Discuss and Rate the Last Thing You Watched (non-movies)

[stroopwafel]

The Exorcist. It's the same exact formula we've seen repeated a hundred times now since the original movie but I really enjoyed this show. I really liked the characters and both the priests and the family felt very modern. There were some unexpected twists and turns I also really liked. Season 2 meanders a bit and fails to really grab me like season 1.

 

[Hawki]

Pokemon: Sun and Moon (3/5)

So, here's a fun fact, this is the first Pokemon season I've watched to completion since Indigo League. Also note that it's only the first season of Sun and Moon, not Ultra Adventures or whatever the hell comes later.

It's...fine, I guess? I mean, this is a cartoon designed for kids, encouraging them to engage in animal cruelty with digital animals. As such, it has simple characters, exploring simple themes, uttering simple dialogue. I know, I know, cartoon for kids, but coming off Legend of Korra, whatever flaws that had, that was still a cartoon with depth in narrative, characters, themes, etc. Cartoons aimed at children, and only children, are perfectly fine, but I can't deny I felt dumber while watching it. And if anything, nostalgia aside, it feels like a step down from Pokemon at the beginning.

So, I'm not really going to go in-depth here, but more a list of observations. So, on that note:

-Ash is competent. He's easily the most competent protagonist in the season. Which makes sense I guess, but on the other, well, a character without flaws isn't an interesting character, to borrow a phrase. I can't really fault this, but, yeah.

-Prior seasons were journeys, this is more "stay at the Pokemon school, go out and do stuff, return." It's at least a change in pace, but I know what template I preferred.

-Up to this point, Ash has always had 2-3 (human) companions with him. Here, this is drastically extended - five fellow students, plus Pikachu, plus a talking pokedex, plus everyone else. I'll give them that Rotomdex isn't nearly as annoying as he could have been, but the students are...well, it's more a question of what you prefer? Fewer characters with more depth, or more characters with less depth? Not that Pokemon has ever had particuarly deep characters, but here, what depth might have otherwise existed, is spread out over characters that aren't particuarly interesting. Of the bunch, Kiawe probably gets the most depth, and Mallow is reasonably pleasant, but I just don't care about the others.

Also there's a character whose arc is learning how to be able to touch Pokemon. The idea of wearing gloves never comes up, because...reasons.

-Team Rocket seems like a formality at this point. They're absent for entire episodes, there's this big pink bear pokemon that has a crush on them or something. Team Skull is also there, but is useless...I dunno. The entire idea of Team Rocket feels redundant in this season, and I get the sense that the writers know it, or rather, are just tired of them.

-So, Z moves are a thing. Not sure how they can be considered fair in a pokemon battle, but meh. Save as mega evolutions. Yeah, they're cool and all, but again, not sure how fair they are exactly. Also, I'm kind of getting flashbacks to Digimon, because with the exception of Ash, every one of the students has something that might be called a 'partner pokemon,' and even Ash has Pikachu.

-So, Ash completes trials, or something, I really don't care, and...what's that? Final two episodes? Misty and Brock are back? Actual battles in gyms? Holy bum nuggets, now that's more like it! It's like the cartoon knows that the originals are the best, or at least, better than these student twats.

-The new animation is...not really much of an issue. It's only with Ash, Misty, and Brock that I noticed, because I have past animation to go on.

At the end of the day, the season is meh. Some of that has to do with the fact that I'm much, MUCH older than when Pokemon became a thing, and I stopped following the series after Gen 2, but even then, the anime feels lacking compared to what I've seen in the past. Yes, it breaks the template of "go to gyms, get badges, travel with companions," but it provides something even more monotonous in its place. I know I'm looking at that old template with nostalgia, but even then, I feel it's a better one. I'd take Misty and Brock over these kids. I'd take a flawed Ash over a perfect one. I'd take Team Rocket being an actual threat rather than weirdos who drop in and out of the series. I'd take...well, I dunno. There's some IPs designed for kids that I've stayed with to at least some extent, but Pokemon isn't among them, and after this, I doubt it will.

