Modern Vespa

No cable at home, and the Big 3 (4?) are mostly "reality" so we've been watching more PBS now, from TOH to Dr Blake, plenty of solid programming.

Working my way through the Doc Martin series. So far, I've made it to season 4. Funny and entertaining. Plus I now know a lot more about Cornwall. Highly recommended.

Doc Martin's bedside manner is hilarious. I wish he was my Dr, and I'm glad he isn't!

Please do! Really admire what he did with this on so many levels. And it's one of those stories that age well.

Need to grab one of his books too....

It's brilliant! Just looked it up and I don't think I've seen the final season. Time to rewatch. I managed to sit through only one episode of the US remake.

'Binger The Expanse is the show I got Amazon Prime for(so much other quality stuff on there too though).

On the road at the moment but looking forward to Disenchantment when I get home next week.

Cobra kai season 3. The best season so far.

And now Warrior Nun.

Forgot about Rake. May need to revisit that one, tho, I seem to recall the second season didn't live up the first (kind of theme for me).

But recalling Rake just reminded me of the hilarious Grinder, with Rob Lowe. Just silly, fast-paced witty fun in the 30 Rock vein.

I think we're about to break down to pay for the second season of the utterly brilliant but wickedly cynical Succession.

A Brit, a blonde, a bike 2021 New Zealand summer trip series just started on YouTube.

Cobra kai is on my list after The Expanse. Fun thing with The Expanse is things started to look familiar to us and it turns out the earth scenes are filmed in Toronto. So we try and figure out where the scenes were shot and can usually figure it out.

I hate binge watching. I find that I don't retain as much of the story throughout the run of the series when I binge it, because it all runs together. I also end up staying up to late, and avoid doing anything else when I'm binge watching.

Hulu used to allow the user to set the watch order of the programs in their watchlist. I loved it, because I could set up two or three series to alternate between/among them. It felt like a more natural way to watch them, and if there was a cliffhanger episode, I'd actually have to wait to watch it, building the suspense. And i was more likely to go to bed at a reasonable hour if the next episode queued up was from a different show. A few years ago, the did away with that feature, now if I want to bounce between series, I have to either back out to the list, or go to the "Home" screen and select the next show from there, manually.

Unfortunately, all of the streaming services behave the same way.

As for what I'm watching, I recently finished watching Suits, and am now about half-way through the penultimate season of White Collar. The wife and I are current on Cobra Kai and The Mandalorian. We also are watching WandaVision. Next up for me after White Collar is Star Trek: Discovery.

youtube never runs out of stuff. it's like the never ending black hole. I'm watching a guy build a log cabin the old-fashioned way in Sweden now. There is a good vid about a man that lived off grid in a redwood forest, I think here in the US. He would harvest the trees and take care of his 'plot', which if I remember was huge. He'd been there 50 years and his house is incredible. He was also artistic.

I watch TONS of YouTube as I have it playing while I'm working during the day. I highly recommend Premium as getting rid of the ads is a much better experience. I do wish though that Google took better care of the creators on YouTube though. Anyway yeah you can so easily find something of interest on YouTube. I'm in to gaming (surprise, I'm a professional nerd) and have been really enjoying the work of Danny O'Dwyer and Noclip media.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0fDG3byEcMtbOqPMymDNbw

PS - Hades is an awesome game.

I am a Simpsons fan and I am in the middle of a rewatch of seasons 1-12, which I consider to be the glory years. I average about 2 episodes per day.

As for new (at least to me) I am very pleased to be watching the reboot of All Creatures Great and Small on PBS. In case you don't know All Creatures is based on the books of real life British country vetrinarian James Heriot from the 1930s and 40s. There was a series years ago that I really liked and after three episodes this one looks just as good.

I have only an antenna and what I can stream. I don't have any services like Netflix. I would like to see The Mandalorian on Disney+ but I can't justify signing up for just one show when I have more to watch than I ever could. As someone else said Youtube is a bottomless pit of programming.

Have you ever seen this? Used to run on PBS now and then. Dick Proenneke "Alone in the wilderness".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy-4NxJRxNQ

Just finished Come and See, a 1985 film by the Russian director Elem Klimov about the Nazi invasion of Byelorussia and destruction of villages and their inhabitants, and the experience of a young man caught up in the violence. It's often very hard to watch, but the filmmaking is impressive. I'm torn between recommending it and warning people off. It has some Ingmar Bergman vibes to it.

I am also a YouTube fan. I used to travel a lot and now just watch others doing it! I like watching bald and bankrupt:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxDZs_ltFFvn0FDHT6kmoXA

So this isn't "Parks and Rec" or "The Office"?

We're three nights into the French "Call My Agent" which is surprisingly good, despite the stupid title, in a very undefinable way. Just well done, smart dramady, and:

a) is chock full of Vespas (Paris!). So that's a bonus.

b) turns out to be set 110 meters (according to Google maps ) from the tiny, tiny (tiny!) Parisian studio apt we rented twice. So that's a bonus...for us, and none of you care, but, well, whatever.

No, not Parks and Rec.

Hmm...Paris. Two sort of problems:
1) Vespas- I'll want to go there.
2) Paris. My wife will want to go.

Well, maybe not a problem. Besides, we can scout out your apartment! 8)

You should want to go to Paris. Rome may be the most interesting city to visit, but Paris remains the only city I'd ever love to live in.

But not enough to, you know, either learn French for seek an income large enough to live there.

Also I don't know what it means about me that the city I love most is full of world's most notorious snobs.... But when I'm there I think "ah, at last I have found my people: a race of a-holes."

