Hey I'm watching season 1 of the Man from UNCLE too!
Haven't spotted Richard Kiel yet.
I wonder if we have a dedicated the Man from UNCLE thread?
______________________
EDIT: I found this one, I may bump it tomorrow with some observations of the first season. That thread talks about the recent movie too much for my taste though.
I'd prefer to have discussion specifically about the show, because its a classic of the genre, the American parallel to the ITV shows of the same era which do have their own threads.
Just watched don't f**CK with cats, on Netflix, I found it compulsive viewing, really a very very bizarre story! I've also found myself really taken with the Mandalorian which to me is a bit like a stat wars esque spaghetti western .
I recently picked up the original Star Trek, I could have bought the
Un-changed set but opted for the remastered version with the modern
special effects for the ships and planets etc.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
We watched the first two episodes of Heartbeat on BritBox, I have only seen a few episodes of this before and I enjoyed the 60’s setting, it’s entertaining enough, I was surprised at the amount of swearing in it and Nick Berry’s wife flashes her threepenny bits so what’s not to like?
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
I recently picked up the original Star Trek, I could have bought the
Un-changed set but opted for the remastered version with the modern
special effects for the ships and planets etc.
My favorite TV show ever. If you got the BluRay set, you can actually switch back and forth between the original and remastered effects. How you do it varies based on your player's remote. I think you can also pick which version to watch from the menu.
The remastered episodes are also nice because in addition to the effects, each episode has been cleaned up and color corrected. You can really see this on Spock in the Where No Man Has Gone Before pilot where his skin has a much more visible green hue to it (they really toned it down for the actual series).
I remember reading how for instance with the green lady, they'd plaster on the
Green make up. Only to look at the returned film to find the lady wasn't looking
too green at all, as the developing crew kept correcting it. I think the executives
also feared a backlash from having a depiction of " The Devil" on Television. )
I'm no Star Trek expert but I've loved it since first seeing it as a Kid.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
I watched Eric, Ernie and Me, on BritBox. A good solid hour relating the struggles that scriptwriter Eddie Braben had in making Morecambe an Wise into comedic superstars. Stephen Tomlinson gives a great performance as the writer and the two actors who portray Eric and Ernie get the characters just about right. The BBC do this sot of thing well.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
)
As it's coming up to Christmas, I too have been watching some of Eric and Ernie. There's
loads of their stuff on YouTube ) and The Mandalorian keeps getting better and better -{
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
I just watched some great TV!
It's the main news broadcast and the London correspondent was on air reporting on the Brexit negotiations when his part of the screen flashed "Battery level is low". Only seconds later his camera went dark and I could see the anchorwoman was struggling with keeping a straight face. I'm so sorry you missed it )
Britbox has some amazing old TV {[] Not on Britbox ( I think ) but I recently
Got all four series of " You Rang M'Lord" another Perry and Croft comedy, a bit
like a comedy version of Downton Abbey set in the 1920s
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
I just binged my way through all 10 episodes of LOVE LIFE the soapy Anna Kendrick series which aired a couple of months back on BBC. I enjoyed it without feeling particularly engaged in the story.
Darby Carter is a twenty-something New Yorker figuring out her life, career and love-life while juggling self-obsessed friends, relatives and boyfriends. The scenarios are eminently familiar. There's no surprises. It isnt even very funny a la Sex in the City. The acting is fairly good all round, but there is a box-ticking exercise regarding who Darby associates with: token black, token lesbians, older richer man, neurotic mother, slacker brother, left-wing political activist, etc etc.
The spoken narration was probably the most amusing part, yet it didnt lend anything to the show other than to highlight deficiencies in the characterisation. A few hastily thrown in obscenities and a scene where the heroine abandons her lover mid-orgasm hardly cuts it. I was disappointed the filmmakers flashed forward to an integral plot twist at the end of episode one leaving this viewer with only a sense of foreboding.
The show looked nice, but that detracted from the reality; impossibly pleasant apartments, restaurants, weddings, backwoods chalets, etc - a series full of the monied elite. Well, not that monied, but aspirational and on the way up. It left a slightly sugary taste. For instance, I wonder how the writers would tackle the substance abuse plotline if the protagonists couldn't afford rehab.