 

[Dalisclock]

RIck and Morty Season 4.

So on one hand, I enjoy watching the show play with various Sci-fi tropes and such. The "Save Scum" remote was actually rather interesting in a couple of ways, off the top of my head.

OTOH, Pretty much all of the characters are unlikable, just in degrees at this point. Even Jerry, who previously had some leeway for being the buttmonkey, gets to have his own moments of being terrible. So yeah, that's what it is.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Carmel, a Netflix documentary miniseries about a famous 2002 homicide in an Argentine gated community. Back then I was about 12 and barely registered it in between catching Pokemon, although growing up I recognized it as one of those big mediatic scandals that capture the interest of a generation (think O.J.). As effective as the documentary is - well-paced, appropriately page-turning with trickling reveals - I can't say I ever cared or that I give a shit as to whodunit. These things exist for consumption by the pseudo-intellectual middle class who likes to confirm their bias about the rich.

 

[gorfias]

I'm watching "The Crown" on Netflix with the missus. Season 1 is fascinating. So much ground covered per episode. The regimentation required of the crown family and the politics around them are fascinating. Yank here so, this is new to me. One episode focused on a particular crisis caused by smog back in the 1950s. I'd never even heard of it before. You think the COVID lock down is bad?

I'd heard it was good but resisted as the concept sounded dull to me. I was wrong. Very recommended.

EDIT: Now that I'm done with 2 seasons of Doom Patrol, I'm watching Teen Titans. The live one. So far, it is far better than I anticipated seeing the truly rotten trailer they showed. Takes a lot of suspension of critical thought. For instance,

Spoiler

Robin supposedly leaves Batman as he is "becoming too much like him." Yet this version is pretty much like Murder Batman from Dawn of Justice. So what is his beef? But, we're going to get a Nightwing and we already have a Jason Todd... though they're treating him like Tim Drake. Right down to Batman meeting him as he tries to steel hubcaps.

 

[Hawki]

Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures: Season 2 (3/5)

Consensus seems to be that the second season of Freemaker Adventures isn't as good as the first. Having watched it...yeah. Pretty much. Basically, it kind of repeats the same overall plot arc, just replace the kyber saber with the Arrowhead, Naare with MOC, reduce the amount of humour, and, yeah. You get a season that has less humour, and not enough gravitas to make up the difference.

To elaborate, yes, intentional or otherwise, this season is less funny than the last. Maybe it's a case of familiarity breeding contempt, but didn't laugh, or even smirk nearly as much as season 1. So, okay then. Maybe the season is trying to tell a more serious story? I mean, it ties in directly with Return of the Jedi, including the destruction of the Death Star, so maybe I should treat it on those terms? Well, if so, it doesn't do a stellar job. Because as I mentioned above, certain plot points are more or less lifted from the previous one and given new packaging. Only here, they don't work as well. The Arrowhead is a Mary Sue ship, in that it's so absurdedly powerful, it more or less breaks the setting. Yes, the kyber saber was absurdedly powerful as well, but that worked in that there was the idea of 'power corrupting.' It certainly corrupted Naare enough to turn her against the Empire, its maker was terrified of its power, and Rowan cast it away at the end of season 1. Nothing that fiction hasn't done before, but there was at least some kind of subtext there. The Arrowhead? No. Not really. It's an uber ship that they have to build.

There's also the antagonist dynamic. MOC is really Grievous 2.0 (droid who can wield multiple lightsabers) who doesn't have the same dynamic that Rowan and Naare had. Again, that dynamic wasn't particuarly new, but it at least worked - master and student, master is secretly a Sith agent, cue betrayal, cue student surpassing the master, etc. MOC, on the other hand, is just some guy. If anything, his dynamic with Vader is more interesting than with Rowan.

