I've been watching the YouTube videos put out by Andraz Egart, who describes himself as "a twenty-five year old adventurer from Slovenia," and who climbs mountains and camps overnight in public bivouacs and other places.
I don't know why I'm so fascinated with these. Egart has a nice sense of humor, and the scenery is great, but a lot of the time I'm clutching my hair and yelling at the screen, "You're crazy! What are you doing! DON'T DO THAT!"
I think I might like seeing what the bivouacs look like inside. There are usually multiple bunks or sleeping spaces, and sometimes a wood-burning stove, though not always. People leave extra food for other climbers, or blankets, or wood. We don't have anything like that here in Arkansas, but on the other hand we probably don't need it. It would be hard to get far enough away from a town to need shelter. Also, of course, the US does not believe in the public good. Or at least the South does not.
Anyway, they're usually thirty to forty minutes long and I watch them at 1.3 speed, usually one every evening. They're what I watch when I am too tired to read.
On the recommendation of someone, I forget who, I watched the first two episodes on Landman, which (at least for me) requires a "free" subscription to Paramount Plus. (I can cancel it for free if I do it within five days.)
This is a series set in the oilfields of Midland, Texas, about a landman, which is a guy who gets leases and solves problems for an immense oil company. Billy Bob Thornton stars, and Jon Hamm plays the owner of the oil company.
There's a lot to like here -- Billy Bob and Jon not least of all -- but wow, the sexual politics.
The main point, at least so far, is that the oil business is a high-stakes and very dangerous game (the getting and selling of oil). It's hard on the bodies and the lives of the men who work the "patch," as the oil fields are called. The pay is good because the job is so dangerous. That part is making a good point.
And the huge amounts of money involved -- the show, so far, does a good job of showing that and showing why the people who own and profit off the oilfields are not going down without a fight. The show explicitly compares the oil business to cocaine/heroine smugglers, which is a nice touch.
The show also does a good job of showing the contrast between the oil company owner's life, and his family who lives on the profits of the oil company, and the lives of the workers on the oil patch, without ever calling attention to it. There's a nice scene where Billy Bob's son says, "The difference between you and [Jon Hamm] is that you quit and he didn't," and Billy Bob snaps back, "The difference is he has a trust fund and I didn't."
The macho posturing and dominance games are pretty well done too.
And there's some nice writing.
But much of the show is aimed at convincing us that the idea that oil companies are destroying the planet is just silly, and the oil production must continue, no matter the cost, in any definition of "cost."
Also, women in this show are either sexual possessions, and shown as such by the show (Billy Bog's nubile 17 year old daughter parades about a house filled with men in her lacy undies and a crop-top sweatshirt; the girl who works at the all-night coffee stand has her tits hanging out; Jon Hamm's wife spends her time lolling in a pool or in the sun); or they are ignorant upstarts who don't understand how the real world works (a lawyer for the evil law firm which protects the oil company). We also have a waitress, who stays out of the way when the men are talking. (I'm not the only one to notice the terrible job this show does with women characters.)
I get that this is probably part of the culture. But the show also shows all these big tough men as good guys, deep down, (Jon Hamm suffers when the oil patch workers die). And of course women exist to flash their tits and ass at men. Why else would men keep them around?
I might give it another episode or two, because the pacing and the writing are pretty good. But it's propaganda for the oil companies and for toxic masculinity, at least so far.
I just spent the past couple months watching every single episode ofVera, which is a police procedural show about a grumpy old lady who heads a murder squad in Northumbria. Partly I love the dialect, but also it was fun watching a woman be mean and unreasonable. Usually only men get to be unpleasant in media. Also the landscape was beautiful -- it's Northern England (I think?) and on the east coast, so there are a lot of fisheries and rolling hills and farmlands. Lots of ancient castle-like buildings too. There's a bit of copaganda, of course, but the show makes a point of having the police actually help people -- providing liaisons for victim's families and so forth -- showing how that can be done.
The show also makes a point of having disabled characters as police officers -- one character is an amputee, and two others are in a wheelchairs -- as well as featuring characters of color as police officers, as well as in Northumbria in general. The crimes weren't all murdered women, too, which was a refreshing change. It's available on Amazon Prime, though you have to subscribe to Britbox to watch it.
I also finally got around to watching Derry Girls on Netflix. I'm probably the last person on the planet to figuring out how much fun this one is. Again, I love the dialect; and the characters, especially the grandfather, are just great. It's about a group of Catholic schoolgirls during "the Troubles" in the 1980s, but that conflict is mostly in the background. The main business of the show is these girls (and one guy) in their daily lives. I was sorry this one ended.
Now I'm watching The Gentlemanon Netflix. I almost quit watching this one in the first few minutes because it looked like it was going to your typical hot guy does hot guy things. (The lead, Theo James, is very pretty indeed.) But I stuck with it because I liked how the siblings interacted -- like actual siblings, I mean -- and I'm still mostly enjoying it. It's about a duke who discovers his father was maintaining the ancient and enormous estate by leasing out part of it to a weed-growing consortium. The duke soon discovers, much to his chagrin, that he has a certain talent for criminal enterprises.
