Reviews

I only managed to get about 30 minutes into episode one. This show commits the cardinal sin of TV drama - it's just dead boring. I don't care about the murder victim. I don't care about the police officers who are trying to work out the details of a twenty-five year old murder case. Even the interpersonal drama between two of the lead cops who are sleeping together seems forced - it's in the script so they do it but there is zero chemistry between the two characters or the actors playing them. Normally these shows are pretty good but this one just seems I'll conceived, forced and ultimately just dull and pointless.

First I wonder what's going on with production that they managed to lose three male leads in such a short time that we're left with what is essentially Dylan's Angels as the FBI's go to team for hunting down the most wanted criminals in America. Points for embracing diversity with a black woman, a white woman and a Maori woman in major roles but the white guy is still in charge so a mixed result.

The plot about guns really has the ammosexual set triggered though with multiple 1 star "There's no such thing as an assault rifle." screeds when the AR15 is the most commonly used assault rifle in mass and school shootings across the country. Of course the FBI should be concerned about illegal gun trafficking.

Given that it's done by National Geographic and Disney, it's no wonder it comes off as a modern take on Disney True Life Adventures. The photography is flawless and stunning, but the narration is more anthropomorphized feel good aimed at elementary school kids than actual scientific education. That's not necessarily a bad thing if it gets kids interested in nature and caring for the planet.

Picking Laurence Lewellyn-Bowen as the host was genius. Anyone who remembers his stint on Trading Spaces knows his over the top style matches his personality. It's ironic that he criticizes the decorating of one house in episode 13 as being over the top when some of us remember his Trading Spaces antics that literally brought home owners to tears.

His clear enthusiasm for finding the right house for each buyer though makes up for some on the over the top silliness and it's just a fun little tour of homes in the UK.

I love Brenda Blethyn. I never miss an episode of Vera. This however is just utterly dreadful. The cast tries but the scripts could have been written by a computer programmed to spit out random sitcom tropes and cliches in a mishmash so bad no human could have consciously, intentionally written it. I really wanted to like it. Started watching the second season but just can't do it anymore. I get that Covid has impacted TV production but this is just desperate and sad.

Been a fan for a long time, since Kate was an agent and McGee was a probie but I'm over it. This season's herky jerky stop start broadcast schedule is just the last straw. Not being able to even predict when it's on coupled with all the cast changes and frankly weak story lines have rendered the show no longer worth the effort. They should probably have wrapped it up at the end of the last season when Gibbs left but they seem determined to ride it all the way to the bottom. It's sad to see something that I once liked so much decay.

It's fun and clever. Love the quirky stuff he finds but man technology moves so fast that a lot of it is absolutely "ancient" just 9 years on. Windows 8 phones and the robotics compared to Boston Dynamics dancing, stair climbing robot people and dogs leave some of the tech seeming quite quaint.

Still great fun with Stephen Fry as host.

I loved the books and really wanted to like this adaptation. Unfortunately I fell asleep during the first episode it was so dull. Noise and violence isn't enough to make it interesting. I didn't care about any of the characters. Whether thru bad casting or bad writing, the characters who are supposed to be the main drivers of this sprawling saga seemed a bit flat. If I'm expected to buy into a series that's projected to go for multiple seasons then they need to wow me right from the beginning and they didn't. I'm sure there are people who are going to be fanatical about this show and will stay to the very end, but I won't be joining them on that journey.

It was time to put the show out of its misery. The writers were clearly out of ideas given their endless use of the "everyone's out to get Pride" trope. Coupled with this season's resurrection of the Sasha Broussard character they didn't have anything more to say. There were some good episodes with great characters but it was time to wind it up.

Oh goody! The writers have run out of ideas again so it's time to drag out the "Someone's trying to kill Pride" trope. They have worn the spots of this one yet they keep resurrecting it. They need to change the title to "The Perils of Pride-lene" and just admit that the show has given up on the idea of having any stories related to the Navy. Either get some new writers or just admit that its time to call it a day and end the series.

If only this was reality. It's pretty amazing that the so many of the original cast come together as if no time at all has passed. Sterling K. Brown deftly steps in for the late John Spencer and the rest of the cast inhabit their characters exactly the same way they did 14 years ago. The lack of the original sets in favor minimal sets and no efforts to hide the theater in which they are working works quite well. It all makes me miss it and glad that it's available to stream whenever I need a fix.