There's also the tidbit that if I'm judging this as being part of overall Star Wars canon (which it isn't, but bear with me), then there's certain eyebrow raising moments. Like, there's the rebel fleet, and the Empire manages to find it and attack it fairly often. Given how easily they do that, makes you wonder why Palpy would even bother luring them to the Death Star when all he'd have to do apparently is wind them down with attrition. Oh well. Palpy's still the one bright spot in all of this, since everything that comes out of his mouth is gold. Also, the idea of finding kyber crystals to power the Death Star does kind of work.

So, yeah. The season isn't bad by any means. But it's a downgrade from the previous one.

 

[09philj]

Saw the new BBC/FX miniseries version of Black Narcissus, a psychological drama about nuns founding a convent and school in the Himalayas. It's a fine piece of work, with plenty of good performances. However, also doesn't really have anything to recommend it over the excellent 1947 film version, which has better cinematography and less than half the overall runtime. You won't have a bad time if you watch it, but there's a better version you could see.

 

[Dalisclock]

I'm watching "The Crown" on Netflix with the missus. Season 1 is fascinating. So much ground covered per episode. The regimentation required of the crown family and the politics around them are fascinating. Yank here so, this is new to me. One episode focused on a particular crisis caused by smog back in the 1950s. I'd never even heard of it before. You think the COVID lock down is bad?

I only heard of it from a China Melville book called Un-Lun-dun which is an interesting little fantasy book which uses the Smog crisis as a central plot point. Though in the book it's established the smog was banished to the alternate universe Un-Lun-dun, London's wierd cousin, where it became sentient and is taking over because fantasy be like that, It's a young adult oriented book but a brisk, fun little read. It's just not quite as interesting as some of his other fantasy books(the Bas Lang cycle).

 

[Hawki]

Star Wars: Forces of Destiny: Season 1/2 (3/5)

I'm bunching the two seasons together because there's not really anything to distinguish them from each other. Yes, season 2 does extend into The Last Jedi, and has slightly better animation, but it's otherwise more of the same.

What that "same," is, is few minute shorts set across the Skywalker Saga (then 7-8 films), plus context from Rogue One and in the final episode, Solo. These vary in quality. No one short really sticks out for good or bad. What's weird is that if you squint, some of the shorts kind of form mini-stories, or at least appear to occur sequentially, despite the fact that the episode release order is all over the place in terms of timeframe. Apparently, some of these shorts were combined into volumes that order them in such a manner, which is a nice idea, but I'm left to ask why that wasn't the case from the start.

Anyway, it's more or less "meh." I'd personally prefer a few long stories rather than lots of mini short stories, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

 

[Hawki]

Star Wars: Galaxy of Adventures (2/5)

...what the fuck did I just watch?

Okay, let me rephrase that. I know what I watched, I just don't get why this is a thing. Basically, this is a collection of 1 minute Star Wars shorts, most of which recreate scenes from the movies. Sometimes, it overlays the dialogue from those movies, and why yes, it IS awkward seeing cartoon characters speak in live-action voices from the 70s/80s. There's even times when the dialogue is transplanted wholesale to different contexts. For instance, Han yelling at Chewie for the hydro-spanner in Empire and whatnot, is transported wholesale to some random incident where the Falcon is being chased by a Star Destroyer. But that aside, I'm left to ask why this exists.

Are the shorts ads? Maybe. But if that's the case, it seems a weird tactic, by just copy-pasting movie stuff into animated form. Also, spoilers and all that. Is it to sell toys? Well, there was apparently a toy line released, but since these are all pre-existing characters, I wouldn't think you needed a new series for that. Is it to give greater context to the universe? Not really - like I said, the majority of the shorts are lifted from the films. There's a few that might be called 'atmosphere shorts,' such as simply watching Vader/Kylo Ren lead stormtroopers against the Rebels/Resistance (and incidentally, these are probably the best by virtue of being original), but they're few and far between. I mentioned in Forces of Destiny that it was a shame that the shorts weren't more narratively cohesive. However, this goes even further away from that. Which is a shame, because the animation here is actually better than Forces of Destiny. But it's wasted on simply copying stuff from the films.