We also just wrapped up the first season of the Spanish Alta Mar/High Seas (also on Netflix), which was fun in an Agatha Christie vein and sumptuously produced.

Tho it does raise the interesting question: is the defining feature of Spanish lineage a massive chin? If so, this explains why the Spaniards look at me with Parisian disdain.

On our bucket list.....but hey, the clock is ticking...

There's a lot of programming on Xhamster exactly like that.

I think Cleaver Greene has a couple seasons left in him.
The US remake was actually pretty good, but too true to the original, and we are way too puritanical for a show like that. Frame by frame by frame....
Speaking of Aussie comedies, anyone else like Frayed? There is something about Cunk's voice that just does it for me. Reminds me of Little Voice, a great British film.

Oh, that's too bad for me.

https://findanyanswer.com/why-are-hamsters-banned-in-new-zealand

I blame Richard Gere.

Also, I blame Motovista's post for reminding me to blame Richard Gere.

Also, possibly I am a hamster: "Since hamsters have poor eyesight, they can be very nervous around humans until they learn to trust them."

Also, I do believe that the deepest hour of sleep I'm recently getting occurs during the two episodes of Schitts Creek my wife insists on watching each night.

Anybody watching 'It is a sin' in the UK? How do you like it?

Here is Olly with the PSB:

https://youtu.be/LmeNkj7n-xs

Just watched Jojo Rabbit.
Would have been fun to watch it in a big German theater.
O.S.

The wife and I started watching Spycraft on Netflix last week. It's a documentary series about various aspects of espionage. We like documentaries, and the subject was intriguing, so we figured why not.

Don't waste your time.

The narrator is horrible. He mispronounces words (nucular, for example). His delivery makes it sound like a high school student's video speech project. It's obvious he's reading a script, so much so that you can almost hear the pages turn. And it's obvious that he didn't read through the script beforehand to familiarize himself with the material.

The writer likes to use "fancy" words when normal ones will do. For example, in the episode I watched last night, I learned that information is "extradited" by spies. Spies also "exfiltrate" information from computers.

To be fair, if you know absolutely nothing about espionage, it's mildly informative. Otherwise, watch something else.

I really hate how Netflix don't tell you it's the last episode in the season. Grrrrr. Expanse finished well, sad that there's only one more season but it will be awesome.

Also they tell me there's new episodes of Star Trek when there aren't.

I'm watching The War, from Ken Burns, and it really makes me appreciate colorization. There have been some great war documentaries coming out of France where they colorize the footage, including one about WW1. It's a lot more interesting than watching someone pan across a black and white photo.

One Night in Miami- Great film.

I watched Queen's Gambit and enjoyed it so much that I watched it again.

But I am quite simple.

Bill

The Shogun of Harlem??

Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon.. always on my playlist.

but right now, El Topo. This and Holy Mountain I still can't wrap my head around and are quite frustrating. I usually end up reverting back to A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More!

Glad to hear Expanse finished well. We're just hitting season 3 now and really enjoying it. I'm a huge Star Trek fan but if it's another Picard I'd take a hard pass, that series was awful and that's being nice to it. The Expanse is a great example of how women can be strong, the colour of your skin doesn't matter and who you love is not a big deal. Picard is absolutely the wrong way to do it and his character was made to look weak.

https://youtu.be/zsmqcLv8Q-4

Picard and Discovery make Enterprise seem amazing.

Kurtzman ruined the series trying to make it something it isn't... an AMC series.

What happened to a utopic view of humanity? What happened to redeeming characters who don't disobey orders every second of every episode? And for the love of God.. what happened to the "science" in science fiction? What I would do for a poker playing episode.. or a holodeck robinhood episode instead of the constant drone of nonsense manufactured crisis.

I knew riding that X-Max would have damaging side effects to your discernment.

But for reals, I'm still the only person I know who couldn't stand it, so go figure. For some reason, the more I become a boring old man, the more I crave tweaky stories.

I don't care what I eat or drink -- it could be the same thing day in and day out -- but I gotta taste a new plot or I'm out!

I know, Yamahas do dull the brain.

That is why I ride the Vespas much more.

I have tried numerous series and films on Netflix, Prime, etc.

Almost all of them get abandoned after a few minutes to a few episodes.

Queen's Gambit stuck.

For me, it was greatly entertaining.

Bill

I'm watching Gambit now....we all are into it. Actually didn't think I'd like it all that much, but I was wrong. Maybe partly the nostalgic trip through my early childhood....well, maybe too young for bobby socks. We're at the point where it becomes suspicious that things might not end well....

I don't think I even fit on an X-Max....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Fonda%27s_Workout

A couple of nights ago I got tired of watching politics on TV and asked the remote to look up one of my favorite movies.

Babe

Yes, the cute tale of a young pig who turns into the world's best sheepdog (or sheeppig)

The story is brilliantly written, engaging and fun.

The message is one that I find more important every day.

Good things happen to people (and pigs) who are honest, kind and helpful.

Not for everybody.

But I love it.

Bill

I am old enough now that I forget I saw something before, so it's a little bit good on that. But, I came across "The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher" and I think it was on amazon. Only four 90 minute episodes of Mr. Whicher and enjoyed them again. There is a particular order to them also, maybe the dates aired or released will be in the description. Just some old British detective stuff from when they still drove carriages. And I came across some of the classics in black and white. They were ok for awhile then I lost interest. And sometimes I just watch my chickens....chicken TV. Good enough and relaxing.