One of the great unexpected pleasures of the Covid lockdown last spring was discovering oddball television series you otherwise wouldn’t have approached with a barge pole. Producers and programming executives detected a nice angle here, so they moved up launch dates by a few months. This is what happened with Mrs. America, a nine-part FX series with Cate Blanchett that debuted on Hulu last April and May, instead of its originally scheduled launch in July and August. (more…)
Tag: television reviews
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I feel like I grew up in Twin Peaks, the fictional Washington logging town that gave its name to David Lynch’s iconic TV series, which aired on ABC from the spring of 1990 to the spring of 1991. Twin Peaks has one of the best pilots in television history, which was followed by an abbreviated first season of seven episodes. (more…)
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HBO is planning a reboot of The Boondocks, an animated television series which ran from 2005 to 2014. Created by black cartoonist Aaron McGruder, the show was an interesting sociopolitical satire, lampooning blacks at least as much as whites. Although the series’ creator majored in the largely grievance-focused field of African American studies in college, it is not the unreflective blaming of whites for the problems of blacks that one might expect. (more…)
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The PJs was an animated television sitcom series that unfortunately ran for only three seasons, from 1999 to 2001. Shockingly by today’s standards, the series focused on lampooning inner-city blacks, depicting them as buffoons in a way that would only be acceptable today if the subjects were white. It was not so long ago that (more…)
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Children of Earth, or more accurately “Children of Britain,” was the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood’s third outing. Torchwood dropped the Doctor and asked what happens when he’s not around to save the day, a not-unreasonable question given the astonishing frequency the Earth is attacked by aliens. Being a BBC show, it’s always Britain that gets attacked first and hardest, and a “Time Rift” in Cardiff keeps vomiting out beasties for the Torchwood team to tackle. (more…)
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For the past several years, fans of H. P. Lovecraft have agonized over the question of how to reconcile their love for the Cthulhu mythos with Lovecraft’s views on race. Lovecraft Country, a TV adaptation of Matt Ruff’s novel of the same name, proposes a solution to this dilemma: to apply Lovecraft’s characterization of eldritch horror to white people. The show, whose producers include J. J. Abrams and Get Out director Jordan Peele, premiered on August 16th. As one would expect, it is awful, (more…)
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Tolkien world experienced two huge events this month.
Amazon announced last week the diverse cast for its new Lord of the Rings series. Shortly thereafter, Christopher Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien’s editor and the guardian of his father’s legacy, died. (Hopefully, there was no connection between the events.) (more…)
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Into the Dark: Pilgrim (2019)
Directed by Marcus Dunstan
Written by Noah Feinberg, Marcus Dunstan, & Patrick Melton
Starring Reign Edwards, Kerr Smith, & Courtney Henggeler -
Remember The Wire?
The HBO television series was Barack Obama’s favorite series and a main item on Stuff White People Like (SWPL).
The Wire ran for five seasons from 2002 to 2008. The show is set in Baltimore – the city President Donald Trump called a “rodent-infested mess” – and focuses on drug dealers and the cops who pursue them. (more…)
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As much as I feared that this series, which departs significantly from the Alan Moore canon, would be weighed down by the usual PC nonsense, I never imagined its very first episode would revel in visceral anti-white sentiment and Leftist Id-expression fantasies. If we extrapolate from this show’s first episode, HBO’s Watchmen may turn out to be the Left’s spin on the imagined future events of The Turner Diaries. (more…)
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Kemono Friends is a clever twelve-episode anime that revolves around an adventurer, Kaban, and her attempts to find out where she belongs in the mysterious, sprawling and derelict “Japari Park.” Airing January through March 2017, it’s since become a surprise hit and amassed a cult following thanks to its effective storytelling and “strange deepness” that makes it more compelling than first impressions may suggest.
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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)
The first two seasons each have two arch-villains: one from the underground, another from the government. In the first season, Tony’s position is threatened by Uncle Junior and by Jimmy Altieri, who turns informant for the federal government. In the second season, the danger escalates on the government front as the primary threat comes from the subversive and patient Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero, (more…)
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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)
It’s been twenty years since it premiered, and twelve since it concluded, so we can now claim with a dose of certainty that we have a historical perspective on it. Yes, folks, I’m talking about The Sopranos, David Chase’s crime drama that redefined modern television. Ditching the episodic format for season-long sagas while still presenting slice-of-life vignettes centered around Tony Soprano, The Sopranos made such hits as Breaking Bad, The Shield, and The Wire possible.
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The third season of The Handmaid’s Tale is well-crafted in almost every way. The cinematography is outstanding. The dialogue is good. The acting is excellent. Its fictional universe is interesting, and it has a dark, dystopian beauty to it. However, the season doesn’t hang together. I got quite bored with it and stopped watching after getting enough information to scrape together a review. (I know what happens in the rest because I cheated and read the plot summaries after watching two-thirds of the season.)