So, yeah, not a fan.

 

[Dalisclock]

Blood of Zeus(Netflix-2020)

So this series basically feels like Netflix capitlizing off the fact Castlevania was a hit and Netflix wanted more of that. It's a "Lost tale" of Greek Myth, which is basically handwaving for the fact the series takes a fair bit of artistic license with the mythology(to the point it feels like Fantasy set in ancient Greece at times). The animation feels kinda similar to what Castlevania did and there's a lot of blood and gore going on. The plot is more or less that Zeus sired a bastard Demi-God son, Heron, who ends up being the center of a power struggle between Zeus and Hera that turns into an Olympian Civil War(mostly because Hera is SUPER PISSED that Zeus had a bastard half-god kid and the other 20,000 Zeus-sired bastards floating around are almost never mentioned). There's also a big plot about a cult of "demons" created by humans drinking the blood of a dead giant that the Gods slew during the before time, and something something Greek Myth stuff.

I tried but it didn't do much for me, even though I kept feeling it should have. Only a couple of the major gods get any dialogue or even named(Hephaestus, Apollo, Hermes, Hera and Poseidon are pretty much the actual cast), and the rest just hang around Olympus as extras during the crowd and battle scenes. Good luck trying to ID them from their art design. Wierdly, even during the big War scenes, Ares is just kinda there fighting but not nearly as much as you'd think considering him being the GOD OF WAR(and I'm not sure if Athena even got a name drop, which is weird considering she's the OTHER GOD OF WAR!).

So it's okay, I guess. Apparently it's getting another season so check it out if you really want some greek myth stuff in your life. Castlevania it ain't, though.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks

4/10

Chris Chibnall proves in one episode how he no longer even seems to care about some of his own plotlines let alone Doctor Who established lore and puts out an episode that would feel mediocre as a normal episode of the series but was a real embarrassment as it was the Christmas / Festive special. We've seen how good Chibnall can do with last years Spyfall but this years was just not great. While no-where near the cultural arson and vandalism that was the Timeless Child it seems like Chibnall decided to throw out the ideas from said episode people liked (what few there were) to focus more on the whole idea of the canon destroying plot twist that essentially means the series no longer has any real tension and The Doctor is now the most super special being in the universe.

Enough of me getting mad about the timeless child though it's time to talk about the actual episode. As there will be Spoilers I'm putting it in spoiler format

The Episode is a follow on from 2018 new years episode Resolution where after defeating the Recon Dalek the remains are being transported away by presumably some government entity (Unit no longer existing nor Torchwood anymore officially) on the way the driver stops at a random roadside portable cafe van to get a refill of tea in his flash only to be poisoned by the tea and the cafe owner then stealing the truck.

It turns out the technology was deliver to a company owned by Jack Robertson (the sleazy business owner from Arachnids in the UK). With the help of a tech expert the Dalek is reverse engineered to produce drones to be used to help law enforcement deal with riots. The new Dalek drones are fitting with water cannons, CS gas sprayers and Sonic incapacitators to deal with riots.

However the engineer who helped reverse engineer the Dalek shell and built all the A.I. algorithms and systems for the drones to operate reveals to Robertson he foudn something else in the shell too. Genetic traces and he's cloned them growing a full new Dalek creature from them which he claims is intelligent and sentient and was for a brief period plugged into the system controlling the drones and all of Robertson's businesses. Robertson orders it destroyed. While trying to incinerate it the Dalek gets loose and takes control of the tech guy revealing the Dalek used it's time in the system to set up a cloning facility in Japan to grow more copies of itself.

The Doctor gets broken out of space Jail by Jack Harkness and tries to return to her fam but ends up coming back 10 months later than she planned with Ryan, Grham and Yaz having already confronted Robertson (unsuccessfully) about the Dalek.

