We watched this last night as well. I don’t know if I’d use the term “bleak”. These folks are just regular folks living their messy lives in a small town where everyone knows everyone. And then murder happens, which hits like a maelstrom, affecting everything and everyone. Mare herself is deeply damaged and Kate Winslet really leans into that well, plays her without a single ounce of vanity. She’s an attractive but tired and wounded woman in her mid 40’s. I loved the scene where she opens the tube of lipstick and it’s covered in dust and hair. And the whole sequence at Guy Pierce’s party was amazing and perfect in every detail and expression.
And all of the characters are pretty well drawn. Well except for Erin’s dad and the bitchy girlfriend of Erin’s baby’s dad, who we’re given no reason to sympathize with. But the rest of the cast seem like well-drawn characters just trying to do their thing.
The whole resentful cop routine is a bit cliched though. One thing I really like about Fargo is that, in spite of its whole heightened reality thing, the (non-corrupt) cops all act like pros–no more, no less. A cop comes from another jurisdiction to lend a hand and they graciously accept the assistance and cooperate professionally on the investigation. Mare being a resentful git who slowly warms to the charming younger cop is dumb.
I did find a couple of events at the end of episode 2 kind of threw me out of the show a bit: Erin’s dad taking the kid out to the woods to shoot him, and Frank being revealed as the potential father of Erin’s child. Does the show really need to get more complicated than it already is? We’ll see how that stuff develops, but it’s starting to feel more like a soap than a procedural.
The Great Pottery Throwdown is Great British Bake Off, but cooking things takes at least 24 hours and, oh yeah, everything is made of clay. Otherwise, expect the same pleasant competition, diverse British accents, and mix of soaring successes and miserable failures. I should also add that instead of being a hard-ass who occasionally shakes your hand, the star judge has a habit of crying when he loves someone’s work or their dedication.
I watched all four seasons in the course of a few weeks. Really enjoyed it.
As much as I dislike most competition shows, my daughters got me started on Bake Off and when they lost interest, I kept watching and caught up on all the seasons. No need for manufactured drama. The drama is in the skills and success or failure of what they are preparing.
We did watch Blown Away and enjoyed it for much the same reason, though the the host whose input is “I think this is awesome” and is not amusing at all makes it less enjoyable.
We tried Forged in Fire. Ugh. It was tedious for many reasons.
Throwdown goes through three hosts in the course of its four seasons. I think they’re all pretty good, though none of them hold a candle to Mel and Sue from Bake-Off.
I’ve been told to try out Forged in Fire, but I have a feeling I’d like Blown Away more.
The concept of Forged is interesting and it must have been successful as they keep churning out seasons, but the editing for drama just grew increasingly irritating. Then they have the big dramatic pause for commercial and come right back with the same clip they left on. Without commercials, you basically watch an identical clip twice. The judges and host are all decent, but the whole thing seems like it is trying too hard.
Blown Away, on the other hand, covers the people’s stories a bit more with the little clips with each contestant and it is more human. But that’s not what Forged in Fire is attempting, so I can’t really fault them for that.
I think you’ll enjoy Blown Away and you should know pretty quickly if you like Forged in Fire or not.
My wife was really excited months ago when she first found out about this show, I wasn’t interested at all. About two episodes in of being in the room while she watched we were both hooked. It follows the bake off format really closely but it turns out that pottery is at least as interesting as baking! I definitely second the recommendation for this show.
I really liked the host from the first two seasons, and thought the host from the third season was fine. But Siobhan in season 4 has been awesome and I hope she sticks around.
Thank you for the input. I’m thinking all day the 30th is good too from what I’m reading. It’s just a bit dicey as we don’t have the service so we’d be signing up mostly to let her watch it before having to wait months for a rental as theaters are a no go in our house still.
I watched the first episode and my reaction was, did Kate Winslet smile even once during that entire episode? No, no she didn’t. But it’s a murder mystery so as long as that part of it is good I’ll watch.
Haute Dog is a dog grooming competition show (single-episode appearances like Chopped, not elimination like Bake Off) that is exactly as absurd as it sounds.
They also have Baketopia, which is a serviceable baking competition show.
If you’re right, Pottery Throwdown might address the only downside of Great British Baking Show (which I adore), and that is that I find it impossible not to eat junk food when I’m watching because the show makes me so gosh darn hungry.
We started watching the first episode last night, and while Pottery Throwdown isn’t likely to make you hungry, it might make you horny. The number of double entendres per minute of this show is pretty off the charts.
I really enjoy The Inside Story on HBO Max. It’s a 4 part documentary about Inside the NBA on TNT, a show that’s been going now for 32 years. After watching the first episode, I thought they filmed the documentary to coincide with the 30th anniversary in 2019, but in Episode 3, they mentioned the pandemic year, and George Floyd, and the NBA bubble, and even more recent events, so it’s a pretty current documentary right now.
I stopped watching the NBA regularly around the time I cut the cord, and Inside the NBA along with it, so I never got to see the Shaq years of the show. For me it was mostly the Ernie and Kenny show, and it was already great, and then Charles Barkley joined and it became perfect. This look back is very nostalgic and a great chronicling of some of my favorite parts of basketball viewing after Michael Jordan left. It’s almost a great sequel to last year’s ESPN doc The Last Dance.
