General Television Thread

[Horus]

Once Upon a Time has become a guilty pleasure of mine as far as TV shows go, despite the dip in quality the show took in seasons four and five. However I just seen a sneak peek of Aladdin and Jafar from this season, and maybe it's just a biased speaking as Aladdin was easily my favorite Disney movie growing up, but it looks like the writing actually got their shit together for this upcoming season.

[GhostMachine]

I gave up on Once Upon A Time after last season. Bringing in Mr. Hyde was the last straw. Plus his accent being horrible didn't help at all.

 

[Monkey D. Lars]

Are the first seasons of Once Upon A Time any good?

[Benji]

I would give it a miss. It was good but never great, and it's just the same thing over and over again with no real stakes as the seasons go on.

[Horus]

Yeah honestly, it may be a guilty pleasure of mine but it does get repetitive fairly quickly, season one to about mid season three are okay, then things kind of start to slowly but surely go downhill.

I'm honestly just jumping back for the Aladdin arc - if anything after that is still good, cool, if not I won't lose any sleep.

48 minutes ago, GhostMachine said:

I gave up on Once Upon A Time after last season. Bringing in Mr. Hyde was the last straw. Plus his accent being horrible didn't help at all.

 

I tapped out on season five after 

Spoiler

After Hook became the dark one and sacrificed himself.

Mind you anything Emma/Hook centric loses my interested. The whole dynamic seems so forced.

 

[Noah]

None of the revived anniversary shows like young hyacinth etc are continuing beyond the one-off episode...except for porridge.  That is now getting 6 more episodes.

Although the creative team behind goodnight sweetheart has made mention of possibly continuing on another channel.

[Benji]

Good Lord, how the fuck is that greenlit? I gave up after two minutes because the laugh track was genuinely worse than this:

https://youtu.be/607j7e-Z94U

British TV is absolutely dire at the minute. With QI switching hosts so I'm finally dropping it, and Doctor Who on yet another hiatus, I think HIGNFY is the only currently airing British show I watch, and even that is starting to show its age.

[Colly]

As far as mainstream BBC comedy goes Porridge was alright, but more importantly they've commissioned a series of Motherland. I'd be surprised if there wasn't another ace BBC drama appearing fairly soon too, they've been excellent recently.

[Maxx]

I'm intrigued by Channel Zero, looks like it might be what I had always hoped American Horror Story would be.  And it looks pretty well made for  Syfy show.
 

 

[Noah]

1 hour ago, Benji said:

Good Lord, how the fuck is that greenlit? I gave up after two minutes because the laugh track was genuinely worse than this:

https://youtu.be/607j7e-Z94U

British TV is absolutely dire at the minute. With QI switching hosts so I'm finally dropping it, and Doctor Who on yet another hiatus, I think HIGNFY is the only currently airing British show I watch, and even that is starting to show its age.

For what its worth,virtually all the comments attached to the article that I found the news out in seemed to be raging that they brought the awful revived porridge back for more and that the BBC again shows that they don't know what the people want.

Typical comment was like, 'why the hell did they bring porridge back and not goodnight sweetheart which was actually good and was well supported. Stupid BBC doesn't know what we want.'

[GhostMachine]

10 hours ago, Gigan Lars said:

Are the first seasons of Once Upon A Time any good?

Yes, but it starts to go downhill with season four, unfortunately. I wish I gave up earlier than I did. My big gripe is with Mr. Gold. Him going from villain to villain trying to be a hero back to villain because he's a power hungry motherfucker gets old real fast. Especially since he did something in a season finale that looked like he had finally redeemed himself, only for the creators to yank the rug out from under that.

Edited October 7, 2016 by GhostMachine

[Jimmy]

10 hours ago, Benji said:

Good Lord, how the fuck is that greenlit? I gave up after two minutes because the laugh track was genuinely worse than this:

https://youtu.be/607j7e-Z94U

British TV is absolutely dire at the minute. With QI switching hosts so I'm finally dropping it, and Doctor Who on yet another hiatus, I think HIGNFY is the only currently airing British show I watch, and even that is starting to show its age.

Really? There's been so much great drama in the last couple of years, Happy Valley being the absolute standout. In terms of comedy, we've even had Catastrophe which is really good. 