It all ended with a satisfied Darby barefoot & contemplating her lot in an empty art gallery to the sound of Glad and Sorry by the Faces - a great song the Beeb slaughtered by having the announcer advertising I could watch it all again on IPlayer. A too typical modern disrespect for artists.
Mind you quite why the hip trendy Darby should be contemplating life to such a weary, 50 year old tune was a mystery. Clearly they dont make music how they used to. Judging by this brave effort that rather goes for TV dramas too.
I saw the last two episodes of Nordic serial killer thriller The Valhalla Murders last night. Perhaps I opened the bottle of red too early but I hardly remember any of it nor even how it resolved. I don't think that was totally because I was 'tipsy' - it did seem to lose its way too much, all set up and no follow through. Perhaps I'm being unfair.
Watching series 1 of the Man from UNCLE, In one episode there's a young Richard Kiel as a THRUSH henchman.
In one scene he wraps Mr Solo in a fishing net and then bangs it against a wall. I couldn't help
hey I just got to this episode too! The Hong Kong Shilling Affair. Thunderpussy you must be about 10 episodes ahead of me.
Kiel's good in this one, isn't he, he gets more to do than in both his Bond films combined.
imdb says he's somewhere in first episode ever the Vulcan Affair too, but I didn't spot him (he must have been crouching)
Generally there's a whole different circuit of recognisable stars in UNCLE than in the ITV spy shows. The only other Bond veteran I've noticed so far is Luciana Paluzzi (Fiona Volpe) in The Four-Steps Affair. Solo frisks her looking for a weapon while she poses naughty and smirks.
(still gotta bump that UNCLE thread like I promised)
A Massive Hunt, If you enjoy old Top Gear, then you'll enjoy this adventure on Amazon.
Also on Amazon season 5 of The Expanse a fantastic Sci-fi series.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Sometimes old newsreels are shown on TV in the afternoon, and today I happened to watch one from 1956. To my surprise it started with the snow avalanche disaster in the village my mother grew up in. Four women and nine children lost their lives, but no men died because they were away fishing. My mother has told us a little bit in the past, such as the girl who sat next to her at school died. But I've never seen live footage from the aftermath before and it made a profound impression on me.
I was chatting to my daughter on a video call and she told me the Christmas lineup up programmes on British TV were dreadful. Not that they’re up to much here either - it will be BritBox and Amazon for us and the movies I have on Google Play
Xmas Eve viewing will be A Christmas Carol, (George C. Scott, version) and OHMSS
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Last summer I missed episode 2 of Killkng Eve S2, so I stopped watching and didn't bother playing catch up.
So, KILLING EVE (Series 2)
I remember I enjoyed series 1 immensely. Thought it was well structured, had interesting characters and moved swiftly from incident to incident. I enjoyed the gruesome and inventive killings. The performances were all round first class. Although Jodie Comer rightly received high praise as the assassin Villainelle, sometimes the character's flightiness grated. Sandra Oh held her own in the central part of Eve and just about succeeded in making her believable even if her decisions were not. It was the two 'handlers' - Carolyn and Konstantin - particularly Fiona Shaw's icy demeanour - which really held my attention as the story became more and more preposterous. It ended unsatisfactorialy.
The Second series tips up where Series one keeled over, with Eve realising she has allowed her injured nemesis to escape. For the first four episodes, this was great drama. Eve is now a much more complicated a character. She gradually recognises her own psychopathic tendencies, broadened by the dissatisfaction of her home life. Initially, Villainelle has barely changed, still exploiting those around her, fond of a luxurious lifestyle, seeking her mother-sister-lover figure. The first couple of episodes reminded me of the best of S1, particularly as we follow the two story arcs concurrently.
