2870

Episode 3 was a hoot (and loaded with mystery too).

2871

I want to talk about a Korean cop show I watched on Netflix called Signal. No, not the The Signal. No, not the other The Signal. In fact, apparently this 2016 show was remade (again in Korea) in 2018, and called… Signal. That’s not confusing at all. Anyway, I watched the 2016 one, since that’s what’s on Netflix.

It’s a police procedural that uses a modified version of the Frequency gimmick. You know the Frequency gimmick? Basically, they have a walkie-talkie where one person is in the past, and one person is in the present, and they can talk to each other. In this case, they are both cops, so they use it to solve crimes.

But not just any crimes! Of course they are crimes that both detectives are intimately involved with. They’re not just unraveling crime stories, they’re unraveling their own stories.

So should you watch this? Is it any good? Well, um, maybe? In the end I got pretty hooked on it. However, it takes a long time to get around to where it is going. It is 16 episodes, and each one is about 75 minutes. And it really doesn’t have to be that long. It does a thing where it will show you a scene, but leave out important details (although this can be annoying, in most cases it is because they are details the investigator can’t know yet, so it does serve a story purpose), and then later will show you the same scene again with more details revealed. You end up watching the same things over and over (sometimes only minutes after you watched them the first time). In some cases this is great to refresh your memory, but other times it’s just… ah, come on already, I know what happened, you’ve showed me this five times before!

But… they don’t overuse the magic walkie-talkie. There’s a lot of parallel investigation in the two timelines, and they only affect each other occasionally. So it stays fairly grounded. On the other hand there are some insane coincidences that move the story forward.

I think the stories are interesting and intertwine in interesting ways. It’s not always easy to judge acting in another language, but I think the past cop is really good. He’s such a sad-sack, but also dogged and effective. Present cop is ok, but there’s one of the guys on his team (kind of a side-character, sadly) who is the jaded cop who just wants to do the least required because he knows he’ll never be rewarded for working harder… but that just means that when he puts his mind to it, he can do anything. I liked him a lot too.

Also, not all the cops are heroes! There are some bad-guy cops too. I prefer foreign police procedurals to U.S. ones because I have no idea how their justice systems work, so I don’t have to spend any brain cells being annoyed that they did stuff wrong. Maybe that’s how Korean police really work! How would I know!

Anyway, if you have any interest in a Korean police procedural with a little timey-wimey nonsense mixed in, give it a shot.

2872

Mrs Kub and I finished Pera Palace up last night and it was great. Closed out the story, well, but also set up what looks like a fun season 2. Highly recommended.

2873

Bizarrely, Netflix just emailed me, saying “Don’t forget to finish Great British Baking Show”. Uh, Netflix, I finished the whole season. They don’t even know what I’ve watched? I guess my information is safe with them.

2874

I have seen all of You, the show about sociopathic stalker/murderer that uses voice over even more heavily than Dexter. It is fun, and at time hilarious, but probably quite an acquired taste given how irredeemably horrible its lead protagonist is.

And I then I watched (so far) 5 episodes of russian show Better Than Us, which is near future scifi about robots. It is I think first ever modern russian show that I watched and surprisingly I like it a lot - good actors, plausible themes, it is just very competently made and entertaining, even if its story beats are not exactly original.

2875

I finished Pera Palace last night. I thought it was… ok. It really needed to be about half as long. Some of the subplots introduced don’t make much sense or go anywhere. The core plot is fine (if a bit lifted from Back to the Future), with some nice interlocking pieces and timey-wimey goodness.

But it really does spend a lot of time faffing about in the middle episodes. I wonder how much was lost in translation, because there’s a lot of conversations that just don’t seem to have any point at all.

2876

I’m pretty sure I saw that it was on the list of foreign Netflix serieses renewed for s2. WW2 time travel if the s1 ending is any indication. Could be fun seeing that from a bit of the Turkish history perspective.

But yeah, there are still a lot of things about the hotel to be revealed, which weren’t completely resolved in s1.

2877

You guys watching the consultant?
It’s got Christoph Waltz, who is expectedly crazy. I’ve only watched 2 episodes so far, and it’s weird. But maybe good.

2878

We talked a bit about it over here:

2879

Sorry, got my streams crossed.

2880

If you’re into true crime at all I would recommend this series on Netflix.:

Catching Killers

These are each mostly 1 episode stories so far (one exception,) so the series is easy to skip around or come back to. They are all about real cases of suspects for multiple homicides. But the catch here is the stories are told with a bit of narration, and a lot of the words from the actual detectives. I think what’s missed a lot in catching these people is how it even affects law enforcement personnel. The stress, the frustration, the feeling they weren’t fast enough or missed the small things, etc. Watching this is pretty deeply affecting because of that. The filming doesn’t hold back showing the emotions and personalities these people have that we rarely think about who hunt bad people.

2881

So I watched the first episode of The Night Agent and it wasn’t great. Its a new FBI/White House conspiracy thriller - Agent on the run type show - from Shawn Ryan (who had a good run with the The Shield a few years ago).

The characters are paper thin and it has lots of really bad expositional dialogue with tired tropes in play. It feels like a 90s 24 clone?

2882

There are so many smart stories out there in print form, and I don’t really know why filmmakers keep making the same dumb-masquerading-as-smart nonsense over and over again. Even when it isn’t an out-an-out direct remake, it might as well be.

2883

I haven’t seen 24, but I assume it’s because it was a hit. So you copy what was a hit before. Besides, I’d never heard of The Night Agent, and it was introduced to me on the Netflix app as being the number 1 show. So I guess it’s already kind of a hit? I wonder how people found out about it?

2884

Few years ago? I watched it 15 years ago! Time flies, dammit.

And The Shield is the best police show ever. Yes, I liked it better than Wire.

Shame to read Night Agent is not great.

2885

Well, perhaps I’m being too harsh on it? It seems serviceable, so depending on mood it might be a good watch for some people.

and yep… time sure is a fickle thing.

2886

I watched the first episode of Shooter last week. Cormac’s description of Night Agent is perfect for Shooter.

2887

Shooter is awesome. I’m like 5 episodes into The Night Agent and it’s really good as well. Thrillers gonna thriller, y’all, but neither really hit the peak absurdity of something like 24 and the daughter-in-peril silliness.

2888

I dunno if we talked about Behind Her Eyes, but I watched three episodes (out of six) and then bailed. I really should have given up earlier. And then I read online how it ends and was glad I didn’t bother watching the rest. What a train wreck.

2889

3 episodes here and I agree. I like political conspiracy thrillers and this hits the mark.