Robertson working with the new PM rolls out the new police drones round the UK to act as guards at various locations.

The Doctor learning about the Dalek's confronts Robertson and is shown the Daleks are just drones with nothing in them. However due to scanning for Dalek DNA the Doctor knows about the Japanese plant and has set Yaz and Jack to investigate and destroy it if needed.

The Doctor when mentioning the Japanese facility is surprised when Robertson emphatically denies owning any facility in Japan. The Doctor then gets Robertson to come with them to see the facility for himself.

Inside The Doctor sees the facility and finds out the Dalek clones are being fed on liquefied human beings but things something else is wrong but can't put her finger on it until she realises the UV light in the facility which allow the Daleks to teleport into the drone bodies and take control.

With a new breed and Daleks who it's revealed the drone bodies were modified to include standard Dalek weapons and flight technology, due to the clone getting into the system, proceed to start to take over the UK.

The Doctor then sends a message to a Dalek ship lost in space with the co-ordinates to earth. The Daleks turn up and their scans reveal mutant Daleks (the clones) present. They then proceed to attack the new Daleks wiping them out.

Robertson then runs away from the Doctor and tries to make a deal with the Daleks to save himself in exchange for his help taking over the Earth. This plan ends quickly on the Dalek ship where Ryan, Graham and Captain Jack are placing explosives and run into a scared Robertson who just witnesses the Daleks execute the last of the clones for being genetically impure. They all teleport out and The Doctor lures the Daleks outside of the ship into the Tardis, expert it's the 2nd Tardis from The Timeless Child which the Doctor has rigged to lock out all controls and then fold in on itself and transport to the heart of the void killing the Daleks.

Plot Holes and problems

1) How come the tech guy is a master of material science able to reconstruct the Dalek technology and make it into drones but also a mater programmer creating the AI network to run the drones and also a master of genetic engineering being able to clone the Dalek from a few left over cells

2) Why open the case to incinerate the Dalek, why not throw it in inside the case. Is a what £100 - £200 case so much of an expense you can incinerate that too?

3) The Dalek claims the cloning facility was set up and built by human and once the experiments were working the humans were liquefied.......... who by? The Clones weren't grown at the time so were still dormant. What are we supposed to believe the human workers voluntarily liquefied themselves or Dalek paid some-one to do it then liquefy themselves at the end?

4) In Resolution the Recon Dalek could only teleport to it's missing pieces using UV light. Why can the clone Daleks just teleport to drone bodies scattered about other than the plot needed them to? It breaks the rules even Chibnall set up there for their abilities.

5) How did no-one not even the tech guy notice advanced weapons and booster rockets being added to the drone design?

6) It's mentioned Yaz has been sleeping in the 2nd Tardis sometimes as she's been attempting to track down The Doctor. How come Yaz''s family weren't worried? She has family who really seem to care about her and a job as a Police officer. None of that comes up

7) what happened to the humans from the Cyber War? They were sent back in time in the 2nd Tardis with Graham and Ryan and it was implied as part ofGraham's arc of getting over his wife's death that the future woman and him might have a bit of a thing starting. But no the future people have vanished and are no longer usng the 2nd Tardis as their home it seems. Infact they're never mentioned at all.

8) The Dalek Drones have a water cannon.........but why when it would mostly not have the water capacity to be effective at all. There's a reason water cannon vehicles are massive because a lot of them is the tank to store water but the ~Human Sized Dalek Drones would have much capacity at all to do more than maybe 20-30 seconds of water cannon firing before needing to refil.

9) How did Jack Robertson know the driver of a truck carrying top secret material would happily randomly stop at a mobile roadside tea shack to refill let alone go down that particular road. What did he set things up everywhere just in case like some Tea shack mafia?

10) The episode in no way felt like a festive special. Spyfall briefly mentioned new Year, Resolution was literally set on new years day. Reovlution of the Dalek didn't mention new year or anything like it or Chirstmas at all.

