Reviews
Its a great show for satanists and christians alike. Since I am not a believer in anything, this show is the equivalent of some bible banging show regurgitating out of context christian or islamic propaganda. It reenforces the false archaic concept of belief, and is no different than going to a Drumpf rally and shouting racists slogans with the the Imperial Grand Creamsickle of the $$$.
I know it seems like harmless make-beLIEve, but once you miseducate children, they stay miseducated.
I became an atheist when I was 10 years old. I can only say that shows like this are an insult to the rational people of the world. Its estimated that there are only 5 or 6% of us. Which explains a lot.
I liked the two characters these actors played on Parks and Recreation, so it is nice to see them doing another show together, and although they are not playing the P&R characters, some of that does come through in this Arts and Crafts competition show.
Unlike other lets-get-6-creative-people-together-to-build-something shows, this one primarily focuses on craft type of constructions. There is an abundance of felt and paper creations that are something that you or I could have easily created ourselves. Its more of an amatuer ESTY type of show, and even has one of the judges is from ETSY.
The twist to this show is that it adds a Survivor 'Voted Off The Island' aspect, so each episode has one of the lousier crafters get the boot. Since the creations are so lousy to begin with, choosing someone to vote off does not seem too hard for the judges.
I decided to stop watching after 2 episodes as it is very formulaic and the hosts' banter isn't as fun as I thought it was going to be.
Make It! ...yawn....
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This could have been a great series with another rewrite of the scripts, but there are soo many plot holes being passed off as "mystery" that it leaves you completely unsatified in the end. The acting is very good, the casting good, the settings good, but the writer or director or the editor dropped the ball.
Imagine you were reading a book and you turned the page, and you find the next page is blank, so you turn the page again, and you find more story and continue reading, but you never, and I mean never, end up finding out what was on that missing page. That isn't a mystery, that is bad writing.
There are many allusions to homosexuality, but besides one girl kissing another girl one time in the six episodes, they could have completely left that out of the script. It adds nothing to the plot and only convolutes the ending even more. It could have been the motivation for running off together, but the story never explores that possibility. Did the three run off to live in sapphic bliss, did they jump and were never found, was there some kind of weird time displacement and they are somehow still up there on the rocks.
The theme can be summed up as something akin to 'Live free or die'. And with a couple more flashbacks of plot at the end and a few other things explained in some way during the series, it would have come through much stronger. For example, why not show Ms. Appleyard going after the little girl and bringing her back to the tower, why not show the little girl jumping out the tower to make it clear she jumped, why was the pretty girl found after a couple days but the others weren't, what happened to the allegedly gay man up on the mountain, I seriously doubt he did anything to the girls as he couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag, why did the fat girl run down the mountain in hysterics, did she really see something, was she being chased by someone, or was it just the dillusions of a repressed attention-seeking fat girl, who were the two men on horses, and if they weren't important and weren't going to be cleared of any wrong-doing, then why introduce them... Its common for mysteries to give false leads on the killer but the false leads need to be cleared up at the end to some degree. You can't leave 20 strings dangling in the breeze and think you are writing a decent story.
I was happy to see the religious idiot brother and mentally deficient sister die in the fire, but that guy would have been out the door saving himself in a second as soon as the sister started the fire. He was another false lead that at least was wrapped up at the end, even if badly wrapped up.
The cop needed to have a much bigger role in the series, he should have actually figured something out. Again, you could leave his part out and it would be the same story.
And what is with the weird time thing on the Rocks, it could have been cool if it was explained in even the slightlest way. Why did the girl see the clouds turn red? Is there a portal to another world? Can I use that portal to go back in time and stop myself from watching the series?
And why is everyone falling asleep on the picnic for no reason whatsoever? And can I have some of that. I could have slept through the whole series and at least got some rest.
I will say that the 4th and 5th episodes started to get better before the 6th episode screwed the pooch. I root for shows to pull out of a nosedive and find a sweet closure, but this one jumped off a cliff into the chasm of timeless dreams.
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First class show with movie quality sets, writing and acting. You would swear they filmed it in the arctic.
The idiotic bravado of the English captains is so typical of the English at that time. The one sane captain is ignored to all their peril.
