{"id":13462,"date":"2021-02-03T07:12:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T07:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=13462"},"modified":"2021-02-04T19:33:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T19:33:00","slug":"blogathon-02-20-gogglebox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=13462","title":{"rendered":"Blogathon 03\/21: Goggleboxing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do we have two new <s>victims<\/s> joiners of this here Blogathon thing? Well wash my fanny with a jar of apple sauce and call me Hugo Z Hackenbush, I believe we do!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are joined by the redoubtable <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/moreshittomakeanddo.wordpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">More Shit To Make And Do<\/a>. I am already on the edge of my seat over this development, and look forward to all contributions from this corner of the Internet with great eagerness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And, after a conversation on the Twitter on Sunday, @Highwaylass, whose blog <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/highwaylass.wordpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Transport of Delight can be found here<\/a>, expressed an interest in coming along for the ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I don&#8217;t think we need any further proof that Young Masher&#8217;s Blogathon Internet sensation has become viral. Do we? No, we don&#8217;t. Anyway, let&#8217;s get down to it (as the actress said to some passing acquaintance or other).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">People are reporting all kinds of lockdown strangenesses. Vivid dreams, dog-walking at most peculiar hours of the day\/night, vivid dreams and, er, vivid dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It must be related to lockdown, but my unfailing superpower of picking only good things to watch on&#8217;t TV has been, lately, a little off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve picked some absolutely horrible films to watch. Stinkers. Not deliberately, obviously. It&#8217;s all been accidental.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But, away from the truly awful films, some of the <s>serieses<\/s> <s>seriesesis<\/s> seriesisisis we&#8217;ve watched have been pretty good. So here&#8217;s a brief look at some of the highs and lows of seriesisisis we&#8217;ve streamed. Or gave up on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First out of the bag is <strong>The OA<\/strong> (Netflix) which, because we don&#8217;t live in a world permanently coloured by hefty doses of LSD, made as much sense as&#8230; well&#8230; nothing at all. But we watched it. I don&#8217;t know what that says about us or indeed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Preacher <\/strong>(Amazon) got off to a promising start but then fell up its own arsehole and disappeared without trace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Boys <\/strong>(Amazon) has been very good indeed. The massive amounts of sweary irreverence have been most amusing to watch. I look forward to the continuation of the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/strong> (Amazon) has been good to revisit too. No, it&#8217;s not been remade, I&#8217;m talking about the original.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">American politics has been represented by the top-flight drama <strong>The West Wing<\/strong> (More4), and the outrageously hilarious spoof comedy <strong>The Trump Presidency<\/strong> (every media channel ever). The writers on that last show must have been on some pretty heavy drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Britain by Narrowboat<\/strong> (Amazon) is a delightful series. I&#8217;m continuing to watch the two stars, Colin and Shaun, in their ongoing weekly <strong>YouTube<\/strong> episodes. Their vlogs are beautifully filmed and edited, and are worth a look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Tom Clancy&#8217;s Jack Ryan<\/strong> (Amazon) is not too shabby. It manages to keep a respectable distance from the original film, which keeps it on the list of things to dip into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Expanse<\/strong> (Amazon) is a slow burn but blimey and indeed O&#8217;Reilly it successfully captures a story of enormous scope and immense imagination. If you like your SciFi in large-scale, this should be on your list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Warrior Nun<\/strong> (Netflix) was absolutely bonkers, but we watched it. Award yourself bonus points for spotting the many historical, geographical and any other type of continuity errors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Umbrella Academy<\/strong> (Netflix) was lapped up by the whole family, as too was  <strong>Stranger Things <\/strong>(Netflix) and <strong>Titans <\/strong>(Netflix). Though I prefer the far more sophisticated <strong>Teen Titans Go!<\/strong> (Netflix) to the latter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The adults in da house revelled in the Netflix seriesis <strong>Sex Education<\/strong> (it was filmed on my old stamping ground which made it doubly interesting for me).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I bailed out of <strong>Star Trek: Discovery<\/strong> (Netflix) because if it&#8217;s brown and looks like shite and it smells like shite then it is, actually&#8230; shite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Staged <\/strong>(iPlayer) was an unexpected delight in the underrepresented &#8216;soft and gentle, meandering ensemble comedy&#8217; category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My guilty secret is <strong>Homes Under The Hammer<\/strong> (iPlayer); I try to sneak an episode or two in during the quiet period of a weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lost In Space<\/strong> (Netflix) was quite good, if one&#8217;s expectations weren&#8217;t set too high. But if you remember how cardboardy and ham-acted the original was, this far exceeds that!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Utopia <\/strong>(the UK version not the US product &#8211; Amazon) was a wonderfully dark little discovery that is well worth a look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The Man in the High Castle<\/strong> (Amazon) bowed out with a sort of a flourish and a damp squib of an ending; I&#8217;ll miss it, but the departure from the original Philip K Dick story stretched the suspension of disbelief just too far to be comfortable. The &#8216;what if?&#8217; question is carried forward very well though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Carnival Row<\/strong> (Amazon) took a little while to settle into (Steampunk not being my natural bag), but after a few episodes I really got into the concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We sampled <strong>The Good Place<\/strong> (Netflix) for an episode and a half before bailing out and declaring it to be a very unfunny thing which, for a comedy, is not a good label to have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Lucifer <\/strong>(Amazon\/Netflix) was completely unengaging and a very easy thing to leave well alone, but the quirky and very imaginative <strong>Locke &amp; Key<\/strong> (Netflix) was a tidy discovery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I watched half of an episode of <strong>Space Force<\/strong> (Netflix) before hanging the &#8216;I&#8217;d rather have root canal than watch another minute of this crap&#8217; label on it. I&#8217;d give Space Force a hard avoid if I were you. And root canal. But if you have to make a choice of something to endure, choose root canal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Glitch<\/strong> (Netflix) was less harmful than root canal but didn&#8217;t open the door to our collective imaginations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are a few (some might say obvious) seriesisisis missing. Picard, Ted Bundy, Hunters, Bosch, The Queen&#8217;s Gambit, Jessica Jones (no relation), Better Call Saul, Designated Survivor, Away, Another Life, Cobra Kai, Ozark, to name but a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are also quite a few promising foreign language possibilities that I have on a list of things to watch if I ever get the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But this is just a list of the memorable &#8216;good watch\/bad watch&#8217; as viewed through the lense of the occupants of this house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So. what have you been doing over lockdown?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do we have two new victims joiners of this here Blogathon thing? Well wash my fanny with a jar of apple sauce and call me<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}