Third season of Repair Shop is on Netflix (I don’t know why the first two haven’t stuck around) and I still love this little show. I can sum up its appeal with one example:
There’s a man who brings in a riding crop that belonged to his grandfather. I don’t remember the exact details, but I think it was used as part of his cavalry exercises when he was in the British Army. Anyway, among other things, the leather that wraps the handle is damaged and worn. So they bring in an expert saddle maker. She’s their expert for anything made of leather. She identifies the handle as pig skin; says the best thing for it is to replace it. So she cuts new skin perfectly to size and sews it by hand in a kind of double-stitch I can’t describe, but the holes are tiny and perfectly space and the leather comes together with perfect snugness. It’s incredible.
The riding crop isn’t even remotely the most impressive piece that they work on. But the craftsmanship in fixing up that one little piece seems exquisite to me. If you’re more into engineering, you can watch their clock maker grind up tiny new axles to replace a clock part, or the music box expert fine-tune the pitch of a restored comb tine. You can see them literally spit-shine a painting, or duplicate the delicate hand-painted image of a fish on a pane of glass just to cut it up to fill in a small fragment that was cracked and lost.
I still wish they got even deeper into the technical stuff in the show, but besides that, I can’t find anything to complain about with such a thoroughly pleasant show.
Sonoftgb
1968
I always wanted to see Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom on stage, but never had the opportunity. Now I can watch it on Netflix and it’s pretty damn good,
My wife is a super fan of the show. I just told her this but she was already aware of it and had already watched an episode!
Thanks for highlighting this, I had never heard of it before and it is definitely our cup of tea.
This past week we watched Los Favoritos de Midas, loosely based on the Jack London story (!) The Minions of Midas, but set in contemporary Madrid. It’s a limited series, just one season, and very well done. The plot involves an unusual extortion scheme being carried out against a media mogul by a shadowy underground group that calls themselves the Minions of Midas. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Anyone check out Sweet Home yet? It’s a Korean horror series based on a webtoon, seems like they skipped the anime and went straight to live action. CGI is a little goofy but works for me, has maybe a bit of an Evil Dead vibe (the movies not the show). I’m still early though so things may change.
Instead of the zombie apocalypse, it’s the crazy weird ass monster apocalypse.
There are six seasons total apparently.
Laura
1973
I’m watching it. Love those crazy monsters! It got some pretty good reviews.
For Netflix Korean horror shows, I recommend Kingdom.
Netflix has just put out what seems to be a sort of Newswipey overview of 2020, but with celebs playing characters as well as the likes of Diane Morgan doing a Cunk-by-another-name. Supposedly co-created by Brooker, though it’s not clear to what extent he was involved in the writing - there are a lot of other writers named in the credits.
Edit: Oh yeah, it’s called Death to 2020.
Watching this right now. It’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s nice and snarky and amusing.
Death to 2020, from the creators of Black Mirror, was pretty damn funny. Samuel Jackson, Hugh Grant, Lisa Kudrow, and many others, it is a great reminder what a crazy fucked up year this has been.
In a true 2020 moment. The hard drive on DVR/Dish receiver dies while watching the show. So I’m trying reset the receiver and its not really working, but I’m also hearing this weird singing “love is coming back into my life”, constantly repeating. I finally go the back of TV and pull the power cord to the DVR, still hear the voice. I’m thinking this really strange. So I turn of the power strip; singing continues. I’m thinking this is something out of Black Mirror. So I pull the plug from the power cord to the wall socket singing still going on. I’m seriously starting to lose my shit, and then I realize that some snapchat video on my phone in my pocket is the source of the mysterious sing.
I finish watching the last 10 minutes on my computer, while shaking my head on this weirdness of this year.
I quite enjoyed it, but I think I preferred the more focussed approach of the -wipes. The writing didn’t seem quite as sharp. I also missed Barry Shitpeas. I assume the BBC owns the rights to those characters or something.
I just binged this with my wife. We really enjoyed it but it’s rather inconsistent as to how monsters die.
