Recommended Television Programmes

[gurnemanz]

Another word here for Chernobyl...(Sky Atlantic)....

....pulls no punches a tough watch (!), but..... compelling....Jared Harris & Emily Watson especially good....
the lead-coffin-and-concrete funeral was...appalling...and great TV drama, so bleak and spare...

I guess no other Game of Thrones fans here.... mixed feelings (and online reactions...!) to the last ever episode.... but it did have one, devastating, emotionally wrenching scene which summed everything up for those who had been with it for so, so long, in the way that very few series ever quite manage. (The Jon/Dany/Drogon scene amid the castle ruins...).
But you still needed to watch it twice to really get it....

Right now I wish I hadn't....

Very much agree about Chernobyl.

Haven't watched GoT but we have instructions from our daughter to tune in to The Last Watch, a "making of" documentary which is showing in the GoT slot next Monday. She spent about six months on it as its editor and is rather pleased with how it has turned out. She tells us it should be well worth a look even if you haven't been watching the show.

[kernelbogey]

Two documentaries I found fascinating, Both BBC 4 IIRC.

Hitler's Children

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01j10j3/hitlers-children

Available 19 days

Five descendants of Nazis talking about their 'inhertiance' - personal,ethical etc and how they deal with it. I'm struggling here but I thiink one was Himmler's great neice, another a descendant of Goebbels and another the daughter of a Polish Concentration Camp Commandant. (The titles is a catchpenny misnomer.) Grim and fascinating.

Storyville: A German Life: Goebbels' secretary remembers

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00052bf/storyville-a-german-life-goebbels-secretary-remembers

Available 19 days

Recently the actress Maggie Smith made a triumphant return to the stage in London after 12 years, to perform the role of 103-year-old Brunhilde Pomsel, secretary and stenographer to the Nazi-propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels - one of the worst war criminals of the 20th century. The playwright, Christopher Hampton, was inspired to write the play after seeing a powerful documentary about Brunhilde, made not long before she died [at 102].

In A German Life, the extraordinary story of an ordinary human being living through traumatic times raises profound questions about the moral choices and personal sacrifices that one is faced with when confronted by evil. Reflecting back on her life, Brunhilde Pomsel makes it clear that the dangers that led to the rise of fascism have not been overcome. ‘So I joined the party,’ she recalls. ‘Why shouldn’t I? Everyone was doing it.’

[burning dog]

Chernobyl.

Jared Harris is excellent.

The contrast between the drab domestic settings and the imposing but intimidating public buildings is well drawn.

Shocking how unprepared everyone was for the disaster. The hospital doctor saying "Why would we have iodine?"
Evidently some of the firefighters understood they were on a suicide mission, others didn't.

[Nick Armstrong]

Hitler's Children

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01j10j3/hitlers-children

Available 19 days

Five descendants of Nazis talking about their 'inhertiance' - personal,ethical etc and how they deal with it. I'm struggling here but I thiink one was Himmler's great neice, another a descendant of Goebbels and another the daughter of a Polish Concentration Camp Commandant. (The titles is a catchpenny misnomer.) Grim and fascinating.

Yes - rivetting and moving (and I agree about the silly title)

Jared Harris is excellent.

Always is. Rather a better actor than his dad, may he rest in peace

[burning dog]

Always is. Rather a better actor than his dad, may he rest in peace

much more versatile anyway...

[Stanfordian]

Four-part ITV drama 'Hatton Garden' starring Timothy Spall and Kenneth Cranham. I've seen the film and the documentaries of the Hatton Garden robbery but I enjoyed this drama just as much.

I now know what 'Toot' and 'Tom' means in context!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Four-part ITV drama 'Hatton Garden' starring Timothy Spall and Kenneth Cranham. I've seen the film and the documentaries of the Hatton Garden robbery but I enjoyed this drama just as much.

I now know what 'Toot' and 'Tom' means in context!

Yes - I enjoyed it very much, too. Perhaps a little too much for the sake of what the real criminals were actually like - the Timothy Spall character in real life had previously doused a victim in petrol and told him he was going to set him alight if he didn't open a safe; that was rather skirted around in the drama - but as story-telling it was very well done, performed, and filmed.

And the Ross Kemp "documentary" in the same spot on Friday night made some attempt to redress the balance, showing what utterly contemptible "ethics" these men live[d] by. And showed that the Alex Norton character was as dim-witted in real life as portrayed in the drama.

[LMcD]

Yes - I enjoyed it very much, too. Perhaps a little too much for the sake of what the real criminals were actually like - the Timothy Spall character in real life had previously doused a victim in petrol and told him he was going to set him alight if he didn't open a safe; that was rather skirted around in the drama - but as story-telling it was very well done, performed, and filmed.

And the Ross Kemp "documentary" in the same spot on Friday night made some attempt to redress the balance, showing what utterly contemptible "ethics" these men live[d] by. And showed that the Alex Norton character was as dim-witted in real life as portrayed in the drama.

I quite agree - it was, after all, a fact-based TV drama, not a documentary. Those who decried it as 'yet another film about Hatton Garden' need to be reminded that its broadcast was delayed twice for legal reasons.

[Nick Armstrong]

much more versatile anyway...

Re: Jared and Richard Harris - yes, that is a better way to describe Jared

[Nick Armstrong]

'Berlin Station' is really gripping.

Episode 6 was a cracker - can't believe so much has happened in so few episodes... and three left to come!

[Pulcinella]

Anyone watching Gentleman Jack (or Poldyke, as my partner has christened it!)?

[Nick Armstrong]

Poldyke

[Serial_Apologist]

Excellent hour-long documentary on the 1960s Mods vs Rockers phenomenon, from the critical pov of a then-original mod. Downplayed completely the jazz-orientation of us originals, before Motown and commercialism turned it into a mass phenomenon - but revealed that the seaside battles between two groups of youth who previously (as was pointed out) not been rivals had deliberately been stirred up by the tabloid press, in order to put youth in its place. Demoralise them first before they get too many ideas about change, then co-opt the cultural revolution aspect of it, and end up with obedient consumers, who can later be blamed for being too greedy when capitalism goes t*its up. That's me saying that, not the programme.

[Richard Tarleton]

Anyone watching Gentleman Jack (or Poldyke, as my partner has christened it!)?

Your partner and one or two others ......Camilla Long.....The Times's Carol Midgley is concerned that, thus far, the much-discussed Intimacy Coodinator had not had a lot to do - and no, we haven't been watching.

[LMcD]

Looking forward to watching the recorded first episode, to find out where on the spectrum between the above two extremes I fall

I'm afraid I found 'Summer of Rockets' increasingly tedious, and soon stopped caring about what happens to any of the characters. What a contrast to 'The Virtues' on Channel 4 with a mesmerizing performance from Stephen Graham as the tortured main protagonist. Equally gripping and dramatically satisfying in a different way is 'The Looming Tower' on BBC 2.