afgavinstan wrote:

Fear not, James! There's a UK version too! Hosted by Mel "oh fuck I've already beaten the legacy of the world's biggest girl band's horse with the biggest stick for years and the taxman is coming" B, and all round general shithawk Professor Green, who's like, a cheekie chappy innit. Cos he's got tattoos. But he also raps about REAL things, like hangovers, and having tattoos. Cos he's got tattoos. You'll love it!

Good Lord, that's every kind of awful.

I hate how British TV takes already shoddy, low-brow Yank ideas and proceeds to remake them with charisma-less stars, a po-face, an even lower brow and a budget of 38p per episode. Then they wonder why EVERYTHING LOOKS AND SOUNDS LIKE UTTER GARBAGE OH MY SWEET GOODNESS I HATE THIS WORLD BURN EVERYTHING BURN IT ALL.

I started watching Vikings on Netflix with zero expectations and I'm hooked. Haven't investigated this but the theme song sounds like that Swedish group the knife.

Watch The Last Kingdom first if you haven't seen it already. It's like Vikings, but with people who can act.

Blocks100 wrote:

Watch The Last Kingdom first if you haven't seen it already. It's like Vikings, but with people who can act.

I'm watching Vikings to fill the Uhtred void. It does a fine job.

Too late, modellist.

pantyfire wrote:

Too late, modellist.

Snared, feck!

I'm watching Battlestar again with the girlfriend, and we're tearing through it at some rate. A lot of it is a bit ropey by today's standards - we've also just watched Black Market aka the worst episode of the whole show - but by and large it's surprising how compelling it still is. I bounce of a lot of new shows, and there is far too much stuff clamouring for attention, or demanding I go back to it because I watch way more films than I watch TV. 

Given that it was happening during that transitional period from good TV to Quality TV, it's holding up pretty well. The cliffhanger at the end of Season 1 made us both physically jump because it's a great bit of dramatic punctuation, and season 2 manages itself really well. The whole pressure cooker feeling of the fleet is excellent, and Pegasus turning up is a real high point with Admiral Cain working as a great, if maybe a little too nasty, foil for Adama. 

So far it has tackled a lot of heavy stuff, and I know from past watching that it only gets heavier. It really is a great little emotional wringer, and as the GF pointed out last night, it manages to present you with lots of positions on the events of the show through characters that you don't always agree with, but feel very easy to understand because they are really quite well rounded even if they appear to be quite shallow on the surface. Also I know it ends quite weakly, but early on the religious stuff is great. It 's a topic you don't see dealt with too much, and it's doing the traditional SciFi thing of using its novum to analyse contemporary America. Easy to see now, but I wonder what the reaction was back then.

Black Market was the episode when I gave up on watching it I think. Seemed like a few episodes in a row where the quality just keeps sinking.

When even the guy who made it slagged it off before it had aired, you know it can't be good.

I watched all of Battlestar Galactica, not sure why I bothered sticking with it, TBH.

I didn't like the end of BSG. Twas a bit shit.

Tempy wrote:

Black Market is a bad one. Epiphanies is right before it, but it isn't awful, it just suffers from being right after Pegasus and Resurrection Ship 1&2 which work as a brilliant three parter.

Yeah I was wrong. I've just looked at the episode list. 'Scar', the next episode, was when I stopped watching. I might be wrong again, but it seemed to more or less be a serial up until that point, or at least did well at developing the story slightly with each episode, but then those two are very weak filler episodes.

It's not like I stopped watching on a point of principle or anything. I've always meant to watch the rest but never actually sat down to do it.

monkey wrote:

Tempy wrote:

Black Market is a bad one. Epiphanies is right before it, but it isn't awful, it just suffers from being right after Pegasus and Resurrection Ship 1&2 which work as a brilliant three parter.

Yeah I was wrong. I've just looked at the episode list. 'Scar', the next episode, was when I stopped watching. I might be wrong again, but it seemed to more or less be a serial up until that point, or at least did well at developing the story slightly with each episode, but then those two are very weak filler episodes.

It's not like I stopped watching on a point of principle or anything. I've always meant to watch the rest but never actually sat down to do it.

Black Market and Scar are rotten yep.

I'm happy to go against the grain for BSG, because it seems I tend to go to bat for these kinds of shows. Id rather watch flawed mentallness in space than another show about cops. Facile, aye, but everyone is catered for so it doesn't harm anyone.

Twice I've been tearing through Battlestar apace and ground to a halt around about the big camp. I just can't push through it.

About halfway through season 2 of The Americans and is really reaching the top tier of TV now. Every episode is a belter, with the last one we watched a particularly emotional and brutal episode.