The tale takes an effectively creepy turn as Villainelle first becomes ingratiated with a paedophile and then meets her new 'handler', the bullying, no nonsense Raymond. As Villainelle struggles to reassert her past existence, Eve struggles to resurrect her own life and marriage while searching for a new unknown assassin, who is unimaginatively named the Ghost. This assassin is ruthlessly killing off associates to the businessman Aaron Peel. We have an amusing series of vignettes as Eve sets up a new team for Operation Mandrake. Meanwhile Carolyn and Konstantin circle the action like hawks over doves and in the background the aura of The Twelve still echoes.
However, once the Ghost is apprehended and Villainelle brought mischievously onside, the action wavers and just like Series one, it teeters close to ridiculousness. The scenes set around Eve's disintegrating marriage begin to jar, as do the constant red herrings flouted by Carolyn. Plot holes start to abound and ends are left flapping loose. The action becomes heavily stylised (wasn't it always? - but the final episode drags it out to Sergio Leone proportions). The grand McGuffin (simply referred to as a 'weapon') is never resolved. Aaron Peel morphs into a psychopath whose profile mixes those of the aforementioned paedophile, Raymond, Villainelle, Carolyn and Eve. It's all a bit messy.
This time the story concludes where and how it should. I was very impressed with the reveal of Peel's tendencies (twice, in fact) and Villainelle's undercover work in Rome was excellently delivered. Eve however interested me less and less. Sandra Oh's almost constant, neurotic, panic stricken expressions and deliberations could only be the result of direction. As her cynicism and paranoia increased, I believed in her less and less. However, her antagonist became more rounded as she became more sympathetic, admitting to emotional voids in her personality and eventually staring abandonment in the face.
It was a fun serues to watch. It looked stunning. It was inventive. Even if I didn't know Series 3 was due, I would have suspected it given all those untied ends. Full marks to Jodie Comer and Fiona Shaw; for the rest of the cast and crew, an honourable mention in dispatches.
THE SISTER. A 4-part drama about a husband who knows more about his wife’s missing sister than he lets on about. We binge-watched this thriller on BritBox, Mrs CHB enjoyed it very much, I thought it was pretty decent as well. It’s nice to see a one-off series all complete in 4 episodes without dragging it out into a 10-parter with lots of needless padding and side plots high don’t lead anywhere.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
It’s nice to see a one-off series all complete in 4 episodes without dragging it out into a 10-parter with lots of needless padding and side plots high don’t lead anywhere.
I didn't watch Killing Eve 3, having not seen Series Two. Except, curiously, when I watched all eight episodes yesterday, I realised I had seen Episode 2. Odd.
KILLING EVE - Series 3
Oh, dear. Oh, dear.
When I think about James Bond, it's amazing how the law of diminishing returns never kicks in earnest. Whenever the series teeters, it pulls back from the brink and reascends. Almost every third film sets a new standard for its respective time. KILLING EVE meanwhile is subscribing to the returns model in spades.
I couldn't quite put my finger on why I found this third series so unsatisfactory. At the risk of being non-PC, I think it might be something to do with the proliferation of female writers and roles for women. I'm all for well written roles, male and female. I have nothing against female writers or directors. Yet this series, based on a book written by a man, felt as if it had taken a step too far into what I can only term soap-opera circumstances.
All the relationships are dominated by women: Villainelle & Eve, Carolyn & Eve, Dasha & Villainelle, Dasha & Konstantin, Villainelle & her mother, Carolyn & Konstantin, Carolyn & Geraldine ( basically Carolyn & anyone, Fiona Shaw's role is so dominant ), even Konstantin & his daughter. It is endles. And they all share these vignettes where the espionage plot - which ought to be the driving force of tension and intrigue in the dialogue - takes second place to cryptic cognitive theories on why everybody's such a bitch or a bastard. I've had a bit of the old psychological treatment and this was dreadfully unrealistic. It simply is not so easy to persuade damaged people to emotionally reveal themselves.
There's an episode midway when Villainelle returns to her family home which is particularly grim, focussing as it does on the undisclosed "darkness" of the mother. The subsequent matricide was an ugly and unnecessary interlude. But not anywhere near as ugly and unnecessary and unlikely as a Russian peasant family all speaking English and spending an evening singing and dancing to Elton John's "Crocodile Rock". No wonder Villainelle wants to kill them all.
