TV news and views

[Eric Cartman]

I fell away from Chuck but may go back. Unfortunately the Zachary Levi revealed himself to be a douchecanoe, and so did Adam Baldwin. It does have Matt Bomer in it from the midway point, so that's cool. A quick google image search reveals Yvonne Strahovsky is a clearly an immortal. The show is fun, dumb but fun, I should remember it for when I'm folding laundry. 

Chuck is breezy fun, but its formula gets exposed fairly quickly.
It also (mild spoilers I guess?) was part of a whole bunch of shows at the time where everything that happened was entirely because of the protagonists parents, which says something about the psychological zeitgeist of the time I guess.

I wish Poker Face was available here. Weird narrative missteps or not, I want more Rian Johnson in my life.

 

The rapid enshittification of streaming services globally is depressing - when I first subscribed to netflix, it had an extensive back catalogue of shows from multiple production companies (ABC / CBS / FOX) and timely movie releases, as well as backing a lot of their own tv shows that would get passed by the networks (so some really great stuff like Glow) but nowadays pretty much has nothing more than 10 years old, gets nothing new from anyone that has their own streaming service (ie all of them) and it mostly pours its production budgets into reality tv slop while cancelling promising shows more ruthlessly than any of the networks did back in the day. Or sniping shit that would have been free on the BBC or Channel 4 from production companies that built their craft on the UK dime.

If I want access to Star Trek in the UK for example, I need subs to Amazon Prime, Netflix AND Paramount+ - there was also a lengthy period where I couldn't watch any new star trek stuff because they cancelled all their existing deals, but didn't bother releasing P+.

If only there was some tried and tested solution

Lately my jag is catching up on Blake's 7, for which "LTTP" doesn't really cover the amount of time this has been available, and I've slept on it.

Blakes 7 is mostly great, but hoo-boy those production values are a steep initial hurdle to get over

It was commissioned to replace a regular ass sitcom, and the BBC didn't much like sci-fi so they didn't give them any more budget than it would take to film a 30 minute sitcom set in contemporary earth, for an hour long grand space opera

It also gets crazy because they wrapped everything up for a series 3 finale, but the BBC commissioner watched it at home, and liked it so much he rang the office and made the voice over announcer promise a series 4 during the end credits as it aired

I just encountered the novel for the first time recently; should I pick it up? Have you read it?

I haven't, but the TV show is really good - it has a lot of noticable 'book tropes' though (main characters being authors, some characters overlapping other characters but referred to differently by different people so you don't realise its the same person - a trick you cant do if you can actually see the person involved, lots of literary references, lots of 'this chapter is retelling these events but from this characters perspective') type POV jumps, etc).

I'd have to assume the book is better, because, well, generally thats a truism.