Current TV Boxset Addiction

[JLC]

Twin Peaks, again, in preparation for Season 3.
Just have the final episode to go, then the movie... Season 2 always seems like it is going to be a chore but to be honest I love it all, except maybe James and Evelyn.

I'm halfway through S2. Haven't watched it in years.

[Smith]

Binge watching Red Dwarf.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Binge watching Red Dwarf.

Just re-watched the fantastic Naeturvaktin/The Night Shift which I can't recommend highly enough. My father caught it on BBC4's Iceland season back in 2010 and forced me to watch it. I did and thought it was utterly grand - a nice slice of Icelandic culture and excellent character comedy about a listless med-school dropout, a sweet-natured manchild and a monstrously complicated communist control-freak (the latter played by later mayor of Reykjavik Jon Gnarr) working the night shift in a petrol station. The show took on a new significance when milady Geoffery went on a work exchange to Iceland in the summer of 2012 and became obsessed with the place. She bought back the DVD of this as well as its two follow-up series (The Day Shift & The Prison Shift) and tie-in movie (which topped the film charts for weeks in Iceland beating international films). It starts as a fairly straight situational sort of thing but in its second series leers into abstract and very dark waters approaching something more like the glorious Julia Davis would come out with. TO ICELAND!

[Smith]

Kryten: He aint heavy,sir.Hes my brother.
I missed that the first time around.

[Bolt-01]

I've been rewatching Deadwood again (Third time, this time with my two youngest) and as Grud is my witness this is the funting finest piece of television ever recorded.

[TordelBack]

I've been rewatching Deadwood again (Third time, this time with my two youngest) and as Grud is my witness this is the funting finest piece of television ever recorded.

QFT.

I other hand am watching ST: Voyager with my two, which will never be given such a justified accolade. 

But...

To my utter amazement not only do the kids love it, but it's actually not bad, and we're almost at the end of Season 2. 

Despite the entirety of the first two seasons being either space-anomaly-is-really-living-creature (and the crew are amazed every single time) or everything-depends-upon-the-Doctor-but-he's-developed-a-new-amusing-quirk (it's possible I've already blocked out the Chakotay-is-an-Indian-in-Space ones all over again), it does succeed in creating a sustained sense of being lost and alone far from home, and also of genuine exploration, which is a lot closer to TOS than than I had previously appreciated.  The ship is also much prettier than I gave her credit for, even if the interior decor is appallingly dull.

Biggest surprise is that I quite like Janeway and B'Elanna this time around, which I never really did, and when they give Harry something to do he's not so bad either.  Tom Paris and Chakotay are as pitifully boring and planklike as they always were. Paris' sole interesting moment is unfortunately in Harry's alternate present where he's still a drunken ex-con, but bam, back to Paris Prime by the end of episode and snoozeville.

I'm now rather dreading Saline-of-Norks replacing Kes: that Jennifer Lein is very easy on the eye (and ear), for all that the character is a hopeless waste of a good concept.

What next I wonder, a favourable reappraisal of Enterprise?  Or even Nemesis (nah, that's not ever going to happen).  Watching Sir Pat doing publicity for Logan I was struck by how very much I would like to see a proper final movie for TNG, a film subseries that suffered from the fact that TNG already had the perfect finale on TV.  But there must be a place for a last rumble for that best of all crews before everyone is dead: just say that new Data-body thing has an ageing algorithm and get cracking.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

I've been rewatching Deadwood again (Third time, this time with my two youngest) and as Grud is my witness this is the funting finest piece of television ever recorded.

Oh yes

Deadwood is still my favourite live action TV drama eeevvver.

[Bolt-01]

Plot spoilers because there will always be someone who's never seen it:

[spoiler]We've just watch S1Ep04, where Wild Bill takes his last breath, and Tom was completely shocked. When the episode closed on Seth's eyes filling with rage-filled tears Tom was clamouring to watch Ep05 to hopefully see the wrath of the angriest man on the planet. So well written.[/spoiler]

[JLC]

Doctor Who, watching it from the beginning! 