There are positives. It's fun at times. Interesting at others. The Twelve remain elusive. The timeline is fractured, nonlinear and frequently impossible. I enjoyed the scenes set around south London and Barcelona, places I know well. Fiona Shaw probably out-acts everyone.
Jodie Comer's great again, but even her quirkiness is wearing thin. Sandra Oh's Eve is just annoying. Her husband, Niko, has the best line: recovering miraculously from having a pitch fork shoved through his neck, he tells Eve to "Piss off forever."
I understand there will be a Series 4. So no hope of that then, Niko.
Beforeigners is Norwegian TV series, but it's filmed in both Norwegian and English (and Old Norse).
The concept of the series is that people from the past suddenly start appering all over the world. They are from bout a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago and ten thousand years ago. In Oslo there is an unsteady unflux of people from the 19th century, vikings and "cavemen". In the streets one can see men in hats, mustaches, pipes and iPods. cavemen slaugter goats and roast them on a fire outside skyscrapers and a shieldmaiden joins the police force. Alfhildr is teamed up with a washed up policeman to investigate a murder on a beforeigner. There is a subtext concerning the migration situation we see today ("Norway for contemperary people!"), but we mainly get humor, drama and a crime story. This is a origional consept and Great entertainmemt.
A superb 6-episode series retelling the true story of the murder of a Swindon girl and the aftermath of the police proceedings regarding the arrest of the murderer.
Martin Freeman as the arresting detective is excellent, as usual, and it’s nice to see Peter Wight, who I remember as one of the policemen in the brilliant Early Doors comedy series, in a serious role.
Highly recommended.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Watched the Not Going out Special last night, sad to see the final appearance of the late
Bobby Ball. I'd like to give a brief bit of praise to one of my Favourite comedy actors.
Geoffrey Whitehead, who has been in so many of my favourite comedies for many
years. He plays the outraged old snob so well
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Comments
Haven't spotted Richard Kiel yet.
I wonder if we have a dedicated the Man from UNCLE thread?
______________________
EDIT: I found this one, I may bump it tomorrow with some observations of the first season. That thread talks about the recent movie too much for my taste though.
I'd prefer to have discussion specifically about the show, because its a classic of the genre, the American parallel to the ITV shows of the same era which do have their own threads.
Un-changed set but opted for the remastered version with the modern
special effects for the ships and planets etc.
My favorite TV show ever. If you got the BluRay set, you can actually switch back and forth between the original and remastered effects. How you do it varies based on your player's remote. I think you can also pick which version to watch from the menu.
The remastered episodes are also nice because in addition to the effects, each episode has been cleaned up and color corrected. You can really see this on Spock in the Where No Man Has Gone Before pilot where his skin has a much more visible green hue to it (they really toned it down for the actual series).
Green make up. Only to look at the returned film to find the lady wasn't looking
too green at all, as the developing crew kept correcting it.
also feared a backlash from having a depiction of " The Devil" on Television.
I'm no Star Trek expert but I've loved it since first seeing it as a Kid.
As it's coming up to Christmas, I too have been watching some of Eric and Ernie. There's
loads of their stuff on YouTube
It's the main news broadcast and the London correspondent was on air reporting on the Brexit negotiations when his part of the screen flashed "Battery level is low". Only seconds later his camera went dark and I could see the anchorwoman was struggling with keeping a straight face. I'm so sorry you missed it
Got all four series of " You Rang M'Lord" another Perry and Croft comedy, a bit
like a comedy version of Downton Abbey set in the 1920s
Darby Carter is a twenty-something New Yorker figuring out her life, career and love-life while juggling self-obsessed friends, relatives and boyfriends. The scenarios are eminently familiar. There's no surprises. It isnt even very funny a la Sex in the City. The acting is fairly good all round, but there is a box-ticking exercise regarding who Darby associates with: token black, token lesbians, older richer man, neurotic mother, slacker brother, left-wing political activist, etc etc.
