Just watched ch4 doc from Saturday Man Made Planet:Earth from Space . Some amazing imagery from IIS and various satellites. Also very humbling at times, with clear signs of the impact of man on our planet.

Dinostar77 wrote:

Just watched ch4 doc from Saturday Man Made Planet:Earth from Space . Some amazing imagery from IIS and various satellites. Also very humbling at times, with clear signs of the impact of man on our planet.

Watched that two nights ago. Very interesting and liked the lack of agenda it had. It obviously pointed to climate change impacting our planet, but also highlighted human ingenuity to, hopefully, find ways to overcome and survive this destructive behaviour. The idea of making deserts into farmland and power plants was amazing.

Brooks wrote:

afgavinstan wrote:

Missus had that Girlboss on Netflix playing. The show is made for her considering her job/interests, and I did buy her Sofia Amoruso's book of the same name. Aye, quite funny in places. Super cameos from the dean from Community.

The trailer for this made me want Trump to nuke everything past present and future.

Trailers are hardly ever that good ever. I didn't like the look of it at all but heh, semi-enjoyable background noise.

Last season was batshit mental.  Looking forward to more of the same in this final series.

Through 5 eps of 30 degrees in February. Swedish thing on Netflix.

It really is very good. 3 stories about swedes in Thailand.

Slow burn drama.

They really do encourage this shit. Interesting mild furore over it a few days back as well as writers and cast actively distancing thenself from its feminist roots. It's an Atwood novel ffs.

That's Big Little Lies done. Enjoyed it. But kinda rightly guessed everything which took away some of the fun. Shows getting predictable in their unpredictability.

Anyone watching The Trip to Spain? It's excellent.

Bloody hell.
Inside No.9 is brilliant!

Season 1 Ep1 I didnt think much of but eps 2 and 3 have been fantastic.

The Trip to Spain

Yes — I'm gonna write a sodding review! Scroll on if you don't like it; go on...

Short version: don't bother watching.

I skipped most of ...Italy because I found it hard, laboured work, but decided to give this another shot because I like its format in theory. One of its biggest problems is that Coogan and Brydon don't recognise — and this isn't helped by glowing reviews from the likes of The Guardian — that their impressions are its centrepiece. The middle-aged rumination angle's incredibly trite, and even if that's what you're after, these two are poorly positioned to attempt it. I just want a bunch of setups for their impressions.

Speaking of which, Coogan's are still better than Brydon's overall, but he has the habit of falling into his own voice every tenth word or so. Brydon holds onto most of his voices with consistency, but they tend to be weaker. But the real problem is that they don't understand how to best utilise them for comedic effect. For example, Brydon mentioned making Coogan laugh with his Barry Gibb in an interview, so I was looking forward to hearing it; perhaps with Coogan having a go at Anderson, 'cause that could've been fantastic fun. But he only used it once, and his material was written-in-five-minutes generic.

I spent a lot of time wishing that I could've been there during filming to make recommendations. Again, examples... At one point Brydon went into Jagger, and despite having done his Jagger previously, I thought that he was segueing into Russell Brand. He wasn't. Then Coogan started up (started up; I'm sorry) with his better-but-not-great version, and Brydon called his Jagger out as Brand. Bu-bu-buh.

Back in the Range Rover, Brydon launched his McCartney (again, not the best), to which Coogan replied with Lennon. Except it wasn't Lennon — it was Paul O'Bloody Grady! A damned good one, too. I can't believe that no-one pointed this out, having Lennon merge into Savage. Anyway, we've had our fun with the voices.

Back on scripting, playing exaggerated versions of themselves doesn't work with known actors playing fictionals. But more than that, the ingrained problem with the series lies in its unheralded middle-classness. Swanning around in a Range Rover eating £300 meals isn't a crime, but you need to ground those things, not amplify them with shipped-in Londonista women to break up the reliance on two-man interplay. At no point did either say anything bad about their food, which could've been another nice setup for some disgruntled impressions. Performing as more egotistical versions of themselves is deliberate, but it comes across as believably authentic, and that's not helped by their real-life willingness to accept praise for the series without seeming to make efforts to improve its bad points.

Jack Dee once made a Curb... rip-off called Lead Balloon. It wasn't funny. And that was because Dee failed to copy the universality of David's portrayal. Dee's character was a dripping middle-classer, no immediate downfall by itself, and his problems were almost exclusively unique to that status. Worse, he brought most of them upon himself. Larry David (real and fictional) is stinking rich, but his grievances are everyday and not always his own fault, else Curb... would've fallen flat on its arse.

And that's what you get with The Trip to Spain: a chronic lack of self-awareness. And what a pity that is, because they're both talented and it could be so much more.

Peter Kay's Car Share by Peter Kay

Peter Kay's car-sharing comedy Peter Kay's Car Share, on the other hand, features a crusty cock of a conceited comedian, but it's very, very good. The Smurf episode sacrificed too much comedy for the realistic drag of driving drunks home, and some of the monkey bits really were from a shit sitcom; a bit more subtlety would've gone a long way there.

But otherwise, the only thing that really bugged me was Kayleigh saying ‘fucky lake’, because it's not a likely Spoonerism. You could've kept it at the same time as making it less fake by changing it to ‘flucky lake’. Its obviousness stood out, turning my thoughts to Kay thinking it up as he wrote the script and away from the programme.

If you'd told me before watching either that I'd much prefer Kay's comedy vehicle to Brydon and Coogan's... But I did by a distance. In a Fiat 500 in the North. Coogan's old venue, but no longer. I'll just have to write him off and remember I'm Alan Partridge, I guess.

Good reviews Escape.  I've not seen Trip to Spain, with Italy being the one I've seen most of...but it still fits. It's funny when they're doing the impressions and having 'banter'.  The semi-real stuff and the 'drama' elements just seem unnecessary. If they've upped the latter side in Spain I don't think I'll bother.

Agree with car share too. I've said earlier I didn't like the way it ends the series, but otherwise it's great stuff. It did feel like this series was a bit rushed and lost a bit of subtlety, the monkey bits did seem a bit out of place (though I still laughed so I let it off!).

That's the Handmaids Tale right there. 
Read it a couple of months back. Stomach flipping in some places, and not a drop of gore.

Atwood is great, read Oryx and Crake too

Tempy wrote:

Atwood is great, read Oryx and Crake too

Yep.  Apparently Darren Aronofsky was developing the whole (Oryx and Crake) trilogy into a TV series, but perhaps inevitably it's in stuck in Development Hell after HBO got cold feet...

Tempy wrote:

Probably for the best. I've only read the original. I read it on my own, newly single on New Yeads Eve, all in one go. It's brilliant and I've never felt the need to expand on it'. The Handmaiden's Tale is what, the third most famous dystopia novel after 1984 and Brave New World?

You read Year of the Flood and MaddAddam? Both fantastic. Atwood is a don (dame?)