Seen that

[lovingboth]

Seen and liked a lot:

Sneaky Pete (Amazon) - a con man is released from prison and adopts his cell-mate's identity in order to escape from the consequences of what got him into prison in the first place.

It's got a very good combination of script, acting and design going for it. We saw S1E1 when in Barcelona over Christmas on someone else's Prime membership, and when our watch of S1 finished, I was delighted to see that S2 had been released.

Quacks (BBC2) - A new sitcom where a Victorian surgeon, his 'eager to be more than a wife' wife, an 'alienist' and a chemist get into assorted medical scrapes, with lots of commentary on sexism, classism etc.

Better Call Saul (AMC in the US, available on Netflix in the UK a day later as a 'Netflix Original Programming', ha!) - S4 is looking good as Jimmy continues to turn into Saul.

The contrast with some other prequels (cough, Solo, cough) is striking: despite the fact that we know that a large chunk of the cast will survive to feature in Breaking Bad, there is still interest in their story because it we do learn things about them that we didn't know before. In part, that's because Breaking Bad had intelligence too and didn't lay it all out.

Not properly started watching yet:

Westworld S2.

Might or might not resume:

Dirk Gently (US Netflix version) - the BBC ones were great, thanks to Stephen Mangan and the scripts. The US version is.. less good, isn't it? I got about halfway into S1 before going 'I want to watch something else' and haven't gone back.

Mixed:

Hang Ups (C4) - speaking of Stephen.. I've seen the first episode and felt that it's trying too hard. We'll see if I get to like it or not. I see there's now a WP page for it and it classes it as 'improvisational comedy' despite half a dozen writers. That would explain a lot.

Who Is America? (C4) - even more mixed, but when it works - as with the fate of the group persuaded to have the 'catch an illegal immigrant' party - it's very good.

Accidentally wiped before watching:

Versailles: somehow I never got around to watching the first series of this, despite the the promise of bisexual action. Now the third series has finished, I see that the TiVo was set up to only keep 25 episodes, which means it's wiped the first half of the first series. Should I see it?

Should have been wiped before anyone saw it, unshock:

Insatiable - apparently going the complete disaster it looked to be, so even more reason not to watch it.

Waiting for the BBC UK showings, so I can go 'I told you it was good':

Killing Eve.

Comments

[ludy]

Quacks is great (and having input from the Welcome Collection obviously helps)It first was shown last year so i'm hoping there'll be another series somewhen. And in episode 4 you get to see the pretty-one-from-Horrible-Histories'* bum ...

I liked Versailles a lot but it's not very everyone. It has a similar feel (for me) to Rome it's gorgeous and ridiculous with lots of soapy sex and violence as well as the historical sex and violence... The first two series had an accompanying 10 minute programme after each episode exploring the actual history and I missed that a lot with the third series. Obviously I love the textiles/costumes. There's a certain amount of squeamfulness/some potential triggeryness - the production team obviously love showing people bleeding from the mouth and there's some sexual violence (particularly in series 2) - and it will suddenly cut from elegant palace dancing to someone being brutally tortured.
The treatment of sexuality is interesting - it tries to explore early modern understandings of sexuality and gender while proving telly-audience-pleasing-eye-candy. I'm not sure if it's quite correct to call Philippe "Bi" - to me he seams more like a gay man who's job it is to be in a political marriage and father children for future dynastic unions. But he has interesting friendship/relationships with both of his wives. And he explores different gender presentations (yay! even more gorgeous frocks). The male/female sex scenes are slightly more graphic than the male/male ones (and there's a disappointing lack of female/female ones) but the relationship is treated just as seriously (well, as much as anything is treated seriously. The Chavalier (Phillipe's partner) is sometimes treated as a comic-relief character (because he is very silly) but is sometimes allowed to be serious and poignant (and after a long time of looking like a stereotypical camp gay man he does have a significant relationship with a woman, which prolly is the Bi-est story-line in the whole show))

*it's rare for me to crush on boy-type-people from visual media but he is very pretty

[ludy]

O and another thing (predictable!?) I appreciate about Versailles is that series 3 (which is generally feels a bit cobbled together compared to the first two) has a devout and nuanced Protestant character who has an interesting sex-life. She doesn't fall into the usual media stereotype of being either anti-sex/pleasure or massively hypocritical (she's not portrayed as perfect and saintly either but just as complex and human as the non-religious characters and those of other faiths (mostly Catholic obviously))

[judiff]

Like have you seen Ghosts? it's got some of the same cast as Quacks (and like even more overlap with Horrible Histories) but it's set like now with like ghosts from lost of time periods and a bit more like sillyness (for example here's like a ghost head who's body can't see to pick him up off the floor). We're enjoying it