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[The Grayfox]

I know I'm very early on in The Shield, but to me there is no comparison to The Wire other than they're both shows about cops. The Shield is MUCH more engaging and much better at creating an atmosphere that you care about. You want to see what's coming next. In The Wire, I never cared what was coming. Very little intrigue for me. Obviously a lot of people love that show, so maybe it gets better in the later seasons, but I'm not going to slog through two seasons of a show to hopefully, maybe get to a point where I sort of like it. I guess a good way to explain it for me is that I felt like I didn't even need to pay attention.

I did, however, watch the miniseries 'The Night Of' and enjoyed it so much that I binged it in two nights. Riz Ahmed was quite excellent in it. If you're ever looking for a short-term watch, I found it to be quite good.

Having watched Sons of Anarchy in the past, I see a lot of similarities in the way The Shield is shot, character arcs, and just overall feel. It has Kurt Sutter's touch on it for sure. And even just watching three episodes, there's some actor crossover as well. Walton Goggins, Benito Martinez and Jay Karnes namely. I'll watch a few more tonight.

 

[DE4life]

I'll probably give The Wire a miss, then. I did watch some of Sons of Anarchy way back when it was first on, but it never really got me hooked in the same way as The Shield. It was alright, but it didn't hold my interest.

Honestly The Shield is an absolute masterpiece when it comes to long-term storytelling. What happens in the end perfectly ties into everything that happened at the beginning and throughout each season, and at no point do any of the developments in the series feel contrived or unrealistic. It's both logical and unpredictable, at no point does it disappoint with a weak payoff or ridiculous pivot. It just goes strong throughout the entire seven seasons. I think it's something like 88 episodes, and I genuinely don't think there's a single bad one.

 

[The Grayfox]

About to start season 6 of The Shield. As a general habit, I look up season rankings just to see which seasons fans prefer with no spoilers. It seems that season 6 is widely considered to be the "worst" season. Out of curiosity, do you agree? So far I've quite enjoyed the previous five seasons quite a bit. Definitely some maddening moments where I would speak directly to my screen and say "what the fuck are you doing?!"

 

[eochaid]

I'm watching Staged.

 

[The Grayfox]

The last few weeks, I've taken a break from binging shows and been watching a mixture of thriller/horror/mystery. There's been a few gems, but holy shit, a lot of unremarkable movies within. As far stuff that stuck out, I thought Barbarian was decent and I was pretty entertained by I Came By as well. Nothing that anyone would consider amazing, but good enough to waste 90-120 minutes watching them.

Oh, and The Killer as well, which I would actually say was quite good. Fassbender was remarkable in it, I'd say. It played like a Fincher film for sure, but I also don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

 

[drawntoblack]

Been watching random episodes of the original Twilight Zone during the past few weeks. ~25 minute long episodes are perfect, don't take too much time and are also not long enough for me to fall asleep. They tend to vary in quality since every episode is completely different in cast and story, but there are only a few really bad ones. Even the bad ones have terrific acting, especially compared to what passes for modern television, and I consider them bad solely due to the particular episode setting not clicking with me.

Last actual tv series I binged was Bosch, the new season ended recently. It's a pretty good detective show made after the book series. The pacing is very book-like, if that makes any sense, and it's has an arching story instead of being self-contained for every episode. Very refreshing, cinematography is great and soundtrack is top notch jazz in every episode. Plus it's very consistent in quality from one season to another. Jamie Hector from The Wire plays one of the main roles, a by-the-book detective who is also a family man, which is extremely unusual if you've seen The Wire. Great actor.

 

[The Grayfox]

I'm a fan of Bosch -- both the books and shows. I haven't watched season 2 of Bosch: Legacy yet but I will soon. I think the shows do a pretty decent job of capturing the feel of the books.

 

[DE4life]

If you like horror/thriller/mystery type shows you might enjoy "Fool Me Once" that's come out recently on Netflix. I watched that with the missus and it was pretty good. Also watched other shows adapted from the same author - "Stay Close" and "The Stranger" - and they were quite entertaining as well. Albeit the stories hit the same basic beats across each series and have similar themes, but overall decent shows to binge watch and only eight episodes each,

 

[The Grayfox]

I'll check out all three of those. I enjoy a good mystery.