[Benji]

Can not stand Sarah Lancashire so never bothered with Happy Valley, but my sister likes it which I generally take as an indicator that I probably won't since her idea of good TV is Britain's Got Talent and Mrs Brown's Boys. The premise of Catastrophe never appealed to me at all, it sounded like a lowest common denominator American sitcom that would be cancelled after three seasons of mediocrity.

I quite liked the first episode of National Treasure, but that's only a limited series from what I gather and whilst I liked it, I'm in no rush to finish it compared to other shows. Humans I liked most of the first season until the end and I'm still 50/50 on watching season two in a month or so because I felt that should have been a limited series and ended better, but that's also not a British original anyway.

More than anything I miss British comedy quiz shows. Buzzcocks, Whose Line?, Shooting Stars, They Think It's All Over, QI at it's zenith, HIGNFY when it was biting with its guests rather than just a bunch of jokes at easy targets. The current ones are largely "who can make the quickest nob gag" (including QI, depressingly).

[Horus]

5 hours ago, GhostMachine said:

Yes, but it starts to go downhill with season four, unfortunately. I wish I gave up earlier than I did. My big gripe is with Mr. Gold. Him going from villain to villain trying to be a hero back to villain because he's a power hungry motherfucker gets old real fast. Especially since he did something in a season finale that looked like he had finally redeemed himself, only for the creators to yank the rug out from under that.

Honestly what where they thinking with that? His character had become the most developed and that episode was a logical conclusion to his story..

Then they just completely hit the reset button on his character instead of leaving well enough alone.

[Hellraiser]

What does EWB thing about the Lethal Weapon TV show? I have to say I'm a fan. Clayne Crawford and Damon Wayans have great chemistry together and I think they captured the spirit of the movies well enough. I hope this stays on the air longer than Rush Hour did.

[Colly]

11 hours ago, Noah said:

For what its worth,virtually all the comments attached to the article that I found the news out in seemed to be raging that they brought the awful revived porridge back for more and that the BBC again shows that they don't know what the people want.

Typical comment was like, 'why the hell did they bring porridge back and not goodnight sweetheart which was actually good and was well supported. Stupid BBC doesn't know what we want.'

To be fair whether you liked Porridge or not, that comment is pretty much rendered invalid by the idea that Goodnight Sweetheart wasn't dogshit. It's a time travel show about a man who could prevent the holocaust but instead uses it as an excuse to have an affair, and I don't want to see that with Nicholas Lyndhurst looking about 70.

[DFF]

6 hours ago, GhostMachine said:

Yes, but it starts to go downhill with season four, unfortunately. I wish I gave up earlier than I did. My big gripe is with Mr. Gold. Him going from villain to villain trying to be a hero back to villain because he's a power hungry motherfucker gets old real fast. Especially since he did something in a season finale that looked like he had finally redeemed himself, only for the creators to yank the rug out from under that.

I'm 2/3 of the way through season four and I'm still enjoying the show, despite Snow and Charming being the least interesting characters in history of time. The only things I'd say about 4 specifically, so far, is that the characters introduced specifically for this season seem less... well rounded/thought out than those of those previously. I'll see what I think when we finish it off.

 

On a related note, was the Once Upon A Time in Wonderland spin-off any good?

[GhostMachine]

Nope. 

[MDK]

5 hours ago, Benji said:

More than anything I miss British comedy quiz shows. Buzzcocks, Whose Line?, Shooting Stars, They Think It's All Over, QI at it's zenith, HIGNFY when it was biting with its guests rather than just a bunch of jokes at easy targets. The current ones are largely "who can make the quickest nob gag" (including QI, depressingly).

I miss that show so much. A League of their Own is enjoyable but its no where near TTIAO.

 

3 hours ago, Hellraiser said:

What does EWB thing about the Lethal Weapon TV show? I have to say I'm a fan. Clayne Crawford and Damon Wayans have great chemistry together and I think they captured the spirit of the movies well enough. I hope this stays on the air longer than Rush Hour did.

To be honest if it wasn't called Leathal Weapon I wouldn't have even bothered. But since it is I decided to give it a shot and quite enjoyed it. I would like it even better if they had a proper season long story and not just the bad guy of the week.

[Horus]

I watched Wonderland for five minutes and it came off as an absolute mess. If nothing else I'm happy certain characters that happened in that series are seemingly going to be considered non-cannon from this season onward.