JD
1980
Saw ‘Death to 2020’, which was produced and co-written by Charlie Brooker. It’s watchable, but also a bit toothless, and I would guess, at times, the writers struggled with finding satirical angles on some of the topics they cover because of the tightrope walk-esque nature. It’s well produced, but the celebrity cast sometimes more distracts than it helps. (Hugh Grant and Christina Milioti are fun to watch though.) I think I prefer Brooker’s Wipe format over this since it seems to channel his sarcasm better as he does all of the narration there and also acts as host. It also doesn’t rely on celebrities.
We saw it last night also and as with many comedies that try to lampoon 2020 I found it a bit lacking. As ridiculous as the year has been it is difficult to lampoon it.
Three episodes into Detention (releasing weekly), an interesting Taiwanese horror show based on Red Candle Games’ excellent horror adventure game and apparently being made in partnership with the studio. The game has a lot to say (in a fairly elliptical and surreal way) about the atmosphere of political terror under martial law in Taiwan in the 1960s. The show is shaping up to be a somewhat more traditional ghost story so far (it’s set in the modern day, for example, although in a remote area where the school is run by the old conservative traditions and values) but there are definite echoes of the story the game was telling, and the ghost in question…well, she’s an unlucky teenager who apparently was quite the poet and she has a lot in common with the protagonist, so they seem to be bonding? Except, I don’t think it’s going to be a heartwarming story of redemption in the afterlife, given said ghost’s already demonstrated capacity for substantial violence, and the recurring motif of blood in both intro and leaking from various things in the haunted building on the school grounds. And one of the things the two girls share is an attractive young male teacher who seems a little too interested in them…
Here’s another trailer for that History of Swear Words - which I really like the idea of, but I hope it’s not just a bunch of people talking about how much they really love to swear.
Well, turns out Detention is only 8 episodes long and they’re all out, so we finished it tonight. Overall we liked it a lot. It’s a bit neat in the ending and I was totally wrong about it not being a heartwarming story of redemption in the afterlife. Main thing is, take the content warnings seriously. There’s some pretty emotionally rough bits including an attempted rape. And don’t expect it to be spook central. There’s some creepy imagery, but it’s more tragedy than scares overall.
We are watching and enjoying Occupied, a Norwegian show about a near-future ‘soft’ Russian invasion of Norway. The idea is that the US has abandoned NATO and become isolationist, if not actively pro-Russia, while the EU has become heavily dependent on natural gas and petroleum from Russia, Norway and the Arctic. A Green government in Norway tries to abandon fossil fuel production in favor of a new nuclear power technology, and the Russians arrive to ‘help’ them with their production problems; with the tacit approval of the EU.
The show seems to be about collaboration and resistance. The PM understands early that Norway’s choice is between abandoning their green ambitions and ensuring the flow of fossil fuels to Europe, or suffering a real invasion, a war the Norwegians would surely quickly lose. He decides on the former, to save lives, etc, and becomes widely regarded — even within the government — as a weakling and a collaborator. And his agreements with the Russians are never honored by the Russians, so he becomes more and more isolated. Other characters try to resist, usually with poor results, and make things far worse. A security operative begins as the PM’s bodyguard, then is put in charge of anti-terror operations; which means his job is hunting down Norwegian patriots engaging in resistance activities. He has a good rapport with the Russians, so eventually he’s working for the Russians to hunt down resistance members. A woman who runs a failing restaurant sees her business revived when Russian administrators and security forces begin to frequent it. She is initially happy, enthusiastically accommodating them; then later troubled.
Who is right, and who wrong? Which person is acting with courage, and which is craven? Are the resistance members — an uncharismatic lot, to be sure — right or wrong to do the things they do? The show seems largely to be about this ambivalence. It doesn’t give you much in the way of clues about who you’re supposed to be rooting for, which is quite clever.
Anyway, we are enjoying it. Three seasons, in Norwegian with English subtitles.
mtkafka
1986
Good series, well shot, paced well. its like a Russian Walking Dead (NO ZOMBIES THOUGH)…with some Russian family melodrama.
Watch it subbed with Russian original…good acting.
Also read thers a Season 2 of To The Lake coming.
