Streaming The Netflix Thread

Streaming Television

AngryRanga

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More Black Mirror coming June 5th. It'll never recover the Britishness that I loved it for initially, but still worth a watch.
 

Blue Arrow

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The Society.
A YA drama that mixes The 100, with Lord of the Flies, Lost, etc. but without external danger.
Some really interesting characters (good and evil), and they didn’t deliver what I thought would have been an expected redemption arc for a character.
My family really liked this, a bit cluncky at times but we semi binged it.
.One thing that my drove my family nuts was where the bus driver was up to the last ep..
 
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My family really liked this, a bit cluncky at times but we semi binged it.
.One thing that my drove my family nuts was where the bus driver was up to the last ep..
I did think of that about half way through the season. The bus driver’s obviously have a way out of the area.

Also note that the dog is in both timelines. So I’m looking at some kind of portal.

Though I still don’t know why.
 
Caught up on The OA a while ago.

The first season was...weird, not great but I didn’t mind it.

That second season though was excellent. The step up in quality was astounding, three times as good as the first in all aspects - plot, direction, everything. You could really sense Brad Pitt’s involvement throughout as one of the producers, I could imagine him playing the role of Karim if he was 20 yrs younger. Loved the complex way it all came together. That house was unreal.
 
The Society.
A YA drama that mixes The 100, with Lord of the Flies, Lost, etc. but without external danger.
Some really interesting characters (good and evil), and they didn’t deliver what I thought would have been an expected redemption arc for a character.

Finished it. Dynamics interesting, acting not so great. Prefer the 100.
 
Finished it. Dynamics interesting, acting not so great. Prefer the 100.
Been binging the 100. Currently mid way through S5. It’s has it’s ups and downs. I didn’t like Alie, and plot armour I’d too obvious.
Though my favourite genre is “survival of the fittest”. Would you have any other suggestions?
 

Blue Arrow

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New season of Designated Survivor on NF next week, good show picked up after bring cancelled on US TV.
 
Preview of the new Tales series.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-...f-the-city-show-armistead-maupin-laura-linney
For five decades, Tales of the City has been life-affirming, life-changing and even life-saving. Armistead Maupin’s books, which began as a newspaper column in 1976, took readers inside the daydream world of Barbary Lane, where the matriarch and landlady Mrs Madrigal presided over a group of friends and lovers in San Francisco – straight, gay, cisgender and transgender – at a time when queer life was rarely depicted outside of queer circles. The series concluded with a ninth instalment, The Days of Anna Madrigal, in 2014, but there is new life for these characters in the form of a glossy, hypercolour Netflix TV revival, or reimagining, depending on who you talk to. It is rare that a fictional universe is held quite so dearly as the world of Mouse, Mary Ann and Mrs Madrigal. Maupin knows it all too well. “All I have to do is go out in Soho to a bar, and, my God!” he exclaims.
The author admits that he had some apprehension about allowing a new version to be adapted. “I was nervous,” he concedes. “Turning your baby over to these other people, and God knows what they’re going to do to it … ” But he soon realised it was safe with the (mostly) younger generation of new writers and directors. “Soon as I saw the scripts, I knew they were not only on the right track, they were going to make me sound hipper than I was,” he chuckles. Maupin is 75, and has recently relocated to London with his husband for what he calls “a last chapter that is different”. The move has coincided with a revived interest in Tales of the City, which first came to the small screen as a pioneering Channel 4 miniseries in 1993, and has been revived sporadically ever since.

“Over the past 25 years it would bubble up,” says Laura Linney, who executive-produced the new series and has played the “perpetual Alice in Wonderland” character of Mary Ann Singleton since the first book made its way to Channel 4. The show last appeared on Showtime as Further Tales of the City, in 2001, “but all of a sudden, things felt a little different,” says Linney. “It felt like: ‘Oh, this might actually happen.’ I could tell it was the right time, and I could tell there was a different kind of interest.” When Netflix picked it up, she says, “we were off to the races”.

Certainly, the climate has changed since that first miniseries aired. When it debuted in the US on PBS in 1994, Tales of the City received critical acclaim and high ratings but attracted protests and threats from religious fundamentalists around the country. The network bowed to the pressure and pulled out of funding a sequel. “I was just shocked. I was so surprised, in a very naive, Mary Ann Singleton way,” Linney recalls. “I was stunned by the nastiness, and heartbroken at the time that PBS would drop the series. But in some ways, that was a very awkward part of the evolution of it all.”


Maupin had been used to controversy surrounding anything to do with the book. “When it went into novel form [in 1978], I had the sales rep say: ‘I represent Arizona, but I would never sell the book there, because they just wouldn’t like it in Arizona.’ The presumption of prejudice held it back at every stage of the game.” The 2019 TV version has been a new experience entirely. “The dramatic difference now is that the culture has arrived at a point where they’re saying, we’re hiring all-queer writers, and they’re bragging about it.”

Reintroducing Barbary Lane to the world required an overhaul, given that life for queer people had transformed since 1976, and even since the first series in 1993. “The thing that’s wonderful about what’s happened now, as opposed to then, is that these stories are now being told by people from the LGBTQ community,” says Linney. “All of our writers are queer. All of our directors are queer. That wasn’t possible in ’93. It’s a shift, and it’s an important one, that these stories are being told by voices that are authentic. I’m very proud of that.”

Part of that shift has led to the beginnings of a quiet revolution in the way that trans characters are portrayed on screen, with increasing calls for trans actors to be given those roles. At 87, Olympia Dukakis is returning as Anna Madrigal, whom she has played since 1993, which could have put a modern queer television series in a bind. “It could have been a dilemma,” agrees Maupin. The solution has been to have an episode that flashes back to Anna’s younger days, and to cast a trans actor, Jen Richards, in the role. “I love that we’ve got a trans woman playing the young Olympia. The pioneering that Olympia did has led to the hiring of a trans actor, who’s amazing,” he says. “I mean, I don’t think anyone who knows the original would begrudge Olympia her cisgenderness, because she’s been so sympathetic to the project all along.”


Tales of the City brings this nuance to an era in which queer stories are no longer quite so rare on screen. “In 1993, it was unheard of; it didn’t exist,” says Linney. “There were a few instances of gay characters, but they were seen as the fop or the villain. They were not seen as people.”


“It’s so rare, still, that we see queer stories being told. When we do see them, they’re often sidelined,” says showrunner Lauren Morelli. “They are the B or C story to someone else’s A story. They’re a friend. They’re the person who gets picked up when the writers have time.”


Everyone involved in the new Tales of the City is aware of how much these characters have meant to generations of readers and viewers. “Oh my God, I feel all the pressure in the world!” says Morelli, explaining that they have to satisfy both old and new viewers. “On my best days, that feels like a great opportunity. On my worst days, it feels like queer people are so starved for representation that you don’t want to mess it up.”


But Tales is in safe hands, and this new series is a celebration of the world that Maupin built. Linney has been worried about how original fans might receive it. “I was concerned,” she says. “I think we all were. But you know, you give it a go. You do the best you can. Is everyone going to love it? Probably not. But I think for some people it will make them feel less alone. And for that, I’m all for it.”
 

JimDocker

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When They See Us. A brilliant 4 part drama series that tells the tale of the Central Park 5. 5 black teenagers from New York that were arrested for the rape and attempted murder of a female jogger in Central Park. It was a shocking crime and the investigation of the 5 boys was appalling too.

This is brilliantly made. Every cast member is perfect. The dialogue is very believable. Heartbreaking stuff.
 
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