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Spoiler: SPOILER

they reveal his face in the last episode?

 

I just finished The Mandalorian a few days ago and I really enjoyed it. The spaghetti Western vibe really spoke to me as a fan of Sergio Leone. The music was like Ennio Morricone and John Williams had a baby. I thought Mando keeping his helmet on at all times was great. He even kept it on for the cast photo. Edit: I guess since it's new lore to this show they could've done it differently.

Spoiler

When they finally reveal his face it was done well, with only a Droid present. Speaking of IG-11, he really stole the show at the end. Also Moff Gideon played by Giancarlo Esposito was brilliant casting. He plays such a great calm villain.

Jon Favreau really knows Star Wars and I thought this show was the most faithful Star Wars production since the original trilogy.

 

Finished up Mandalorian, Watchmen, and The Witcher. I enjoyed Mandalorian, Watchmen really made me think and provided some truly memorable scenes and situations. Witcher was just... a lot. Completely visceral but it honestly didn't hold my attention enough to say I really enjoyed it.

Oh, also finished up Mr. Robot. Might be in the minority, but I thought the way they ended it was a perfect ending for that show.

 

I saw it. 2 minutes of footage was not enough. I respect them for trying it, but time and time again we have Mando supposedly making a deep emotional connection with another character and we're watching that person talk to a tin can. It didn't work for me.

@LetMeBeFrank what did you like about the helmet being on? Is it just a faithfulness to the lore thing?

 

Gotcha. I think it adds to the charm personally.

 

I thought it added an element of mystery. It reminds me of the "mysterious gunfighter" character many westerns use.

 

I'm 3-4 episodes into a Spanish police procedural, BITTER DAISIES (irrational name w/no connection to the drama). I'm really starting to enjoy the idiosyncratic rhythms & dramatic situations of this production:

• The good things include suspenseful sleuthing by the very interesting female cop lead character. We often get to watch her think things through...she turns clues over & over in her head, often making inspired connections.
• The weird (but still fun) stuff includes the ubiquitous macho vibe of this rural town; the whorehouse/bar & everyone in it; and the constant background presence of religion & religiosity.

I'm also experiencing the typical pleasures of hearing a foreign language (Galacian Spanish) & watching characters interact & behave in ways that often seem unfamiliar.

 

LOL: https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/egrdpu/geralt_of_hmmmvia/
I think Cavill really did a great job honoring the books and the games, with his taciturn grunting being spot on. My GF, who is only passingly familiar with the source material, even picked up on it.

 

The grunting and how he used "f**k" were very deliberate and I would put myself in the same category as your GF, and I picked up on it as well.

 

Well, BITTER DAISIES took a bad turn (plot-wise) and pissed me off so much that I bounced it from my Netflix List, which has become an eBloodbath of late.

On a plus side, thanks to @Tchoupitoulas, I managed to get started on LINE OF DUTY on AcornTV. I'm 3 episodes in and really enjoying it--a gritty production with a real pulse.

The hard part was actually getting to AcornTV on my big LG OLED, a tale that illustrates the balkanized nature of streaming:

• There's an AcornTV app, which one could theoretically stream on a cellphone and mirror on a smart TV. But my cellphone is an ancient flip-phone w/o Internet, so that's out
• I could get AcornTV readily on my home office's Samsung TV because Roku, which lists ATV as an available sub-channel, signed a deal with Samsung & their app is on all Samsung TVs
• But the LG has no AcornTV app and gives me no way to download it
• That left only buying AcornTV through Amazon Prime, the app for which came preinstalled on the LG.

When I signed up for ATV via Prime (which I don't have a subscription to, nor want), the interface screens made it seem like I had a subscription only for ATV, not Prime. But I've since been bombarded w/Amazon emails welcoming me to Prime. Actually called Amazon tech support tonight to straighten it out. They assured me I could cancel my new/unwanted subscription to Prime w/o affecting AcornTV.

It's even odds I'll be able to view AcornTV after this. Such is streaming life in 2020...

 

Thanks for the Deadwind recommendation @Pharmaboy. I finished the season and thoroughly enjoyed it. Anyone who likes slow burn procedurals should check it out.

 

Thanks for all the posts and recommendations, I've now got a list of series to try out.
I'm working my way through the BBC "Inspector George Gently" - its much slower paced than "regular" recent TV series, like many classic BBC series its more like a play than TV. Its set in North East England (Durham and Northumberland) in the 1960s (although a lot of filming was done in Ireland). Its got beautiful scenery and period stage sets (cars, houses and the ilk). The actors Martin Shaw and Lee Ingleby are very credible as their characters - I'm enjoying it atm.

Also just binge-watched the 4th season of "Better Call Saul" - its interesting that the development of Jimmy (from an overall well-meaning character to one becoming incresingly less concerned about scruples) in some ways seems to be parallelling the moral tragectory of Walter White. I really enjoyed the 4th season.