It reminds me a little of Breaking Bad, except the duke is likable, unlike Walter White, who was always something of a jerk and who got worse as the series progressed. There are still moments in every episode where I wonder why I'm watching this, but it's charming enough that so far I have stuck with it.
It's the end of the semester, and I'm reading not just papers but revisions of papers -- 68 students in my three Comp II classes, and all of them are turning in a ten page research paper with citations. I have to read the papers, I have to check their citations, I have to give feedback. Then half of the students change one thing (or nothing) and resubmit and I have to send them gentle notes advising them not to try that bullshit on me.
But anyway! In the evenings, I have been watching, among other things, Severance, which is on Apple TV. (You can get it for six dollars a month as a "special deal." ) I thought this was a grim and depressing TV show about life in an office, and in fact it is!
But it's also a SF show about a new procedure that lets you "sever" your work self from your not-at-work self, and goes hard in its critique of pure capitalism. I can't say you'll exactly like it, but it's fascinating and definitely worth watching. Also, gay Christopher Walken. Need I say more?
The final season of The Last Kingdom dropped. It was engaging, and Uhtred finally reclaims Bebbanburg, but it left a lot of open doors. I hear there's going to be a movie. This is a series, btw, about King Alfred and his heirs as they fight the Vikings and unify England. It's also about Uhtred of Bebbanburg, his friends, and his family. A lot of good women characters in this one, and it shows clearly how the Christian religion/cult warped history. Very much worth watching, and there are five seasons, so there's your next six months sorted.
Arcaneis an animated series on Netflix, with some beautiful animation and worldbuilding. Apparently based on a video game? You can't tell, except for now and then there's a weird focus on fighting. This one is set in a city that has two levels, the wealthy in the upper city and the poor and disenfranchised down in the "lanes." We follow a handful of characters, some from the the city, some from the lanes, as an invention by a technological genius -- one which couples magic to weapons -- changes the balance of power. Nice writing and characterization, too. Only the first season is out so far.
Russian Doll has just dropped its second season. Russian Doll, you'll remember, is the Netflix show about a woman caught in a time loop -- she keeps living the same miserable night, over and over. It was really good, and won a bunch of awards, so I see why they wanted another swing. Also the lead actor is great. I can't think what they're going to do, exactly. I've got this one on my queue. so technically I'm not watching it yet.
Call the Midwife Season 10 is out on Netflix. We've reached 1967, I think. I still like this show, but it's utterly soap opera. Also I miss Chummy. She was the best. According to Wikipedia, Season 11 is out in England.
I rewatched the Kiera Knightly Pride and Prejudice, and have decided this is my favorite P&P. Sorry, Colin Firth.
Scott & Bailey is a police procedural set in Manchester, England. It's free on Amazon Prime; looks like you can get it on YouTube as well. One review calls it the Cagney & Lacey of British television, which, okay, I can see that. But also, no.
Cagney & Lacey, for those of you who don't remember when TV had only four channels, was a police show, debuting in 1982, about two women detectives (Cagney and Lacey) who worked for the NYPD. It was ground-breaking for having woman as main characters, but in every other way it was typical copaganda. Also, both the show and the two women detectives focused heavily on the men in the department, and on their lives. Men were in charge; women were allowed into the department, on sufferance, but they and everyone else knew who the real people were.
Scott & Bailey had its first season in 2011. The idea of women in the workplace no longer seems groundbreaking (honestly, it never was: my grandmother had a job her entire life, including after her children were born), but that's not the big difference here. The big difference is that women are the center and main focus of this show. We have Scott and Bailey, the two detectives; but we also have Gill, who is maybe 20 years older than they are and the head of the Syndicate Nine of the Major Incident Team, the department in which the series is set; and we have Julia Dodson, head of another syndicate, and Gill's longtime friend and mentor. The show, written mainly by women, accurately portrays the lives of women -- what we talk about, what occupies our attention, the many ways we can screw up our lives, that sort of thing.
Women aren't primarily or even mostly thinking about men in this show, is what I'm saying. Also, the male characters aren't shown as the norm, or the "real" police, who the women are allowed to pretend to be. The woman are the real police. Some of the men are too, but lots of them are mediocre white guys promoted beyond their level of competence. (Several of the reviews of the show are very pouty about this. Men shown as imperfect? As screw-ups? As people who make women's lives much, much, much harder? How very dare!)
The show also spends some time on men as criminals, and the effect the violence and exploitation and carelessness of men has on the lives of those around them. (There are women criminals as well, don't worry.) In fact, most of the personal problems, the real wearing down of the main characters, is due to the men in their lives: a husband who feels he's not the center of his wife's life; a brother who expects his sisters to continue being his mommy throughout his life; a lover who sees women as objects who exist for his gratification, and resents being called on his bad behavior -- resents it to the extent of violence.
The show lets us see how, rather than being valiant protectors and providers, many men* exploit the women in their lives, demand their support, and become abusive or pouty -- or simply leave -- if their women don't expend huge amounts of energy catering to those men's egos. One major arc concerns a handsome white guy, promoted beyond his capabilities, who goes into a prolonged sulk because his (female) bosses don't praise him constantly, and ends up betraying them.
