The Netflix TV Show Thread

Has anyone watched the Amazon pilot Oasis? Any good?

I thought they were quite different. Escobar in Colombia rose quickly to drug kingpin and had little opposition. When he was caught, he arranged serve to his sentence in a prison of his own making with all the usual luxuries. El Chapo in Mexico had to work his way up to become a kingpin and had other kingpins to worry about. When he was caught, he went to a Mexican prison and was treated brutally, as were the other prisoners. The government was more corrupt, killing journalists that wrote stories about their crimes. The season ended before the tunnel.

Good news everybody! We’re getting a second season of Lady Dynamite!

The four-part series The Fire Chasers is now on Netflix, chronicling fire fighters in California during a particularly harrowing fire season (which I believe is mostly 2016). The photography is simply astounding.

— Alan

Watched the first episode of Big Mouth, the animated show about adolescents with Kroll and Mantzoukas. Not entirely convinced by it, I have to say, though it had its moments. I’ll give it a couple more episodes to see if it settles into a decent groove. I wasn’t sold on Bojack at first either, and that turned out amazing.

I’m on episode 3 and wow, this is really funny.

“Opinions are like assholes, keep them away from your basket balls.”

It’s like almost everything Kroll does: some bits of hilarity wrapped up in a bunch of stupid. I think that it is worth it overall, but there is a LOT of stupid.

I laughed 3 times during the episode. GF laughed zero. I’ve hear a lot of hype on it, but I don’t think we’re going to dive back in.

The best way to wash the bad taste of Big Mouth away is to watch Patton Oswalt’s Annihilation. So fucking good that it hurts.

Mindhunter is really good so far. Its about 2 FBI agents who started studying serial killers backgrounds in the 70’s. The main actor is kind of annoying but the rest of the show is so good.

While surfing around Netflix I stumbled upon Detectorists, a BBC comedy series about guys who wander around empty fields searching for treasure with metal detectors. It starts Arnim Zola from the Captain America movies (Toby Jones) and Gareth from the British Office (Mackenzie Crook.) It’s written and directed by Gareth as well.

Perhaps that doesn’t make you want to rush out to watch it. Which is a shame, because in its own determinedly low key way it’s quite wonderful. The best comparison I can make is to Local Hero, one of my favorite movies. It’s gorgeous to look at (not something you normally say about sitcoms,) beautifully acted, and unlike many dramadies these days actually contains setups and jokes and punchlines.

Best of all, being a British series, it’s quite short. You can binge-watch an entire season in the time it takes to watch a long movie. (There are two seasons on Netflix, of which season 1 is better. Not that season 2 is bad, it just suffers the inevitable fate of being a sequel to something that didn’t need a sequel.)

There’s actually a season 3 airing. I agree Season 1 is really perfect as a standalone, but the other seasons are so short why not.

I would never consider watching the show except you had to go and mention Local Hero which is pretty much my favorite movie of all time!

I’ve inexplicably gotten hooked on American Vandal on Netflix. The conceit is that it’s a true crime documentary by a high school student about another student who is kicked out of school for allegedly spray-painting dicks on 27 cars in the faculty parking lot. I think what’s great about it is the casting and the performances–a lot of classic high school archetypes, but well-chosen and well-executed. The actor who plays the accused boy, Dylan, is, I think, a great performer.

Hardly inexplicable, a lot of us really liked it!

Whaaaat? We saw what we thought was a funny mock preview for that and thought, “man, those people really nailed how Netflix advertises it’s TV shows.”

It’s a real show?!?

It’s my favorite show I’ve seen this year. That includes Season 2 of Stranger Things.

I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite, but it’s definitely better than Stranger Things.

It’s real and one of the best things Netflix has done.

I don’t know why I thought it was flying below the radar for the most part. I only tried it on a fluke because one of the writers at my office mentioned it in passing and I asked “Should I watch that?” (more because it seemed like the thing to ask than that I was looking for something to watch) and three people at the table instantly said “YES”.