[Edit for a quick clarification - the pilot and 1st season was called "George Gently" then it became "Inspector George Gently" for season 2 etc.]

 

I'll try INSPECTOR GEORGE GENTLY. Just casting about now on AcornTV for another quality show to watch between episodes of LINE OF DUTY...it's good timing for this recommendation (thanks).

 

Seems like Line of Duty might be an extremely rare example of Canadian Netflix users doing better than US ones - it's there, including a new season (5).

We've watched the first 4 so far, and of those, season 1 was the best. The mention further up the thread that a critical part of police procedurals being (consistent) procedure is relevant here - things get a bit more sloppy and hard-to-credit as it goes on. Nonetheless, 2-4 are worth watching: engaging stories and solid acting, including in Season 4, Thandie Newton in a major part. If all 5 are on Acorn, IMO they're worth going beyond the free first free month (or is it two?) to complete, interspersed with other stuff there or not.

Another recent watch on Netflix has been Occupied, in which a green govt in Norway stops all oil & gas production and as a result is essentially invaded by Russia (with EU backing). The premise is strange (why would Russia with its larger reserves want to re-start Norwegian production rather than take more European market for itself?) but the show is nonetheless well done and the characters are believable. It's perhaps more entertaining for me than for others as I used to work for a big Norwegian oil company and recognize some of the bureaucratic characters as well as the scenery, but if you like Scandinavian dramas I'd recommend it. Three seasons so far.

 

Just put OCCUPIED on my Netflix list. Thanks!

Comment apropos of nothing regarding a content conundrum I'm facing:

• My whole life I enjoyed violent, dystopian dramas
• In the last couple decades, this became a deep appreciation of police procedurals--the darker, the better. This genre is reflexively dystopian (chasing criminals & trying to solve an endless cornucopia of murderous crimes = failure amidst whatever successes one can eek out)
• But now w/Netflix & AcornTV my main sources of nightly content on the big OLED, I'm beginning to feel hemmed in by my own choices, a Netflix list overwhelmingly tilted towards police procedurals dotted with the occasional horrow film/show.

So something like OCCUPIED represents kind of changeup for me: still dark as hell, but not a police procedural.

The day is not far off when I bookmark indie RomComs out of sheer desperation...

 

Lagertha.

 

Just watched Episode-1 of GIRI/HAJI, a very stylish Japanese police vs yakuza drama. I'm impressed: at least so far, this series has terrific acting & writing. The actor who plays the main character (a Japanese detective sent to London to search for his brother) has a face the camera loves--amazing from any angle. When he gets mad or just very serious, his face turns to stone.

There are leavening traces of humor, drama and compassion in this show. It has elements I've seen in Japanese cinema over the years: familial devotion; a driving sense of duty; violence in furtherance of group identity; and sentimentality. It shares a certain streetwise vibe with French gangster films of the '40s & '50s.

 

Well, I'm 4 episodes into GIRI/HAJI, and this one is very good. I feel as if I'm watching an especially stylish, yet emotionally anchored story shot as a movie that happens to be in the form of eight one-hour episodes. It's cinematic in the truest senses of those words: a story is told; there is mystery to the people & what they do; and the ways we see their colliding worlds are visually expressive, resonating with the story.

I'm really sucked into these characters & their drama. Now I'm seeing why this one got such a high imdb rating (which it totally earns IMO).

Had a conversation w/a friend about this. Like me, he's relatively new to streaming. He said he watched more TV in the last 6 months than the entire rest of his life. We agree that certain types of TV content are now so compelling as extended narrative--and sometimes so stylishly directed--as to represent an ALT-cinema for us.

This has nothing to do with any inconvenience of going to the movies, TV being in the home & therefore easier; I'll never stop going to the movies. It's just that TVs are physically larger and better in visual quality than ever before--and video content is more than keeping stride with the technology.

PS: one translation of GIRI/HAJI is Duty/Shame (which is f'ing awesome)

 

Reading through this thread, am getting some good recommendations. Thanks.

I really liked Unbelievable on Netflix. Very absorbing, well-acted, and based on a true story reported by ProPublica and The Marshall Project in 2015. A little like Mindhunter.

 

I have a real thing for S. Korean episodic drama. After finishing the quite amazing police+prosecutorial procedural, STRANGER late last year, I recently began 2 others, both with very high IMDB.com scores:

• THE K2: This one has it all--cops, criminals, spies, family angst, a martial artist hero, and just about the baddest female villain ever. Yun-ah Song, the baddie, is gorgeous, but that's the least of what she means in this drama where she steals every scene with arresting face-acting and emotional transformations. It's not perfect--the martial arts can be a bit vague technically at times--but I'm totally sucked in after just 2 episodes
• VAGABOND: This is more of an everyman-meets-danger story, a little more human-scale, but very well done so far. I'm a couple episodes in and fully committed.

I've learned to appreciate the ease with which S. Korean dramas organically juxtapose high action, mystery, and weepy melodrama. It all works & the plot momentum never misses a step.