The spoken narration was probably the most amusing part, yet it didnt lend anything to the show other than to highlight deficiencies in the characterisation. A few hastily thrown in obscenities and a scene where the heroine abandons her lover mid-orgasm hardly cuts it. I was disappointed the filmmakers flashed forward to an integral plot twist at the end of episode one leaving this viewer with only a sense of foreboding.
The show looked nice, but that detracted from the reality; impossibly pleasant apartments, restaurants, weddings, backwoods chalets, etc - a series full of the monied elite. Well, not that monied, but aspirational and on the way up. It left a slightly sugary taste. For instance, I wonder how the writers would tackle the substance abuse plotline if the protagonists couldn't afford rehab.
It all ended with a satisfied Darby barefoot & contemplating her lot in an empty art gallery to the sound of Glad and Sorry by the Faces - a great song the Beeb slaughtered by having the announcer advertising I could watch it all again on IPlayer. A too typical modern disrespect for artists.
Mind you quite why the hip trendy Darby should be contemplating life to such a weary, 50 year old tune was a mystery. Clearly they dont make music how they used to. Judging by this brave effort that rather goes for TV dramas too.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Kiel's good in this one, isn't he, he gets more to do than in both his Bond films combined.
imdb says he's somewhere in first episode ever the Vulcan Affair too, but I didn't spot him (he must have been crouching)
Generally there's a whole different circuit of recognisable stars in UNCLE than in the ITV spy shows. The only other Bond veteran I've noticed so far is Luciana Paluzzi (Fiona Volpe) in The Four-Steps Affair. Solo frisks her looking for a weapon while she poses naughty and smirks.
(still gotta bump that UNCLE thread like I promised)
Also on Amazon season 5 of The Expanse a fantastic Sci-fi series.
Xmas Eve viewing will be A Christmas Carol, (George C. Scott, version) and OHMSS
So, KILLING EVE (Series 2)
I remember I enjoyed series 1 immensely. Thought it was well structured, had interesting characters and moved swiftly from incident to incident. I enjoyed the gruesome and inventive killings. The performances were all round first class. Although Jodie Comer rightly received high praise as the assassin Villainelle, sometimes the character's flightiness grated. Sandra Oh held her own in the central part of Eve and just about succeeded in making her believable even if her decisions were not. It was the two 'handlers' - Carolyn and Konstantin - particularly Fiona Shaw's icy demeanour - which really held my attention as the story became more and more preposterous. It ended unsatisfactorialy.
The Second series tips up where Series one keeled over, with Eve realising she has allowed her injured nemesis to escape. For the first four episodes, this was great drama. Eve is now a much more complicated a character. She gradually recognises her own psychopathic tendencies, broadened by the dissatisfaction of her home life. Initially, Villainelle has barely changed, still exploiting those around her, fond of a luxurious lifestyle, seeking her mother-sister-lover figure. The first couple of episodes reminded me of the best of S1, particularly as we follow the two story arcs concurrently.
The tale takes an effectively creepy turn as Villainelle first becomes ingratiated with a paedophile and then meets her new 'handler', the bullying, no nonsense Raymond. As Villainelle struggles to reassert her past existence, Eve struggles to resurrect her own life and marriage while searching for a new unknown assassin, who is unimaginatively named the Ghost. This assassin is ruthlessly killing off associates to the businessman Aaron Peel. We have an amusing series of vignettes as Eve sets up a new team for Operation Mandrake. Meanwhile Carolyn and Konstantin circle the action like hawks over doves and in the background the aura of The Twelve still echoes.
However, once the Ghost is apprehended and Villainelle brought mischievously onside, the action wavers and just like Series one, it teeters close to ridiculousness. The scenes set around Eve's disintegrating marriage begin to jar, as do the constant red herrings flouted by Carolyn. Plot holes start to abound and ends are left flapping loose. The action becomes heavily stylised (wasn't it always? - but the final episode drags it out to Sergio Leone proportions). The grand McGuffin (simply referred to as a 'weapon') is never resolved. Aaron Peel morphs into a psychopath whose profile mixes those of the aforementioned paedophile, Raymond, Villainelle, Carolyn and Eve. It's all a bit messy.
