TVs you like - let's share em!

I've got the Clandestine Revolutionary True Detective Critical Studies Group convening in front of my TV tomorrow night.

After watching the first episode, my feeling is that its overly serious and stylistic for no good reason. And the music sucks from beginning to end.

If anyone has to take the blame, it should be Nic Pizzolatto more than the director. It is his creation, writing all the episodes.

I don't think there's much to critically analyze this season. Hopefully I'm wrong by season's end.

I'm nearly finished series three of Orange is the New Black - top drawer.

Few episodes into Sense8...haven't decided if I like it yet

Edit: also, re the Wire vs. the Sopranos conversation....I'm with Fleur on this one. Sopranos is my favorite show of all time.

Nearly finished season one. Great characters. Great everything.

Not TV but finally watched Matewan last night. Just brilliant. It even had a cop that I liked!

Just watched the premiere episode of Mr. Robot, about a programmer named Elliot being recruited to a hacker group with schemes to take down a big conglomerate, and wiping out all student debt and mortgages. It has a strong left wing political outlook, in which the main character espouses conspiratorial, anti-corporate and anti-consumerist views. This quote is an example:

Most of the time the character is talking to himself in his head. It's all pretty entertaining to watch so far, even if you don't agree with the politics. I'll even say it may have the potential to becoming a top series everyone talks about.

Finally gotten around to watching Sons of Anarchy. Lol, they actually quote Emma Goldman in the show, which given the context might piss people off here. I dunno. But I'm enjoying it. I keep on thinking of that episode of the Sopranos though where Tony and Christopher stick up a biker gang and spend the rest of the episode making fun of them...."We're with the vipers!" Would have loved to see a cross over episode of the two shows, haha.

Real person!

Sons of Anarchy just gets worse and worse, I watched it to the end for some reason but I would not recommend it, the sheer ridiculousness of it begins to get a bit dull as they desperately try to make a club based on being a bit of an anti-social wanker into some kind of sacred brotherhood and expect us to care about unlikeable, and quite dull, characters.
Also in spite of the editing and music it becomes pretty obvious that motorcycles are useless against cars. And Kurt Sutter has some derious issues that he decides to work through with his TV show.

Try Rectify, it's a bit of a slow burner but after 3/4 episodes I feel like there's something there.
Revolution has its moments.

Eh, I'm only ten or so episodes in but enjoying it so far. I'm sure it will go downhill. Most shows do!

I'll second that, I watched SoA from start to finish and it got pretty boring and repetitive. 3 seasons would have been plenty to tell the story that it told.

Although if there was a cross over episode between Sopranos and Sons of Anarchy it would probably cause a rift in the space time continuum since Drea de Matteo is on both shows.

The Mill S01+02 - simply amazing! Did I miss it here or is it really possible that noone mentioned this before on libcom.org?

House of Cards S03 - better than S02, perhaps even better than S01.

Hoping to start watching Sense8 soon.

Hannibal is the best show since Breaking Bad, hands down, in my opinion. Absolutely brilliant, especially from the second half of the first season forward (it begins with more a focus on being a good procedural police drama and thus at first glance looks a little too much like a copy of Dexter -- but even at the beginning, you know its different). Season 2 was amazing. Season 3 is unlike anything I've watched before -- Bryan Fuller is doing a better 21st century David Lynch than Lynch himself. But we'll see what the revival of Twin Peaks brings. Anyways, its a real shame that Hannibal is canceled -- it was obviously a bad fit for American network TV from the start, and its surprising it lasted as long as it did. There's still talks that season 4 may appear elsewhere (or as a movie), but thankfully, even if it doesn't, because the show was always under threat of cancellation, each season finale is made to be able to double as a series finale.

The Wire, of course, is great. A similar HBO show, in my opinion, in a lot of ways is Deadwood. It's like The Wire of the old west, and offers a decent depiction of American manifest destiny expansionism and the rise of modern capitalism in the latter 19th century. It's got great acting and writing, and it is production-wise very raw. But just like Hannibal, its was canceled after 3 seasons.

The Americans is an awesome and intelligent show. Just don't watch it for communist politics. I think, right now, it and Hannibal are the best shows out there.

Mr. Robot is great too, so far, but I will reserve my ultimate judgement until the whole season is over. So far, though, it is very good. Again, though, try not to take its politics too seriously. It draws on some naive, occupy-esque leftism. But it does so intelligently, I suppose, and in many ways it is brave for doing so. It is also apparently a technically sound hacker show, which is something.

The first season of Better Call Saul was great -- as if anyone would have doubted that it would be!

Twin Peaks, of course, was an awesome show. Especially season 1.

X Files may just be my favorite show ever, and I am super excited about its revival this January.

Yes...I watch too much TV.

HOW DARE YOU HAVE A DIFFERENT OPINION TO ME!

Hmm, what's your opinion on the show? I didn't see you write anything about it.

I'm no mark kermode, but I loved it - as I did galveston. lera lynn, the landscape shots are really good. the cast smashed it; i didn't know vince vaughn (dodgeball, the break up) and rachael mcadams (wedding crashers) could play those parts. i didn't completely keep up with the plot, but i don't care.
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/06/nic-pizzolatto-true-detectiv...

The landscape shots were nice but to me they felt a bit disconnected from the rest of the show despite depicting (well) the places the story was set in.

On the large scale the story was better and more ambitious in season 2. I think they took on a bit to much though. They couldn't handle relationships beyond the almost absurdly male stuff.

The ending of the first season was crap beyond belief but up till then I loved it. I'm a sucker for the southern moody stuff though.

Just finally finished American Gothic. Weak points and sometimes it just looks plain silly but the effects are surprisingly good and the themes are surprisingly dark from a one-season network show from 1996. Worth a watch, quite a few good actors in there.

Someone's at the door.

A bit of 'Nordic Noir' with the Mammon mini series. Top notch and available in the UK on 4OD http://www.channel4.com/programmes/mammon

Just finished watching The Devil's Whore (it's called The Devil's Mistress in the US) on Channel 4's catch-up facility. It's a historical drama set at the time of the English Civil War and assorted revolutionaries of the time, such as levellers, diggers and ranters, all feature in the storyline. Although the writers have taken a fair bit of artistic licence, it's a good tale with a strong socialist and feminist heart and I really enjoyed it.

the plod?

I remember watching American Gothic when it first came out, but this is almost exactly as scary:

ETA: Also, I knew I recognized Sarah Paulson from American Horror Story from somewhere, and I just realized she played Merlyn in American Gothic.

The Sheriff actually, but it's kind of the motif of the series.

omen - I watched it when it came out too, no idea why I didn't finish it then, might have been scheduled badly back in the days when US imports were rare and badly treated on UK tv

Just finished watching Peaky Blinders, six part miniseries setting Birmingham in 1919. Overall I'd say it was fairly good (up to the last episode I would set was very good, but the ending was a bit rubbish). It's focused on a criminal gang but in the background is the working class and revolutionary upheaval of the time and police efforts to stamp it out

There are two seasons of it Steven.

Devrim

The second season is pretty damned good, too.

I haven't scrolled through the entire thread so someone may have mentioned it, but one of my current favorite shows is Steven Universe from cartoon network. It's the tale of a young boy maturing under the care of his ne'er-do-well dad and his three intergalactic lesbian revolutionary step-mothers. Seriously.

Resurrecting this thread, Narcos is very good, and Making a Murderer is amazing!

Especially if you watch it and The Jinx, you get a great look at the criminal justice system in the US from the perspective of a rich person, and a poor one