[Tiste Simeon]

Finished Watchmen the TV series. That was a seriously good show, lots going on to digest. They kept it wonderfully in line with the tone of the graphic novel.

I think I'll watch The Wire next.

[worry]

Have fun!

[Slow Ben]

Hells yes.

I’ve had a Wire RE-watch stewing for years.

Shiiiiiiiiit

[worry]

I just watched that History of Swear Words series on Netflix and that actor is in it to discuss a certain favorite cuss.

[Slow Ben]

worry, on 03 March 2023 - 01:38 PM, said:

I just watched that History of Swear Words series on Netflix and that actor is in it to discuss a certain favorite cuss.

That’s awesome. I’ll have to watch it.

[Tiste Simeon]

Slow Ben, on 03 March 2023 - 01:17 PM, said:

Hells yes.

I’ve had a Wire RE-watch stewing for years.

Shiiiiiiiiit

Aww yiss both Idris Elba and Lance Reddick are in this? Heck yes!

[Mezla PigDog]

Has anyone watched Physical: 100?

I have. I don't really know why. I watched it with dubbing and got enthralled with how they must have selected 100 people to do the voices and kind of matched the voices to the people they were voicing. And there is a lot of physical exertion in that show so the voice overs are constantly grunting and gasping. I'd love to see footage of them recording the voice overs!

It was weird. But strangely enthralling. And now I hear the final has some controversy associated which is a bit disappointing.

Anyway. Not especially recommending it but curious if anyone else has as little spare time on their hands as I do but still managed to waste it watching this?

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Second episode of the Party Dowm reboot had me in stitches multiple times, what a return. Is anyone watching this?

[worry]

I’m currently rewatching before I get to the new ones…but I’m excited!

[champ]

Mezla PigDog, on 03 March 2023 - 10:15 PM, said:

Has anyone watched Physical: 100?

I have. I don't really know why. I watched it with dubbing and got enthralled with how they must have selected 100 people to do the voices and kind of matched the voices to the people they were voicing. And there is a lot of physical exertion in that show so the voice overs are constantly grunting and gasping. I'd love to see footage of them recording the voice overs!

It was weird. But strangely enthralling. And now I hear the final has some controversy associated which is a bit disappointing.

Anyway. Not especially recommending it but curious if anyone else has as little spare time on their hands as I do but still managed to waste it watching this?

Guilty! Same thoughts as you, I was hooked watching it but with no idea why I was, just couldn't turn it off! I was waiting for the day the new eps were released.


I hadn't heard about the final shenanigans. I was surprised by the person who won it, didn't expect it.


They should expand out the idea to other countries, I'd watch a UK show for sure.

[Slow Ben]

worry, on 05 March 2023 - 02:28 AM, said:

I’m currently rewatching before I get to the new ones…but I’m excited!

Same. Watched 2.3 last night.

I’ll hopefully get to it next week!

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

'Peak TV Is Over. Welcome to Trough TV.

Streaming’s golden age has been ending for a while, but it’s only now become clear what’s replacing it.

[...] a steroidal hybrid of algorithmic insights and old-school showbiz wisdom about what sells, resulting in a flood of bad-idea IP extensions (Velma, That ’90s Show), true-crime schlock (Netflix’s entire Documentaries tab), and Yellowstone spinoffs. Call it Trough TV, when the networks that once aimed for the stars now see how low they can go.

[...] The boom isn’t just ending. It’s imploding, with some of its products being snuffed out or vaporized altogether, and the old winner-take-all logic reasserting itself. Even some of the products of the boom, those nifty, bespoke little shows that played to small but fervently devoted audiences, are starting to go bye-bye as well, and in the post–physical media era, that means they’ve effectively been deleted from the world.

[...] the only place to watch the show was “on American Airlines and on JetBlue.” [...] writer-producer for Game of Thrones and The Rings of Power, was recently looking to watch the 2019 HBO series Mrs. Fletcher, [...] He couldn’t find it. It wasn’t on HBO Max, wasn’t available to purchase or rent, wasn’t even on DVD. It was, he concluded, as if the show had been “buried alive.”

[...] for a while, the prevailing wisdom seemed to be that concluding a series, even in a different format, would make the whole more valuable[...]

[...] the old TV-industry thinking seems to be reasserting itself that extending a little-watched series is just throwing good money after bad. [...] But when a passionate fan base is no longer enough to keep a show alive, especially when that fan base is paying the network directly instead of in the secondhand currency of eyeballs and attention spans, it feels as if a contract has been broken, a rosier future smothered by pedestrian reality.'

Peak TV is over. Welcome to Trough TV

But maybe AI will help?... in a year or three....

[QuickTidal]

Again, I feel like this is some poor brand specific choices.

