons. :)

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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby linguoboy » 2015-01-14, 17:31

Varislintu, don't you get plenty of British TV where you are as well? Does it suffer from the same problems?
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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Marah » 2015-01-14, 17:57

What TV-Series do you watch Varislintu? Maybe we can recommend something interesting depending on what you like.
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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-01-14, 22:22

Varislintu wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Hey, I don't blame you for getting ranty. I may not have the exact same reasons for not watching TV these days, but I don't watch it either. :lol:


Now I'm curious about your reasons. :)

Well, I never watched all that much TV to begin with. I've always felt like there was something I'd rather do with my life than watch TV, and I could barely stay awake the last time I tried watching TV for more than two hours straight (which was many years ago). :lol: Even when I did watch TV, I mostly watched sitcoms. At some point not long after the turn of the century, I got the impression that the sitcoms that were on were much dumber than the ones that were normally shown before that point. Nowadays, at least there's The Big Bang Theory, which looks good enough, but I've almost never managed to watch a full episode of that show and don't really care anyway.

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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Varislintu » 2015-01-15, 8:10

linguoboy wrote:Varislintu, don't you get plenty of British TV where you are as well? Does it suffer from the same problems?


Actually yeah, that's true. We don't get a very great variety of British TV here, but I do gladly watch some of the crime stuff they buy. Silent Witness, Morse, Lewis, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, and some others I'm forgetting now. I've really liked them. Scott and Bailey! :yep: Many of the ones I've liked have movie-length episodes, maybe that's why I haven't really categorised them as series in my mind.

The majority of the stuff shown here is American, though. They buy a lot of glossy but annoying stuff. Oh dear, I guess it's mostly the American stuff I don't like. :shock: Except Grimm. Despite its faults, I still watch it. Ah Portland, the wesen hub of the world. :lol:

The German crime shown here isn't really my cup of tea either. Too conservative and naive.

Marah wrote:What TV-Series do you watch Varislintu? Maybe we can recommend something interesting depending on what you like.


Thanks, but I need to mention that I'm too lazy to download stuff from anywhere (unless I've missed an episode). I watch series on TV if there's something good on, but not really more than that. Unless I can borrow the entire series DVD-box from the library.

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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Varislintu » 2015-01-15, 8:18

vijayjohn wrote:Well, I never watched all that much TV to begin with. I've always felt like there was something I'd rather do with my life than watch TV, and I could barely stay awake the last time I tried watching TV for more than two hours straight (which was many years ago). :lol:


I can understand that. Luckily even a modern person has other choices of leisurely activity than TV-watching. :yep:

vijayjohn wrote:Even when I did watch TV, I mostly watched sitcoms. At some point not long after the turn of the century, I got the impression that the sitcoms that were on were much dumber than the ones that were normally shown before that point. Nowadays, at least there's The Big Bang Theory, which looks good enough, but I've almost never managed to watch a full episode of that show and don't really care anyway.


I see. :) I only gave The Big Bang Theory a cursory glance, because I don't really like sitcoms much. I got enough of it in my childhood with Happy Days and Archie Bunker and I Love Lucy and The Bill Cosby Show. Although Little Mosque on the Prairie was an unexpected delight, at least for the first season. It's the only one I've watched in probably 10 years.

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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Car » 2015-01-15, 10:00

Varislintu wrote:Silent Witness, Morse, Lewis, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, and some others I'm forgetting now.


Yay, another Silent Witness fan! :) Although it's nowhere near as good as it used to be a few years ago. :(

The majority of the stuff shown here is American, though. They buy a lot of glossy but annoying stuff. Oh dear, I guess it's mostly the American stuff I don't like. :shock: Except Grimm. Despite its faults, I still watch it. Ah Portland, the wesen hub of the world. :lol:


Most of the American stuff doesn't attract me at all, never really has, but nowadays even less. I only started watching series for real once I was able to receive British TV. Apart from that, I'm mostly watching those Scandinavian crime productions that became hits. I recently gave the much-praised Gomorr(h)a a try, but I found it rather mediocre and stopped after three episodes. I'm not sure I actually like mafia stories anyway, though.

The German crime shown here isn't really my cup of tea either. Too conservative and naive.

Despite the good ratings, it gets criticised a lot all the time here.
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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Aurinĭa » 2015-01-15, 11:03

Car wrote:
Varislintu wrote:Silent Witness, Morse, Lewis, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, and some others I'm forgetting now.

Yay, another Silent Witness fan! :) Although it's nowhere near as good as it used to be a few years ago. :(
Funnily enough, although I've always liked the other series Varislintu mentioned, I never liked Silent Witness. And I regard it as a personal victory that I got Yserenhart, who doesn't really care for detectives, into Poirot. :P

I've never watched any American series (except for the Simpsons and Friends, which my younger siblings liked watching after dinner, to my great annoyance) and I don't want to (except for Battlestar Galactica and Stargate). They would just annoy me too much, for fairly similar reasons as Varislintu.

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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Varislintu » 2015-01-15, 11:57

Car wrote:Yay, another Silent Witness fan! :) Although it's nowhere near as good as it used to be a few years ago. :(


Oh yay, glad to hear it has more fans. :D Have you seen both the ones with the older (Irish?) actress and the newer ones with the younger actress? I think the character of the series changed a lot as the main character changed, but I actually like both. They're different, but still both good.