 

[DE4life]

We ended up binge watching all three series in three nights - just over six hours each time, which is quite a lot! But it's designed in a way where you just want to watch one more... then one more... and before you know it you're two episodes from the end and now you might as well finish it.

 

[The Grayfox]

Taking a bit of a break from anime and concentrating on some British mystery. So far I've watched Waking the Dead, Shetland and now I'm watching Ripper Street, which I'm quite enjoying. Wire in the Blood is on the docket as well.

 

[DE4life]

I started watching 'The Steve Harvey Show' recently, lmao. Never seen it before. I don't understand why it's called the Steve Harvey show, but then his name is changed to Steve Hightower in the show itself. I mean, was Steve Harvey that big of a name at the time that having his name in the title was imperative to the show's success? Maybe he was, idk, it was America in the mid-90s and I'm culturally clueless there.

 

[The Grayfox]

Your TV viewing habits are amusing to me for some reason. What a random show for a dude living in the UK to start watching. Over here, Steve Harvey is mostly known for hosting Family Feud. The situation you mention happens over here a lot and I've never understood it either. The show Martin for instance, while it doesn't use his full name, Martin Lawrence's character in the show is Martin Payne. But the title 'Martin' was used to get people to watch the show because it was Martin Lawrence and in the early 90s, he was pretty big. There are plenty of other examples that are not coming to me right now, but it is quite common.

 

[DE4life]

Yeah it is really random tbh basically I watched a bunch of those Steve Harvey Family Feud compilations on YouTube, then saw in the comments about him having a sitcom in the 90s. I'd never heard of it, so was like, OK - let's see. Watched a few episodes, ended up enjoying it and now I'm some way through season 4 of 6, lmao. God knows what I'll end up watching next.

 

[The Grayfox]

I have a soft spot for American sitcoms so I get it. I never watched The Steve Harvey Show, though I do remember when it was on. The sitcoms I grew up on were Full House, Family Matters, Saved by the Bell, stuff like that. For my money, the greatest sitcom of all time goes to NewsRadio, which was so unbelievably underrated. When Phil Hartman died, the show kind of died with him. He was such a huge part of it and in my opinion, the best part of it. Great cast, great chemistry and still few people even know what it is. Amazing show though.

 

[DE4life]

We had a bit of a mixture of UK and US sitcoms here. I don't think we ever got Full House (that I remember) or Family Matters, but we got series like Saved By the Bell, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, My Wife & Kids, Kenan & Kel, Sister Sister, Moesha, Boy Meets World, Home Improvement, Sex and the City and Friends alongside our own programs like Only Fools and Horses, Vicar of Dibley, Fawlty Towers The Office, One Foot in the Grave, Father Ted, The IT Crowd, The Royle Family, Red Dwarf, Men Behaving Badly... well, I could go on, but I get the feeling you guys probably didn't get many UK Sitcoms in the same way we got American Sitcoms I know you got your own version of The Office, which I actually think is pretty damn good after the first season. For some reason rather than just import our shows over, you guys seem to want to Americanize them (I don't mean you specifically, but your TV companies), and it almost always ends in failure. The US version of the Inbetweeners is just... fucking awful.

 

[eochaid]

We had a bit of a mixture of UK and US sitcoms here. I don't think we ever got Full House (that I remember) or Family Matters,

We had all of those shows here in Spain. Absolutely all of them. And a lot more that you didn't mention. But it's probably due to our own productions being garbage.

 

[DE4life]

We had all of those shows here in Spain. Absolutely all of them. And a lot more that you didn't mention. But it's probably due to our own productions being garbage.

The US or UK ones? Or both?

 

[eochaid]

The US ones. From the UK we had, Dr Who, Blackadder and the young ones through our regional TV. I cannot remember the office reaching here and the national TV channels only hosted, as fat as I can remember, the Benny Hill Show.

 

[DE4life]

Well, those are some classic UK shows for sure. I can remember Laverna/Sister loving Mr. Bean, so I guess that aired in Poland, lmao.