Recommended Television Programmes

[teamsaint]

CATCH-22 (C4) got off to a good, solid start I thought? Difficult to adapt (or read...), but with 6 episodes it could develop into something compelling....
The direction emphasised the bomber raids themselves very vividly, and you do need that for the psychological/emotional perspective...and the catch itself was clearly described within dialogue.

Clooney a bit strange & limited in his role, Lawrie always good on screen, even when (or especially when) munching lamb chops...still it's only ep.1...
(and once you've binged on recent series it is hard to wait a week...I want the green button!)

I always thought it was a nice example of a good book that made into a good film.
But then its prolly about 35 years since I read the book.

[johncorrigan]

I always thought it was a nice example of a good book that made into a good film.
But then its prolly about 35 years since I read the book.

I know the film pretty well - seem to recall seeing Catch-22 on my 18th birthday, and a few times since - read the book a couple of times in my 20s and loved it, laughing out loud in a variety of public spaces. I was really looking forward to the TV programme and it was a pretty good opening episode, though I kept seeing the faces of the film characters in my head and imagining events still to come - enjoyed Milo's introduction, and also found the bit about the young gunner who went into the wrong tent very moving. Have I missed something or are they calling Yossarian, Yo-Yo...not sure about that? And there's no Bob Newhart in there...oh well, nothing can be perfect!

[Dave2002]

Just watching Top Gear - the "new" version - which has electric cars. Never really watched it much in the days of Jeremy C (not the Labour guy), but the newer version since he and his mateys left for Amazon. Really is total rubbish - not just slightly rubbish and amusing, but really awful. Did have a quick look at the new Tesla car though - which seems extremely impressive. Is this what we pay the licence fee for?

Also did not say how much it cost to charge up the car for the very fast runs. It doesn't follow that the very low energy/cost figures which electric cars claim for regular road use will apply for speed tests such as the ones on the test track at Dunsfold.

[Braunschlag]

Having managed to get access to NOW TV (at my daughters, doesn’t work at home with the BT Youview/Sky spat going on forever), I was over the moon to spot Babylon Berlin. Wow, golly gosh, blimey - superb production in almost every respect. I accept the period liberties taken here and there, it’s drama not documentary, but there’s a real decadent atmosphere here, excessive,squalid, desperate. And I can’t get that ‘cabaret’ song out of my head (Zu aschen..) - it’s so unusual and beguiling.
My daughter got a free month pass from a Kit Kat bar....

[Serial_Apologist]

Contrary to my own recommendation, I did in fact watch Summer of Rockets (BBC2) through to the end. For me the series restored Poliakoff's reputation for me to an extent, and frankly I was gripped throughout, probably as much by interest in the story, with its look back at an important period in British history that, as one of the characters implied at the end, has had repercussions right down to the present day, as by the unfolding drama of the story. Poliakoff is at his best here, rather than in indulging the mores and lifestyles of high bourgeois types, whom we are not sure whether to envy or despise: here the lines were clear-cut, and we were kept on a leash as to which of the parties in the plot we were to assume to be trustworthy, right up to the penultimate episode. I have misgivings about several aspects of the concluding episode not clarifying some of the foregoing. Unless I was missing something, we never learned the basis of prep schoolboy Sasha's obsession with "Anthony"'s disappearance, nor his headmaster's confidings in him; nor whether Anthony really was Anthony or eventually, under pressure, just pretending to be so as keep everybody happy and not stir up a pot of other people's mysterious making. It did seem odd to find Richard Shaw invited to the final garden party, having been revealed at the gathering of all the suspects as totally complicit in the military coup plot. Petrukin's exoneration of him as having had an off-day seemed particularly lame, but Shaw's willing involvement seemed neither here nor there. I also feel that the blowing of Petrukin's cover would have ensured his disappearance, rather than the brief duffing up, given that being allowed to escape give him a blank cheque to expose all the goings on. But we aren't left with the impression of a man of courage, so that in the end we are just left to ponder issues of conscience.

[Stanfordian]

Having managed to get access to NOW TV (at my daughters, doesn’t work at home with the BT Youview/Sky spat going on forever), I was over the moon to spot Babylon Berlin. Wow, golly gosh, blimey - superb production in almost every respect. I accept the period liberties taken here and there, it’s drama not documentary, but there’s a real decadent atmosphere here, excessive,squalid, desperate. And I can’t get that ‘cabaret’ song out of my head (Zu aschen..) - it’s so unusual and beguiling.
My daughter got a free month pass from a Kit Kat bar....

I was totally captivated by Babylon Berlin even Brian Ferry's contribution too - Yes, there were liberties taken with the period but I didn't mind that at all.

[jayne lee wilson]

A last round of applause for The Planets after the last, haunting, informative, beautifully-presented episode. Brian Cox is a very gifted presenter, visually and vocally. The warmth and precision of his delivery, the understated friendliness of his persona-to-camera, was the perfect televisual blend.

So much we didn't know about those distant, frozen worlds from Uranus and beyond. And all thanks to years of tiny satellite explorers, with their stunning photographs and geological/biochemical analyses....some of the best things humanity has created. So welcome in these times of political chaos, prejudice and small-mindedness.

Geysers on Triton, a Moon captured by Neptune's gravity, 5 miles high! It was almost as if sic-fi imagery was feeding back into science itself...

But it still takes great skill and creativity to pull it all together as a film production. The pacing of each episode was so unhurried, peering with calm fascination at each revelatory aspect.
Brian Cox is wonderful. I think we need more creative artists as presenters....

[Richard Tarleton]

A and a from me. Brilliantly done.

[johncorrigan]

Colonel Cathcart: At this table you see the face of cowardice; and the face of cowardice does not get Baked Alaska!

I'm loving Catch-22.

[Nick Armstrong]

I'm loving Catch-22.

So am I.

Also just completed Summer of Rockets which I was gripped and seduced by. I share some of S_A’s qualms about some details of the final episode, but they weren’t enough to mar a great piece of television - the look of the thing, and the performances by Toby Stephens, Keeley Hawes, Timothy Spall (alarmingly emaciated but so subtly ambiguous/sinister), Mark Bonnar, and not least Claire Bloom

[gradus]

Catch 22 is wonderfully cast, especially Cathcart and de Coverley. I was still laughing this morning at Hugh Laurie's look of amazement as he walks into the meeting room in Bologna. Really super stuff.

[Mal]

I'm binging on The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime at the moment. It's gripping but depressing.

[LMcD]

Catch 22 is wonderfully cast, especially Cathcart and de Coverley. I was still laughing this morning at Hugh Laurie's look of amazement as he walks into the meeting room in Bologna. Really super stuff.

[Richard Tarleton]

Anyone been watching Series 2 of Big Little Lies? A few here watched series 1. Any number of powerful female leads, women whose lives are unravelling as the ripples from the end of Series 1 play out - with the addition of a mesmerisingly evil mother in law played by Meryl Streep...

Another vote for Catch-22. I never made it through the book, but this is amazing. The colour tones of the cinematography, all browns, yellows and sepia (making the splashes of red all the more shocking) are superbly done.

[Mal]

Another vote for Catch-22. I never made it through the book, ...

So long since I read it that I couldn't remember if I made it through first time, but on a second try recently I gave up fairly quickly! I recall (vaguely) enjoying the old film back in the 70s. I did make it through Philip K. Dick's Novel Man in the High Castle recently, perhaps his greatest novel? But I'm seriously flagging at the start of season 3 of the Amazon Prime series... will probably give up on it...