Anyway, this refreshing view of the world alone makes this show worth watching; but it is also well-written and acted, and I love the accents. It admits that the police screw up, that they lie, cheat, and abuse their power; but only incidentally. This is still copaganda, in other words, so fair warning.
Of course. Who isn't? My kid sent me a PM asking, why is everyone losing their shit over Ted Lasso? Isn't it just a show about a soccer coach? I sent back, Ted Lasso saved my life.
I'm not saying it will save your life. I was extremely depressed and feeling generally hopeless, and this show is about persevering in the face of that hopelessness (and about a soccer coach), as well as being about people who do the right thing. Also it's funny. Also, the actor who plays Roy Kent is extremely hot. Also, lots of accents. You know I love dialectical English.
Season Two has started to deal with some darker issues, but I'm still watching. Free on Apple TV if you have a Apple device, or you can buy the season on YouTube.
Lupin
This is a French series, in French. I heard good things about it, but mainly I am watching it to practice my French. I am up to 524 days on Duolingo, and can understand about half of what's being said on screen. (I keep the subtitles on, but only check them when I get stuck.
It's also a pretty good show, at least so far, about the son of a Senegalese immigrant whose father was wrongly convicted of theft and who is trying to clear his father's name while being himself hunted by the French police, because he also makes his living as a 'gentleman thief.' His name isn't actually Lupin; apparently that's a name he takes from a book series he read as a kid. (I'm only on episode two.)
On Netflix.
The Darkest Hour
Not the one about Churchill. This is about two young software engineers who go to Russia to pitch an app to some business there and while they are in Russia aliens made of wave-form energy invade. Basically a horror-SF movie, but I enjoyed it. Very few Russian characters for a show set in Russia, but I did like the guy living in a Faraday cage with his cat in Faraday armor, that was fun.
On Netflix.
Law & Order: UK
Copaganda. Don't waste your time unless you're really interested in English dialects.
I watched a couple episodes of The Chair on Netflix last night after someone on FB called it "woke garbage."
It's not the best TV I've ever seen -- Sandra Oh has just been named the chair of the English department in a small eastern college somewhere, where enrollment is falling and most of the faculty are white guys well over the age of sixty. It's her job to thin out the faculty, and her dean suggests she start with the oldest (two white guys and a white woman, all apparently in their late 70s) and the highest paid. But these faculty were her mentors, and at least one is a close friend, and so she's reluctant.
There's also a young black professor, and a fifty-year-old white guy professor whose wife has just died and who, though a brilliant teacher and scholar, is in a tailspin over her loss. At the end of episode two (which is where I stopped) he runs into trouble online after he (ironically) gives a Nazi salute in class and someone takes a video of it which goes viral.
That's it, that's the entire show. I watched it, frowning, looking for the "wokeness" which made it "garbage." There are no LGBT people (highly unlikely, at a university in the East); there are office politics but no other politics; there is no mention of immigration or global warming, or the pandemic;there are no enforced seminars to make people recognize that black people are people too....
Oh, wait. There it is. The show simply assumes that black people and Asian people and women are people. The show has an Asian person as its main character. Not only that, but she's a woman. And the show has two other women -- one of them black -- as professors in a university. There's the "woke garbage" my FB critic was complaining about.
It's honestly true. White conservatives think anything that's not about white men, entirely about white men, with women only as minor characters in the background, is liberal propaganda. That's the world they live in. Which explains a lot, when you think about it.
Anyway, so far as recommending it goes, it held my interest, and it's mostly realistic (unlike the usual fictional depictions of university life we get in movies and TV). The professors are clearly paid an unlikely amount (what English professor makes over $100,000 a year?) but this may be because they're at a famous (if fictional) private university? I probably won't keep watching, what with the semester starting up, but if you like campus fiction and Sandra Oh, this might be for you.
I finally watched On the Basis of Sex, as I noted a few posts ago. And Dr. Skull and I have been watching Rake, which is an Australian TV show about barrister, as well as life, politics, and sex in Sydney. (You can watch it on Netflix.)
It's funny, and also appalling. The main character, Cleaver Greene, is an enormous jerk, who also happens to be brilliant in court. The supporting characters are great, though if I were any one of them I would have ditched him much, much, much sooner. Good writing and acting. Also, occasionally it gives us a look at the US through Australian eyes.
Shows/movies I have tried to watch and given up on after less than 20 minutes:
2012
The Lovely Bones
The I-Land
Awake
Some of them were too stupid, and some too boring. The Lovely Bones made me queasy. YMMV. We have finished watching Rake, and may try Ted Lasso next -- I hear good things about it.
I'm still tragically, dramatically sick, which means I can't do much besides lie on the sofa and whimper. Also blow my nose, emit hacking coughs, and read novels.
(I lie. I'm also writing. Each day I trawl up sufficient energy to write for at least two hours. Then I collapse.)
Anyway, I'm reading a lot. Also binge-watching a lot of Netflix.
