'Whatchu Watching About, Willis?!' DIGRESSION ALERT: Please, for the love of all that is, don't call it that. 2.

I've been watching more TV than ever now that I've got my own place!

I've been watching The Walking Dead - still surprised that this is improving after the god-awful Season 8. The change in writing staff clearly made a difference! I'm also cautiously enjoying His Dark Materials. I'm glad we're getting what seems to be a good adaptation after that dreadful film ten years ago, but there's still some suspect moments. I don't really rate the lass playing Lyra, but I'm getting into it.

The Apprentice has continued to be wonderfully cringeworthy and I can't stop watching it. I got genuinely mad at tonight's episode.

I finished watching Netflix's Witcher yesterday evening and it's dam good. I've said elsewhere that I'm tempted to get the books and I have started Witcher III, thankfully January is a dry month for games as it's a tad long I hear.

Today on things I don't think I'll watch: The Watch, 'inspired by' Sir Terry Pratchett's books and simultaneously looking (it would seem) to take a great big dump on them.

Everyone at work is all over the witcher, i reckon i need to get involved soon.

Balla, dont give up hope entirely. Preview material loves to misconstrue tone.

Just look at The Witcher, reviews this makes no sense 50 odd on rotten tomatoes, users 90 odd this is great.

Sure bad reviews may put you off but you may still find it enjoyable and vice versa with something with good reviews you might not like.

That's not quite what I was getting at . . . I mean, trailers and stuff. There are reviewers I agree with and reviewers I don't but media criticism is important.

Yeah I get you, it was just a easy thing to talk about

Drunkalilly wrote:

Balla, dont give up hope entirely. Preview material loves to misconstrue tone.

This is fair, but there are aspects of that material I don't know how they can come back from. I'd be happy to see them try though.

It has to be funny. It can be occasionally grim, and frequently scathing and satirical; but it has to be largely funny. If it manages that I may yet give it a chance.

...Carcer looking moody though.

Drunkalilly wrote:

Everyone at work is all over the witcher, i reckon i need to get involved soon.

It's baaaad.... well, ok. Episodes 1 and 2 are complete trash. The last episode is poor too. The show does get better in between, with the penultimate episode being the best, but it lost me so much prior that it really had a lot of work to do to win me back.

It could have been a decent show, but the way it's edited together is really dire. Heners puts in a solid shift as Geralt (although sometimes his voice breaks making him seem like Snape in cosplay trying to impersonate Geralt - he grows into the role though) and a couple of the other performances are pretty good but it's not enough.

The Witcher suffers from some awful scripting, heavy info-dumps, abysmal pacing, and a complete lack of grounding iconography or temporal context. In essence, most of the show will have you wondering what the hell is happening without giving you a reason to care about any of it.

I feel Netflix's new funding model was detrimental. They changed their production philosophy, funding 1 season guaranteed and renewing if they do well because of falling share prices. This caused the writers to bite off far more than they could chew, botch the formatting but ensuring that they ticked off representing a number of key characters, monsters and large scale battles so that they could make a sexy trailer in the hopes of putting numerous bums on seats. I could be wrong and maybe things just didn't work out the way I wanted them to. I would be surprised if there wasn't a season 2 though.

It's got some good fight scenes and wiz bits, so anyone who can overlook the writing will probably fare better than me.

Muss wrote:

.

It's got some good fight scenes and wiz bits, so anyone who can overlook the writing will probably fare better than me.

I'm the guy who can quote all seven transformers movies from memory so I'm probably good in that regard . . .

Muss wrote:

This caused the writers to bite off far more than they could chew, botch the formatting but ensuring that they ticked off representing a number of key characters, monsters and large scale battles so that they could make a sexy trailer in the hopes of putting numerous bums on seats.

This was my biggest problem with it as well, and if I hadn't played the game first I would've been lost way more than I was and smiled way less when certain characters were introduced or name dropped. Overall I liked it but it does feel rushed, hopefully now that they have essentially set the scene that format can take a more of a tale/monster of the week style approach.

Yeah, I enjoyed it through the confusion and hope that season 2 will fix the mad timeline

I hadn't played any amount of the games or read the books till watching the show, which I didn't find confusing especially the timelines which seemed pretty straight forward, just maybe they wanted to do a lot in one season though to get to where it all comes together.

I don’t understand how the timeline wasn’t confusing, even Geralts jumped back and forward with no acknowledgement of when and where it was taking place, let alone each episode containing up to 3 completely different places in time. I get that they wanted to cover a lot of ground, but I feel it would’ve made more sense to do an episode per character and state when it was happening.

Star Trek Picard happened. It's legitimately good and it feels like star trek in a way nothing quite has in a long, long time. After how spectacularly Star Wars shat the bed, I'm more sure than ever which side of this debate I'm on.

For me, it's on Amazon Prime and the only thing (maybe Grand Tour) that I could see watching that I might wait till it's all done then sub for a month then cancel.

We actually switched from Prime to Netflix recently. Netflix had all the series we were watching and more. Prime's been quite muh outside Person of Interest.

Prime has become more useful to me since The Office, Parks & Rec and Community arrived. Netflix is my main port of call, but hey I live off Amazon so the tv is only an added perk.

Watched all of Season 3 of Castlevania yesterday, Banger!

I loaded up the collection, I feel IV and Bloodlines will be worth a play still the others felt a tad too old, yet I played CotM not that long ago and that was fun.

What I'm feeling though is Lords of Shadow.

We finished Agretsuko season 2 the other week. It gets better before the end. Final Space season 2 is next before we dip into Castlevania. Feels like we've been waiting for ever for that to come around!

I still haven't plucked up the courage to finish Bojack Horseman, which remains my favourite cartoon and possibly show. Gotta be in the right mood to polish that one off.

Bojack is fantastic right to the end, don't worry

It's for sure the best show on Netflix at the very least

I've started S3 of Castlevania - so far, so great! I really dig the wee moments of humour interspersed amongst the heavier stuff. Speaking of a show that also does that, Better Call Saul S5 has kicked off. I remain stunned that I'm as engrossed in this as I am, especially considering how sceptical I was of the concept when it was first announced. I'm still plodding on with The Walking Dead - this season has been pretty good, which was entirely necessary as I was very close to dropping the show a couple of seasons back.

We haven't started Better Call Saul's finale yet. I do like the show but I don't think it's anywhere near close to the magic that was Breaking Bad. I seem to recall being a bit disappointed with season 4, although I cannot remember why.

Over these two weeks quite a bit

All of Beastars which I liked but maybe an acquired taste of an anime

Season 3 or Part 3 as it's called of Sabrina which still gives me that Buffy like fix

I finished up Lost in Space Season 2after having two episodes let to watch for ages

The first three chapters of Mandalorian on Disney+ which I did the year sub for when it was on offer for £50, I've also watched the live-action Aladdin which I kinda liked and if I watch all the films I want, like that and Lion King, Onward, Toy Story 4, Mulan then be worth getting Disney+ for without the new stuff as I would I rent them via Xbox for £3-4 each

Yesterday all of Season 6 Brooklyn 99 as it finally landed on Netflix

Now I've got more I want to watch on Disney but that is mainly films, that I'm wondering did anyone watch Picard? As it's on Amazon Prime, I've not been keeping up as that's about all I would watch on Prime but now that it's all done I was thinking about subbing for a month (might even be able to get a free trial) to watch it.

I finished Picard. I mostly really liked it, this was the most Star Trek-feeling Star Trek since 2009 but I still have caveats. The story didn't need to be 10 episodes long, and the very end of the final episode is a total cop-out which left a bad taste in my mouth.