The suspence is handled well and even after two episodes you don't quite know what they are facing out there on the ice.
The interactions with the native people are well done, and they even touch on social issues like homosexuality aboard the ship.
If the show Black Sails and the novel Moby Dick had a baby, it would be called The Terror.
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It was an exceedingly well written and acted first episode. They covered an enormous amount of backstory and set up a season of family drama dealing with the fact that she isn't going to die. Which turns out to be far more problematic than you would think. The show really clips along with never a dull moment. I'm not sure it will be nearly as exciting in a couple episodes, but it was a good start.
The second show was ok, they are certainly trying hard to give it a fast pace, but it has a superficial quality that I don't like. Its more like a montage, which other shows do as well, skipping right along over the boring parts, but I guess I'm just not that interested in the characters. It might come together after a few more shows, but I'm struggling with the teenage girl trying to be the grownup and tell others how to live their lives when she is obviously a mess. And there is her cancer being "cured" that was obviously bogus science. And somehow laughing at a cat having cancer made it into the script. It was funny, and then not so funny. I decided to drop it.
The screenplay for this mini series was well written in general, being from the La Carre book it has a lot of depth and nuance. Elizabeth Debicki is stunning throughout and the scenery is at turns as beautiful as her and then the complete opposite highlighting the underbelly of the middle east arms trade and its horrid casualties. The Mallorca home is amazing. The series is a bit overly nuanced though and it is certainly not a James Bond type of spy movie, and is at times very boring and could have easily been reduced to a 3 or 4 episode action thriller instead of what it is which is a slow burn overly-English passive observer gentleman type of reluctant hero avenging a lost love that he really didn't even know that well in the first place. There are several aspects especially in the last few episodes that appear contrived simply to move the plot along, and the series suffers from what a lot of book-to-movies suffer from... too many pages of description and very little action. In the end everything wraps up but its rather anticlimactic... like unsatisfying sex... sure, you had sex, but that is about all you can say. If it wasn't for Elizabeth being painfully beautiful to watch and the overly-english guy being occassionally elegant and sauve, I probably would have given it 3 stars. Its well done, but essentially flawed. The 'House' guy plays a near perfect bad guy, but again in the last couple episodes it becomes a cat and mouse game that simply would not happen in real life. Why not simply get rid of the new guy that is very likely the spy. Its like the boring version of a James Bond villian not killing James right away and therefore allowing him to escape and foil his dasterdly plans. I do hope they make another season, but I hope they step up the action and make a more modern version of the rather old style of writting. Tinker Tailor is simply a very old novel and its boring in comparison to modern screenwritting timing and action. I'm sure there are people who will say they love this series, but after watching it I can see why I didn't even here about its release... its good but not great... and it should have been great.
The No Reservations show was great, but it mostly focused on food and was a Travelogue second. Parts Unknown flips that around, its mostly a Travelogue with a little bit about the food. I can not tell you how many times I've been in a conversation about this or that aspect of the world, and the only reason I know anything about this or that topic is because I watch this show. Its basically contemporary history.
Probably my favorite show right now, which is saying a lot as I'm not into mystical fantasy shows... being as I am a highly pragmatic scientific nerdy kind of atheist. Its that good. The production values are world class and the acting is like a movie every show. The plots are riveting and even the ample amount of gayness fits right in unlike other shows that shoehorn it in trying to show how diversified they are. There is one episode in the last season that is so over the top amazing that I was speechless watching it and could only say WOW after it was over. I would imagine its the way people felt watching Shakespeare back in the day.
Just finished the second season, it was better than the first. It is a highly LBGTQ oriented show, and that aspect gets a little heavy-handed at times, but it does make for some truly unique scenes that have never been done in tv or the movies. One annoying aspect is that like a lot of the "we are the special people with super powers" shows, it attempts to explain these magical abilities with "science." It is of course all made up BS, but besides the dead people that somehow still exist ("beacause their memories are alive"), it is often quite fun as the different personailities solve the personal problems of this character of that character. My favorite is the japanese woman who kicks serious ass. The director has a thing against clothes; the characters are so often not wearing any. Time for a psychic sex scene.