Netflix throwing a whole SLEW of shit at the wall and see wast sticks (read: picks up new subs), stubbornly sticking to the binge model when so many other services have shown that week-to-week can keep subscriber attrition low, the password shennanigans, and especially not letting MOST shows get past a 2nd or 3rd season before unceremoniously cancelling it. I mention Netflix first since they have failed so hard at this, and I think it's because they were the first on the scene...and when streaming was in its infancy their model worked and worked WELL, but it only worked in a world where the vast majority of people had yet to cut cable and they were slowly but constantly gaining subs and getting people to cut the cord. But we've moved past that infancy and many other streamers have proved themselves immensely viable, and I would argue more people DON'T have cable anymore than do. The world is streaming now....in THAT world, the Netflix model is garbage and does not endear itself to the viewer. Netflix as a corp has no idea how to run its business as a monthly subscriber service and not as a constantly upping of subscribers for more profit over time model. If they continue on this path, I foresee them being the MySpace of streaming...a flash in the pan that burned brightly, and then failed because it refused to innovate as the world it helped create...changed.

Meanwhile, juxtapose with Disney+. Who have a deep movie and TV catalogue for all ages for binging/revisting ect., and yet ALL their new/original content (Be it Marvel, Star Wars, or something else) is carefully crafted to air week-to-week (no binging; sort of a malleable streaming 'appointment TV' of old) and is all lined up to not overlap, so you can go from one season of a show to another season of a show, Like we had BOBF, and then ANDOR, and then THE BAD BATCH, and then MANDO S3....all airing after one another with small or no breaks in between, same is true of Marvel, Nat Geo, and all the other shows they make. This keeps most people subbed as regular subbers. It's a steady revenue for a company that makes lots of money in other regions of entertainment.

Amazon Prime gives you decent originals as well (airing week to week too), AND you get to use the site to order using Prime (a bonus), and you can add "channels" of other sub services (like BritBox, or Acorn, or the like) at a discount from what you pay if you get it a la carte.

Like all these companies offer more than just the streaming they manage. Netflix has nothing else. Even their merch sites for shows like STRANGER THINGS are pitiful...hell, the most good and official COBRA KAI merch you can find online is not through a Netflix site, but a third party site.

So I don't think that Peak TV (whatever that is) has stopped, or that Trough TV is a thing....the better streamers out there are producing good content, but it's curated to not overlap so it comes out slowly and carefully, and not all at once. The article uses THE NEVERS as an example...it's a terrible example since it was on HBO and Whedon left (due to his shittery in his real life), and it was eventually cancelled in Dec 2022, so of COURSE they re going to burn off the remaining 6 eps on their ad-supported Tubi service, because they want to make some money off a show that flunked for them when the show runner walked. That's just a good business decision.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Past 'peak TV' in terms of sheer numbers will probably be vastly exceeded when AI makes it cheaper to create---especially once AI is capable of generating good content with minimal human involvement. At present we have crude AI trying to predict what shows people will want to watch, which for the most part is almost certainly limiting rather than fostering creativity (though it could conceivably come up with combinations with a potentially large audience humans may not have thought of, or might have been reluctant to fund).

One big question is whether access to high-quality AI tools will be mostly limited to megacorporations who own a significant chunk of the training data or are willing to pay licensing fees (etc.)---or who are able to muster the computing power....

In the meantime, certainly some IP with a large enough dedicated followings (Star Wars, Marvel etc.) will do relatively well---though even there whether the weirder or more innovative or niche shows will continue to be funded (as the economy of the trough plows through them) is an open question... and the same goes for shows with exorbitant budgets very likely in excess of the profits they bring in.

But if AI makes SFX cheaper, maybe Rings of Power will finally be able to afford to hire writers?... And I wouldn't mind if most of those actors were replaced by AI. If it got any worse, it might at least be funnier....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 06 March 2023 - 04:21 PM

[QuickTidal]

Azath Vitr (D, on 06 March 2023 - 04:18 PM, said:

But if AI makes SFX cheaper, maybe Rings of Power will finally be able to afford to hire writers?...

LOL, touché.

[polishgenius]

Trailer for Apple's adaptation of Wool. Looks pretty good.


Apple TV seem to have much higher standards of curation than Netflix, and even Amazon.

[QuickTidal]

Been watching S1 of the CW's KUNG FU show, Olivia Liang and Shannon Dang are REALLY good in it, and Tzi Ma is exceptionally wholesome and heart-warming as their father. Make no mistake, it's a CW show....but it's got really good action choreography (the John Wick people apparently do it?) and some fun mystical stuff mixed with family troubles and cultural stuff.

[Slow Ben]

The Last Of Us was fanfriggintastic. They nailed it.

I know how it would end, so I probably enjoyed my wife’s reaction of the ending more than the ending itself.

[Tiste Simeon]

Slow Ben, on 14 March 2023 - 02:45 AM, said:

The Last Of Us was fanfriggintastic. They nailed it.

I know how it would end, so I probably enjoyed my wife’s reaction of the ending more than the ending itself.

Yup spot on. Really good show and very toned down on the horror, which I quite liked. It was all about relationship rather than just "oh no! More monsters!"

[worry]

It COULD have used more monsters imo, but I do otherwise agree it was a wild success.