I really wanted to like this because of Pauly Perrette but I just cringed thru the entire pilot episode. The whole thing is a hash of sitcom cliches. We have the struggling blue collar single mom from Grace Under Fire, the stereotypically gay butler from The Nanny and the smart kid with the clever mouth from every sitcom of the last 30 years. The problem is that as derivative of successful shows as it is, it never manages to take all those pieces and make them work together. The result is a mess of sitcom tropes with no actual comedy.

I get that filming in the mountains of Papua New Guinea is challenging. However, I don't really need to hear about what the photographers had to do to get their helicopter, how the weather impacts flying, how hard it is to find a landing sight, how hard it is to hike in the rain forests, how their equipment handles the environment, how their camp is set up, what kind of cameras they use, how they set their cameras up and on and on and on. When they finally show film of the birds of paradise that are supposed to be the subject of the film, they give us film of playback of video on a laptop screen. I only got 13 minutes into it and in total there was about a minute and a half of marginally good footage of actual live birds. National Geographic could learn a thing or two about film making from David Attenborough and PBS.

I started watching this on a Saturday morning (on Disney+) hoping to see some lovely scenery and learn about ways to experience our national parks. Unfortunately what I got was a slaughter fest of "the circle of life". Episode 1 on Olympic National Park focused on orcas killing sea lions, orcas killing grey whale calves, bears eating salmon, river otters eating salmon and on and on. Decided to skip to episode 2, Yosemite and after just 30 seconds or so of beautiful scenery we back to bobcats and coyotes hunting and killing things. I understand that predators have to kill to eat and that's how life works. But in this case the film makers seemed to go out of their way to focus almost exclusively on death. Not the calm pleasant tour of our National Parks I was expecting or hoping for. Big disappointment.

Somewhat interesting "what if" in the mold of "The Man in the High Castle" but the production itself is downright irritating. The constant running of camera shots on a loop showing the same sequence over and over is like fingernails on a chalkboard. The frequency with which the sound and video go out of sync is also distracting. Finally, it's just not an interesting enough idea to sustain a whole series without a lot of irrelevant filler that doesn't contribute to the overall story.

Been a big fan thru the first 6 series of Letterkenny. The characters were fun and engaging, the storylines were diverse but woven together well and it was overall something to look forward to as each new series was released. That's why series 7 was such a letdown. They seem to have written themselves into a corner. The hockey team is gone, so the characters of Jonsey and Reilly don't really have anything to do. The skids have no storyline of their own, just incidental appearances. Tanis and the guy from the rez pop up but in more of an outline for a story than an actual plot. That leaves the 4 main characters doing a lot of repetitive word play games which, while funny, are not enough to build and entire show around. The main "story" of this series call in show, but even that seems more plot outline than a fully fleshed out story. It just doesn't go anywhere. All thing considered, series 7 is just not up to the standard set in the previous 6 series. If they come back with an 8th series, I hope they can rediscover what made the show funny originally.

The biggest problem? I can't stand one of the main characters - Homelander. It's as though the writers looked at Donald Trump and modeled the entire character after him and created the first smarmy narcissistic super "hero". I may have to live in Trump world in real life but fortunately I don't have to in my entertainment. I'm out.

Is it the next Citizen Kane? No, of course not but not nearly as bad as the negative Nancy's would have you believe. It's passable family entertainment and hardly deserving of the vituperation in some of the comments. Some people just seem to feel a need to always complain about something. Ignore them.

The film makers took an interesting historical incident and in an effort to add "drama" or something ended up with a boring series of meandering shots that left me actually asking the television if we could please get on with the story. It opens with a long shot of a guy standing alone in front of an empty school building first asking some guy to keep everyone quiet and out of the shot, then stands there doing and saying nothing for what seems like forever and the rest proceeds at the same snails pace. When they got to some weird side story about Tombstone, AZ and how they're "Second Amendment City" I finally gave up. Apparently it is possible to make someone stop caring about a story simply through bad self-indulgent film making. Just read the Wikipedia article and you'll get the gist without all the "Indie Film" foolishness.

Lasted 20 minutes into the first episode and it's clearly just another trashy soap opera/weak telenovela littered with stock (read cliched) characters and ridiculous "intrigue". No wonder people are fleeing network television for Netflix.