This time the story concludes where and how it should. I was very impressed with the reveal of Peel's tendencies (twice, in fact) and Villainelle's undercover work in Rome was excellently delivered. Eve however interested me less and less. Sandra Oh's almost constant, neurotic, panic stricken expressions and deliberations could only be the result of direction. As her cynicism and paranoia increased, I believed in her less and less. However, her antagonist became more rounded as she became more sympathetic, admitting to emotional voids in her personality and eventually staring abandonment in the face.
It was a fun serues to watch. It looked stunning. It was inventive. Even if I didn't know Series 3 was due, I would have suspected it given all those untied ends. Full marks to Jodie Comer and Fiona Shaw; for the rest of the cast and crew, an honourable mention in dispatches.
KILLING EVE - Series 3
Oh, dear. Oh, dear.
When I think about James Bond, it's amazing how the law of diminishing returns never kicks in earnest. Whenever the series teeters, it pulls back from the brink and reascends. Almost every third film sets a new standard for its respective time. KILLING EVE meanwhile is subscribing to the returns model in spades.
I couldn't quite put my finger on why I found this third series so unsatisfactory. At the risk of being non-PC, I think it might be something to do with the proliferation of female writers and roles for women. I'm all for well written roles, male and female. I have nothing against female writers or directors. Yet this series, based on a book written by a man, felt as if it had taken a step too far into what I can only term soap-opera circumstances.
All the relationships are dominated by women: Villainelle & Eve, Carolyn & Eve, Dasha & Villainelle, Dasha & Konstantin, Villainelle & her mother, Carolyn & Konstantin, Carolyn & Geraldine ( basically Carolyn & anyone, Fiona Shaw's role is so dominant ), even Konstantin & his daughter. It is endles. And they all share these vignettes where the espionage plot - which ought to be the driving force of tension and intrigue in the dialogue - takes second place to cryptic cognitive theories on why everybody's such a bitch or a bastard. I've had a bit of the old psychological treatment and this was dreadfully unrealistic. It simply is not so easy to persuade damaged people to emotionally reveal themselves.
There's an episode midway when Villainelle returns to her family home which is particularly grim, focussing as it does on the undisclosed "darkness" of the mother. The subsequent matricide was an ugly and unnecessary interlude. But not anywhere near as ugly and unnecessary and unlikely as a Russian peasant family all speaking English and spending an evening singing and dancing to Elton John's "Crocodile Rock". No wonder Villainelle wants to kill them all.
There are positives. It's fun at times. Interesting at others. The Twelve remain elusive. The timeline is fractured, nonlinear and frequently impossible. I enjoyed the scenes set around south London and Barcelona, places I know well. Fiona Shaw probably out-acts everyone.
Jodie Comer's great again, but even her quirkiness is wearing thin. Sandra Oh's Eve is just annoying. Her husband, Niko, has the best line: recovering miraculously from having a pitch fork shoved through his neck, he tells Eve to "Piss off forever."
I understand there will be a Series 4. So no hope of that then, Niko.
The concept of the series is that people from the past suddenly start appering all over the world. They are from bout a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago and ten thousand years ago. In Oslo there is an unsteady unflux of people from the 19th century, vikings and "cavemen". In the streets one can see men in hats, mustaches, pipes and iPods. cavemen slaugter goats and roast them on a fire outside skyscrapers and a shieldmaiden joins the police force. Alfhildr is teamed up with a washed up policeman to investigate a murder on a beforeigner. There is a subtext concerning the migration situation we see today ("Norway for contemperary people!"), but we mainly get humor, drama and a crime story. This is a origional consept and Great entertainmemt.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
A superb 6-episode series retelling the true story of the murder of a Swindon girl and the aftermath of the police proceedings regarding the arrest of the murderer.
Martin Freeman as the arresting detective is excellent, as usual, and it’s nice to see Peter Wight, who I remember as one of the policemen in the brilliant Early Doors comedy series, in a serious role.
Highly recommended.
Bobby Ball. I'd like to give a brief bit of praise to one of my Favourite comedy actors.
Geoffrey Whitehead, who has been in so many of my favourite comedies for many
years. He plays the outraged old snob so well