Car wrote:Apart from that, I'm mostly watching those Scandinavian crime productions that became hits. I recently gave the much-praised Gomorr(h)a a try, but I found it rather mediocre and stopped after three episodes. I'm not sure I actually like mafia stories anyway, though.


I think I could give Scandinavian stuff more of a try -- I only really followed Bro(en) (The Bridge) closely. I do watch the occasional Beck or Wallander movie (or Maria Wern and what-nots), though. My boyfriend refers to this as me getting my fix of depressive stories. :lol: They are pretty bleak. :hmm:

Car wrote:Despite the good ratings, it gets criticised a lot all the time here.


I see. I think a problem is also that the series from Germany they buy to Finland are either old or really long-running series. I guess they could try to freshen up the selection a bit.

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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Varislintu » 2015-01-15, 12:06

Aurinĭa wrote:Funnily enough, although I've always liked the other series Varislintu mentioned, I never liked Silent Witness. And I regard it as a personal victory that I got Yserenhart, who doesn't really care for detectives, into Poirot. :P


Cool! They did a really good job with his character in the series, I think. He's got his hang-ups (like the intellectual elitism and super-cleanliness), but they don't over-do it to the point of annoyance, and despite them he's portayed as a very altruistic and compassionate person. He's living in a class-society, but he can see beyond class, too.

Well, of course such a character is cheery fantasy, but not every fiction needs to be full of rotten main characters à la Game of Thrones. :P

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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Car » 2015-01-15, 12:22

Varislintu wrote:Oh yay, glad to hear it has more fans. :D Have you seen both the ones with the older (Irish?) actress and the newer ones with the younger actress? I think the character of the series changed a lot as the main character changed, but I actually like both. They're different, but still both good.

I only joined when Harry and Leo were part of the team. Back in 2010, maybe? I've yet to catch up with the older episodes. I definitely was watching in 2011. Time flies so quickly.

I think I could give Scandinavian stuff more of a try -- I only really followed Bro(en) (The Bridge) closely. I do watch the occasional Beck or Wallander movie (or Maria Wern and what-nots), though. My boyfriend refers to this as me getting my fix of depressive stories. :lol: They are pretty bleak. :hmm:

I'm not too fond of Wallander, at least the one(s) I've seen. Scandinavian stuff is known to be bleak and depressive for a reason, but that's a nice change.

I see. I think a problem is also that the series from Germany they buy to Finland are either old or really long-running series. I guess they could try to freshen up the selection a bit.

Most of what's on TV here seems to be really long-running series, they don't have the courage to give new ideas a try. Whenever the private channels produce something, it's usually trashy, and the public channels simply keep on doing what they've done for decades. They really fail to reach younger audiences (their average is over 60), but whenever they try to reach them, the older folks cry out loud and many younger people don't even expect to find anything for them on them (if they still watch TV at all). There was a lot of talk about trying new things, "Americanising" series more (read: serial productions instead of procedurals), but I'm not sure how much they're actually working on.

Free TV really isn't what is used to be any more here, so that also affects the productions. Apart from that, Germany traditionally was more of a film or TV film than a series country, as you can still see by looking at their programming. Unlike in other countries, pay TV always struggled, too, so that's another source that doesn't produce good stuff (they've apparently produced some decent or good series recently, though). At least pay TV started making profits recently and with the big merger of the different "Skys" and a growing number of own productions, that might became a source of good productions. Actually, for series fans, free TV is just getting worse and worse, many are actually fleeing into pay TV or VOD (or piracy, of course).

I agree with you about your description, especially all this intellectual talk and the hype nowadays is unbearable. I recently read an article where experts described what we can learn about their subject through popular TV series. So people watched Breaking Bad to learn about chemistry? I doubt that. That's probably the downside of the increase in popularity of series in general and especially serials.

Another series I liked is the Flemish "Salamander". A very different crime drama compared to e.g. the dark Scandinavian ones, but good, with a lot of history in it, too. It also has both Flemish and French in it on a regular basis.
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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Varislintu » 2015-01-15, 14:39

Car wrote:Another series I liked is the Flemish "Salamander". A very different crime drama compared to e.g. the dark Scandinavian ones, but good, with a lot of history in it, too. It also has both Flemish and French in it on a regular basis.


I wish they would once in a while go exotic and buy something like that to here. But it's always North America, Britain, Scandinavia, Germany. Sometimes France or Italy.

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Re: Series on TV or the Internet

Postby Car » 2015-01-15, 16:49

Varislintu wrote:
Car wrote:Another series I liked is the Flemish "Salamander". A very different crime drama compared to e.g. the dark Scandinavian ones, but good, with a lot of history in it, too. It also has both Flemish and French in it on a regular basis.


I wish they would once in a while go exotic and buy something like that to here. But it's always North America, Britain, Scandinavia, Germany. Sometimes France or Italy.

That one made it to the UK, Germany and Italy at least. It took over a year to reach the UK. It's on Netflix in some countries, moreflicks.com lists Canada and the US, but they're not always complete.

I'm not sure about Italy, but Germany and especially the UK don't go for "exotic" countries a lot either. Even Austrian series struggle here and they do have some nice ones (Schnell ermittelt, CopStories [based on a Dutch series, IIRC), Janus is said to be good as well).
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