WOOHOO
HOLY CRAP.
Just finished off The Chalet last night. It’s French, so be prepared to read along, but it’s a pretty grim “And Then There Were None meets Friday The 13th”-style revenge thriller with plenty of violent deaths and boobs (it is French, as I mentioned). There are a LOT of characters and two distinct timelines, so the first episode is fairly confusing especially when a large new group of characters arrive at the train station near the end of the ep. Trying to work out who’s who and what their place is in each timeline is a little frustrating at first, but by the middle of the 2nd episode, you should have a pretty good handle on who everyone is.
It’s not perfect: there are a few murders that require a little too much “right place/right time” to be totally plausible, and I’m not sure the reaction of a couple of the characters to the Big Reveal really matches what we know of them to that point. But considering the intricacy of the plot, everything wraps up tight…not sure there are any major loose ends.
Also, creepy-ass opening credits sequence, that gets creepier as the village degenerates by episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMs0anZmve0
The Rain is on my “to watch” list for sure. A pal at work has been trying to get me to watch it for a week or so now. It seems reasonably interesting. But I got so much other stuff to catch up on!!
I’ve watched 3 or 4 episodes so far. It’s been interesting though I’m curious about some of the scientific aspects of the rain.
I tried. Turning off the awful english dubbing helped, but I couldn’t get past the mediocre writing.
Perhaps this is a “Spartacus: Blood and Sand,” which gets great after a bad beginning.
Binge watched the whole thing over the weekend. It was very easy to do, as episodes are only around 30-35 minutes each and there are only 8 of them.
The production values were excellent. They managed to capture perfectly the eerie feeling of a post-apocalyptic world 6 years after most of the population died almost instantly. Everything from the skeletal remains of the kids in the playground to the look of the hospital and the way cars, shops and everyday places were simply abandoned as people fled or died. The set they re-used for every bunker was fantastic, from the lighting to the design elements (very clean and Scandinavian). Also, much of the music used in the series was very good.
While I enjoyed the story/plot overall, the “science” behind it required a whole lot of suspension of disbelief. I’m still not sure how building a huge wall somehow contained a weather-borne contagion, or how they managed to keep the population from surging over the borders while they constructed said wall, or how the virus became introduced into the water system in the first place. Also, how is everyone not dying of thirst? I mean, sure, you can boil water to kill the virus, but to maintain even a small group like the main characters, you’d need to boil several gallons per day then carry it around with you. Whatever, it’s television.
Anyway, I enjoyed it and would watch a second season if/when it became available.
I agree whole heartily with your synopsis about how it really feels realistic. I also would say that to skip the English dubbing and listen with subtitles.
I’m not sure if it’s me, but I couldn’t help but think that it’s like breakfast club came out of detention to find most of the world is dead.
I’m also not confident on how far they can stretch this. I think it would have been good as a 1 season series.
There are the common pitfalls of writing that have you yelling at the screen, but most of this can be attributed to young adults who don’t know any better.
I agree, it’s difficult to see where they could go with a season two that wouldn’t feel like a rehash, especially since in the end they turned around and went back into the quarantine zone
Had they made it through the wall, you could have had a Season Two where they all discovered as a group what life was like outside the zone. What is the corporation up to, and are there other corporations or people working against them? Instead they’ll go back to wandering around the quarantine zone, dodging patrols and looking for more bunkers (how many more can there be?) while Rasmus whines endlessly about not being able to ever kiss a girl again thanks to his mutated virus. That doesn’t sound nearly as fun as the first season. =)
Season 2 of The Toys That Made Us is out. Woop woop!
Is that a good one to watch for someone completely uninterested in toys?
I’d say: yes. They’re well made, and the makers clearly care about the topic.
Out of the 8 episodes, only one covers something I actually owned (Lego), but thanks to a buttload of commercials and other types of ads, tv shows and movies, the other toys/toy lines were inevitably part of my childhood nevertheless. Did I ever care about Barbie? No. Did I find the episode about her roots and rise to cultural significance interesting? Absolutely.
Cool. Barbie does sound interesting. I was thinking things like Star Wars or Transformers, which sounded less interesting maybe.
I’ll check it out once I get back on a Netflix Sub. Right now I’m on Hulu for a second month.
Watching this now. Good god, is Martin Short really 67? He looks like a teenager compared to Steve Martin.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Season 4 is up (only 6 episodes though.) Parodying Netflix, its competitors, and its shows plays a major part in a couple of the episodes.
I’m really, really enjoying this season. They’re still cranking out great jokes on a regular basis, but it’s also more overtly political, and more successfully so than some of its earlier episodes.
Also, Michelle Wolf’s show started the other week. I like it so far, though it’s no Last Week Tonight. Feels a bit like the Nightly Show in tone, but less of an ensemble and with some pre-recorded parody sketches.
We watched the pilot episode but probably won’t go back. I hope it does well but I just couldn’t understand what she was saying sometimes. The voice just got to my wife & me really quickly.
Anyone watching the recent release Safe? It’s an episodic series starring Michael C Hall as a widower surgeon with two daughters who lives in a gated neighborhood. His daughter goes missing and off they go. My wife is about as anti-binge as you can get but we blew through the first 3 episodes the other night - it drew us in and we couldn’t wait to see what happened next.
It’s a British production, and so Hall is sporting a British accent. It’s a bit jarring in the beginning, but you get used to it (and he seems to do a pretty good job at it).
Even through just the first three episodes there have been plenty of plot twists and turns. Recommended!