I avoided watching Peaky Blinders for ages even tho itās Birmingham cos I thought the name sounded twee, but I have watched it now & caught up & itās really good! The second season has Tom Hardy in it! I love Tom Hardy!
I like how every role Tom Hardy does a different silly accent! In this he was doing like a cockney Jew + it was nearly as good as his Bane voice! Off top of my head, I can think of him doing a Welsh in that one where he was in his car, and like a retard american in that one where he was working in that bar, and I spose the one where he was Ultimate Warrior, and then there was that weird Oz mumble in Mad Max, and I spose Iām missing loads too!
Check out Tom Hardy Peaky Blinders good acting work!
A friend of mine recommended Penny Dreadful. I scoffed at her suggestion, but gave it a go and itās amazing. V gothic and based on a graphic novel. Visually stunning and the acting and writing is top notch. No Tom Hardy and his wonky accents but what the hey. Eva Green is amazing and Rory Kinnear equally.
Cillian Murphy who plays the main character is excellent as is the drawing of his character. At first I had fears that he was too enigmatic and that he didnāt really carry the physical threat that his character needs to carry the story. But instead of bigging up his hard-man side, the writers have shown him as vulnerable and that he can be physically bested, but heās relentlessly driven and determined.
If you havenāt watched it. Watch it.
Following a recommendation on here some time ago I tried to watch Newsroom, but it wasnāt on the Sky Boxed Sets page. I noticed the other day that it had appeared and so I watched the first couple of episodes last night. Really enjoying it as I knew I would.
Peaky I loved - another show good at making you root for the nasty villan a la Sopranos. Ripper Street got better and better as the series came to an end. Great acting and good writing. Dr Foster is really interesting. Cant work out where it is going but the writing is true. I just hope it doesnt give us a cop out ending. Better than The Affair for me. Penny Dreadful, hmmm. Enjoyed it when it started then it got a bit silly but improved towards the end of the last series with her back story. Very dark. Thought Lady Chatterlyās Lover was a bit tame. Aquarius on Tuesday nights is worth a look if you like period pieces. 60s offering following the Charles Manson story fleshed out with a fictional sideshow featuring David Duchovny as a flat top cop with an eye for the ladies (no change there then).
This yearās season of South Park is quite interesting. It has never been a show afraid to make big changes, even if it did backtrack on stuff like Kenny being dead. Iāve seen three episodes of this season so far, and unlike most episodes of South Park, where something crazy ends up happening only for the reset button to be pushed, there is a lot of stuff carrying through from one episode to the next.
So far, itās had a go at Caitlin Jenner and Donald Trump. This week marked the arrival of the hipster crowd, as Kennyās run-down neighborhood (just his house and another) become the centrepiece of a gentrified redevelopment. Amused with all three episodes, but South Park can pull other emotional punches. Not for the first time, they managed to spring tears from my eyes with a more heartfelt scene in the third episode.
Well worth a watch. Matt and Trey have still got it.
Personally I think people are quite snobby about South Park, and it is more important as a social commentary piece (due to the way they decide to write episodes) than Family Guy and The Simpsons.
I think Iām putting Gotham on my list of good shows. Last season had a definite purpose, even if was unwieldy in getting there. This season, Rise of the Villains, has been very good so far, and this is coming from someone that refuses to watch the final seasons of Smallville on a point of youāve-strung-me-along-far-too-long principle.
The show loves to tease the audience. A new character this year is a dead ringer for Batmanās arch-villain Joker, although Iām not certain thatās going to be the case. Proto-joker, maybe. Regardless, Gotham is an unforgiving city; Iāve often been surprised at how much blood is in the series (probably more than in any of the films, barring TDK). Gotham is a good show. There, I said it.
Everyoneās been banging on about it recently, but iād like to add Netflixās own āNarcosā to the list. It follows Pablo Escobar from his relatively small beginnings as a smuggler in Colombia through until he became one of the most powerful and wanted criminals in the world. The trailer below portrays the show as much more glitzy and glamorous than it really is, but I couldnāt find a trailer that accurately depicts the mood of it all. Itās brutal, bloody, violent and fucking brilliant.
Iād also like to add in that Wagner Moura (as Escobar) is phenomenal, have followed his career since I saw āElite Squadā a few years ago and hope that he gets a good name from this show.
Warning, this is a documentary and some of you may have seen it before.
Oliver Stoneās Untold history of the United States. Itās a ten episode run, ranging from the end of the second world war to Obama. Like most histories, heās had to pick and choose what to include, but even so, itās a very decent primer into the sort of shenanigans that the US has gotten up to since the end of the second world war.
Thisāll be no surprise to anyone, but the vast majority of its military actions have certainly been immoral, many even illegal. Many, including Iran in 1953, were simply about advancing the interests of US companies, 50 years before the invasion of Iraq.
If nowt else, the show does put the lie to the idea that the US lost its moral authority over Iraq. Some estimates put the number of foreign nationals killed by US military actions since WW2 as high as 30 million. This show, with its examination of how the US has essentially been bang at it for seven decades, gives you a good idea of how it happened.
I 2nd Narcos as the best drama of the year. Funniest comedy by a mile was āpeople just do nothingā, very well made and acted. I have never seen a funnier or more accurate depiction of doing pills than they did in the final episode. Very pleased to hear they were given the contract for a 3rd and 4th series.