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Star Trek: Discovery (henceforth referred to by the fitting abbreviation STD) is the sixth Star Trek television series, and a direct prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series. The first season premiered in 2017, and the second premiered this January. The plot centers around the exploits of the USS Discovery amid a war between the Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets.
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It is well known that death is as much a part of life as taxes, and yet there are very few creative works that deal with the mechanics of death. Who digs the grave? Who cuts and engraves the headstone? What happens behind the scenes at a funeral parlor? What is it like to grow up in a house where the remains of the recently departed are embalmed in the basement? (more…)
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There needs to be formal recognition of the genre of TV shows where the protagonists “walk the Earth.” The best explanation of these was given by Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) to his partner Vincent (John Travolta) in the film Pulp Fiction:
Jules: First, I’m going to deliver this case to Marsellus, then, basically, I’m just going to walk the Earth.
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“You know the kind of guy who does nothing but bad things, and wonders why his life sucks? Well, that was me.” So began the early episodes of My Name is Earl, a comedy series which ran from 2005 to 2009 and followed the life of working-class white man Earl Hickey on his quest to make up for all of his past sins. This series from writer and director Greg Garcia combined genuinely funny and creative writing with an unfortunate proto-SJW mindset which elevated “victim” groups and denigrated white people in a way that is increasingly prevalent in popular entertainment today.
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About a month ago, a friend suggested I check out The Punisher, Netflix’s 2017 series. Wary though I am of the Marvel Comics Universe and modern entertainment, I must say what he said about the series was rather appealing. So, I bit the bullet and watched the thing. Now, recently, Netflix announced that it would be canceling the show due to attempts by Disney (more…)
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Few outside England and under 50 will have noted the passing last month of one of Britain’s great comic character actors: Windsor Davies. Although born in North London, he was actually Welsh by parentage, gifting him an accent he made much use of, delivered in a timber-shaking baritone. (more…)
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Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (more frequently Gurren Lagann) is a 2007 fantasy adventure by Gainax. It’s an explosive, white-knuckle roller-coaster ride of mecha action, as well as featuring stunning dialogue and character design. (more…)
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Monty Python’s Flying Circus sent a shockwave through 1960s England as its anarchic and surrealist comedy completely overturned televisual orthodoxy. The show was the result of a collaboration between a group of supremely talented, middle-class Englishmen (and one American) who, whilst challenging the norms of mainstream comedy, still kept the irony and biting satire that have always been the staple of English comedy at its core.
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Girls’ Last Tour (2017)
Directed by Takaharu Ozaki
Written by TsukumizuGirls’ Last Tour is a short (twelve episodes, manga-based) slice of life/adventure anime. Unlike the cutesy and safe setting of contemporary Japan common to the genre, Girls’ Last Tour is a post-apocalyptic journey through an industrial wasteland. (more…)
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Metapolitics – the technique of altering our culture, to prepare the way for political change – is the primary strategy of the White Nationalist movement. It’s what most smart cookies promote to get us out of this godawful mess. But to change the culture, we must become part of it.
As we are not, currently, part of the establishment’s culture, the tendency of the Right is to view existing popular culture from an “identitarian” perspective. But is this justified? (more…)
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The Handmaid’s Tale, Season 2 (2018)
Produced by Hulu
Starring: Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Ann Dowd, Sydney Sweeney, Max Minghella, Joseph Fiennes, etc.The Handmaid’s Tale (Season 1) is based on the book of the same name that is both a femi-porn rape fantasy like Fifty Shades of Grey and a hard, alarmist look at the drop in the fertility of high class, intelligent, white women. (more…)
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The Handmaid’s Tale, Season 1 (2017)
Produced by Hulu
Based on the 1985 book The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Starring Elisabeth Moss, Max Minghella, Yvonne Strahovski, Joseph Fiennes, & Ann DowdI decided to watch The Handmaid’s Tale with some trepidation, (more…)
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I just concluded a very satisfying orgy . . . of nostalgia. By that I mean that I finished watching season 1 of the new series Cobra Kai on YouTube Red. Before the NEETS accuse me of giving money to the Jews, I’ll have you know that I have a free 30-day trial that I intend to cancel before I am charged. Elements within the Alt Right have already discussed the show a bit, (more…)
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The Looming Tower (2018)
Produced by Hulu
Based on the 2006 book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
Creators: Dan Futterman & Alex Gibney
Starring Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, Wrenn Schmidt, Bill Camp, Louis Cancelmi, Virginia Kull, Ella Rae Peck, Sullivan Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, Peter Sarsgaard, & Eisa Davis (more…) -
Metalocalypse is a cartoon show created by guitarist Brendon Small and comedy writer Tommy Blacha which first aired in 2006 and continued for four seasons, concluding with a one-hour special “Klok Opera.” (more…)
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English original here
Rozesmutněn nad ztrátou Perníkového táty (Breaking Bad) jsem několik let hledal seriál, kterým bych ho dokázal nahradit. (more…)