[TordelBack]

Plot spoilers because there will always be someone who's never seen it:

[spoiler]We've just watch S1Ep04, where Wild Bill takes his last breath, and Tom was completely shocked. When the episode closed on Seth's eyes filling with rage-filled tears Tom was clamouring to watch Ep05 to hopefully see the wrath of the angriest man on the planet. So well written.[/spoiler]

I've said it too often before, but Deadwood is what Shakespeare would have written for TV. Almost every line is poetry, every character both angel and monster, every subplot an epic in its own right.  There never was such a show.  So naturally it was killed off in its prime.

[DaveGYNWA]

I've said it too often before, but Deadwood is what Shakespeare would have written for TV. Almost every line is poetry, every character both angel and monster, every subplot an epic in its own right.  There never was such a show.  So naturally it was killed off in its prime.

Deadwood is a work of art - loved it, and so wish it could have continued in either a 4th series or the oft-rumoured TV movies.

[Professor Bear]

I'm now rather dreading Saline-of-Norks replacing Kes: that Jennifer Lein is very easy on the eye (and ear), for all that the character is a hopeless waste of a good concept.

I found Kes more interesting second time around by dint of her not being terribly sexed-up relative to other female characters in Trek played by attractive actors, and the long game the writers tried to play with writing her out of the series (everything leading up to Year Of Hell before her part in that storyline was rewritten for Jeri Ryan) was probably the last time the writing room made any effort before I gave up entirely somewhere in season 5.

RE an Enterprise reappraisal: do it.  I hated Enterprise when it first aired, but became a late convert after for some reason rewatching the third season years ago and finding it to be great fun.  I've come to the conclusion that the two risk-free seasons that came before exhausted my Trek goodwill and blinded me to some objectively great sci-fi telly.  The fourth season continues an upward trajectory, though the final episode notoriously made the preceding episode - which ends with a dead baby and a crying Vulcan - look like a better series finale.

[The Legendary Shark]

Enterprise is my favourite Trek series - humans blundering around with a ridiculously fragile, under-powered, poorly-armed and barely shielded prototype starship with only their wits and best intentions to rely on. To me, Enterprise portrays the ideals of Star Trek better than any other series.

Voyager has its moments but, unfortunately, too few of them. Year of Hell, however, is one of my favourite Trek episodes of all time and Jennifer Lien is absolutely on fire in Warlord.

Oh, and Deadwood's a masterpiece also - as soon as you stop expecting Tinker to turn up at any moment trying to sell Lovejoy a kettle.

[Dandontdare]

I dread ever doing a re-watch of Voyager as I may be disappointed. I really enjoyed it at the time, but I am painfully aware of it's many flaws especially:

.... space-anomaly-is-really-living-creature (and the crew are amazed every single time) or everything-depends-upon-the-Doctor-but-he's-developed-a-new-amusing-quirk (it's possible I've already blocked out the Chakotay-is-an-Indian-in-Space ones all over again)

,... and ... 

Tom Paris and Chakotay are as pitifully boring and planklike as they always were. Paris' sole interesting moment is unfortunately in Harry's alternate present where he's still a drunken ex-con, but bam, back to Paris Prime by the end of episode and snoozeville.

The only one I really hated at the time was Chakotay - the way he went from violent revolutionary to starfleet asshat in an instant, and the cod-spiritual native american BS.

The finale, unlike Enterprise, was fantastic. They got them home (they had to) with some cool time-travel gubbins thrown in, rather like the TNG finale (which is one of the few episode I re-watch quite often, the other being the original 2 part borg story)

If memory serves, the point where I lost faith in Voyager was the episode set entirely in Paris' 1950s pulp-sci fi holodeck program, when I decided they'd finally run out of ideas.

[The Legendary Shark]

Eurgh, and that terrible "Irish" town as well. Awful. At least the TNG holodeck episodes gave us Moriarty.