 

[Trunkage]

Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks
Snippers

This was still way better than most other specials.

Not saying it was good, it was pretty mediocre. It is something I wish the franchise would abandon

 

[gorfias]

Just started "Rome" as I understand a lot of enthusiasm is out there for this show. It was so expensive to make they stopped after Season 2 (Not enough eyes and cost more than GOT).

Some enjoyable characters already. Lots of nudity and simulated sex. Some suspension of disbelief already

Spoiler

they found Caesar's eagle and his nephew in one swell foop? OK.

7/10 so far.

Finished Season 2 of Titan's and, while I enjoy clone Superman, they've taken the show where I have trouble enjoying it

Spoiler

Super Clone Clark kills a lot of people and others are acting like, "well, he just doesn't understand, so it is alright. And more.

. We'll see what happens if/when Season 3 comes out.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

This was still way better than most other specials.

Not saying it was good, it was pretty mediocre. It is something I wish the franchise would abandon

No the other specials were good fun this just felt like a standard episode just as badly written as one (recently) too.

 

[Trunkage]

No the other specials were good fun this just felt like a standard episode just as badly written as one (recently) too.

That's a no from me. Not that the last two seasons haven't been mediocre. I'd prefer Chiball write Doctor Who forever than watch another holiday special that contorts itself so it can be a holiday special.

Fuck you, planet of Christmas. Fuck you, Nick Frost. You're better than that. Fuck you Space Titanic.

Sorry. Had to get a few things off my chest there.

This only reason these last two are better is that its NOT centred on Xmas and NOT bending over backwards (thus breaking the whole plot) just to say Xmas. New Years is hardly mentioned in this last one. The BEST part is they could have been a standard episode

You, of course, can feel free to like the holiday specials

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

The First Episode of The Watch

I usually don't review a television series based on its pilot episode but in this case I will, because there's not a chance in hell I'm gonna be watching the rest of this. The Watch is a series allegedly based on Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld Novels, more specifically on the City Watch subseries, about the police force of its largest city Ankh-Morporkh, sort of a late medieval cross between London and New York. I grew up on the Discworld books. The were to me what Harry Potter was to normal people my age (That said, I did read Harry Potter too.) They were a great influence on my understanding of Fantasy as a genre, on my sense of humour and, on some level, also on me, as a person. The BBCs recent adaptation decided to turn these books into something that will feel barely recognizable to people familiar with the books and incomprehensible to those who aren't.

Once again we find ourselves in Ankh-Morpork, here reinvented as some industrial steampunk nightmare, and we follow charactera sharing names, occupations, and little else, with characters from the books. Angua is short, Cheery is tall, Lady Sybil is young, Captain Vimes is wearing eyeliner (I don't know either.), Lord Vetinari is a woman, Colon and Nobbs aren't in it and Carrot... actually somewhat resembles his namesake. Who would have thought. The story, as far as the first episode goes, concerns gang leader Carcer, believed to have died twenty years ago, returning to Ankh-Morpork and hatching a scheme that appears to involve a dragon. People familiar with the books will notice that the writers are mixing together the specific narratives of "Guards! Guards!" and "Night Watch", respectively the first and sixth book in the City Watch series, which is not a decision I'll call them out on. The first book, while laying the groundwork for a lot of what would come later, had that particular awkwardness that most of the earlier Discworld books had, while Night Watch delves just deeply enough into the background story of the setting to add some convenient context. It's a decent enough note to start off of. Other things to be said in its defense is that the setting, little to do with the Ankh Morpork of the books it may have, has a pretty unique look to it, a strangely ambigious hodgepodge of different technologies and cultures that resembles a toned down version of the gothic, gaslit port town where Jean Pierre Jeunet's cult fantasy movie "City of Lost Children" was set, crossed with the sensibilities of early british Punk Rock. I will also praise some of the actors. I've already mentioned that Adam Hugill, playing Carrot, is both in terms of looks and demeanour a really good fit for the role. Richard Dormer, playing Sam Vimes, washed up captain of the Watch, has obviously been directed to overact in a way that, at its worst, feels like an inauthenthic imitation of Nick Meloni's character in the thoroughly mediocre Film Noir farce Happy. Yet nevertheless what shines through once in a while is that behind that overacting and the ridiculous eyeliner, the guy could probably actually play a half decent Sam Vimes. Anna Chancellor as Lady Vetinari brings quite a bit of dignity to the role of the aloof Patrician and while making Vetinari a woman is a decision that's hard to justify, I felt she did about as well as could be expected from her.

I try to commit to a general positivity when talking about media, born mostly out of spite towards the kind of people who've made it their lifes purpose to tell others on the internet that the things they enjoy are actually garbage, but this is where my praise for The Watch ends. I would have very much liked to tell you that, while it fails as an adaptation, it still works as a standalone piece of media but at the very least the pilot episode failed to convince me of that. Beyond superficial complaints born out of reflexive repulsion like "They made my werewolf waifu look like a little boy" the problem with The Watch is that all the things about it that work, namely some humurous pieces of worldbuilding, are lifted straight from the books the rest of the series is trying to distance itself from, while all of its own ideas fall resoundingly flat. The Watch is a colourless and tonedeaf affair, it tries to be punk but it's lacking any sense of passion. It's gritty, but it's neither provocative nor funny. Its editing and attempts and edgy humour remind me of Suicide Squad and its uninspired mixture of fantasy and police procedural tropes reminds me of Bright. Suffice to say, it's not exactly a compliment when I have to describe a series as a cross between two unwatchable David Ayer movies. There is little life and little personality to its main characters and considering what they're based on, that's just an embarassment. Honestly, they had one job, which was translating a cast of well established and well liked characters to television and instead of doing so, they turned them into barely recognizable, at points unrecognizable, caricatures. All of this might make me sound like a purist but I wouldn't be complaining about it not being like the books if there was a single thing about it that wasn't worse than the books. I have no issue with the idea of a steampunk, with emphasis on the punk, fantasy crime series. And if that had been enjoyable, I wouldn't have had much of an issue with it taking the character and place names from the Discword novels either. But the point is, it just didn't engage me, matter of fact it reminded me of a less self serious, but also worse written version of Carnivale Row over on Amazon Prime.

There is a reason both Sir Terry's daughter Rhianna and his collaborator and friend Neil Gailman disowned this show. It fails as an adaptation and brings little to the table as a standalone project. It tries to be different from its source material, yet has no worthwhile ideas on its own. It's not funny, it's not exciting, it's not creative and it lacks any charm. This is based on the first episode. Maybe it just needs to get into gear and maybe I'm dismissing it prematurely. Should it be so, I'm ready do eat my words. But I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, a lot of people saw teasers of The Watch some time ago and wrote it off immediately, expecting it to be much like you've described. Not surprised in the least.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Watchmen
Had to do a small bit of reading before this, and am glad I did, because hot damn, trying to explain why is what and who is why, the giant squid, the blue dildo and the man on mars, to someone who hasn't ever seen or heard of this IP before, is a bit of a daunting task. On the other hand, this is a respectable niché to find, and one I very much live for. The quirky but tense and threatening world-building to entwine real life tragedy and issues alongside a muted grandeur of comic book swagger with a garnish of dark humour all set in a particularly intriguing alternative world where the stakes are often unclear, and every detail demands to be soaked up. It's comforting to know there are still people willing to put the required production resources into something this focused on what I'd assume to be a rather narrow audience. Also, the title drop for each episode is different, which produced a unique hint of confidence that this is more a work of passion than product (for me anyway).

 

[Dreiko]

Finally decided to jump into Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. This anime is over-dramatic to a point of absurdity and I love every bit of that.